"Spent," a Social Issues game

[Antiquehunter]

I find it weird with this, almost, aggression towards this game. Like what they are trying to depict is an affront somehow.

The premise behind my comments is simply this:

It is pointless to have a game (that is intended to prove a very real point - that it is extremely difficult to have a good quality of life and/or to get ahead, when you are trapped in the role of the 'working poor') when the game is (apparently) designed such that it cannot be won.

If one proposed that the game of Monopoly was intended to prove a point about real estate investing, then the game's premise would be useless if it was a foregone conclusion that you would lose.

I am extremely empathetic towards the plight of those who are trying to raise families on minimum wage. Was this game a useful tool to make me more empathetic? No.

 

[Aepervius]

I lasted 21 days. I would have lasted longer if they didn't keep throwing in kids, dogs, unethical bosses, inability to look for a second job after going on piece work to name but a few.

I understand what they are trying to do but I feel this is frivolous.


ETA - Completed it again and lasted the month but not in good shape! Was left with $486 and rent due the next day and had turned into a complete skinflint. I did notice that it doesn't matter if you choose piecework or remain on hourly rate as the game will punish you either way, so therefore it's no choice at all.

I feel so indeed too. Add to it death, and bad mother heatlh.

That is not your average low income situation here.

 

[Lamuella]

it's amusing to see the a small number of people who have ideological problems with the game are complaining about it being "broken" because it conflicts with their view of what being poor is like. Sorry they didn't include a bootstraps button with the game, guys.

 

[whatthebutlersaw]

Have you thought about why this makes you so anti?

Did you expect Firaxis resources behind something like that? The game depicts one month because most people don't have the time to play an entire year and see how it balances out. (I'm not even sure it's unwinnable. I think it depends on how much crap get randomized to a given session. I played it twice and had a lot worse luck the second time. The first time around I actually made it with enough money for rent to spare without drastically changing my strategy.)

For a more realistic idea, maybe one could play The Sims with career progression somehow switched off. A lot of people in entry level jobs go to work on time and do their best and never get promoted (or get promoted to some KAPO function with no pay increase) - and of course, in Sims moving will generally generate money instead of costing as you always own your home and sell with a small profit, but on the other hand you don't have to move to change jobs and there are always jobs going.

ETA: "bootstrap button"

 

[Antiquehunter]

it's amusing to see the a small number of people who have ideological problems with the game are complaining about it being "broken" because it conflicts with their view of what being poor is like. Sorry they didn't include a bootstraps button with the game, guys.

Not at all.

As I intimated before - I too have lived in a household where there was a transition from two parents were working, to zero income, piling debts, an eventual bankruptcy, and then moving on from a very dismal and disheartening situation. That this happened as I was leaving highschool and made my University plans much different looked much worse at the time than it does today, looking back. And what moved our family forward was not a lottery win, or an inheritance, but resourcefulness and hard work.

If life is as hopeless as this game points out - that there is NO WAY to escape from the vicious cycle of the working poor in the US - which is the 'lesson' taught by the game... then what more bleak, hopeless and uninspiring message is that?

Slash your wrists now, because this is as good as it gets?

 

[NoahFence]

***Of course, some idiot is going to come along and whine about how you can't get a job in the current economy, much less a second one, blah...blah....blah. Whatever.

INCLUDING a good number of statements made on the 9/11 subforum by truthers, this is probably in the top 10 stupid statements I've ever read on here. Congrats.

 

[Aepervius]

it's amusing to see the a small number of people who have ideological problems with the game are complaining about it being "broken" because it conflicts with their view of what being poor is like. Sorry they didn't include a bootstraps button with the game, guys.

I grew in a poor family, with both my parents jobless and 3 sister. So really i know what can drive you. At least in my situation and those of my friend (which were NOT better off). So, hold on your mighty horse.

 

[bluesjnr]

snip...I find it weird with this, almost, aggression towards this game. Like what they are trying to depict is an affront somehow...snip

I'm not seeing that here. I'm seeing people, myself included, commenting that the game is stacked and somewhat rigged. I can't see anybody who has said that any of the things that may befall you when playing are false or don't occur in the real world, or that they were affronted by the experience.A good number of those complaining about the physics of the game seem to have experienced some level of "poorness" or at least hardship.

