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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →You Are Jeff Bezos is a short, browser-based Twine game that asks what you would do with a fictionalized version of the Amazon founder’s fortune. Its menu offers huge, sometimes absurd expenditures, but its arithmetic is deliberately not a guide to what those real-world problems would cost. In a 2018 GeekWire account, reporter Kurt Schlosser made several large purchases and still had $90 billion left in the game.
What is You Are Jeff Bezos?
Created by writer Kris Ligman, You Are Jeff Bezos is a text-driven, choose-your-own-adventure game made with Twine 2. The player wakes up in Jeff Bezos’s body and is invited to spend the enormous fortune represented in the game by choosing from a menu of civic causes and comic, politically pointed options. It is a brief thought experiment, not a financial simulator.
Ligman said they wrote the game in four days. In a postmortem, they described it as a “power fantasy” that reduces “massive real-life social problems” to a few round numbers. That simplification is central to the experience: the game makes an immense sum feel tangible by turning it into a set of choices, while also making the limits of that framing hard to ignore.
What can you spend the money on?
GeekWire’s October 22, 2018 report described the game as starting with $156 billion. Its examples included a $139 billion option to repair Puerto Rico, $20 billion to end homelessness in the United States, and $1.5 trillion for student loan debt. Those are historical figures from the game’s menu as reported in 2018—not verified or current estimates of what repairing Puerto Rico, ending homelessness, or addressing student debt would require.
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The scale of the choices is part of the joke and the provocation. A player can compare the menu’s price tags, see which problems the game frames as individually solvable, and watch the balance change under its rules. But a price tag in this game should be read as a device for the thought experiment, not as a budget proposal or a real-world cost comparison.
Why is it “not that easy” to spend it all?
The game gives the player a strikingly large starting balance, yet its options do not necessarily exhaust it. In Schlosser’s GeekWire playthrough, he said he still had $90 billion after selecting several large expenditures. That is one reporter’s account of a particular run, not a universal result or a claim about how much money Bezos had at the time.
Rank #2
- YOU ARE THE OWNER: Sign players, manage the cap, and build a championship caliber roster before anyone else at the table.
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- FOR 2 TO 4 PLAYERS, AGES 8 AND UP: Plays in 45 to 60 minutes.
- BUILT FOR FOOTBALL FANS, NOT BOARD GAMERS: Accessible strategy that still feels like the sport.
- PART OF THE 5 SPORT BILLIONAIRE SERIES: Collect football, soccer, hockey, baseball, and basketball for the full portfolio.
The friction is part of the premise: even choosing expenditures measured in billions can leave a vast remainder when the starting pot is so large. The game turns that imbalance into an uncomfortable question about personal wealth and collective problems, rather than offering a realistic exercise in philanthropy.
How seriously should you take the game’s numbers?
Not as real-world estimates. The game’s own end-credit disclaimer, reproduced in GeekWire’s report, says: “Let’s be honest, this game is mostly just a thought experiment. A lot of the numbers here are totally fake, based on cursory internet searches, and should be taken with a large grain of salt.” Ligman likewise characterized the game’s math as “extremely unrealistic.”
Rank #3
- SIGN THE STARS: Build the rotation, manage the apron, and chase the title as team owner.
- CAPTURES THE MODERN STRATEGY META: Big three builds versus deep rosters, tank windows versus veteran wins. Every path costs something.
- FOR 2 TO 4 PLAYERS, AGES 8 AND UP: Plays in 45 to 60 minutes.
- DRAFT, TRADE, AND CAP MECHANICS: Front office decisions that feel like the real thing.
- PART OF THE 5 SPORT BILLIONAIRE SERIES: Collect all five sports for the full portfolio.
That caveat matters especially for choices framed as solving homelessness, repairing Puerto Rico, or dealing with student loans. These are complex policy and social issues; the game’s menu does not establish their costs, define what “end” or “repair” would mean, or account for how an intervention would be funded and carried out. Treat the figures as fictional game mechanics, not advice for giving, investing, or public policy.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What is the point of the thought experiment?
Ligman wrote in a November 6, 2018 postmortem that the game resonated because “money is a shitty game we never asked to be opted into,” and that it can feel nearly impossible for people to opt out while most of the world remains subject to it. That is the creator’s interpretation of the response to the work, not a claim the game proves. The choices invite players to imagine what a fortune could do, while the game’s blunt simplifications expose how difficult it is to reduce structural problems to individual spending decisions.
Rank #4
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For a personal-finance reader, the useful takeaway is not a list of causes and their supposed price tags. It is the contrast between a private fortune large enough to make billions feel like menu items and the complicated public problems those items represent. You Are Jeff Bezos makes that contrast playable for a few minutes; it does not settle what should be funded, how, or at what cost.
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