Why we made SoftLife.
Fake food ordering sites went round the world this year: order dinner, watch the tracker, and the food never comes. We loved the joke and wanted a version set at home.
SoftLife adds what the joke was missing: one wallet for everything, a reason to come back each day, and local detail. Lagos traffic, Balogun traders and omo onile, then the same jokes rewritten for Accra, Nairobi, Joburg, Houston, London, Toronto and Mumbai by people who live there.
Then the city grew around the joke. Today SoftLife is a whole city you walk in 3D: 8 countries, 53 cities and towns, 269 districts and 252 real landmarks, with the people you meet there, the job you clock in to, the home you walk into and the crew you run an ajo with. The food still never reaches.
Our rules
Satire of situations, never of groups
We laugh at traffic, customs and trader theatre. Never at an ethnicity, a religion or a tribe.
Real places, fictional businesses
No real brand appears unless it paid to, and then it's labelled Sponsored.
Clearly play money
No cash-out, no transfers, nothing that could pass for a bank balance.