I played Spent, a serious game developed for the Urban Ministries of Durham in North Carolina, which helps illustrate the difficulties of poverty, homelessness, and unemployment throughout the United States. Spent employs experiential decision-making / simulation-based play through choice-based mechanisms used to propel the narrative forward. Throughout the game, the core decision-making mechanic is presented to the player through a series of financial and social dilemmas that impact your character’s ability to survive, make rent, and pay bills. Furthermore, the player starts with $1,000 that they need to use to make choices and survive throughout the month. The choice-based mechanics are sometimes binary, or multiple choice, as seen below.
These choices can sometimes net you money, but more often than not, end up siphoning away your money. To bolster this ever-draining pool of cash, players can also use optional mechanics found on the left-hand sidebar of the screen, which allows you to ‘smash your kid’s piggy bank,’ ‘donate plasma,’ or ‘get a payday loan’.
I played the game a couple of times, so I was able to realize that Spent also uses slight randomization in their “events”. While some key decisions arise in the same order every playthrough (such as choosing a job and paying for a healthcare plan), other dilemmas (such as paying your electricity and gas bills, your child attending a friend’s birthday party, or your pay getting slashed at work) occur at random, unpredictable intervals.
This mechanic can only be appreciated after multiple playthroughs, but I enjoyed the dynamics of realism that it adds – poverty is unpredictable. There is no formulaic pattern to life, and things sometimes happen without warning or anticipation, but you have to do your best to roll with the punches. From these choices, players are forced into uncomfortable situations of penny-pinching, occasional crime (hiding evidence of damaging shoes you were purchasing for your child), and guilt (sending your child empty-handed to a friend’s birthday party). Dynamically, from these choice-based mechanisms, players learn tradeoff behavior and prioritize certain needs above others. The game also forces social reflection as players weigh whether or not to ask a friend for assistance and the repercussions that it may have on their social network.
Aesthetically, as mentioned above, the game evokes tension, stress, and guilt as players are forced to make difficult decisions. Moreover, the player’s experience elicits frustration as their best intentions to save money are often quashed. For example, in one playthrough, my workplace offered some workers the opportunity to transition to per piece pay instead of an hourly wage. Though I opted to keep hourly wage, which turned out to be higher than the per piece wages, my employer slashed my hours to avoid paying me.
After making some choices, the game occasionally provides players with a “Result” notification that provides a snippet of academic information, statistics, or real-world studies regarding the situation the player finds themselves in. The below “Result” arose after I decided to share my living unit with a friend who needed a place to crash.
As a result of these mechanics, Spent has both educational, attitudinal, and advocational outcomes. Educationally, Spent teaches players about homelessness and poverty as they make their simulated life choices. Attitudinally, the game directly challenges players who would “never need [the Urban Ministry of Durham’s] help” to prove it.
However, as these players work their way through the ‘game’, they will undoubtedly find themselves frustrated and in often uncomfortable and unpredictable situations that may hopefully shift their attitudes towards more sympathetic ones. Lastly, as an advocational game, Spent helps raise awareness about the issues pervading poverty and unemployment and acts as a device to help raise donations for the cause.
