Sketchnote for Ian Bogost’s “The Rhetoric of Video Games”
I played Adventures with Anxiety, created by Nicky Case on itch.io. In this game, you play as the embodiment of the human character’s anxiety, a wolf. As the anxiety wolf, your job is to protect your human from any potential danger, whether that danger is legitimately a threat or not. The game takes you through several, non-life threatening social situations, one life-threatening situation, and finally, a conversation (rather than a fight) between the human and the anxiety wolf about what a healthy relationship with our emotions looks like. I played two rounds (~1 hour). I believe the main audience is people with anxiety or who know others with anxiety, especially since the game ends with links to mental health resources and a message saying you (the player) are not alone with your anxiety.
The game is a visual novel and comedy about mental health. I actually really enjoyed the ironic humor the game uses to discuss such a heavy real-world topic of anxiety, as well as how this exploration of mental health is done through the anthropomorphism of anxiety as a wolf. Bogost discussed the creation of a “possibility space of play” (p. 120) through games that lets players explore how different systems work. In this game, through the anxiety wolf’s dialogue with and actions to fight against their human character, Case designs a game where players can see the self-harmful, feedback loop (i.e., system) that emerges from an unhealthy relationship with anxiety. While Case could have explored this topic through a very serious tone or even through a medium that is not a game, the ironic humor of playing a protector figure ultimately harming rather than helping your human, and in a make-believe space (that’s still representative of the real-world), allows the player to explore and process these feelings without having to necessarily experience these scenes in real life.
Bogost also argues that games make claims about the world and that, through gameplay, players can “understand, evaluate, and deliberate” these claims themselves (p. 119). In this game, I see Case make two claims:
- Anxiety is meant to be a helpful emotion, but requires you to nurture a healthy relationship with it for it to truly protect you as intended
- Having anxiety is hard and complicated, and that is okay.
Through the design of the game, which places you in the anxiety wolf’s shoes (or paws, in this case), Case takes you out of the human experience of feeling anxious, one we are all familiar with, and instead positions you on the other side of this experience as the emotion triggering a certain response or reaction. By framing human emotions as a creature (an animal) that responds to us and with which we have relationships, paired with putting us in the unfamiliar position of actually being that emotion, we learn how anxiety works (e.g., how it rationalizes fear, how over-stressed it becomes when relied upon too much), gaining greater understanding and empathy for it (and by extension, ourselves).
I really like how the game tackles this topic through its characterization and making the player play as the antagonist. Presenting anxiety as a protector wolf, who then is later reframed as an abused shelter dog, evoked a strong emotional response from me (especially as a dog owner). The reframing occurs during the pivot from antagonist to ally/friend, which helped me go from questioning why the anxiety wolf overreacts in certain situations to asking why we often portray anxiety as something harmful when its original intent is to protect. I want to take this approach of having players play as the antagonist figure with a pivot later in the game, as it was a very effective method for evoking empathy in me during the game, especially when paired with narrative scenes where the anxiety wolf responded with dialogue or actions that felt very familiar to me and how I respond when anxious.
I believe the overall message from this game is that it’s okay to suffer from anxiety because that feeling is a protection mechanism, but when we feel overwhelmed by it, that is an indicator we need to nurture a healthier relationship with this emotion. This game was very successful in communicating this message, through its character (the anxiety wolf), the plot and corresponding goals (first, to harm your human by justifying it as “protection” before actually needing to protect your human in a life-threatening situation), and tone (ironic humor about a very heavy topic, which made it easier to engage). I remember even getting a little teary during the final scene of the game (“the Other Sandwich” scene) where the human and the anxiety wolf talk through what they both need. While, of course, I could understand the stress and frustration the human felt throughout the story, playing as the anxiety wolf lent me another lens through which to view the function of anxiety in the game (and, as I reflected on it, in my life). As someone who definitely over-worries, this game’s message hit close to home.
I do think there was some ludonarrative dissonance between the comedic tone and the heavy subject matter, but I would argue such dissonance strengthened the rhetoric overall because it mirrored how an overstressed/over-triggered anxiety response is counter to its actual function of protecting a human. Even though the anxiety wolf has the goal of protecting its human throughout the game, it overreacts and causes both its human and its function to suffer, to the point the human almost ignores their anxiety in the life-threatening situation. The dissonance of the anxiety wolf’s goal and its actual actions (mirrored by the ludonarrative dissonance of the game) is what is discussed and reflected on in the most emotional scene of the game where the human and their anxiety wolf try to nurture a better relationship with each other.
