How Marvel's Spider-Man 2 video game perfectly exemplifies UK's housing crisis

When Spider-Man swung on to the PlayStation in 2018 for his blockbuster video game, it offered a surprisingly nuanced take on the tangled web of homelessness. And the housing crisis is also an integral part of the newly-released Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.

Homelessness in video games is so often portrayed as window dressing. Perhaps you’ll drive past a tent city in Los Santos – Grand Theft Auto 5’s Los Angeles equivalent – for example. In Yakuza Zero – another open-world game although not as expansive as GTA – one of your missions is to acquire booze for each of the men keeping warm around a fire in order to convince them to give up information they’ve uncovered on the streets. They act as quest-givers, rather than believable humans. In fact, many open-world games reflect that homelessness exists in society without ever delving too deep.

There are games that do drill into the issue. One indie game called CHANGE simulates trying to survive on the streets and even let you sell The Daily Issue – a reference to a certain UK street paper.

But among the big AAA games that rake in millions of pounds and sell consoles, Marvel’s Spider-Man offers a unique take.

Over the course of the game, Peter Parker is evicted from his home and large portions of the game take place at F.E.A.S.T. – a homeless shelter in Marvel’s version of New York. Playing as Parker, players can spend time walking around the shelter and meet some of the people experiencing homelessness to discover how they got into the situation.

That includes stories of how Cam fell into difficulties after losing his job while his chess opponent Eileen became homeless after losing her husband.

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In fact, Spider-Man even plays an integral role in signposting one character, Gloria, to support at F.E.A.S.T. after saving her from being attacked by thugs and she pops up throughout the game and its expansion/midquel Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales on her journey out of homelessness.

The Big Issue previously interviewed the developers who make the PlayStation exclusive games, Insomniac Games, to find out why homelessness was given such a prominent profile in the game.

Ryan Schneider, Insomniac Games chief brand officer at the time, said the use of the shelter offer an “opportunity to see how Peter blends his human and superhuman worlds”.

He added that developers wanted to “treat the issue of homelessness with the sensitivity and dignity it deserves and requires” and “how we portrayed the homeless population was not taken for granted during development”.

Ben Arfmann, one of the writers on the original game and the sequel’s narrative director, said he drew on the experiences of a shelter called Bridge House where his family volunteers in Colorado in the US to inform how people experiencing homelessness were portrayed. He said that meeting staff and clients was “was invaluable in opening my eyes to the breadth of this issue”.

And as for the decision for Parker himself losing his home, developers hoped it would strike a chord with others too.

As Schneider put it: “If Spider-Man can be evicted and feel like he has no place else to go, it can happen to anyone. Maybe that will get someone to think twice about how they characterize someone else without a physical home.”

The sequel Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 comes out today and publisher Sony has already been showing off Parker’s housing situation: he’s now a homeowner with players able to explore Aunt May’s house in Queens.

Concept art of the front of the house was released ahead of the game’s release – an unusual step for a game where punching supervillains like Venom and Kraven the Hunter in the face is most likely the main appeal.

But it is testament to how the housing crisis is so deeply woven into society globally that depicting a superhero’s housing situation in a video game is vital to building a deep and believable world for players to explore.

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Spider-Man 2 continues to show that crisis further up the chain.

For all his spider superpowers, it still took inheritance for the superhero to get on the property ladder too.

And Parker is struggling to keep up with the mortgage while juggling a job and a side hustle. For anybody who has tried to stay ahead on a variable rate mortgage while interest rates have been rising, that will be truly relatable.

After all, if a bite from a radioactive spider can’t solve the housing crisis, good luck to the rest of us.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is out now on PlayStation 5.