I played Spent by McKinney. It’s a game about the reality of homelessness and economic insecurity.
The game uses experience-based play, emphasizing the real-life experience of making difficult choices under hard financial constraints. I found myself exploring different paths in the game trying to make it past a month but always lost from a lack of budget. For example, I would have to choose which types of bills to pay, types of insurance, groceries, and loans to take on all with less than $100 in my bank account. These random series of events are only made possible through the experience created through this game.
Spent also uses expressive play, expressing the harsh reality of homelessness, using the player’s difficult decisions to convey empathy towards the homeless and the realization that homelessness could happen to anyone. There were many times in the game where I had to give up a pet, miss a child’s play, or do immoral things just to make ends meet.
Applying the MDAO framework, the most prominent mechanic are the limited options for each scenario.
As seen above, each situation only had 1-3 options to take, making the player feel trapped since they are limited to whatever is given to them. This mechanic combined with the only available resource being money, created this dynamic of taking any actions possible to prioritize money (to not lose). I found myself having to give up my animals, sell all my items, and risking the happiness of my children all to minimize costs and take any chances I could to make money.
There is also an added dynamic of playing quite conservatively. Knowing that any rash decisions could lead to an immediate loss of money made me choose the option that spent the least amount of money and caused the least amount of trouble. For example, I could not do anything risky like confronting coworkers who were shit talking me since I could lose my job and be socially outcast.
Another mechanic to Spent are the immediate results after each decision.
Seeing these real facts and statistics given as results after each decision really created a gameplay dynamic that made me take the game a little more seriously. I stopped choosing any rash or the “wrong” decisions on purpose and actively tried to win the game.
The limited choices and immediate results created an aesthetic of both challenge and discovery. After seeing the consequences of my actions, there would always be some new scenario that popped up to keep the game fresh and unpredictable. Even after replaying the game multiple times, I always explored a new path and never got the same result or scenarios. The added challenge of navigating a harsh economic landscape highlighted the unusual moments where everything seemed to go well and drove me to continue playing for the purpose of reaching those highs.
This all contributes to an outcome where the game hopes to encourage players to understand the complexity of poverty and homelessness. They should have more empathy towards the overlooked struggles that people face and puts into context how even $10 can go a long way.
I liked that at the end they have a prompt to donate to help someone living Spent. It turns the game from something made up to someone else’s reality, which ingrains in the player’s mind as they finish the game.
