For my critical play, I decided to play Depression Quest by Zoe Quinn, Patrick Lindsey, and Isaac Schankler on my browser (link). This is an interactive, (non)fiction game that tries to convey the experience of suffering with depression to a mature audience that’s interested in this subject matter. Notably, this is a game that explicitly warns you that’s not intended for it to be a fun or lighthearted experience before you start; from the get-go it’s clear this game isn’t trying to follow the traditional mold of what a game and story telling looks like. Instead, it seeks to bring awareness to the experience of living with depression and lower the social stigma around it. To play this game as a feminist is to embrace the subversion to patriarchal expectation of games and learn from the agency provided by the game’s mechanics to uplift those suffering from depression.
This game mostly plays like a traditional, text based, choose-your-adventure game. You play as a man with depression trying to get through your life, given the occasional choice on what to do. Unlike many other choose-your-adventure games that are about what you can and choose to do (e.g. Stanley Parable and Telltale games), this game is more focused on showing what you can’t do. Some of the choices that you are offered are crossed out in red, giving you limited, often negative or at-best neutral choices. When you are faced with doubt on the stability of your relationship, you are shown the socially correct options, such as “Tell Alex how important she is to you and enjoy your evening,” but have the option of choosing it away. The creators of this game are explicitly taking away your agency, which is in stark contrast with traditionally patriarchal game design that prioritize agency as a form of interacting with the world, which we see in games from Call of Duty to Minecraft.
In this game, agency takes on the feminist definition as “the need for active voices speaking up against the system of power” (p. 89, Chess). Here, by taking mechanical agency from the player, the game are giving agency to the experience of people with depression. This in turn gives us a better understanding of their experiences and prepares them to speak up on this issue. This also gives agency to those who suffer from depression as a an “agentic-training tool” through which these people can learn how to act. They are shown a mechanically limited world that can act as a “training mechanism for a world where we often feel like we have more will, agency, and voice than we might really have” (Chess, p. 90). Through this game people with depression can act out and practice different situations in a safe manner which can then empower them to take on life as in the game. As you take positive steps in the game, such as starting therapy, the options you can take open up. This might be the push some people need to start bettering themselves.
As a feminist, we should be playing this game with an open mind. We should embrace its mechanical design and story telling techniques, allowing it to manifest through us. Depression is not a topic that is acceptable in patriarchal spaces. Depression shows personal weakness and admitting to having it is a vulnerable experience. However, games are unique spaces where, as Aubrey Anable writes, an “interface for grasping a contemporary or feeling.” Therefore, as feminist we should embrace the emotional power of games and allow the feelings its trying to convey, regardless of how uncomfortable they might feel.
One critique is how it frames the idea of fun. This is a game warns you that it doesn’t mean to be fun. However, in many ways it still embodies fundamental aspects of fun. There’s the central narrative of the game with small side-pages accessible through hyperlinks where you can discover important context. And yet, I can’t say that it was fun to play, in a traditional sense. The fun I find in this game is more akin to intrigue. Maybe that’s what fun is not. It doesn’t need to be nice or exfiltrating; it just needs to resonate with us.
