A game about homelessness

[J T]

Some games are made to be entertainment. Some games are made to be art. This browser-based game is meant to raise awareness of a serious social issue and to help you gain a little empathy for those in need.


http://playspent.org/

In spent, you are told that you have just lost everything- your house, your job, your savings. You're down to your last $1000 and your only goal right now is to just make it through the month. It's time to get a job and pull yourself back up. Along the way though, you will face the kind of challenges that people in poverty face everyday. You'll have to make decisions about where to work, where to live, what you can afford to buy. Are your smart enough to balance a budget where there's no room for new expenses? Can you stay honest when your back is up against the wall, or is morality a luxury for those who can afford to not be a thief or a liar? How much comfort will you sacrifice just to get by?

By using the power of interactivity inherent in gaming, Spent really puts you in the shoes of a person who is down and out. It shows just how difficult it is to get by when you are down below the poverty line and it makes it apparent how hard it is to get back above that line once you've gone under. In one particularly brilliant aspect of the game, Spent gives you the option to send a facebook message to your friends asking for financial help in the game, thus giving you a tangible sense for the kind of shame that the poor feel when needing to ask for handouts and financial help from those around them. I wish I could get more middle class to upper class wealthy people to play this game to gain a little more understanding.

Spent was designed by the Urban Ministries of Durham in North Carolina. They are a non-profit group that provide services to the homeless. The game is meant to both raise awareness and understanding about homelessness, and to potentially generate donations for their cause. There is a story and video about this game and their cause here:
http://www.umdurham.org/spent.html#video

[cyborc]

I made it through the month but I had to make some tough decisions. thanks for posting this. I have been telling all of my friends to play it.

[Limewater]

This is a great example of a game that tries to make a point, but makes a mockery of a real issue instead. I played it sometime last week when it was making the rounds on FARK and Consumerist, etc.

Rather than create a situation a player can relate to, they are presented with a ridiculous, over-the-top parody of living as working poor. If it takes that much exaggeration and such exceedingly ridiculous circumstances to make a situation look hopeless, that's a major failure.

It also fails to account for things like education and intelligence. I'm pretty sure that's one reason why they have to gimp the scenario so severely. The only way they really have to simulate this is to present the player with either-or situations with two incredibly stupid choices.

I'd really like to see games as a legitimate means of social activism, but this is a step in exactly the wrong direction, imo.

[Bradtemple87]

This is a great example of a game that tries to make a point, but makes a mockery of a real issue instead. I played it sometime last week when it was making the rounds on FARK and Consumerist, etc.

Rather than create a situation a player can relate to, they are presented with a ridiculous, over-the-top parody of living as working poor. If it takes that much exaggeration and such exceedingly ridiculous circumstances to make a situation look hopeless, that's a major failure.

It also fails to account for things like education and intelligence. I'm pretty sure that's one reason why they have to gimp the scenario so severely. The only way they really have to simulate this is to present the player with either-or situations with two incredibly stupid choices.

I'd really like to see games as a legitimate means of social activism, but this is a step in exactly the wrong direction, imo.

THANK YOU

[CFFJR]

I made it to the end with $452, and in need of dental work.

I feel the game is a little too black and white with its choices, but I also understand that its trying to make a point. How valid that point is I think would have to be a matter of perspective.

The game certainly made me remember my own family's circumstances at certain points of our lives. I know what its like to live by your paycheck. However, I also know that there are always options.

I dunno. I'm not real sure how I feel about it.

[J T]

This is a great example of a game that tries to make a point, but makes a mockery of a real issue instead. I played it sometime last week when it was making the rounds on FARK and Consumerist, etc.

Rather than create a situation a player can relate to, they are presented with a ridiculous, over-the-top parody of living as working poor. If it takes that much exaggeration and such exceedingly ridiculous circumstances to make a situation look hopeless, that's a major failure.

It also fails to account for things like education and intelligence. I'm pretty sure that's one reason why they have to gimp the scenario so severely. The only way they really have to simulate this is to present the player with either-or situations with two incredibly stupid choices.

I'd really like to see games as a legitimate means of social activism, but this is a step in exactly the wrong direction, imo.

That seems a bit harsh to me. The choices are simplified black & white decisions, but the sacrifices required by those choices are very real. I've worked as a therapist with homeless people and many of these scenarios are the very kinds of things they have had to struggle with.

It would theoretically be possible to create a game that offers more nuance in decision making and that better captures the complexity of this issue, perhaps by offering some more Mass Effect-styled choices, but then it quickly becomes a game that needs a bigger budget. Since this is primarily meant to be a marketing tool for a non-profit group dedicated to helping the homeless, I think it needs to stay simple. If it were anything more than the simple and clever flash game that it is, people would be wondering why they blew all their money on a game and set a bad example for working on a tight budget.

[dedalusdedalus]

I feel the game is a little too black and white with its choices, but I also understand that its trying to make a point. How valid that point is I think would have to be a matter of perspective.

Agreed. The game could have benefited if your performance in the game were also gauged by a "happiness" metric. So you skipped your kid's game and you didn't get your tooth fixed? Your happiness meter goes down.

Interesting game concept though.

[Erik_Twice]

I have to agree with Limewater. It simply has too many bad things happening at once to work, it takes very little time to see your suspension of disbelief shattered.

It's not that those scenarios don't happen because they do. But all of them at once? Not so much.

Every single day in the game something bad happens. There's so much bad stuff that you don't need to be poor to be brought down by the stuff that happens in the game. At the rate the game was going I was expecting my character to break a leg while being beaten by his evil wife and facing the racist discrimination of the capitalist guy in front of him.

It's also unfair to keep information from the player. My character should know when taxes should be payed so I can act accordingly. Or how much food I should buy. And why can't I go jogging alone instead of sending a facebook message to a friend?