 

[whatthebutlersaw]

I grew in a poor family, with both my parents jobless and 3 sister. So really i know what can drive you. At least in my situation and those of my friend (which were NOT better off). So, hold on your mighty horse.

And that is your experience. Are everyone born with the same amount of impulse control or aptitude for studies? You seem to be saying that your friends were also ambitious, so was there around you a culture of trying to get out? Do you think things would have been different with a different, less ambitious, group of friends to cheer each other on? What if all the people you had to choose from to be your friends decided to go criminal instead?

How old are you? Did you grow up in an economic slump or in a hausse? Does your country provide free education, primary as well as secondary? Is the primary sexual education where you come from "just don't do it, mkay?" What is the public transport situation like where you grew up? Were you dependent on a car when you started out or were there alternatives? Were your parents supportive? Are they proud of you now? Are you in touch? Did you have to go through anything that traumatized you severely while growing up? Have you had any mental illness? Physical illness? What happens if you get sick in your country? Is there a social network that allows you to do things like drop out temporarily and then get back up, allowing you to leave a job that seriously restricts your possibilities of improving your situation even if you have no new job to go to?

Can you see why one person's bootstrap may not be available to everyone else?

Can _someone_ on this freakin' board accept that their own story is almost never universal? Does anyone understand that there are levels of poverty below the one you have yourself experienced? I have been stuck with a full time job that did not cover rent + utilities + travel AND food. But that did effectively prevent me from finding other employment as losing a day of work for an interview meant not making rent - not to mention having the energy to sell yourself on a buyers' market. I made a schedule where I ate every other day to free some cash up for travel to interviews out of town but my grocery budget was already so small, it took me months to save up a train ticket. And I COULD do that because I didn't have kids. If you have kids, they gotta eat. There are no "but"s or "maybe"s then.

That was a harsh time, but it was nowhere near the kind of debilitating poverty that is out there.

I have seriously seen the argument in these poverty threads that because someone was once a student, then they know all about poverty and the problem with getting enough nutrition. Idiocies like that make my want to blow my brains out because, seriously - if we're THAT dumb and THAT incapable of some theory of mind - what chance do we have? And this from, presumably, an educated person? I mean, what?

And no one EVER takes logistics into account. Apparently every single person in the world can afford to live within walking distance from a job. No one is ever in the situation where rent + travel costs = paycheck?

 

[Antiquehunter]

Can _someone_ on this freakin' board accept that their own story is almost never universal?

I'm pretty sure you're the only person who is interpreting what is simply critique of a game, into being something much larger.

Someone made a game, which is supposed to have a 'message'. I don't think the game communicates that message effectively. That the message is important and real, is not at dispute.

Nothing more. At least, not from me.

 

[Aepervius]

And that is your experience. (SNIpped for brievety)

*AGAIN* you are missing the point. I am not saying such situation don't exists, only the way the game present it as extreme is not your average. I have seen a lot of misere enough to know I have been lucky to have had good parents. But I can also see that the game is intentionally pushing for a bad situation. The critic is directed *AT* the game.

ETA: And frankly, you have no way to evaluate my experience or how bad it was.

 

[bluesjnr]

And that is your experience. Are everyone born with the same amount of impulse control or aptitude for studies? You seem to be saying that your friends were also ambitious, so was there around you a culture of trying to get out? Do you think things would have been different with a different, less ambitious, group of friends to cheer each other on? What if all the people you had to choose from to be your friends decided to go criminal instead?

How old are you? Did you grow up in an economic slump or in a hausse? Does your country provide free education, primary as well as secondary? Is the primary sexual education where you come from "just don't do it, mkay?" What is the public transport situation like where you grew up? Were you dependent on a car when you started out or were there alternatives? Were your parents supportive? Are they proud of you now? Are you in touch? Did you have to go through anything that traumatized you severely while growing up? Have you had any mental illness? Physical illness? What happens if you get sick in your country? Is there a social network that allows you to do things like drop out temporarily and then get back up, allowing you to leave a job that seriously restricts your possibilities of improving your situation even if you have no new job to go to?

