14 ms·

I find that I live a much more active life in this game than I ever have in real life. Back when I was making $9/hr, I can't remember a single week where my do

I find that I live a much more active life in this game than I ever have in real life. Back when I was making $9/hr, I can't remember a single week where my dog died, I got injured at work, the neighbor kid broke my window, I decided to see a therapist and one of my co-workers came down with a terminal condition. I only made it to day 13, but already I've spent more in that game than I did in real life over the last month. I realize it's trying to make a point, but all it's really doing is making me suspect that it's fibbing a bit. More realism might turn out to be more convincing.

davedx 15y ago
Do you have kids?
StavrosK 15y ago
I made it through the month with $150 to spare without sacrificing my child's education or my health. I just didn't turn down free stuff (hey, there's nothing wrong with being poor) and didn't make stupid decisions, even though the game tried to set me up (forcing me to choose between getting paid per hour or per piece without an estimate on how much per-piece would give me? I'd at least do a back-of-the-envelope calculation in real life). EDIT: Just tried it again and went with the hourly wage. The game said my supervisor cut it in half. Nice going, game. Also, who starts smoking when they can't afford it?
- dkersten 15y ago
  Things I didn't do/have when I couldn't afford them in real life: children[1], pets, smoking, a car, entertainment[2] [1] ok ok, I know that sometimes this is unplanned or you already have children before you have no money [2] often had to turn down things I wanted to do because I couldn't afford them
  - StavrosK 15y ago
    Same here. I would also sometimes add "food" to that list, though very briefly. Although, I must add, I was soft-poor.
    - dkersten 15y ago
      True, I have often eaten the cheapest food I could find and once or twice went without eating for a day. But, I always had a safety net: while I may have been low on money and even without money on occasion, I could always have borrowed money from family knowing that they would give it to me if I asked. But, I was saving that for if I ever really really needed it.
      - StavrosK 15y ago
        Exactly the same situation as me. That's why I clarified with "soft-poor", which isn't really the same, but not too different either.
        bkmartin 15y ago
        And that is what really separates the poor from the impoverished most times. When you look at those who are in the worst of the worst situations you realize that these people have little to no support network. If their parents made the same choices they did, or they don't even have parents anymore, or reliable family and friends, what are they to do when it gets tough? I know that if things every got really crazy tough for my family I could go to either me or my wife's parents and we could stay there, we have a social safety net. Lots of people living in these scenarios don't.
  - allwein 15y ago
    Agreed. I was especially pissed off with this game when, after choosing to pay higher rent so I could live within walking distance of work, it still made me keep my car, which hit me with a resultant $500+ in monthly costs between insurance payments and a mechanical breakdown.
- randallsquared 15y ago
  Also, who starts smoking when they can't afford it? People who are depressed, whose friends mostly smoke, and who can't see how they'll ever get out of this financial hole that seems deeper every month. Assuming it costs $80 a month to start smoking, the difference between $0 and $80 at the end of the month looms larger than the difference between -$100 and -$180. In the former case, you're going broke smoking. In the latter case, well, you were already broke, so hey, no change: still broke. [Edit: I didn't actually play the game. I'm just responding to your comment about it. :) ]
  - shabble 15y ago
    I started a while back because of work stress, depression and anxiety. It's a very short-term fix, but by the time it stops "helping", you're dependent on nicotine to the point of continuing just to avoid the extra pain of having to quit, on top of everything else. The final impetus for me was realising that I was spending something close to £200 ($300) a month on cigarettes. Nearly 4 months now, and I reckon in a year or so I'll have enough to replace my macbook :)
    - true_religion 15y ago
      That's a lot of smoking. I've been a smoker for 9 years now, and I still smoke at most 2 packs per month. I buy the most expensive cigarettes that are still mass-market, and still I only pay ~$20 per month for my habit. If I were poor, I'd have to look more closely at that $20, but for anyone in the middle class $20 is the price of a good meal if that. With the game, I found myself questioning a lot of the priors such as---why when I'm living <5 miles away from work, do I lose my job the moment I don't have a car? Can't I walk? Why do I even have a car in the first place? Also, why do I have a mobile phone on monthly contract? Was pre-paid not available in my area? It's just a game but it seems pretty unfair even for small choices.
      - JonnieCache 15y ago
        >That's a lot of smoking. A pack of 20 in the UK costs about £6, which is about $9. It's going up in the next budget.
- ap22213 15y ago
  A lot of the smokers that I know started in their early teens. They saw smoking as a way to be cool.
- cedsav 15y ago
