How did Spent fail our expectation?

This week when I was playing the serious game Spent, I got this feeling of unsatisfaction but did not clearly know what was wrong with this game. After our discussion this past Thursday, I started to see some serious problems that made this game not serious enough, and I want to expand on our discussion during class here as I believe these pitfalls that Spent had can potentially be ignored by other game design as well.

One thing that we discussed during the class is that Spent’s game mechanics give people an illusion as if one is fully responsible for one’s financial situation and the problems low-income families face are totally controllable if the right choices are made. Here, even though Spent introduces new challenges to players every day, it is up to the players to decide on whether to spend the money or not, and every of their decisions changes the amount of saving on the avatar’s account and determines if the family will be able to pull through. This game mechanic gives players agency and allows them to decide on the destiny of the avatar’s family, making it as if it is the players’ decisions that determine the outcome of the avatar’s financial situations. In other words, Spent oversimplifies the real social problem due to the system and makes the players believe that poverty is something controllable as long as the player makes the right choices and manages money properly. Another serious game, We Are Chicago, that we played this week also shares the same problem, though it is said that the design team has carefully studied Spent before actually making We Are Chicago. Another blog post from this week “We are Chicago” and Chicago’s Legacy critically touches on this issue, and I highly recommend everyone to read that blog: the author argues that We Are Chicago leaves players with the impression that there is a way for the avatar to make his way through as long as he chooses to be a good resident and do the right thing. It focuses too much on individual level experience and failed to critically discuss the structural problems and unequal resource displacement that cause all the violence in Chicago from the first place.

In the meantime, Spent gives the players a lot of backup options to maximize their probability to win the game. On the lower left-hand side of the screen, players are offered three options to earn money if they run it out in the middle of the month—avatar can smash the kid’s piggy bank, donate plasma, or get a payday loan. It is not hard to see that the game really wants the player to win—it poses challenges while also makes every effort to make the process less difficult. As a result, players are very likely to be left with the impression that it is not so hard to earn a living: if they can make it on the first try, others should also be capable of solving the problems in real world scenarios, and those who fail to get out of their financial struggle must have problems within themselves. The affluent backup options players have possibly form them a subjective impression on the real dilemma low-income families face.

Another problem with Spent is, this game only creates unexpected situations that show the challenges low-income families face on their daily basis without carefully exploring deeper reasons behind their unpleasant financial situations. In this game, players constantly have to deal with unexpected situations that cost money and increase stress, such as experiencing a sudden heart problem, kids accidentally breaking the window, etc. Players are forced to keep close attention to the changing number in their saving and adapt to new strategies to manage their money every day. Players get to take up whatever is set up for them and experience pressure from outside ever since the moment they start the game, while the game does not tell them any back stories: why does the avatar only have such a small amount of saving? Why are these low-payment jobs the avatar’s only options to earn a living? These barely addressed questions in this game can potentially lead to more fundamental discussions critical to solving the problem on a structural level, while this game chooses to gather people’s attention to the phenomenon, to have players understand low-income families on a superficial level. This lack of more profound understanding to the situation fails to generate empathy within the players and unsuccessfully promote more meaningful changes other than asking people to donate money.

Even though Spent failed people’s expectation in many aspects, there is still some good design that is worth giving it a shoutout. For example, the biggest surprise I had with this game is that there is explanation window popping up almost every time after the player makes certain decisions. These explanations successfully connect this game play choice to real-world situations. One thing that gave me the aha-moment was a window that explains why low-income families tend to be less involved in their children’s education. Unlike my previous assumption (they do not acknowledge the significance of education), many parents had to quit because they needed to use the time to work and earn money. These explanation windows allowed me to see the real reasons that I otherwise will not think of.

In a nutshell, Spent fails to truly address the fundamental problems low-income families face. It also shows the huge amount of effort and careful thought that need to be put into a serious game design if it intends to generate serious discussions over real-world problems.