35 Great Games Like Change: A Homeless Survival Experience

Realistic poverty isn't a subject that is commonly featured in video games. The medium rarely asks players to balance finances with real world consequences or to experience absolute economic destitution.

I spoke to Adam Crowley, author of Representations of Poverty in Video Games. He talked about how, instead, many games offer players an experience of poverty tourism, that is -- a chance to go "slumming" in a digital world. Players, Crowley says, can observe the working poor and can wander through disadvantaged communities from a position of privilege in many games. This, he explains, establishes a fanciful relationship with poverty, one in which poverty is experienced as mere entertainment.

While games rarely include "absolute poverty," where you have no access to the things that you need, they do sometimes include "relative poverty," which forces you to consider economic contexts.

This is where we landed for this list. These are games that offer not only representation of working class people living on low incomes, but invite you to step into these settings. This sometimes comes with the hope of engagement or making a statement about these things, but equally can simply offer the chance to get a better understanding of this way of life.
 

While many games include characters to interact with, some are specifically designed to make relationships a central element. Whether this is during the rounds of a puzzle game amidst a zombie outbreak or as we race cars around a circuit, they can offer a unique way to think deeply about how we relate to each other and to the games people play.

In contrast to films or books, characters and relationships in video games need to be discovered by the player. Some of my favourite relational moments in games happen amidst other action. Often these other actions – whether shooting, puzzle-solving, or fetching and carrying – serve to underline the difficult, awkward and snatched nature of interpersonal interactions.
 

Games often offer us the chance to step into the shoes of powerful and fantastical characters. These power fantasies are exciting and exhilarating. There are many games that invite us to step into the shoes of the disempowered.

Games where you play the underprivileged or discriminated against, not only provide information about how these unjust imbalances exist in the world, but (to some extent) what it feels like to be on the receiving end of discrimination.

The logo on this page is the PEGI Discrimination descriptor. It indicates that the "game contains depictions of ethnic, religious, nationalistic or other stereotypes likely to encourage hatred. This content is always restricted to a PEGI 18 rating (and likely to infringe national criminal laws)." You won't see this on any game because the game would also be breaking the law.

The games in this list address ethnic, religious and nationalistic themes, but in a way that shines a light on discrimination and injustice. In a small way they can help us grow in our sensitivity and awareness of these issues.
 

Being able to discern between reliable sources and unreliable sources of information is an important skill for children to develop. This starts with questions of trust and authority but then leads to decisions about how we use and share information ourselves.

We've worked with Childnet International on this list of games that help children and young people experiment with what they should trust and the potential unintended consequences. Childnet International is an online safety charity working with others to help make the internet a great and safe place for children and young people. They believe that the internet is a wonderfully positive tool for children and young people. Childnet are also part of the UK Safer Internet Centre and organise Safer Internet Day in the UK every February.

Some of the games, like Thousand Threads, either put them in a world where what people say and believe impacts the other characters. Other games, like Headliner, put the player in charge of information so they can see the consequences first hand of its misuse. There are even games, like Papers Please, that enable the player to police who is and isn't allowed access to information or even access to the country.

As Childnet write, "Critical Thinking is an important skill that we need in order to navigate the internet safely and find the latest news headlines or facts and information. With the amount of content that is online sometimes it’s quite easy to be reading something that is inaccurate without realising."

These games each provide different ways for players to develop critical thinking. They provide a space where trust and authority can be experienced first hand, and where the negative and positive consequences of how we handle these topics play out.
 

How hard a game is considered to be depends on who is playing it. A three-year-old tackling Zelda will struggle. But equally a new-to-games-parents will find Mutant Mudds quickly gets beyond them. The games in this list are known for being difficult. They wear the difficulty as a badge of honour. "None shall pass," except this with the will, time and belligerence to get good enough at this particular activity to beat the high bar the game sets.

This might be grappling with the flying mechanics in Rocket League, getting endlessly lost trying to find the next guardian in Shadow of the Colossus or coming up with the right tactic to get enough money for the ship you need in Elite. Of course, some of these games can be made easier, but to play them at their best is to ramp up the difficulty to max (crushing on The Last Of Us for example) and let them give you all they've got.