Signs of the worldwide economic downturn, known by some as the Great Recession, are nearly absent from modern video games. So it came as a surprise to me when one my assignments in a new video game was to foreclose on homes.
The game is DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue, which is an unlikely candidate for commentary on the economic crisis. DeathSpank is a game about a stupid muscular hero who, under the playerās control, goes on an adventure to kill bad guys while searching for several magical thongs. In this game, youāll be using a flaming sword to smite ogres, and youāll collect donkey manure because someone asked you to.
https://lastchance.cc/played-deathspank-thongs-of-virtue-5650338%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Well, these mortgages werenāt that happy, and DeathSpank had to foreclose on a bunch of them.
Iām not sure if I have a choice about which homes to foreclose on. I canāt tell if there are more homes than there are foreclosure notices. Iāve foreclosed on a few, including the blasted crater of a home featured in the video here, but I havenāt seen any characters reacting differently because I foreclosed on their homes.
As with most things in DeathSpank, you are expected to carry out your missions with glee. I didnāt feel much remorse for foreclosing on homes, mainly because the action seemed to be without consequence. Still, I felt less comfortable doing it than I did smiting leprechauns.
Thereās no deep economic commentary here, but at least thereās a sign that the creators of this game know something about what Americans are going through now and that that has some influence on the expression in their work.
