Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 142 posts

Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?

#101

Post by naet »

umvi wrote: post #42
laristine wrote: post #25

"CHANGE: A Homeless Survival Experience" is one of the best games that gives you an immersive experience and challenge of an everyday homeless person.

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?

#102

Post by lelandfe »

BigBubbleButt wrote: post #79
jl6 wrote: post #74

I think if you succeeded in making a game that successfully simulated the experience of poverty, it would be extremely unfun to play. There is a popular misconception that poverty amounts to having your bank balance reset to zero. “Damn, guess I’ll have to earn it all back”. But what you can’t reset or simulate is the human capital embodied within you that got you to this point. Your lifetime of education, your exper…

> I think if you succeeded in making a game that successfully simulated the experience of poverty, it would be extremely unfun to play. I don't think you're someone that plays many videogame simulations, as the whole point is making something fun that's inherently boring in real life. There are so many popular simulators for famously mind-numbing jobs: farming, janitorial services (and further niches within this incl…

And there’s a whole range of games intentionally meant to not be fun - there are sad games, like That Dragon, Cancer. There are meditative games, games that will make you angry, and more. Video games are art!

The person making this poverty simulator game could add a fun ludonarrative angle to it like Papers Please - or it could aim to be realistic and encourage empathy for those suffering. This War of Mine is an example that strikes a balance between the two.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?

#103

Post by netaustin »

zwkrt wrote: post #16

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…

I played a version of this on Zoom as part of a Columbia University program [1] designed to simulate the conditions of re-entry from prison, which have considerable structural similarities to poverty and homelessness. The Zoom game is based on one played in person with "stations" representing different institutions and "tokens" representing stuff like money, birth certificates, ID cards, etc. Your hypothetical scenario is quite a lot like the mechanics of this game. I'm working on building a single-player software version of it because the live simulation is rather difficult to stage!

[1] https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/socialenterprise/initiatives/r...

Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?

#105

Post by xwdv »

DarylZero wrote: post #59
xwdv wrote: post #22

There is a game you can play in real life where you withdraw a certain amount of cash (i.e. a minimum wage paycheck after taxes removed) and then try to survive on that for two weeks, only using cash, and subtracting any expenses for subscriptions and rent you use during the two weeks. To make things more accurate, you could choose to modify your rent expense to reflect the kind of home you’d actually be living in. I…

Seems silly, this isn't going to be like poverty at all. Poverty isn't just low levels of routine spending. A better poverty simulator is, maybe, go ahead and keep your high level of consumption, but cancel all your insurance policies for a year. Including car insurance. That'll have a chance at provoking some poverty-like stress levels.

That’s just an uninsured simulator. People in poverty could still have insurance if they are paying for it. Low levels of routine spending can get stressful.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?

#106

Post by DarylZero »

xwdv wrote: post #105
DarylZero wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems silly, this isn't going to be like poverty at all. Poverty isn't just low levels of routine spending. A better poverty simulator is, maybe, go ahead and keep your high level of consumption, but cancel all your insurance policies for a year. Including car insurance. That'll have a chance at provoking some poverty-like stress levels.

That’s just an uninsured simulator. People in poverty could still have insurance if they are paying for it. Low levels of routine spending can get stressful.

Well, it's not a simulation.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?

#107

Post by walking_datura »

bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #2

I think it is a niche worth exploring. I have long thought of a vanlife game which would highlight homelessness. If anyone wants to work together on such a project just holler.

I’ve been thinking about a van life game too! - I traveled around the country in a travel trailer during the pandemic. Saw a lot of inner city homelessness, but also places like Slab City and Taos Mesa where people live an off-the-grid lifestyle.

The van life community is pretty unique because van dwellers are oftentimes adventure seekers; the state of drifting is sometimes by choice. Though the lifestyle brings challenges regardless, like parking restrictions, space limitations, loneliness, high maintenance cost, etc. And most of all, vanlife is still outside of conventions and one can be judged for it. I’d love to explore these dynamics thru a game.

P.S. Nomadland has been one of my favorite films. The book is just as good. There are millions who try to find peace on their own terms.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?

#108

Post by tlb »

DarylZero wrote: post #63
tlb wrote: post #3

It could be most beneficial to people currently in poverty, to try out strategies for escaping it.

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 for making cheap nutritious food. Any of these can be taught.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?

#109

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin »

reidjs wrote: post #18
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #2

I think it is a niche worth exploring. I have long thought of a vanlife game which would highlight homelessness. If anyone wants to work together on such a project just holler.

Might be interested in building a game together with this angle. Would you like to send me an email? I’ll put it in my profile for a short period of time

Emailing.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any good poverty simulator games?

#110

Post by syntheweave »

With the last round of "empathy games" (early 2010's stuff like Cart Life or Depression Quest, all of which got some play in academic game studies) one of the major objections that came up was that the player of such games may not carry this forward into any positive action their lives, but rather see themselves like the viewer of a TV sitcom, aggressively making things worse for their character for the sake of being a troll: "sucks to be poor, lol".

If there's a correct way to produce an empathy response, it appears to be Undertale's model, in which the player spends most of the game thinking that they are beating the game by killing monsters and ignoring the signs that they actually made an ethical choice until it's too late, further hammered in by an extra layer of permanence in the game's save system taunting them for what they did.

The downside is that this seems to mostly be a shame response, not a guilt response. Much of the resulting fandom casually overlooked the darker elements of the characters you're sparing, which are mostly revealed in postgame content. That is, the ethical behaviors are produced by manufacturing an attachment to the fictional universe, not by developing the player's philosophy of action.

If you want to take on this type of game, addressing the player attachments is priority one. Otherwise they disengage with the content and aim just to break the game systems instead.

Post reply on HN