I have experience working for a year in a homeless shelter. I think that there is a “papers please” or “a dark room” style game that you could make that would simulate what it is like to try to exist in homelessness. You have very few resources, many of which are provided by the shelter but only intermittently. You should expect your things to be stolen from you if you are around other homeless people (and to not be…
Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
121–130 of 142 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yea except it only benefits you if you are way below the poverty level. We need to make sure every one is benefitted so we don’t deincentivize seeking higher paying jobs just to keep basic benefits.
Yep. Politicians for years have made it super hard to get benefits, and now decry people not wanting to work. There's a huge gap between "eligible for all benefits" and "makes enough to offset the loss of benefits", and no clear way to cross over short of getting paid $20+ an hour. Trying to make benefits reduce proportional to income would work, but requires a lot of bookkeeping and proof (and, of course, some polit…
Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#123Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#124Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do we pay for an expansion of federal benefits? The ones we have are already quite cumbersome on the federal budget.
Making the benefits universal would increase everyone's personal budgets to compensate.
Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you own a couple of grand in assets you no longer qualify for SNAP. Which is crazy given that 15 million people rely on SNAP.
Seems in a lot of cases the limit is $2500! Even a very modest emergency fund is probably going to be double that...
Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#127The result of that is looking down on poor people as "they just aren't good at the game" except it's their life at play, not a high score or virtual currency. People who enjoy "janitor simulators" would very likely not enjoy having to scrub toilets all day long for minimum wage, people who enjoy bus driving simulators would very likely not enjoy having to deal with grumpy and sometimes violent passengers in real life, but they don't realize that, they look at the game and think "it's not so bad it's even fun I could totally do that for real". I don't think we need people to start thinking "being poor is kinda fun lol it's just about management".
A game that accurately portrays poverty would not be fun to play, and nobody would be playing it, because there's no end game and no win for a lot of people in poverty and many simply stay in that situation their whole life. Otherwise, just play GTA, that's as fun as it gets for a "start poor become billionaire" game.
Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah it's a pretty depressing and challenging game. I beat this game with all the different scenarios. If you play long enough though, you can find a pretty simple formula to win: - Find the nearest homeless shelter that is near a job board - Take freelance jobs, putting the bulk of your earnings in a savings account and only keeping a little cash on hand for laundry and other things (otherwise it gets stolen at the…
I have done both spanging ("spare any change?")and busking in high traffic areas of California. Around Christmas I might make 80-200 dollars a day in a wealthy shopping district performing... but most of the time it was a couple of bucks and half finished leftovers, not a sustainable way to make money
Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#129Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes poverty is caused by people not knowing certain strategies, and those strategies are of course known by people who are not poor... come on.
The strategies for the first steps out of poverty are different from strategies to rise within the middle class. So they're mostly not known by people who aren't poor. For example, many government aid programs are (intentionally) obscure. Signing up for food stamps is so complicated, there's a charity that just helps people do it ( https://www.mrelief.com ). And there are plenty more strategies that help people, like…
(A common misconception is that by avoiding spending, one can escape poverty, but this is not the case, because poverty is a lack of income.)