Finally, a Korean dev delivers that debt simulator Asia needs to play

A Korean-developed indie mobile game has managed to achieve one of those rare moments when a game teaches you a real world lesson. Poor Gladiator, developed by the Alchemists, does it through nothing but the game’s own mechanics. It’s depressing, absurd, and the system works in a horribly flawed way that in no way feels fair. It’s basically life. It’s perfect.

There’s no shortage of games seeking to elicit this same sort of reaction from the player. A lot of them offer their big payouts at or near the end. Braid and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, among others, build up to what I would consider fantastic endings, only possible if you’d been adjusting to the mechanics, and more importantly not seeing the final moment coming. “Don’t make me do this!” I remember thinking in both games, and I had a similar experience with Poor Gladiator as I was forced to ramp up the number of enemies to pay my debts. Unlike the time-reversing and controlling two characters at once, deciding how to best spend resources is something we do everyday.

In the game, you sort of control a gladiator, fighting to pay off his debts. The amount is pretty hefty. We’re talking, student loan, I-didn’t-get-a-scholarship-but-studied-at-an-Ivy-Leauge-school-anyway huge. The debt payments are modest at first, but they increase with each round. You earn gold by killing the other gladiators and occasional predatory felines thrown in the pit with you. Your debt is due in regular increments, and even if you make the payment your aggregate debt grows each round. It’s sort of a commentary on extortionate compound interest. Or evil game design. Or both.

Juxtapositions that normally would have me shaking my head were easily forgivable. They felt almost intentional. The ridiculous music playing on loop, which I would like to say is generic but actually just belongs in another game, is the best example. The fact that the game was set in a Western, Romanesque aesthetic could be considered fitting, as debt crises have shaken several Western nations, but the game could just as easily highlight the issue in Asia, starting with its country of origin.

While this game could have been developed anywhere, it’s not surprising that it would come from Korea, a country where individuals are increasingly undertaking massive debt, which far exceeds GDP growth and wage increases. With housing prices reaching 7.7 times the average annual income, the helpless feeling while investing your limited resources in Poor Gladiator might really strike a cord with many.

This isn’t to say that the situation is one that is exclusive to the Korean peninsula either. China, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore actually were seeing a greater rise in household debt as a percentage of GDP early last year than Korea, with Indonesia and Hong Kong only slightly behind. When Malaysia’s household debt reached 80% of GDP last year, it forced the government to consider limiting the availability of credit. The list was topped by Canada, so increasing debt is by no means limited to Asia.

(See: How Super Evil Megacorp plans to conquer Asia)

On a microeconomic level, you don’t need to be a hipster philosophizer to see room for some commentary on the debt we often accrue in the search for material things we just want, or think we want. The endless waves of enemies or the always-increasing debt in the game can symbolize that; pick whichever metaphor you prefer. That a game like this is monetized by in-game ads sounds like it might create some dissonance in the player. Maybe it did for me. Maybe it was supposed to.

My biggest takeaway from the game is how in-tune with your resources you are forced to become. Looking at my available funds, I had enough to make my next loan payment, but would often succumb to the urge to upgrade one of my stats, resulting in a failure to meet my deadline as things didn’t go as planned. It often comes down to the wire, and to see your streak come to an end as a result of a poorly-thought out decision, or just sheer luck is heartbreaking.