SOI SATHORN 1, SATHORN — Every day on his walk to work, Piyabuth Wongsahan passed a homeless man with disability navigating the sidewalks on a skateboard near Lumphini MRT Station. He wondered what had brought him there.

That question became the seed of a video game designed to make players “a little more empathetic” toward people society tends to overlook and heavily stigmatize.

“If you go around and you meet people, especially people who are unseen, homeless people, those people have stories to tell,” the 31-year-old said. “I want to tell stories about people who are unseen.”

Piyabuth’s game studio, Shameful Guys Development, released “Bangkok Story: A Stray Dog” in April. The game follows Boon, a homeless man in Bangkok who regains a sense of himself by talking to a stray dog and strangers about his past.

But before he could write Boon’s story, Piyabuth had to unlearn a few things about the people he hoped to represent.

Piyabuth, who was born and raised in Ram Inthra and lives in Sam Yan, had never been homeless. But in 2015, while still dreaming of being a startup founder, he started spending time with people who were.

His research took him to Hua Lamphong, Chatuchak and Chiang Rai. He said he interviewed the communities and sat and begged with them.

He gathered stories from a friend working at a social enterprise that helps unhoused individuals access welfare. He also read a book about why people became homeless in the first place.

“When I finished the book … I kind of felt like, ‘Oh my god’ — a lot of people, I would say like 80% of them, used to have a home,” he said. “But they have mistakes in their life that made them homeless.”

Bangkok has nearly 1,300 individuals living on the streets, according to the Thai Health Promotion Foundation. About 52% chose to remain outside due to unresolved family conflicts from abuse, among others, ThaiRath reports. 

At the same time, Piyabuth noticed a gap in the games he played. Games about homelessness existed, he said, but almost all were survival simulators: finding food and shelter and keeping a meter from hitting zero.

“There were no games that tackle their emotions and their past,” he said. “So I wanted to do that.”

One observation stayed with him long enough to make its way into the game: homeless people sometimes talk to themselves. He wanted the game to explore this reality rather than look away.

“In their own eyes, it feels so real,” he said. “But us, we might see them as crazy people, right? But they do this because they try to cope with their mental struggles.”

That perception is widespread. Unhoused individuals are portrayed in the media as “dangerous dirty people sleeping on the streets” 93% of the time, according to an analysis by Penguin Homeless, a publication of the Institute of Asian Studies.

That’s why the game’s protagonist talks to a dog instead of another person.

Piyabuth explained Boon carries deep trust issues with humans. It’s built from a version of the same betrayals: family conflict, debt and people who let him down — that came up again and again in the stories he had collected.

Built as a visual novel, the game revolves around conversations rather than action. Players spend most of their time reading, punctuated by light exploration, quick-time events and choices that shape multiple endings across roughly eight to 12 hours.

He set the whole thing in the neighborhood he used to walk through: Sathorn 1, near what the game calls “Lumphini Mansion.” In real life, that building is Q House Sathorn, where Piyabuth met Soiciety for this interview.

“90% of the setting is the same as the real thing,” he said.

The research process also corrected some of Piyabuth’s own assumptions. He said he hadn’t realized, for instance, that homelessness and begging aren’t the same thing.

Some street vendors selling coffee or snacks may be homeless, he said, while some people who beg may have homes to return to.

“Begging is a job, homelessness is a status,” he said. Thai laws also classify them differently.

He also came to understand how much an ID card means to someone living on the street. About 31% of homeless people lack identifying documents, meaning “they can’t get the (government) benefits that people like us, who are residents, have,” he said.

For those who do have one, an ID is more than paperwork; it’s proof they exist. Piyabuth recalled people wearing their cards “like a necklace” and showing them to him with pride.

Piyabuth quit his full-time software engineering job in 2020 to work on the game. 

Years earlier, he had begun saving for that leap, knowing he would have little to live on beyond occasional programming gigs. Over five years, he poured roughly 1 million baht of his own savings into the project.

By the time “Bangkok Story: A Stray Dog” soft-launched on Steam in 2022, it had attracted about 15,000 wishlists, more than double what had been considered a “healthy” benchmark before release. Even so, the game has yet to break even.

Piyabuth declined to share sales figures, describing the game’s performance after three months as “decent.”

“I still feel like it’s underwhelming at the moment, personally,” Piyabuth said. “But in the long term, I would create more games and hopefully that would generate more revenue.”

With “Bangkok Story: A Stray Dog,” Piyabuth said he’s not trying to solve homelessness, nor does he think that’s a fair thing to ask of the game’s players.

“My purpose is to have them be more empathetic, not just for homeless people, but to everyone all around them. Just be empathetic to human beings,” he said. “That’s what I really wanted to do.”

Funding from you is what makes this reporting to spotlight the people trying to make a real difference in this city possible.

If you value deep dives into community builders, creators and everyday people driving social change, become a Soi Resident for $15/month to keep these stories coming.