Some things are also illegal. Your landlord can't magically raise your rent just the day after you moved there. It's cheap difficulty at it's worst.

The game had potential but it was brought down by cheap difficulty and anvils dropping at every chance. They ruined it by forcing it.

[Limewater]

That seems a bit harsh to me. The choices are simplified black & white decisions, but the sacrifices required by those choices are very real. I've worked as a therapist with homeless people and many of these scenarios are the very kinds of things they have had to struggle with.

General Norris said it very well. When you play this game, the aren't just having a bad month. You're having the worst month possible short of living in a country where your people are experiencing genocide. And you're also exceedingly stupid.

Surprise! You got a speeding ticket! (That's funny- I don't speed.)
Surprise! You have a 75$ a month cell phone bill! Your choice is, give up the phone or have the heat cut off! What the heck?
Surprise! Even though you've chosen to pay the highest rent and live closest to your workplace, if you car is repossessed you can't get to work.
Surprise! Your car does get repossessed! You're out of work no matter where you live.
Surprise! Your kid was behind and needed a tutor AND was also accepted into a gifted program in the same month.
Surprise! You can't drive well and you hit another car in a parking lot!
Surprise! You suddenly need major dental work.
Surprise! Your grandfather just died.
Surprise! Your mother needs money for her medicine.
Surprise! Your grocery store doesn't carry beans and rice. This game insists on perpetuating the myth that highly processed foods are cheaper.

Surprise! All that happens within one month. It's pretty ridiculous. When I played it, I didn't come away with more compassion for those less fortunate. I came away thinking, "It must not be so bad." In an effort to cover everything, and maybe get something to stick, they throw EVERYTHING at you at once. They have to exaggerate everything into a roadrunner Wile E. Coyote version of reality to make things look grim." That's not the effect they wanted. I came away from the game with less compassion for these folks than I already do!

And I'm not a snob asshole about these things, either. I volunteered weekly at a homeless women and children's shelter for two years. Had to stop this past year because it was affecting my school work, and I'm going to school on other people's money. There are homeless guys on the streets where I live that I've known for years. Heck, there are some weeks that I spend more money buying them food than I do for myself.

It would theoretically be possible to create a game that offers more nuance in decision making and that better captures the complexity of this issue, perhaps by offering some more Mass Effect-styled choices, but then it quickly becomes a game that needs a bigger budget. Since this is primarily meant to be a marketing tool for a non-profit group dedicated to helping the homeless, I think it needs to stay simple.

It's not a matter of nuance. Sure, it's small-budget. It's a matter of the extremely exaggerated situation presented. Sure, these are the sort of things that lead to homelessness. But they don't all happen at the exact same time! Also, choices and events usually have consequences. In this game, there are very few. Again, your kid can need a tutor and be accepted to the gifted program in the same month.

My biggest problem with the game is that it starts with the tag line, "Can YOU make it through a month as the WORKING POOR??!!?!?!" It then presents situations that I could not even remotely relate to. They didn't just make me poor. They made me retarded (I apologize for using this word, but I really do think it's the best one in this case). The game isn't about putting me in the shoes of the working poor. It's about throwing a bunch of crap at me and then presenting me with either a bad or worse choice. The "game" part of this presentation is what makes it so bad. I guess maybe being a "game" gets people to look at it, but honestly, the scenarios and choices described here would not have been nearly as ridiculous if just presented in a pamphlet or power point slide or something. Or even if it was a series of isolated choices presented to the player rather than the worst month ever.

[J T]

I have to agree with Limewater. It simply has too many bad things happening at once to work, it takes very little time to see your suspension of disbelief shattered.

It's not that those scenarios don't happen because they do. But all of them at once? Not so much.

That's part of the point though. When you live in poverty you face non-stop problems that feed into each other. You live farther away from your work to afford your housing, but that knocks out time from your day that is wasted in commute, yet you need that extra time to get things done, so you stay up too late, but when you stay up too late, you're tired the next day and you do something careless like speeding on your way to work, you get a speeding ticket you can't afford so you go to court, but court takes up time and your manager is pissed at you, so you suddenly find you are on the schedule for fewer hours at your job, now you can't afford the electric bill, so you let it slide, but that turns off the power and suddenly everything in your freezer is ruined and all that grocery money was wasted, plus you are now low on food, so you buy things on credit card, but you can't afford the full balance when the bill comes, so now you're paying out the nose on interest and it's on a card with a horrible APR because that's all anyone will give your broke ass, meanwhile the stress, poor hygiene, and poor nutrition is breaking you down and you suddenly have odd medical problems that you can't afford to treat. Not to mention that many of these people just have rotten luck in the first place.

This is not exaggeration. This shit happens. Everything has late fees, requires exhorbitant time to work out, etc. These things feed into each other and there is an income line that is a kind of tipping point where this just becomes near impossible to manage. There is a program here in Seattle developed by one of my colleagues that is all about trying to get people to get jobs and keep them. The primary difficulty in making this happen is that in the face of these unrelenting crises, the benefits of being on disability for either physical or psychological reasons far outweigh the benefits of a meager paycheck. As soon as you start making enough money in a job, they take your benefits away, but you end up with less income to cover all your fees and payments to pay off credit cards, loans, the IRS, and other debts on a routine basis, so why would you bother to get a job unless it paid highly, but after being poor so long, you don't have the resume to get the high paying jobs. Yet living in poverty just compounds all of their psychological and physical health problems. It's possible to rise up and get out of it, but it is exceedingly difficult.

Look, this game's not perfect. But I like it because it highlights how a person in poverty has to make tough decisions and make sacrifices to stay afloat. I think too many people (present company excluded) have this attitude of "Well get a job ya lazy bum!" and believe that's all there is to it. Well, it's not as simple as that.