- The game is SPENT, made through a collaboration between McKinney and Urban Ministries of Durham
- The game is about trying to survive paycheck to paycheck as a poor American, making decisions on how to spend your money to make it through the month.
- The type of play in this game was Experience-based and Expressive play. The experiential play of the game created a desperate, painful atmosphere, often choosing between doing what’s right and what will prevent you from going broke. There is also a level of expressive play: SPENT is specifically designed to portray the choices of a poor family in a desperate situation. I initially came into the game trying to win it like any other capitalistic simulator. The way to get out of poverty was simple: put your savings into appreciating assets, stay healthy, and stay out of jail. This becomes difficult when you are constantly put in situations like a broken window on your house your landlord won’t fix, a job that destroys your body with no worker’s compensation/ ability to take off, and already starting the game with lots of debt in the first place.Many times in the game your decision is between impossible, grueling and heartless. It’s impossible for me to go my grandfather’s memorial, or pay for my mother’s medication, and there is absolutely, utterly, no way for me to pay off my credit card balance
Interspersed between every prompt is a blue educational quote that teaches you more about how the choice you made connects to everyone else around you, and real world choices other americans make.
I lost my first couple times around, but as I learned the prompts ( never pay for a roommate), and to be more heartless to my friends and family I started doing better. For get striking, or asking for legal help, you’ll run out of money by being instantly booted from your job. The games ends with a call to donate to help someone else going through the real-life situation.
The Mechanics of this game are the
- day timer.
- choice system
- prompts that come with each day.
- an element of randomness to everything
- Optional payments( not really optional):
- Unpaid credit card debt
- Unpaid car registration
- Emergency money stashes you can access through
- Smashing your child’s piggy bank
- Donating your blood
- Getting payday loans
The dynamics comes out in how the player makes decisions based on their bank account, and the day timer ticking down not only to their next paycheck, but also to when the game ends on Day 30. It also comes in the ability to choose a set of jobs and a set of health insurances at the beginning of the game. The Aesthetic, which is reinforced by the black and orange end screen is one of moody sadness and general disappointment.
The Outcome is a game in which you always feel you are in a lose-lose situation where the only way to survive is to be as heartless as the institutions abusing you. It’s an awesome simulator and overall I quite enjoyed it.
