Pathologic 2.
Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
31–40 of 142 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many don't know the USA has a very large safety net. Medicaid, medicare, social security, SNAP, TANF, SSI, LIHEAP, EITC, rent vouchers, pell grants, job training programs, etc.
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.
How do we pay for an expansion of federal benefits? The ones we have are already quite cumbersome on the federal budget.
Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many don't know the USA has a very large safety net. Medicaid, medicare, social security, SNAP, TANF, SSI, LIHEAP, EITC, rent vouchers, pell grants, job training programs, etc.
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 political will), so that's unlikely to get traction...and raising the minimum wage to the amount necessary so that any job will take one over the gap is -also- politically undoable.
So, yeah. Lots of safety nets, all of which require you to live in extreme poverty to qualify for, and which still don't equate to a reasonable standard of living.
Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#34https://store.steampowered.com/app/632300/Hobo_Tough_Life/
This looks really interesting, thank you.
Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#35Banished does a good job at simulating a resource strained community where bad choices can have terrible consequences in the short term.
Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#36It wouldn't be fun. Grind, grind, grind, never get anywhere. Work twice as hard for half the reward, then get fucked over in every other aspect of life. Games are about escapism, a chance to win at something, not experiencing bleak and abject failure for reasons outside of your control.
Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#37It is probably a genre worth exploring. An interactive fiction game that explored a similar area is Depression Quest:
http://www.depressionquest.com/dqfinal.html
A hypothetical "Poverty Quest" (or perhaps "Precarity Quest") would have additional challenges, though, such as avoiding becoming Grand Theft Auto without glossing over the fact that criminality is sometimes the only seemingly viable career path, not to mention intersectional issues like race and class, food deserts and swamps, elevated toxic exposure (including lead) in low income neighborhoods, etc.
Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#38Cart life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cart_Life
"He initially planned to finish the development in 30 days but he worked on development for three years"
Can relate
Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#39UK homeless charity Centrepoint created an experience in this vein - “In their shoes”: http://centrepoint.org.uk/intheirshoes
Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?
#40Frostpunk is similar to this https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/323190/
Looks interesting. Seems to be more of a fantasy-dystopian "last civilization on earth" version of SimCity.