Episode 52 - How Video Games Represent Poverty (with Adam Crowley)

Ethics and Video Games Podcast

We encounter poverty in lots in games. We might play in a GTA-“ghetto” or interact with people in a “slum” using common tropes our culture has about the poor. We might be poor ourselves and set out to level up through the tropes of wealth and power. Sometimes our real world economic capacity can even be a factor in a game – say, with pay to win gamrs. In this episode, we look at how poverty is depicted in games and what questions it raises about how we should play and design them.