Spent is a game designed to raise people’s consciousness and empathy for the low-income and homeless population. Putting the player through some typical choices that this specific group needs to make in a month, Spent presents the struggle faced by this population in the form of a choice-based game. The player starts their games with $1,000 and a job at $9/hr (3 paydays in total if the player manages to stay employed). Possible spending covers costly items – like rent and gas bills – as well as daily purchases – like the child’s lunch money.
As a fumblecore game, failure is easily achievable: one just needs to spend all the money before they make it through a month. There is no real success; even if one makes it through a month, the game will make it clear that such a life and struggle will still go on. “YOU MADE IT THROUGH THE MONTH WITH $__,” it says, “BUT RENT'S DUE TOMORROW.” The in-game character’s doomsday is right ahead, even though the player has finished the game. Below those lines, in bigger font sizes, the message continues, “GIVE $10 to help someone living SPENT.” Now the player understands: Spent is not a game for them. They are not supposed to win, because the message is that there is no winning for the low-income and homeless population. Putting the player through the game, Spent wishes to raise the consciousness and sympathy of those well-to-do and privileged players. You are not who we care about. We just want you to care about them and help them.
This principle is a possible way to explain the lack of punishment and reward for moral choices in Spent. Sometimes, the player has to choose between going to their kid’s show and taking on a $50 part-time job; sometimes, they have to decide if they want to spend a small amount of money to send the kid to a gifted school for a better future; sometimes, they have to choose whether to chip in $20 to support a colleague who has been seriously ill or to lie that they forget to bring the wallet. The game does not inform the player about the consequences of these choices. The game is linear. Sending the kid to someone’s birthday party empty-handed will not put the kid right into a rebellious phase, nor will they come back crying because they got humiliated at the party. Unlike in Papers, Please, the player’s in-game mother will not get killed in two days if the player chooses not to give her money for going to the hospital. Days simply go on; as a player, one may or may not feel the weight of reality pressing down. One only pays the price for being nice, caring, and loving. If one chooses to be cold-blooded, they will not be punished; on the contrary, the money they save from being jerks might enable them to make it through another day. The price for being nice is high, and the punishment for being selfish is so low.
But what can you do? With $75 in your pocket and the payday way ahead, will you pay $3 a day so that your kid’s pride will not get hurt from being called “free lunch kids” at school? It is not a matter of choice; you simply cannot. So, you are becoming a terrible person, a terrible parent, but you are justified for acting this way. This, in my opinion, is also one of the real issues faced by the low-income and homeless population that the game wishes to convey. For them, “being nice” is not affordable sometimes.
That might be why the game does not include reward and punishment for moral choices. If the player needed to take into consideration their relationship with family members and co-workers, the choices might become less of moral dilemmas and more of mere calculation. Without the game providing punishments and rewards, the player has to rely on their conscience. And keep in mind that the game has a mission, so it must know its audience. If one doesn’t care at all, it’s fine; because the game clearly cannot count on them to make donations or help. Why, then, would the game bother to create a more cohesive gameplay experience for those people at all? If one feels the moral struggle — if they feel that their conscience is getting in the way to make terrible choices while at the same time their balance does not allow them to be nice — then they are the target audience Spent is looking for and looking at. Feel that? Feel bad? Then help.
This game, encouraging people to make donations to help the low-income and homeless population, targets at the audience who care, who have kindness in them, and whose sympathy will be provoked by this game. For them, even the game does not offer punishment, their conscience will be the judge; they might think twice before making choices, and they will feel the struggle of trying not to live like a terrible person. Spent does not need to be Papers, Please and take interpersonal relationships as a part of success. This game is not created for its players. It distinguishes the player from the population they are representing in the game; Spent is about what one can do for them.