Mental Illness in Video Games
Last year after reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte I was very interested in literature and how it depicted mental illness. I began working on a research paper to construct a timeline featuring time periods when literature would push back against the public stigma of mental illness, and I would also look at moments in which literature reinforced these ideas. In the end I did not finish the paper, but I did go on to take another class focused on the concept of the “Mad woman” while studying abroad in Ireland.
This week during the Mental Illness in Games presentation I agreed a lot with the groups that video games very rarely depict mental illness in a realistic or positive way. Most of the time characters with mental illness are depicted as dangerous, someone to be feared, and not trusted.
When I was playing the game Batman: Arkham Asylum for my game critic project I honestly did not consider it a huge deal at first that the mental patients at the asylum were dangerous and would jump on and try to kill batman. However, I did realize that this is actually a major flaw in the fundamentals of the game. Yes since Batman’s origin the Arkham Asylum has been a key component of the comics, shows, movies, and games. Batman in general has themes of fear, madness, mourning, and a detachment from reality, however it never accurately depict true mental illness.
In the article: “Gaming’s favorite villain is mental illness, and this needs to stop” by Patrick Lindsey the opinion of the piece is quite clear. The article makes a lot of points that I agree with. One statement made is that “One of the most destructive aspects of mental illness is that it is invisible” and this is so true. It is nearly impossible to know if someone is suffering from a mental illness. Unless it falls into the category of physical or verbal symptoms. Such as confusion, violence, screaming, anger, hallucinations. The term “tweaking out” is used to refer to not only people using serious drugs but also to describe someone with schizophrenia.
It is also true that “If you encounter a game that deals with issues of mental health, chances are it’s a horror game. The genre loves to play around with mental illness; specifically the vague, generalized Saturday Morning Cartoon-style “insanity” that doesn’t match any real definition of the term” (Linsey, 2014). If it isn’t meant to scare it is meant to be something that needs to be defeated such as in the Batman game I played. In that game Insanity served “as a main, and often sole, motivation for villains in action games”(Linsey, 2014). All of the character in the game suffer from some form of delirium and mental disorder that makes the characters a threat.
One thing that I liked that the group presenting did was they introduced how the video game industry does do it right sometimes. They game examples of game developers doing extensive research to make sure that the experience was accurate or that the emotions and thoughts depicts could truly be felt. I had no idea that amount of research that developers put into not only the visuals and the structure of their games but also they researched the character depiction and development as well.
I think having games that accurately depict mental illness and do challenge the common misconception and the public stigma is an important step in the process. It is important that people try to understand mental illness and its impact on the people around us. Instead of trying to “distance ourselves from it as much as possible” and creating the illusion that “insanity is the province of Bad People, and they are dangerous and not to be trusted”(Linsey, 2014) is wrong and a stigma that should not be promoted in any way.
Work Cited: Lindsey, P. (2014, July 21). Gaming’s favorite villain is mental illness, and this needs to stop. Retrieved November 10, 2017, from https://www.polygon.com
