Spent kind of annoyed me, and I’m not sure if I’m being insensitive or ignorant to have that kind of response. I’m trying to figure out exactly why it bothered me, and I am a little nervous to write this post because maybe I’m totally in the wrong, but I’m hoping unpacking my reaction to the game can at least be kind of productive for understanding why I game might not evoke the desired response from its audience (me).
I get the point of Spent. I think it’s a good point. The audience is pretty clearly players, like myself, who haven’t had the experience of what it’s like to live in poverty. The goal seems to be to a) survey the kinds of situations and dilemmas people living in poverty frequently face that the audience may not consider, and b) convince the audience how difficult it can be to make ends meet when living in poverty and evoke a sympathetic response to this realization. My reaction to the game was that it mainly succeeded in a) and failed in b).
I did really appreciate the variety of situations the game presented in which the options available to the player really just sucked. The example that sticks in my mind the most is when the player found a card in the mail with ten dollars for their kid, and had to decide whether to deliver the gift or keep the money for bills. This is a super poignant example of the kinds of dilemmas no one should have to face but in fact millions in our country do. And it’s a dilemma I never even thought of someone having to face even though it surely happens all the time.
Where the game lost me was how they linked all of these situations together. Because in order for point b) to land, the player needs to either fail to make it to the end of the month or make it to the end of the month but without enough money to pay rent for the next month, were the game to continue. So the game’s seems to be designed to ensure that’s what happens. Except, in order for that to happen, the game contrives for the player to experience such a degree of improbable misfortune that it stopped being believable. Now, I’m sure some people have gone through brutal times like what the player goes through in Spent, but just as an example from one run through of the game, I had my rent illegally raised, my grandpa died, I got robbed, my car broke down, I started having heart problems, my mom got sick, I crashed my car, and my boss (somehow) cut my wages to $4.50/hr.
Like, yeah, if all that happened, on top of normal bills and rent (which seem really high for a town with a $9 minimum wage) it would be hard to make rent next month. But I left the game feeling like I only got a picture of a worst case scenario, not an actual representation of what real people living in poverty typically go through. There’s probably value in showing the worst case scenario to demonstrate the importance of having a safety net for people who fall on really dire circumstances. But I feel like the message would be more poignant if you could play the game, work your job, make all the smart decisions, experience normal luck in terms of emergencies and tragedies befalling you, and still have a chance of not being able to make rent. Because that is the reality for so many people, and that’s unacceptable and tragic, but that’s a nuance the game fails to demonstrate because it is so bent on making sure you can’t possibly succeed. I think it would be a more powerful game if you sometimes got kind of lucky and were able to succeed, and sometimes got a little unlucky and failed. When you’re set up to surely fail, it takes some of the sting out of it, which I think ultimately undermines the game’s ability to portray the injustice in the way it wants to.
Like I said, I’m not sure I’m thinking about this in a fair way, and I’m certainly no expert here, so please let me know if you think I’m being unreasonable. I know a lot of people had positive reactions to the game, so I’m curious to hear if people were or weren’t bothered by some of the same mechanics that bothered me.