Can you see why one person's bootstrap may not be available to everyone else?

Can _someone_ on this freakin' board accept that their own story is almost never universal? Does anyone understand that there are levels of poverty below the one you have yourself experienced? I have been stuck with a full time job that did not cover rent + utilities + travel AND food. But that did effectively prevent me from finding other employment as losing a day of work for an interview meant not making rent - not to mention having the energy to sell yourself on a buyers' market. I made a schedule where I ate every other day to free some cash up for travel to interviews out of town but my grocery budget was already so small, it took me months to save up a train ticket. And I COULD do that because I didn't have kids. If you have kids, they gotta eat. There are no "but"s or "maybe"s then.

That was a harsh time, but it was nowhere near the kind of debilitating poverty that is out there.

I have seriously seen the argument in these poverty threads that because someone was once a student, then they know all about poverty and the problem with getting enough nutrition. Idiocies like that make my want to blow my brains out because, seriously - if we're THAT dumb and THAT incapable of some theory of mind - what chance do we have? And this from, presumably, an educated person? I mean, what?

And no one EVER takes logistics into account. Apparently every single person in the world can afford to live within walking distance from a job. No one is ever in the situation where rent + travel costs = paycheck?

This is getting ridiculous, have you actually read the posts which criticise the game? This isn't a pissing contest, why are you insisting that that is what is being indulged in here?

 

[Newtons Bit]

$9 an hour? I've made it the last ten years on $8. Do I win?

From what this game shows us, this is not possible. You should have gone bankrupt in the first week.

 

[slingblade]

From what this game shows us, this is not possible. You should have gone bankrupt in the first week.

I've been bankrupt twice, in my first marriage. I could give the details of it, but the point I want to make about it is that in my first marriage were the few years I didn't always live at low income. My first husband's lousy money management and alcohol-fueled "decisions" accounted for both bankruptcies, and three foreclosures.

In my second marriage, we've avoided all credit, only buy what we have the cash on hand to buy, and yet still need to file bankruptcy for medical bills alone.

We've bought only two things on credit. The first was my second husband's life. (Both his carotids were almost fully blocked; without surgery, he was rapidly on his way to death from a major stroke.) We got a huge discount on it, because of our low income, but it wasn't free. He didn't have to pay for a $100,000 surgery...but that it was only $30,000 didn't make it any easier to afford. (I suspect I'm now working on a significant heart condition, but I can't afford to go find out.)

I'm also in student loan debt, because I tried to better myself that way. It didn't work out as planned. But that debt, I have to try to pay. You can't go bankrupt on it. I hope to be able to do that one day soon. I am obligated to pay it and I take it seriously.

The game is trying to make only one point, I think, and to be asking it to make others, or cover all the bases in the issue might be asking too much of it. That's not what it's supposed to do. Okay, so it is somewhat of an appeal to emotion, but it also rings quite true to me, having lived it.

 

[Newtons Bit]

I've been bankrupt twice, in my first marriage. I could give the details of it, but the point I want to make about it is that in my first marriage were the few years I didn't always live at low income. My first husband's lousy money management and alcohol-fueled "decisions" accounted for both bankruptcies, and three foreclosures.

In my second marriage, we've avoided all credit, only buy what we have the cash on hand to buy, and yet still need to file bankruptcy for medical bills alone.

We've bought only two things on credit. The first was my second husband's life. (Both his carotids were almost fully blocked; without surgery, he was rapidly on his way to death from a major stroke.) We got a huge discount on it, because of our low income, but it wasn't free. He didn't have to pay for a $100,000 surgery...but that it was only $30,000 didn't make it any easier to afford. (I suspect I'm now working on a significant heart condition, but I can't afford to go find out.)

I'm also in student loan debt, because I tried to better myself that way. It didn't work out as planned. But that debt, I have to try to pay. You can't go bankrupt on it. I hope to be able to do that one day soon. I am obligated to pay it and I take it seriously.

