Get a Life, the K20 Center Game That Lets Students Try Careers

The K20 Center at the University of Oklahoma designed Get a Life for middle and high school students. A playthrough takes 10 to 15 minutes. The player picks a career focus for the character from 16 clusters and decides whether the character applies to college or skips it. In college the player keeps up the character's grades and wellbeing through the choices made.

Each level of education leads to different careers, and each career has its own difficulties and openings. More than 96 careers are in the game, including some students may never have heard of. When the character reaches retirement, the game shows a look back: total income earned, final level of comfort, impact on society and the retirement savings left to live on. Students can start again with a new character, a new interest or a different level of education.

The developers describe the game as a seed for thought, not a full answer to questions about college and careers. It gives immediate feedback on each decision and a summary after every play, and the design invites repeated runs.

Players try several educational paths and careers, including some they had not considered.

Get a Life was one of two K20 Center games named finalists in the business and nonprofit category of the 2019 Serious Games Showcase & Challenge. The other was Functions of the Machine, a game about reasoning with dynamic visualizations.

The game is still offered. The K20 Center's game page loads in November 2026 and calls Get a Life a narrative-driven college and career awareness game for grades 8 through 12, with a playthrough of about 10 to 15 minutes. Players guide a character from high school graduation to retirement and balance comfort, civic involvement and income along the way. The page says teachers can use K20 games in a classroom free of charge by creating an account on the K20 Game Portal.

The K20 Center's main site and its games page also load. Nothing on the page says the game is retired or replaced. Functions of the Machine is listed as unconfirmed.

The page adds that the branching play produces a very large number of possible storylines and outcomes.