The Aesthetics of Failure in Spent

One of the common critiques of SPENT during the in-class discussion was that it was perceived to trivialize poverty through the over simplification of the forces at play. Based on this shortcoming and the discussion of research suggesting that SPENT may unintentionally reduce empathy towards people living in poverty, many students labeled it as “unsuccessful”.

One study of Spent involving undergraduate students from Yale and online participants found “playing SPENT imbues the player with a sense of personal agency; the player extends this feeling to the impoverished character in the game and subsequently believes that people in poverty also have personal agency over their outcomes, which adversely affects attitudes toward poor people.” (Roussos and Dividio). These findings suggest that a similar game that did not give the player as much agency or asked them to question their agency may have improved attitudes towards people living in poverty.

The modern, sans-serif font, simple sound design, clean animations, and minimalist design of Spent isn’t what I expected from a game “developed in 2011 to give players the experience of living on the brink of homelessness” (McKiney). It’s not surprising SPENT looks like it could be the landing page for some startup given that the creators. The game was created by McKiney, an advertising agency, as a pro-bono project. As pleasing as it may be, this aesthetic does nothing to “reject the smoothness and cleanness of contemporary digital design” (Anabel 122) like other game designers. Anabel observes that games that embrace failure in aesthetic and form cause players “to become attentive to the relationships among our failings, our feelings, and the systems with which we interact.” This type of response would potentially allow players to question the systematic factors in poverty, and have improved their attitudes towards people living in poverty. However, the aesthetic of SPENT has no such effect, and instead directs the players focus towards the details of the simulation, and thus the conclusion the poverty is personally controllable.

I can’t afford my house, so I’m downsizing to a smaller place. Can I store some stuff at your house? http://playspent.org/html/

While SPENT is unsuccessful in improving the perception of people living in poverty, that may have not ever been the goal. Throughout the game, the call to action is clear: donate to the Urban Ministries of Durham. By this measure, it was an incredibly successful, raising “about 5,000 new donors totalling about $25,000” (ABC 11) in the first year and has reached more than five million players since release (McKinney). Examining SPENT as an advertisement instead of a game, many of the design decisions make sense. The minimalist aesthetic is inoffensive and perfect for the viral campaign they were attempting to produce. The social media sharing, which is a strikingly poor representation of the shame one might feel asking a friend for help, functions perfectly for achieving engineered virality. Ultimately, SPENT is exactly what you expect from a company that “[solves] business problems through creativity,” (McKinney) but attitudes towards poverty aren't going to change with a modern rebrand.

McKinney. McKinney, 2008, mckinney.com. Accessed 1 Dec. 2019.

“Urban Ministries of Durham.” ABC 11 Eyewitness News. ABC 11. N.d. Television.

Roussos, Gina, and John F. Dovidio. "Playing below the poverty line: Investigating an online game as a way to reduce prejudice toward the poor." Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace 10.2 (2016).