I chose to play the serious game Spent, which is by McKinney and Urban Ministries of Durham. Spent is a game about poverty. The player takes on the role of a single parent with $1000 savings and no job. The goal is to survive a month while making hard financial choices, like paying rent, feeding your child, and overcoming emergencies on the tight budget.
Spent uses a few different types of gameplay. There’s a Competition/Challenge element, since players compete against the constraints of poverty and try to win by lasting the full month. There’s also role-play, since the players step into someone else’s life who is living paycheck to paycheck (or in this case a fixed budget). There’s also chance, since random events like car breakdowns, medical expenses and surprise fees add an element of unpredictability.
Mechanics: The game uses simple decision trees: multiple-choice questions where each choice adds or subtracts from your budget. These mechanics are minimalist yet still very effective. You can always see a running tally of your balance, and then “Game Over” if you hit zero. In the image below, we see an opening job selection screen, where the user can choose which job they want for now. This illustrates the basic mechanic of decision-making with immediate financial consequences.
Figure 1: the first choice that we have to make
Dynamics: the dynamics of this game emerge when random events and their cascading consequences add sustained tension. Early on the choices/dealing with random events may feel manageable, but then as medical bills, insurance, car breakdowns, or any other emergencies add up, the players will feel impossible tradeoffs. For instance we see in the figure below that immediately into the game, I needed to buy insurance. This didn’t seem like too much, but then in the figure below that one, I also had to pay for housing and suddenly I’m down to $192.
Figure 2: Choosing insurance (unpredictable cost)
Figure 3: Finding a place to live
Aesthetics: the aesthetics of this game are stark, utilitarian, and very minimalist. The black-and-white interface and bold fonts add feelings of anxiety, which furthers the theme of this game. Seeing your balance drop to double digits against a plain backdrop heightens the sense of hopelessness. The aesthetic serves the emotional goals: empathy and stress. In the image below, we can see that as money is declining, there’s no sense of validation of support. The options seem very small, and there’s a lot of attention directed at the money, which represents real life when people are constantly checking how much cash they have left.
Figure 4: stark and cold aesthetic
Outcomes: inside the game, the outcome is to last the full month. I think the game gets very exciting because there’s so many different actions you can take to reach the goal outcome. However, beyond gameplay, the game ends with a call to action to donate or volunteer to help out real people who are actually living through this struggle. This game left a very strong emotional impression on me, as it’s something a lot of us (especially as students) take for granted. In the image below, the call to action takes me to a website that has a lot of information on poverty and how even a $10 donation can go a really long way.
Figure 5: game over scene
Overall, playing Spent showed me how a serious game can use very simple mechanics to create a powerful emotional experience. The constant trade-offs made me feel the stress of living on a tight budget in a way just observing numbers alone never could. I left the game quite entertained, but also with a deeper sense of empathy for people who face these challenges every day. I think this game was a great example on how we can raise awareness for serious topics through fun games
