ABOUT RWR
WHAT THIS IS
RWR is a short, free game for thinking about work. A lion cub called Todah asks about real moments from your life, and together you mark the evidence on a map: what you love, what you are good at, who it helps, and what it can pay. Then you set one goal of your own. Todah roars only when you say you have reached it.
It is a place to think, not a test. At the Crossroads Todah can lay out three paths to test if you ask, but he does not choose for you, and he never promises a job or any outcome.
WHAT THE AI DOES
If you allow it, an AI service writes what Todah says. It asks and reflects back. You bring the evidence and decide what it means, and you can change every word before it is marked on your map.
It is told never to tell you what to be, never to guess at your chances, and to respond with care if you are having a hard time. It does not state pay, training or demand. The AI picks the three paths from a list of real occupations, and the pay, the training and the outlook shown on each come from United States Bureau of Labor Statistics figures. Without it, the whole game runs from written questions and nothing you type leaves your device.
WHAT SHAPED RWR
The purpose diagram gave RWR its shape. Its four circles became four levels (Heart, Craft, Cause, Coin), and its overlaps became the trail map, which shows where your evidence is strong and where it is thin.
Ikigai gave RWR its way of asking. It is a Japanese idea about what makes life worth living, found in small, ordinary things. So Todah asks about small moments you have actually lived, and the map counts what you have done, not what you wish.
Old 16-bit adventure games gave RWR its heart: a companion who grows as you do, and a journey you take at your own pace.
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE DIAGRAM
The four circles were drawn in 2011 by Andres Zuzunaga, a Spanish writer, as a diagram of purpose: what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be rewarded for. It first appeared in print in 2012, in a book by Borja Vilaseca.
In 2014 a blogger, Marc Winn, replaced the word "purpose" in the middle with the Japanese word "ikigai". That version spread around the world, and many people now think the diagram is an old Japanese idea. It is not, so the middle of ours says PURPOSE, the word its author put there.
IKIGAI IN JAPAN
Ikigai joins iki, life, and gai, worth. For many people in Japan it is something small and daily: family, a craft, a garden, a morning routine. It can be work, but it does not have to be, and it has nothing to do with being paid.
The best-known writing on it is the 1966 book Ikigai-ni-tsuite by Mieko Kamiya, a psychiatrist. She described the things that give a life meaning and the feeling itself that life is worth living, and wrote that it has to be lived to be understood.
RWR is influenced by ikigai. It does not teach it. Ours is about work and counts pay, and ikigai is about a whole life. If we have described it badly, we would like to be corrected.
THE SHISHI
One outfit turns your lion into a shishi. Guardian lions stand in pairs at gates and temples across East Asia: shi in China, where they come from, and shishi or komainu in Japan. In the lion dance, a shishi chases off bad luck and brings in good.
Ours is green with gold curls. Green is the cloth of the Japanese lion dance, shishi-mai.
Todah is a lion, and this one is here as a salute to those lions, not as a joke at their expense. If we have drawn or described it badly, we would like to be told.