Actual Sunlight screenshots, here and lead, courtesy of Will O'Neill/WZO Games.
In ideal circumstances, talking freely about depression and mental illness wouldn't be an issue. But realistically it is, and especially for men. Suicide remains the UK's single biggest cause of death among males under the age of 45 (according to CALM, there were 4,623 male suicides in the UK in 2014, which equates to 12 deaths per day), and pressures levied by societal stigma unfortunately hinder universal discourse.Video games can't and shouldn't replace seeking professional help in these circumstances—and Gareth Dutton's 'The Problem with Using Video Games as Panacea for Mental Health Issues' 2016 article for (a pre-Waypoint) VICE is a very interesting exploration of this point. But by increasingly exploring sensitive and interpersonal themes, the scope for promoting these conversations only serves to widen—for creators, critics, and, crucially, players.Enter the Talking Simulator.In ideal circumstances, talking freely about depression and mental illness wouldn't be an issue. But realistically it is, and especially for men.
Elude screenshot courtesy of GAMBIT.
Hug Marine screenshot courtesy of failnaut.
Another game that resonated with many players around the same time was Zoe Quinn's Depression Quest. Built using the Twine engine, the free interactive non-fiction game tells the story of a person struggling with depression whose life becomes increasingly dictated by their affliction, and was designed as an educational experience as much as it was a video game."The topic is too big, there's too many people who live with it, and too many moving pieces for anyone to do a definitive statement on what depression is like for everyone," Quinn told The New Yorker. "Depression Quest's goal was to be a basic introduction to the concept and to get the conversation started."For this, Quinn faced a barrage of abuse and harassment from trolls. Yet the game has been played over a million times and has encouraged many players to speak out about their own similar experiences.And the list goes on. Anna Anthropy's Dys4ia is another autobiographical game that relays the author's experience of gender dysphoria and hormone replacement therapy. Sym is an abstract side-scrolling platformer that follows a socially anxious protagonist—where alternating between light and dark worlds represent his inner, reclusive self against the external 'real' world.Players use video games to escape to safe places, to explore ideas, to witness and share a game creator's suffering, and to ultimately talk about their own circumstances after playing.
Neverending Nightmares screenshot courtesy of Infinitap Games.
And it's this idea that perfectly outlines the power of video games: where films elicit emotion from viewers by virtue of spectating, games invite players to experience their narratives alongside their creators—something O'Neill describes as "a sort-of mechanical empathy". The process facilitates a give-and-take interactivity, and in Actual Sunlight players discover this within a negative space of interaction—where the player is ultimately coerced into performing certain actions so as to underscore its central narrative. It's this invitation that opens players up to experiences they may be unfamiliar with, but, equally, has scope to expose them to relatable themes and ideas.Personal healing is a natural evolution of this, whereby players use video games to escape to safe places, to explore ideas, to witness and share a game creator's suffering, to ultimately talk about their own circumstances after playing. Talking about mental health is hard—and partners, friends and acquaintances are often perplexed in the face of it. Instead of retreating into ourselves, can we use video games to help express the words and thoughts so often trapped inside our heads? I think so. And I think talking simulators, as it were, are a great place to begin doing so.Follow Joe on Twitter.Related, on Waypoint: The Unwilling Hardcore: How Video Games Helped Me Battle My OCD