For this project, I played “Spent” by the Urban Ministries of Durham. This is a game about the difficulty of living in poverty. For me, this game primarily elicited narrative and challenge types of play.
The game told the narrative of a single parent with a school aged child who had just lost their job. It allows the player to choose the path of the character, selecting things like job and housing location. Rather than just losing or gaining money, the game presented players with decision opportunities imbedded in narrative pieces, further immersing the player into the narrative being built around and by them of the main character. In this way, each new decision opportunity was exciting as it continued and deepened the narrative. As I was playing the game, I felt a sense of anticipation at what the next decision would say. In truth, it was very engaging, and offered replay-ability due to the randomness of the decision events which built a new narrative each time.
At the same time, “Spent” is quite challenging. After all, it’s first message to the player is an offer of challenge, daring the player to prove their abilities. While I was eventually able to “beat” the game, it took me three tries. By manipulating the player’s money resource, the game creates a sense of tension where often times the player is both on the brink of bankruptcy and soon to get a new injection of money. While being difficult, the game never felt impossible, as random events kept players on their toes. Yet, those random events added an element of choice, allowing players to feel in charge of their destinies and adding the ability to use resources strategically.
These two types of fun interact with each other beautifully, as players who chose to maximize strategy would often be forced to take on the persona of a cold hearted person, doing things such as stealing from their child or ignoring their player character’s mental and physical health needs.
While playing fully strategically was possible, the narrative element of fun created balance by reminding players of the game character’s humanity and thus their similarities to real humans, who often could not always make the strategically optimal choice.
“Spent” ultimately created an outcome of attitude change, namely making players understand that those in poverty struggle despite their best efforts and deserve help. With this outcome established, the developers of “Spent” presumably identified narrative and challenge as congruent aesthetics for their game as these two aesthetics help create empathy and encourage over learning. The dynamics of the game, such as the narrative interacting with and often counteracting the narrative, help achieve the aesthetics and outcome. Finally, the developers came up with the actual mechanics, which in this case is the daily decision popup, which is chosen due to it’s ability to integrate narrative with player control to allow for a feeling of challenge. By working backwards, the developers of “Spent” likely would have followed this MDAO framework in creating their game.
