Design Documentation for Poor Guy

Poor Guy is a game designed to simulate the life of the poor in the city and their vulnerable situation in a capitalism society. Player is playing as the poor person in the game and using arrow keys to wake up, do work, and make decisions. In the game, the goal of the player is to earn money by work and survive as long as they can. 

This game is inspired by the income and spending system in everyday life and the system of poverty. Saving and debit are the stocks of this system, and incomes and spendings are inflows and out flows. The two of most common spendings in life are rent and meals, and they are really expensive in a city like NYC. The income is from work, usually physical labor and part-time job for the poor. For poor people, the inflow and outflow of this system is likely balanced so the stock—saving is usually very low. For the system of poverty, the stock is the time and energy of poor people. The inflow is taking rest and eating meal to gain more energy, and outflow is working to spend time and energy. There is a diminishing loop that you have to spend money to purchase food and pay rent for eating and resting, but to earn money you have to spend your time and energy. When you have less time and energy in your life, you’re likely to earn less money and cannot afford food and rent. Health condition is another stock for poor people, like natural resources for companies. It recover very slow and poor conditions constantly cause health issues. When they have poorer health condition, they have less energy to work and become poorer. These different diminishing systems combine into a larger reinforcing system, poverty. Basically when you are poorer, you are likely to become poorer.

To restore the system of poverty, I make the game into an unstoppable reinforcing loop. The player have to wake up at the right time and press right keys to finish enough work. Otherwise they will get punishment by their mistakes. I make the punishment in the game very heavy and snowballing. When you get up late, you have less time to work and very likely to incomplete your work and earn less money. Then you have to decide to save money and starve or take risk of being kicked out from house. If you are starving, you have lower energy and have to press more times in work. If you don’t have money to pay the rent, your will have to sleep on the street and have more health issue. Moreover, the game is unstoppably running and cannot pause at any stage, like real life. Also the speed of time passing is depending on your energy and health condition. If you get up too early and get tired, time will pass faster and you’re more likely to get up late and do less work, also you have less time to think and make decision.

The increasing speed of time flow and the stock of saving and debt is the most interesting parts in this game. The player cannot stop or pause after start playing this game, and once they get tired, they are likely to make more mistake and get trapped into this unstoppable reinforcing loop. Since the time passing speed is related to the status of player, the game is getting harder and harder when the player start to make mistake. Then the player cannot escape from the trap of poverty. The stock of saving and debt is the same stock in the game but in two opposite directions. Once the player run out all money, they got debt and the debt are growing with a reinforcing loop, to reflect the theme of growth.

For next step, I’d like to clarify the relationship between time passing speed and health condition. Currently player can only notice that by sense that they don’t have enough time to work, but it isn’t clear enough. Also this project is about the poverty system on a single person. It would be interesting to make a game about growing poverty in a society.