Make ends meet without losing your cool
Pay your rent or your doctor’s bill? Live in your car or pawn it?
Test your decision-making skills when the stakes are high and your assets are dwindling.
Create empathy and insight by playing Broke the Game.
What is Broke the Game?
Broke simulates the stress and pressure of overcoming poverty in the U.S. by making choices on real-life situations. Simple setup and 45 minutes of game play creates lots of opportunity for discussion and learning.
# Age 12 and up
# Decision-Making
# Educational Game
# Poverty Game
What’s Your Choice?
Poverty is not a game, but
Playing Broke Creates Real Understanding
Gain empathy and insight
Broke the Game invites you to grapple with anxiety-producing, cringe-worthy, and heartbreaking situations – all through game play!
- Immerse yourself in real-life experiences of poverty
- Learn about the systemic nature of poverty
- Enjoy a lively learning experience
- Gain insight and empathy for those who struggle with poverty.
Meaningful Play for Various Scenarios
Educational Environments
Classrooms can use Broke the Game’s materials—discussion guide, book, app, and presentations—to immerse students in real-world scenarios that deepen their understanding of poverty and its impacts.
DEI
Groups exploring diversity, equity, and inclusion gain insight into the systemic nature of poverty through real-life situations and explore their own biases toward those living in poverty using Broke the Game’s discussion guide.
Workplaces
Professionals use Broke the Game to understand how poverty affects decision-making and analyze work practices to benefit individuals caught in the poverty spiral.
Community Engagement and Volunteering
Through Broke the Game communities can explore the impact of poverty on individuals, applying that knowledge to their community work.
What the experts have to say
The game creator, Dana Gold, brings a lifetime of personal and professional experience to help create a game that enables people to better understand the systemic nature of poverty and its crippling impact in our society on individuals and families. This is important work that can help raise awareness and ideally help make changes for the better for all of us.
Drew Davidson
Director of Entertainment Technology Center, CMU
BROKE’s design is brilliant, because it forces players to confront the realities of an economic system that helps the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. Who would have thought a fun party game could get people to look each other in the eye while discussing systemic racism and economic theory?
Jesse Schell
CEO, Schell Games
Broke the Game brilliantly flips the script by asking players to confront the systems that keep people stuck in poverty, and by starting vigorous conversations between players about scenarios drawn from real life. This game incorporates best practices for changing players’ perspectives, and it does it while being brilliantly fun.
Jessica Hammer
Entertainment Technology Center, CMU
Broke the Game can also be played as an app!
“Fun (and slightly stressful) way to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Try to hang on to your money while responding to lives ups and downs….its not easy!! Realistic depiction of the way that a small decision can snowball into something consequential.”