Relentless: The Nature of Chronic Poverty - A Social Issue Video Game

In the process of working towards a minor in International Development, I have read extensively on a large number of social issues, many of which I could have made a game around. I am passionate about all of these issues, from the way that we are treating the environment, to the status of women in many countries around the world. However, the issue that I decided to write about is the relentless nature of chronic poverty. Chronic poverty is simply defined as a phenomenon whereby an individual or group is in a state of poverty over an extended period of time. This is something that has always struck me as a crucial social issue, and is one that scores of people have researched and tried to understand. What frustrates me the most about this issue in the US is that many people still believe that the American Dream is alive and well. Many people still believe that if people would only work harder, they would be able to pull themselves out of poverty. This has led to a belief that people in poverty are lazy, and are not doing enough to pull themselves out of this hard time. Globally, in 2010, 1.22 billion people lived on less than $1.25 per day (World Bank), and the vast majority of these people are hard-working, honest people who cannot just pull themselves out of chronic poverty by their bootstraps. In his book The End of Poverty, economist Jeffrey Sachs discusses what he calls the poverty trap. While it would be difficult to explain in words, here it is in a picture. 

Basically, people who are trapped in poverty are unlikely to be able to get out. This is a problem that spans across many generations, and leaves whole groups of people in cross-generational poverty. The entire field of international development exists for the increasing of quality of life, and for the reduction of chronic poverty, and yet, this issue is much more complex than most politicians and policy makers realized, and the people in poverty continue to suffer. The poverty rate is effected by the economy, by past generations, by access of the individual to opportunities, by policies that are created by various countries, and so many other factors. From class, I was greatly affected by the Ted Talk that we viewed about the danger of the single story. I decided that I wanted to try and give a different perspective of the experience of poverty through a video game. For this game, I decided to try and simulate the way that it would feel to be a person in chronic poverty. To do this, I created a game that is impossible to win. There are many monsters to overcome, to simulate the number of obstacles that people who endure chronic poverty. There are also very few rewards for the things that the player overcomes, which leads to a drain in the ability of the player to continue. Without these rewards for the hard work that is being put forward, the player quickly dies, and there is no chance to overcome the circumstances in which they have been placed. 

Play the Game!!

Citations: 
"Poverty." Overview. The World Bank, n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.
Sachs, Jeffrey. The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. New York: Penguin, 2005. Print.
Shah, Anup. "Causes of Poverty." - Global Issues. N.p., 24 Mar. 2014. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.