The idea of a video game about mental illness can feel like an oxymoron; we think of video games as fun, bombastic and progressive, and mental illness as miserable, colourless and static. But games that convey the experience of depression and grief – particularly indie games – have flourished in the past few years, both through exploiting the aptness of games for immersive, intimate, environmental storytelling and pushing the limits of the form, subverting our basic assumptions about what gaming is supposed to be and how it’s supposed to make us feel.
The elegant puzzle-platformer or dark visual novel about mental illness has become common enough to almost reach cliché status: examples include Celeste, Gris, Spirifarer, Night in the Woods and OMORI, all of which are beautiful and rightly praised. However, ‘depicts mental illness’ can be considered praiseworthy enough in its own right that we don’t think more deeply about the ways gaming jars with depictions of mental health, and how different games deal with that friction. What do games do well when conveying depression? What traps do they fall into?
Out of every common form of media, gaming is the one that makes you the most singular, important, and responsible. Music, film, television, radio and books all have rich and complex relationships with their readers, viewers and listeners, but there’s always a sense that the reel of tape would still be spinning, even if you weren’t there. Gaming is different: most games are designed to wrap themselves around you, to make everything feel like it wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t for you. You solved the mystery. You saved the princess. You are this little world’s God. Defeating the game’s problems – or, at least, enough of them for the game to be satisfying – is both inevitable, storyline-wise, and entirely down to your skill and talent. When it comes to games about depression and grief, working within a medium with that kind of history is difficult.
Source – eurogamer.net
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