People who are depressed, whose friends mostly smoke, and who can't see how they'll ever get out of this financial hole that seems deeper every month. Assuming it costs $80 a month to start smoking, the difference between $0 and $80 at the end of the month looms larger than the difference between -$100 and -$180. In the former case, you're going broke smoking. In the latter case, well, you were already broke, so hey, no change: still broke.

[Edit: I didn't actually play the game. I'm just responding to your comment about it. :) ]

The final impetus for me was realising that I was spending something close to £200 ($300) a month on cigarettes. Nearly 4 months now, and I reckon in a year or so I'll have enough to replace my macbook :)

I've been a smoker for 9 years now, and I still smoke at most 2 packs per month. I buy the most expensive cigarettes that are still mass-market, and still I only pay ~$20 per month for my habit.

If I were poor, I'd have to look more closely at that $20, but for anyone in the middle class $20 is the price of a good meal if that.

With the game, I found myself questioning a lot of the priors such as---why when I'm living <5 miles away from work, do I lose my job the moment I don't have a car? Can't I walk?

Why do I even have a car in the first place? Also, why do I have a mobile phone on monthly contract? Was pre-paid not available in my area?

It's just a game but it seems pretty unfair even for small choices.

That's atypical, the typical smoker smokes between a half pack and a pack a day. I'd even say you're not really a smoker, you just dabble in smoking.

A pack of 20 in the UK costs about £6, which is about $9.

It's going up in the next budget.

I guess you've never, um, opened your eyes and looked around.

Maybe the game needs some other measures to track or force you to react to, like morale, or depression level, or boredom, or popularity, or addiction?

So you ate up $850 in savings and have no way of paying rent the next day.

The game isn't realistic. It condenses in one month what could happen in the span of a year or more, but the result is the same though. you end up broke.

[1] ok ok, I know that sometimes this is unplanned or you already have children before you have no money

[2] often had to turn down things I wanted to do because I couldn't afford them

Although, I must add, I was soft-poor.

But, I always had a safety net: while I may have been low on money and even without money on occasion, I could always have borrowed money from family knowing that they would give it to me if I asked. But, I was saving that for if I ever really really needed it.