I get this. I didn't know about the husband though

The game is trying to make only one point, I think, and to be asking it to make others, or cover all the bases in the issue might be asking too much of it. That's not what it's supposed to do. Okay, so it is somewhat of an appeal to emotion, but it also rings quite true to me, having lived it.

Unfortunately, it has to do it a little bit fraudulently. One starts the game thinking that the player can get a job at $9/hour and have an income of over $18,000/year. But almost immediately it hamstrings you to $9,000 a year and then throws an unbelievably large number of bad things at you. The game gave me an income of $720/month and in the first week threw over $400 in random expenses at me. Am I surprised I can't make my $855/month rent? Of course not. It's mathematically impossible.

Yes, I know that living below the poverty line is exceptionally difficult. I know bad things happen. But that doesn't mean we can't point out the silliness of a game that is designed to make a person fail.

 

[whatthebutlersaw]

*AGAIN* you are missing the point. I am not saying such situation don't exists, only the way the game present it as extreme is not your average. I have seen a lot of misere enough to know I have been lucky to have had good parents. But I can also see that the game is intentionally pushing for a bad situation. The critic is directed *AT* the game.

ETA: And frankly, you have no way to evaluate my experience or how bad it was.

No matter how I evaluate it, it is only your experience. Geddit?

And no, I'm not missing the point. I'm talking about the level of aggression that people have towards a piece of simple programming, as if it mattered. It DOES illustrate the point. Maybe you just don't like the point?

Getting pissed that, what frankly is probably written as a favour by someone with basic programming skills in less than three weeks - as an illustration - is not a full immersion super realistic gaming experience - well, it's a bit weird, frankly. Whut? Arguing that no one has that kind of experience is also weird, because I have seen people go through horror months that were exactly like that. In fact, several in a row. So you would not have been dragging credit card debt? Well, the credit debt (in fact ANY of the posts) are just place holders for a given amount of money that you need to cough up for one reason or another. If it isn't old credit debt, it might be something else. If your paycheck is small enough it could simply be a month when all the utilities come at once. Heck, I've had months like that. When quarterly utilities like phone, electricity and gas have showed up at the same time as student loan repayment. Nuthin but staying alive stuff. Of course people have months like that. People have streaks of months like that. And people get so sick they have no choice but staying home and then the next month there may not be utilities, but the paycheck is considerably lighter too. Going all Rainman on what they call the posts? Really?

And then I also (in addtion to, besides) talk about how hard it seems to be to entagle ones own experience from how we perceive how other people handle completely different experiences. In ANY thread. (Sometimes, just sometimes, a thread can hold more than one discussion.) And one thing that baffles me from thread to thread is how some people seem to think that because they once went without waffles in uni, then they understand all the mechanics of poverty. It's a different, but related, subject.

 

[slingblade]

I get this. I didn't know about the husband though

It's all right, and thank you. He's relatively healthy now, and has eliminated or altered habits so as to stay that way.

Unfortunately, it has to do it a little bit fraudulently. One starts the game thinking that the player can get a job at $9/hour and have an income of over $18,000/year. But almost immediately it hamstrings you to $9,000 a year and then throws an unbelievably large number of bad things at you. The game gave me an income of $720/month and in the first week threw over $400 in random expenses at me. Am I surprised I can't make my $855/month rent? Of course not. It's mathematically impossible.

For about four months before we moved to New York, we were having to fudge our rent. We couldn't pay the whole month out of one paycheck (he didn't even earn $700 per two-week pay period), and trying to hang on to part of it out of one and the remainder out of the second was difficult.

So, we'd send the landlord $550 or $600** on the first, and the remainder on the 15th. We'd spend two weeks trying to get by on a hundred or hundred and fifty, because out of the second paycheck we had to pay the utility bills, the rest of the rent, and still have gas money for work, buy groceries, and so forth. The budget was stretched so tight that if even one unexpected item popped up, car repair or a dentist visit, it was shattered for more than just one month. Peter had to be robbed again to pay Paul.

$17, 500 yearly income, minus $8,400 for the year's rent is a hamstring. It's almost half, just for the roof over your head. And our rent was the lower end of typical. $600 was getting towards "slum lord" level where we lived. The oil shale industry artificially drove up rents, but we didn't work in that industry.

