I thought the class discussion concerning Spent raised two interesting themes:
1. In games that attempt to get the player to engage with and even internalize failure, the ability of games to accomplish that can be hindered by the way player choices and game outcomes are structured and implemented.
2. Games are litmus tests, reflecting the beliefs and attitudes of the players who play them. I think this point is more obvious than the first one but in light of the class discussion raised by Spent I thought it important to include this anyways.
Both themes were inspired by the paper "Playing below the poverty line: Investigating an online game as a way to reduce prejudice toward the poor." In this psychology research paper the authors explore how playing a game versus observing others playing it can influence the ability of the game to change an individual's beliefs (in this case, about poor people). If you're into the idea of the potential for games to affect people's beliefs I highly recommend checking it out. Credit for discovering this goes to Professor Jagoda, who alluded to this research in the class discussion about Spent.
Regarding the first point, I was inspired by the authors of the paper discussing their hypothesis that the combination of being able to make decisions in Spent (choosing how to spend your budget) and the ability to win there might actually be decreased sympathy for the poor for players. This paper did not really find this effect, though the authors point to other prior papers that did observe said effect. The idea makes sense; if everything is under our control then the only reason people wind up at bad outcomes is because they made bad choices. Applying this to game design specifically, if too much control is afforded to players then the players may fail to embrace the idea that failure within the game can be the result of external forces, in a game this would simply be the way the game is designed. And if this is a game about poor people, then we can see how this may lead to less sympathetic attitudes for those in poverty (the stereotypical line "poor people made bad life choices and thus deserve to be poor"). I think this point is actually really important in game design: the amount of control afforded to players is not just about game mechanics anymore, in certain contexts it influences the beliefs and feelings of players. How game designers choose to structure the amount of player choice and how they do or don't affect the outcome is an important consideration if the designer wants to communicate a specific message to the player. Stepping away from political beliefs about poverty, we can see how on the other end of the spectrum even minor losses of control can negatively affect the gameplay experience. Take Pokemon, where individual moves have a chance to miss. In close games this can be the deciding factor in an unmeritocratic way: "you only won because RNG." Pokemon players are being forced to embrace the idea that the game they play is not 100% meritocratic, that despite the fact that they exert a lot of control "bad luck" can still sometimes be the deciding factor.
Concerning the second point, this was really inspired by the class discussion and the paper. The paper alluded to how personal philosophies concerning issues like "meritocracy" or "personal controllability" were tied to the success (or lack thereof) to change the individual's attitude about the poor. Reflecting back on the views espoused in the class discussion with the paper's point in mind and it becomes clear that people were coming from varying personal beliefs concerning "meritocracy" or "personal controllability" but what I thought was interesting to me personally was the ability of a video game to do this. Spent was able to reveal that players were not entering a magical zone divorced from reality; they were very much carrying their personal ideologies (built in reality) with them into their gameplay. To be fair, I think it's easier to pick up on this effect in Spent because of the topic but I thought it was interesting to consider that perhaps this has always been the case but with all the games I ever played.
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