Stigmatizing Mental Illness in Horror Games

The Ethics Behind Mental Illness in Games

I have been reading up on example games using Mental Asylums and was lead onto a few articles relating to the stigma behind mental illness and games. I found this very interesting as I am wanting to somehow portray mental illness to the user through gameplay and this requires me to have a vast understanding of some mental health illnesses so  I can portray them within my game/walkthrough. I am still not sure if I am actually going to be creating an actual game as I have had an idea in my head for this 'project' to be an educational piece and hence, you explore a level/map and learn as you progress through.

I will create a blog post explaining what I am thinking of doing in a little while but for now, I want to concentrate on the ethical side of mental illness in games as it proves to be a interesting a valid point on both sides and one which will be useful for me to explore.

I first stumbled across this site:

http://indiestatik.com/2013/08/11/asylum-jam-towards-horror-games-without-negative-depictions-of-mental-illness/

This is explaining a game jam that happened in October last year (2013) which looked bring game enthusiasts and creators to create horror games that did not involve depictions of Mental Illness. I can see why they wish to do this for a number of reasons. One, which has concerned me for my project, is that Asylums/hospitals and mental illness in games is considered overused and not original anymore. This is why for my project - due to my high interest in the subject, I am looking to somehow make it more interesting and unique.

This game jam was created in response to this article:

http://kotaku.com/nobody-wins-when-horror-games-stigmatize-mental-illness-912462538 

Ian Mahar raises some valid and interesting points in this article. Most importantly that game creators are portraying fictional mental states for characters and results in showing inaccurate information about how mental health illnesses actually affect people. In all fairness, most of the time in these types of games they exaggerate in order to enhance the fear onto the player. What does make these kind of games effective for a horror theme is that people fear the unknown and mental illnesses are always a mystery to those who do not suffer or have direct contact with it (it's also a mystery to those who have it at times.). This unknown factor is what game creators thrive on and use it to their advantage to create a truly scary horror game.

I am a huge fan of horror games and I can relate to fearing the unknown. However I am interested in mental illnesses and would love to create something that portrays the true feeling of such mental states.



'The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) publicly denounced the game Manhunt 2, in which the protagonist initially escapes an insane asylum while fighting off murderous fellow patients, for "its irresponsible, stereotyped portrayal of mental illness," and requested that the game be edited or recalled due to content that "unfortunately perpetuates and reinforces cruel, inaccurate perceptions that people who live with mental illness are violent."'


As you can see, not just the individuals find these games offensive and inaccurate but large organizations also feel this way. This is what is helping me drive my own idea into an ethical experience that helps show the true and factual representations of mental illness as well as hopefully creating empathy towards those who suffer from it.

I highly recommend reading this article. It has proved very interesting and has given plenty of example games which I intend to look up and most likely play myself.