The New Game That Lets Players Walk in the Shoes of U.S. Visa Seekers

Two years after Allison Yang moved from China to the United States, she noticed a quiet pattern among immigrant circles: conversations about visa status often unfolded like a round of cards. A former Chinese journalist and founder of game studio Reality Reload, Yang was at a New York event when she heard fellow Chinese immigrants referencing their status with card-game terms, calling their standing a Queen, Knight, or Ace to avoid blunt explanation. The actual “cards” they laid on the table were the jargon names of U.S. legal immigration categories: H-1B, OPT, L-1, O-1, NIW. Only after everyone revealed their status could they dive into the full, messy details of each person’s immigration journey.

This kind of specialized insider jargon circulates constantly in conversations between people born outside the U.S., but for most native-born Americans—even passionate immigration supporters—it sounds like a completely foreign language. Very few have ever had to navigate the tangled U.S. immigration system themselves, so this shared knowledge gap inspired Yang (who is not related to this newsletter’s co-author Zeyi Yang) to build H1B.Life, a video game that simulates the experience of applying for a U.S. work visa. The game captures what it feels like to build a life as an immigrant in a country that has grown increasingly hostile to your presence.

Slated for mobile release this summer, H1B.Life is a visual novel centered on a protagonist who completed their studies in the U.S. and now wants to transition from a student visa to a work visa. Players make a series of life choices for their character that shape their financial stability, social support network, and resourcefulness, all leading to vastly different immigration outcomes later in the game. It is far from a simple choose-your-own-adventure, though: a slot machine mechanic introduces random world events, from terrorist attacks to financial crises, that can completely rewrite the protagonist’s trajectory.

More than half of the game’s nine-person development team have either secured a U.S. visa themselves or gone through the process and failed. Most contributors are originally from China, but the team intentionally hired talent from other countries to incorporate a wider range of diverse immigrant perspectives.

“Almost everyone knows someone on a visa, but not many people talk openly about that part of their identity,” says Andrea Saravia Pérez, a Colombian immigrant who joined the team as a narrative designer in February. “We wanted to build an interactive project that would show Americans this immigration system that most of them have never encountered or understood.”

Issue-focused political games are drawing growing interest across the gaming industry, Yang notes. When her team showcased H1B.Life at last week’s annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, they received an outpouring of interest and support, in large part because the project tackles a critical societal issue without chasing large profits. The game is already backed by a philanthropic organization, and the team plans to raise additional funding via a future Kickstarter campaign.

Yang has also heard from creators in Germany and Australia who are interested in licensing or adapting the game for their own countries’ immigration systems. “The entire world is shifting right politically, and life is getting harder for immigrants everywhere,” she says.

“If we can put people in our shoes, I think it can create a really positive impact,” says Saravia Pérez. “As long as players have fun, leave with more empathy, and understand this experience just a little bit better, our team has done what we set out to do.”

Technicalities Versus Emotions

Launched in 1990, the H-1B visa program is one of the most reliable U.S. immigration pathways for college-educated white-collar workers. In recent years, the program has capped out at roughly 85,000 new visas issued annually, but demand consistently outstrips available slots, so selection comes down to a random lottery. If you are not picked, you have to wait a full year to apply again. Every person who has gone through the process has a unique story of success or failure—including me.

The H1B.Life team began development by interviewing immigrants with firsthand H-1B experience. To date, Yang says they have spoken with more than two dozen people about their journeys, and used those interviews to make the game as realistic and accurate as possible. The team’s biggest ongoing challenge is balancing accurate explanations of complicated immigration rules with keeping the game fun and accessible.

Yang’s solution is to center the shared emotions that connect most visa applicants. A journalist on the team, who requested anonymity out of fear that speaking publicly would harm her own future immigration applications, shared two interviews that left a lasting impression. The first was with an applicant who lost the H-1B lottery five years in a row. When this applicant first entered the lottery, their odds of winning were around 80%, but official government data shows those odds dropped to just 25% by 2024. Five consecutive losses left the applicant spiraling, and forced them to question every choice they had made in their U.S. life, the journalist says.

A second interviewee shared that they had wanted to buy a nice couch for years, but never made the purchase—because they were constantly terrified they would be forced to leave the U.S. on short notice. “I heard so many stories just like that,” the journalist told me. “People feel they’ve lost control of their own lives because of the immigration system.”

Blessings From Chick-fil-A

H1B.Life is built around a mysterious slot machine that the protagonist uses throughout their journey. Periodically, the machine spins past five different buddha figures, and lands on one that delivers a random life event that shifts the protagonist’s trajectory.

These playful elements are designed to add lightness to a game that can often feel unflinchingly heavy, says Saravia Pérez. “We’re crafting these moments of ups and downs so it feels like a roller coaster, not a constant downward doom spiral,” she explains.

It is a fitting design choice: every year, hundreds of thousands of immigrants enter this high-stakes gamble that can rewrite their entire future, so a gamified random system perfectly captures the pervasive feeling of lost control.

The deep uncertainty of the process has led many applicants to seek spiritual guidance or embrace modern good luck superstitions. One of the five buddhas in the game’s slot machine is the “Crispy Buddha,” a chicken-shaped figure inspired by an urban legend among Chinese immigrants that eating Chick-fil-A can boost your odds of winning the visa lottery.

The myth is thought to have originated on Chinese immigrant online forums, where multiple applicants shared they had unexpectedly won the H-1B lottery shortly after eating the chain’s fried chicken. Every April, around lottery announcement season, thousands of Chinese visa applicants swap their social media avatars for the Chick-fil-A logo, hoping it will bring them good luck.

This is an installment of Made in China, the newsletter by Zeyi Yang and Louise Matsakis. Read previous newsletters here.