April 2015

Slumlords

Development.

Slumlords is a supplemental educational application for classrooms learning introductory economics. With the classroom desks serving as real estate assets and the students as tenants and owners, the underlying educational material is brought to life with fun mechanics and sometimes difficult lessons.

At the beginning of a course, the desks in a classroom are represented as a set of rows and columns. Every student is provided a weekly wage that accumulates with each class session unless they record an absence or tardiness. As a rule, a student can only sit at a desk that they own or are renting. If a student cannot afford a desk during a given week, the teacher may assign a less desirable seating situation.

The students begin playing the game by renting a seat from the bank. However, the rents are varied by their desirability; For example, a desk near an air conditioning unit could be highly valued, while the desk near a trashcan could be less valued.

Once a desk is purchased by a student from the bank, that student no longer pays its rent. They control its future sale price, and they may either sit there, rent it out to another person for a fee of their choosing, or leave it vacant. There is no limit to the number of desks a student can own.