  > I made it through the month with $150 to spare. So you ate up $850 in savings and have no way of paying rent the next day. The game isn't realistic. It condenses in one month what could happen in the span of a year or more, but the result is the same though. you end up broke.
- afterburner 15y ago
  "Also, who starts smoking when they can't afford it?" I guess you've never, um, opened your eyes and looked around. Maybe the game needs some other measures to track or force you to react to, like morale, or depression level, or boredom, or popularity, or addiction?
ramanujan 15y ago
Right. And here's a different flash site, which shows that literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide increased their real income over the last twenty years: http://www.gapminder.org/labs/gapminder-china/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=100;stl=t;st=t;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=4.0174193548387;ti=1990$zpv;v=0$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=pp59adS3CHWfKPVb7dEexFA;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=rvalNLkeEs-y9Tp1T-SZb0g;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=20;iid=pp59adS3CHWfpIxpjegY4bw;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=CATID1;by=grp$map_x;scale=log;dataMin=83;dataMax=101655$map_y;scale=lin;dataMin=8.8;dataMax=83$map_s;sma=53;smi=2$cd;bd=0$inds=;modified=80 http://www.gapminder.org/labs/gapminder-china/#$majorMode=ch... Somehow hundreds of millions of people in China and elsewhere went from far more deprived conditions to first world status over the span of a few decades. Nothing in that game compares to the horrors of the Cultural Revolution or the mass starvation of the Great Leap Forward. So clearly it is possible for an entire civilization to pull itself up by its bootstraps through capitalism. [0] Finally, as noted the game stacks the deck against reality. It starts you out as a single parent with no savings and evidently no family members who will help you out...without any acknowledgement of the fact that broken homes, divorce, out-of-wedlock births, a lack of a high school diploma, and a failure to save are the major causes of poverty. [1], [2] If the game started a few years earlier and asked "do you want to complete high school" and "do you wait till you're financially stable before marrying & having children", the overall message would be very different. Indeed, the authors would likely be accused of having unfashionable political sympathies for simply advising that people mimic the behaviors of middle class Asian immigrant families. [0] http://www.amazon.com/Third-World-First-Singapore-1965-2000/dp/0060197765 http://www.amazon.com/Third-World-First-Singapore-1965-2000/... [1] http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba428 http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba428 [2] http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2010/pdf/bg2465.pdf http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2010/pdf/bg2465.pdf
- ianterrell 15y ago
  I agree with your main points, but did your closing sentence need to get racist?
  - smoyer 15y ago
    That statement may have a bit of racial stereotyping as we can be sure that not all (100%) Asian immigrants were so frugal but I don't see any malicious intent ... I get the impression that the statement is positive. I know I've been impressed by the work ethic of many immigrants I know (Asian and otherwise) compared to those who sit and wait for their government welfare checks. I understand welfare for those who are truly needy, but there needs to be a way to lift them up so that it's not permanent (with perhaps the exception of those with disabilities that prevent it).
ghurlman 15y ago
It didn't happen to you, therefore it doesn't happen?
quantumhobbit 15y ago
I quit when I got a collections call for an overdue car payment. I never had a choice to not miss a payment. Being poor sucks, but this game is trying way to hard to make that point and actually backfires. The contrived situations make me less likely to emphasize with someone who is in that position.
- dbingham 15y ago
  The scary thing is that those situations feel contrived to you. But to someone who is actually in that situation this is much closer to reality than you want to believe. Sure, it's been crunched in in time a bit. But the end result is about the same. You can't pull yourself up by your own bootstraps when all your time and energy is spent desperately treading water.
hugh3 15y ago
I played for an entire month. Not only did my dog die, but my grandfather did too (the funeral was a $350 airfare away). Then my best friend from school got married a few days later (another $350 airfare). I got sick twice, and my mother got sick once. Oh, and a neighbour's kid broke my window too. And I spilled bleach on my nice new shirt. If this was billed not as a poverty simulator but as an "Unluckiest person in America" simulator, I might see the point. Perhaps the game should just start off "You go to look for a job, but you get hit by a bus and die".
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
firefoxman1 15y ago
Does this game remind anyone else of "The Oregon Trail" game from way back? Though I'm sure it was a little harder for the settlers back then.
danssig 15y ago
Went to the therapist? wtf! All the poor people I know (grew up poor) wouldn't go to the doctor if a cancer tumor was growing out of the side of their head. Too expensive. This thing thinks we would be going to a therapist? Maybe if someone else pays for it, but even then: can I just get the cash instead if you're giving it away?

davedx 15y ago

Do you have kids?

