How Human Realities Shape Retirement Outcomes

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By the time many people begin thinking seriously about retirement, the biggest life course factors that influence it have already done much of their work. Most people don’t actually picture the retirement they want until they’re almost on its doorstep. And while things like suitable housing, social connection, good health and financial freedom feel like the basics everyone should expect, few connect those hopes to the everyday realities and decisions that have been shaping their future long before they stop working.

At the Standard Life Centre for the Future of Retirement, we’re exploring new ways to help people make that connection earlier. Our focus is simple: bring the human realities of pensions and retirement to life. Not as abstract financial concepts or “tomorrow problems”, but as lived experiences built through decades of work, saving, caring, housing, and health. To do that, we need new engagement tools that spark understanding, build confidence, and enable people to take action.

Introducing Future Pathways

In collaboration with Social Ludo - specialists in using games to surface insight - and Age Irrelevance - champions of intergenerational understanding - we’ve developed Future Pathways, a new “serious game” designed to help people explore how life events, structures and choices interact to shape retirement outcomes.

Future Pathways invites participants to step into the shoes of another person entirely. The game features 20 characters, each grounded in our research and reflecting real experiences, real constraints, and real trade-offs. From navigating caring responsibilities while trying to build savings, to dealing with insecure housing or sudden health shocks, each character helps players see how life course events accumulate, either opening opportunities or compounding barriers.

It’s an approach designed to get people thinking “How do all these interconnected factors shape what’s possible?” and importantly, “What can I do now?”

An Inspiring First Test at Anthropy

We were delighted to take Future Pathways for its first ever test play at Anthropy 2026, held at the iconic Eden Project in Cornwall. Anthropy brings together leaders, thinkers, creators and challengers who are reimagining a better future for the UK; an ideal place to explore new approaches to how we think about life, work and longevity.

In this inspiring setting, surrounded by people daring to rethink the UK’s future, we facilitated our first full game session. Participants stepped into multilayered life stories revealing how work, saving, caring, housing and health continually intersect and how this can accumulate advantages, or compound barriers across a lifetime.

We saw moments of recognition, surprise and real emotional connection:

• Someone playing a character balancing part time work and caring felt the full weight of trying to build financial security in a system not designed for them.
• Another, playing someone navigating a later life divorce after career breaks to raise a family, suddenly saw how those pauses and the shock of separation had quietly shaped their long term financial future.

These are exactly the moments Future Pathways is designed to create: helping people “be it to see it,” stepping outside their own perspective to build empathy, insight and agency.

The Power of Creative Collaboration

Testing Future Pathways at Anthropy was more than a playthrough, it was a chance to gather real-time feedback and invite fresh perspectives as we tested this creative engagement method. Working alongside Social Ludo and Age Irrelevance brought complementary expertise, and the conversations from Anthropy will help shape the next phase of the game’s development.

The experience reaffirmed our commitment to designing experiences that help people join the dots between their lives today and the futures they hope for. Retirement is shaped across the life course, and we need tools to make that real, relatable and actionable.

What’s Next?

Following this successful first test, we’ll continue developing Future Pathways and exploring opportunities to use the game across organisations, communities and sectors. We believe it has the potential to spark meaningful, memorable conversations that help people connect with their future selves and support better retirement outcomes.

If you’d like to know more, or if you’re interested in hosting a Future Pathways session, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact kate_bryant@standardlife.com