Spent - An Online Game About Poverty and Homelessness

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Don't you wish there's an online game about poverty? Online games allow you to match colors of jewels, plant gumball trees, raze lairs of enemies and defeat them, and match colored dice. Aware of this, charity Urban Ministries of Durham took it to heart and came up with a game called Spent. So, how does this game work (spoilers to follow)? You portray a single parent who have lost his or her job, savings, and house. You have a budget of a thousand (US) dollars that must last for a month. Well, it's easy to quit, and it can be achieved by clicking on "exit" or "I can't do this." But if you click "find a job," you have to choose one of the three jobs. If you chose "temp," you have to take a typing test. If you do fail, the game boils down to two remaining choices. The warehouse position requires you to lift 20 pounds, while the casual restaurant server earns less cash but with tips. Once you got the job and chose to have health insurance (which means lower pay) or not. You have to find somewhere to live. Rent is higher in the city, but if you live further from it you'll spend less on it but you'll pay dearly for gas. During the course of the game, you're faced with tough choices. You have to either miss the wedding or run out of funds to fly to it. Ditto for your close grandfather's funeral. If you take time off to pay your last respect to him, you'll get a job strike (2 more and you'd lose your job because the workplace in the game has neither sick leave days nor vacation days). You have to choose between helping your neighbor move into his or her home (which pays you $50) or see your child's play. You have to make a clearly split decision between spending $30 for babysitting a child just to see a concert (free) with friends or miss it. Some of your decisions trigger interesting facts about the working poor and homeless people. For instance, you have a fever and a headache and you have to be at work for an hour in that day. If you select "go anyway," it says that some millions of Americans don't get sick leave. If you chose to go to the library for online resources on making extra money, the game tells you that some people living below poverty level would do so likewise. One of the challenges is the grocery shopping. Sure, I hate grocery shopping, but if I were that game's protagonist, I'd hate it much, much more. You have to budget for food and items that would really stretch for a few weeks. The interactivity is amazing - you can post game progress on your Facebook walls. You can choose to ask your Facebook friends to do the laundry for you (which actually links them to the game site) or pay $30 to do it at the laundromat. Spent is my favorite game of all time. I love games like Dice Dice Baby, CarniBall, and Gryphon Hearts, but this really takes the cake. I read compelling stories of the working poor who are drowning in debt (mainly credit card and student loan) and the protagonist of the game you portray relates to them so well. There's no "try again" if your life is like that game - working in a job with low wages and struggling to make ends meet. Most people who live like it are one paycheck or life event away from being homeless. I play this several times and work at a home-based business and that makes me not only give to a charity like the game's creators but to help others out of homelessness. Have you played that game before? If so, how well did you do? If it matters, how does the game relate to you and why? If you are affluent, does this compel you to give to the needy? Source: http://playspent.org