StavrosK 15y ago

I made it through the month with $150 to spare without sacrificing my child's education or my health. I just didn't turn down free stuff (hey, there's nothing wrong with being poor) and didn't make stupid decisions, even though the game tried to set me up (forcing me to choose between getting paid per hour or per piece without an estimate on how much per-piece would give me? I'd at least do a back-of-the-envelope calculation in real life). EDIT: Just tried it again and went with the hourly wage. The game said my supervisor cut it in half. Nice going, game. Also, who starts smoking when they can't afford it?

dkersten 15y ago
Things I didn't do/have when I couldn't afford them in real life: children[1], pets, smoking, a car, entertainment[2] [1] ok ok, I know that sometimes this is unplanned or you already have children before you have no money [2] often had to turn down things I wanted to do because I couldn't afford them
- StavrosK 15y ago
  Same here. I would also sometimes add "food" to that list, though very briefly. Although, I must add, I was soft-poor.
  - dkersten 15y ago
    True, I have often eaten the cheapest food I could find and once or twice went without eating for a day. But, I always had a safety net: while I may have been low on money and even without money on occasion, I could always have borrowed money from family knowing that they would give it to me if I asked. But, I was saving that for if I ever really really needed it.
    - StavrosK 15y ago
      Exactly the same situation as me. That's why I clarified with "soft-poor", which isn't really the same, but not too different either.
      - bkmartin 15y ago
        And that is what really separates the poor from the impoverished most times. When you look at those who are in the worst of the worst situations you realize that these people have little to no support network. If their parents made the same choices they did, or they don't even have parents anymore, or reliable family and friends, what are they to do when it gets tough? I know that if things every got really crazy tough for my family I could go to either me or my wife's parents and we could stay there, we have a social safety net. Lots of people living in these scenarios don't.
- allwein 15y ago
  Agreed. I was especially pissed off with this game when, after choosing to pay higher rent so I could live within walking distance of work, it still made me keep my car, which hit me with a resultant $500+ in monthly costs between insurance payments and a mechanical breakdown.
randallsquared 15y ago
Also, who starts smoking when they can't afford it? People who are depressed, whose friends mostly smoke, and who can't see how they'll ever get out of this financial hole that seems deeper every month. Assuming it costs $80 a month to start smoking, the difference between $0 and $80 at the end of the month looms larger than the difference between -$100 and -$180. In the former case, you're going broke smoking. In the latter case, well, you were already broke, so hey, no change: still broke. [Edit: I didn't actually play the game. I'm just responding to your comment about it. :) ]
- shabble 15y ago
  I started a while back because of work stress, depression and anxiety. It's a very short-term fix, but by the time it stops "helping", you're dependent on nicotine to the point of continuing just to avoid the extra pain of having to quit, on top of everything else. The final impetus for me was realising that I was spending something close to £200 ($300) a month on cigarettes. Nearly 4 months now, and I reckon in a year or so I'll have enough to replace my macbook :)
  - true_religion 15y ago
    That's a lot of smoking. I've been a smoker for 9 years now, and I still smoke at most 2 packs per month. I buy the most expensive cigarettes that are still mass-market, and still I only pay ~$20 per month for my habit. If I were poor, I'd have to look more closely at that $20, but for anyone in the middle class $20 is the price of a good meal if that. With the game, I found myself questioning a lot of the priors such as---why when I'm living <5 miles away from work, do I lose my job the moment I don't have a car? Can't I walk? Why do I even have a car in the first place? Also, why do I have a mobile phone on monthly contract? Was pre-paid not available in my area? It's just a game but it seems pretty unfair even for small choices.
    - JonnieCache 15y ago
      >That's a lot of smoking. A pack of 20 in the UK costs about £6, which is about $9. It's going up in the next budget.
ap22213 15y ago
A lot of the smokers that I know started in their early teens. They saw smoking as a way to be cool.
cedsav 15y ago
> I made it through the month with $150 to spare. So you ate up $850 in savings and have no way of paying rent the next day. The game isn't realistic. It condenses in one month what could happen in the span of a year or more, but the result is the same though. you end up broke.
afterburner 15y ago
"Also, who starts smoking when they can't afford it?" I guess you've never, um, opened your eyes and looked around. Maybe the game needs some other measures to track or force you to react to, like morale, or depression level, or boredom, or popularity, or addiction?