Yes, I know that living below the poverty line is exceptionally difficult. I know bad things happen. But that doesn't mean we can't point out the silliness of a game that is designed to make a person fail.

Poverty is "designed" to make you fail. Not trying to be a smart-ass, but don't people consider that?

**edited to fix appallingly bad math!!

 

[slingblade]

The premise behind my comments is simply this:

It is pointless to have a game (that is intended to prove a very real point - that it is extremely difficult to have a good quality of life and/or to get ahead, when you are trapped in the role of the 'working poor') when the game is (apparently) designed such that it cannot be won.

If one proposed that the game of Monopoly was intended to prove a point about real estate investing, then the game's premise would be useless if it was a foregone conclusion that you would lose.

I am extremely empathetic towards the plight of those who are trying to raise families on minimum wage. Was this game a useful tool to make me more empathetic? No.

Well, I may have misjudged it. I thought it rather was a decent tool to further understanding, if not specifically empathy. I don't know that I was going for empathy, so much as understanding. I didn't expect it to explain everything, or make the points all crystal clear. But rather, I thought it would provide some good conversation (and it has, thank you all), and a little food for thought.

Hey, at least a couple of my goals were accomplished.


There are so many individual and yet somewhat universal aspects to poverty, the whys and wherefores of it, that it's hard to tackle all in a cogent and logical, critically thought-out manner in just one scenario, one conversation, one game.

In the thread on affording healthy food, I wanted to make a very simplistic, real-life example, but it was a bit vitriolic in there, and I chickened out. So, I'll briefly make it here. It's just an example; don't give it a lot of weight. I love blackberries. And sometimes I treat myself to them. But at almost four dollars for a rough handful, I usually tell myself that's two meals worth of frozen fish fillets, or a bag of frozen corn that will last two weeks, or a gallon of milk and most of a loaf of bread, any of which will provide more meals than a handful of blackberries. And I put them back, and go get the corn.

It's not exactly that I cannot afford them. I cannot justify them.

The game showed this with the food shopping aspect. I knew what to buy. Not the chicken; the fish sticks. Not the carrots; the spaghetti sauce (still a "vegetable," but one that goes farther).

Anyway, I am reading and considering the posts pointing out the flaws. I find most of them reasonable. If nothing else, it was good as a topic starter.

 

[AvalonXQ]

I think part of people's frustration is due to the fact that all the identified problems are relatively simple to fix.

Be up front about the credit card bill, car payment, or any other expenses that the person would know about at the beginning of the game. The amounts don't have to be fair, but the situation needs to be consistent with the stated premises. Springing bills on the player that the character would have known about is bad game design; it removes empathy for the character by disconnecting the player and character in an unnecessary way.

Give the person some hard choices that may result in the decision to speed or not speed -- running late for work, etc -- so they see it as something they had to do rather than something done to them.

Give them the option to send out resumes and be realistic about their chances of finding a second job.

Having unexplained credit card debt and automatic speeding tickets sends the wrong message to the player -- namely, that the reason poor people (or at least people like the game character) have so much trouble is because they're irresponsible, and that these people could "fix" their situation by avoiding debt, obeying the speed limit, picking up extra jobs, etc. This is not the message the game is designed to send.

 

[marplots]

$9 an hour? I've made it the last ten years on $8. Do I win?

From what this game shows us, this is not possible. You should have gone bankrupt in the first week.

Does the game allow you to commit crime? I only ask because crime represents a freelancing opportunity for those of us under that poverty line. Crime allows me to share my own personal financial problems with others.

As an aside, I did go bankrupt. But that was before I was poor. I went bankrupt when I was pulling down a nice $65K a year. At the time, I had no appreciation for how money worked. Bankruptcy had some fine lessons to teach me. I should also mention that I do not "feel" poor. I will admit I have no health care, my dogs are not properly licensed and my car is crap. I am wearing clothes, fairly warm in the winter and I have cable.

And yes, I understand there are others poorer than me and I should be thankful for my $8 an hour. On the other hand, it's not a tragedy to pull down a few hundred a week.