Play Spent

LoonyLunaLovegood

This is crazy and eye opening. 

http://www.playspent.org/

MaryJaneWatz

You haveto have Flash for the website. I can't look on my phone. What is it

MaryJaneWatz

Oh, I just saw the post on ML. I'll have to check it out when I'm on a computer.

ClaireDunphy

I ran out of money on Day 23 because I decided to pay $400 for the sick dog instead of putting it to sleep or letting it suffer. Sounds like me.

LXLX

I ended with $488. But I have no insurance, I sold my crap at a yard sale, I'm not paying SLs or CCs, I'm ignoring a root canal and chest pains, I'm living off PB and ramen, I skipped grandpa's funeral, I didn't give my mom money for medication and my dog is at the shelter.

Mrs_W_Pookie

Wow.

clseale13

Am I the only one finding this a bit dramatic and completely stupid?

LXLX

I think it's overly dramatic, but I think that's the point. Of course not all of those things happen in one month, but those are real life problems. My situation wasn't that dire, but I lived kind of like that my last two years of college. A lot of those scenarios reminded me of that. But I always had my parents to fall back on in a real emergency. I can't imagine how my life would have been with literally no backup/emergency plan.

ClaireDunphy

clseale13:

Am I the only one finding this a bit dramatic and completely stupid?

A little dramatic, yes. But we all know: when it rains, it POURS.

clseale13

ClaireDunphy:

clseale13:

Am I the only one finding this a bit dramatic and completely stupid?

A little dramatic, yes. But we all know: when it rains, it POURS.

Yeah. It's just that I played it twice, (just to compare) and it screws you every way possible no matter what option you choose. It's never the right one. Plus, with a lot of options, you would have the info that it gives you after you make the decision BEFORE you'd have to make the decision. I ended with a little over $300...I just think they did everything possible to make it worst case scenario. I just saw it to be a bit ridiculous...not really eye opening. Oh well.

ClaireDunphy

Yeah, I played it again too. Started with a different job & got different questions. Ended the month with $543.

LXLX

clseale13:

ClaireDunphy:

clseale13:

Am I the only one finding this a bit dramatic and completely stupid?

A little dramatic, yes. But we all know: when it rains, it POURS.

Yeah. It's just that I played it twice, (just to compare) and it screws you every way possible no matter what option you choose. It's never the right one. Plus, with a lot of options, you would have the info that it gives you after you make the decision BEFORE you'd have to make the decision. I ended with a little over $300...I just think they did everything possible to make it worst case scenario. I just saw it to be a bit ridiculous...not really eye opening. Oh well.

I still think you're missing the point. Think of how few people make it out of poverty and how many stay in the same vicious cycle (no matter which options they choose). That's the point.

jenhappy

Lucille Bluth:

I still think you're missing the point. Think of how few people make it out of poverty and how many stay in the same vicious cycle (no matter which options they choose). That's the point.

Exactly. Not that it happens all the time, but it easily CAN happen, and that's all it takes to put you in a hole from which you can never recover. No matter how sensible your choices. It's not just lazy people who end up poor, like some all-too-public figures would have you believe.

Mrs_W_Pookie

jenhappy:

Lucille Bluth:

I still think you're missing the point. Think of how few people make it out of poverty and how many stay in the same vicious cycle (no matter which options they choose). That's the point.

Exactly. Not that it happens all the time, but it easily CAN happen, and that's all it takes to put you in a hole from which you can never recover. No matter how sensible your choices. It's not just lazy people who end up poor, like some all-too-public figures would have you believe.

It made me sad knowing this is the reality for likely millions of people/families.

clseale13

It was just stuff like (as an example) I HAD to get groceries and it put my bank account to $48...and then I was charged a huge fee for being under $50 (never had a bank that did that with a checking account) I highly doubt there wasn't a single scrap to eat in the house to where I couldn't have put it off and waited a day to get paid if I had known that the bank would charge a fee. And in real life I would have known about that fee.

 Also, with the manual labor job you got screwed no matter which way you chose to get paid. I don't know...I was a broke college student, but in my last 2 years I got by without any help from my mom. I just think there are so many alternatives to the options it forces you to choose. I get that these are real life problems, I just don't think your only options to not go broke are to ignore chest pains, tell your mom she'll just have to die, kill your pet and live with rotting teeth...but it doesn't matter because you have no food to chew anyway. lol They're trying to make a horrible situation even more dramatic and it's not needed.

MaryJaneWatz

I made it thru the month with $401 to spare. My kid is on the school team and we're eating Ramen. I might have a heart attack and I have bad teeth.

clseale13

jenhappy:

Lucille Bluth:

I still think you're missing the point. Think of how few people make it out of poverty and how many stay in the same vicious cycle (no matter which options they choose). That's the point.

Exactly. Not that it happens all the time, but it easily CAN happen, and that's all it takes to put you in a hole from which you can never recover. No matter how sensible your choices. It's not just lazy people who end up poor, like some all-too-public figures would have you believe.

I am 100% aware of this. I am probably one of the very last people who would ever even for a second correlate laziness to poverty. It's kind of condescending to assume someone would think that. I don't think it's not an issue or that this can't be reality. It was the "game"  I was having an issue with. I just didn't think it was that eye opening for me because it's kind of like, "No shiit. Of course this stuff can happen. It happens to people all of the time...and it's horrible" Clicking through a little game didn't give me some big ah-ha moment.

jenhappy

It's not condescending -- it's real. There ARE people who correlate laziness with poverty. Those people are who this game is attempting to reach. If it doesn't give you an a-ha moment, then you probably aren't the target audience of their efforts. But there IS a large, and growing, segment of this country who perfectly fits into that target. Hopefully they will get a taste of real life from the game. Sadly, they will likely see it as just a game and not something that could happen to real people, let alone that it has happened to so many.

clseale13

jenhappy:

It's not condescending -- it's real. There ARE people who correlate laziness with poverty. Those people are who this game is attempting to reach. If it doesn't give you an a-ha moment, then you probably aren't the target audience of their efforts. But there IS a large, and growing, segment of this country who perfectly fits into that target. Hopefully they will get a taste of real life from the game. Sadly, they will likely see it as just a game and not something that could happen to real people, let alone that it has happened to so many.

Got it. I thought you were assuming that's why I personally didn't like the game. I agree that sadly, there are people that think this way and like you pointed out, I still don't think they're going to get it after seeing this. I think the people that are ignorant enough to have that opinion are going to be the same people that see this and think that this could never be real life.

I guess my thoughts are that this type of thing is hardly ever effective for the intended audience. The people that seem to get it are the ones that already got it anyway. Sometimes I just get annoyed with the attempts to add drama to an already horrible, very real situation.

jenhappy

On the plus side, look at our group -- it started a conversation. Imagine for a minute that I *were* woefully ignorant and thought this could never happen. Maybe I would snarkily say so to someone who knows the truth, maybe even too well. The game itself might not open my mind, but conversations that it starts might start to clue me in.

clseale13

jenhappy:

On the plus side, look at our group -- it started a conversation. Imagine for a minute that I *were* woefully ignorant and thought this could never happen. Maybe I would snarkily say so to someone who knows the truth, maybe even too well. The game itself might not open my mind, but conversations that it starts might start to clue me in.

True. I guess awareness in any form can be a good thing.