ramanujan 15y ago

Right. And here's a different flash site, which shows that literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide increased their real income over the last twenty years: http://www.gapminder.org/labs/gapminder-china/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=100;stl=t;st=t;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=4.0174193548387;ti=1990$zpv;v=0$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=pp59adS3CHWfKPVb7dEexFA;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=rvalNLkeEs-y9Tp1T-SZb0g;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=20;iid=pp59adS3CHWfpIxpjegY4bw;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=CATID1;by=grp$map_x;scale=log;dataMin=83;dataMax=101655$map_y;scale=lin;dataMin=8.8;dataMax=83$map_s;sma=53;smi=2$cd;bd=0$inds=;modified=80 http://www.gapminder.org/labs/gapminder-china/#$majorMode=ch... Somehow hundreds of millions of people in China and elsewhere went from far more deprived conditions to first world status over the span of a few decades. Nothing in that game compares to the horrors of the Cultural Revolution or the mass starvation of the Great Leap Forward. So clearly it is possible for an entire civilization to pull itself up by its bootstraps through capitalism. [0] Finally, as noted the game stacks the deck against reality. It starts you out as a single parent with no savings and evidently no family members who will help you out...without any acknowledgement of the fact that broken homes, divorce, out-of-wedlock births, a lack of a high school diploma, and a failure to save are the major causes of poverty. [1], [2] If the game started a few years earlier and asked "do you want to complete high school" and "do you wait till you're financially stable before marrying & having children", the overall message would be very different. Indeed, the authors would likely be accused of having unfashionable political sympathies for simply advising that people mimic the behaviors of middle class Asian immigrant families. [0] http://www.amazon.com/Third-World-First-Singapore-1965-2000/dp/0060197765 http://www.amazon.com/Third-World-First-Singapore-1965-2000/... [1] http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba428 http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba428 [2] http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2010/pdf/bg2465.pdf http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2010/pdf/bg2465.pdf

ianterrell 15y ago
I agree with your main points, but did your closing sentence need to get racist?
- smoyer 15y ago
  That statement may have a bit of racial stereotyping as we can be sure that not all (100%) Asian immigrants were so frugal but I don't see any malicious intent ... I get the impression that the statement is positive. I know I've been impressed by the work ethic of many immigrants I know (Asian and otherwise) compared to those who sit and wait for their government welfare checks. I understand welfare for those who are truly needy, but there needs to be a way to lift them up so that it's not permanent (with perhaps the exception of those with disabilities that prevent it).

ghurlman 15y ago

It didn't happen to you, therefore it doesn't happen?

quantumhobbit 15y ago

I quit when I got a collections call for an overdue car payment. I never had a choice to not miss a payment. Being poor sucks, but this game is trying way to hard to make that point and actually backfires. The contrived situations make me less likely to emphasize with someone who is in that position.

dbingham 15y ago
The scary thing is that those situations feel contrived to you. But to someone who is actually in that situation this is much closer to reality than you want to believe. Sure, it's been crunched in in time a bit. But the end result is about the same. You can't pull yourself up by your own bootstraps when all your time and energy is spent desperately treading water.

hugh3 15y ago

I played for an entire month. Not only did my dog die, but my grandfather did too (the funeral was a $350 airfare away). Then my best friend from school got married a few days later (another $350 airfare). I got sick twice, and my mother got sick once. Oh, and a neighbour's kid broke my window too. And I spilled bleach on my nice new shirt. If this was billed not as a poverty simulator but as an "Unluckiest person in America" simulator, I might see the point. Perhaps the game should just start off "You go to look for a job, but you get hit by a bus and die".

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

firefoxman1 15y ago

Does this game remind anyone else of "The Oregon Trail" game from way back? Though I'm sure it was a little harder for the settlers back then.

danssig 15y ago

Went to the therapist? wtf! All the poor people I know (grew up poor) wouldn't go to the doctor if a cancer tumor was growing out of the side of their head. Too expensive. This thing thinks we would be going to a therapist? Maybe if someone else pays for it, but even then: can I just get the cash instead if you're giving it away?