For this week’s coding post, I want to reflect on a game that we didn’t get a chance to talk about in class, which was Zoe Quinn’s Depression Quest. I have a feeling we didn’t talk about it because it seems pretty straightforward. According to the game’s homepage, Depression Quest is meant “to illustrate to people who may not understand the illness the depths of what it can do to people.” But another reason we (maybe) did not talk about the game in class is because it’s boring. The game is text based, so it requires a lot of reading, most of which I found myself skimming through so I could finally choose an option at the end, which even in itself did not feel all that thrilling.

My first thoughts were something along the lines of, “I get it. The game is supposed to be boring. It’s intended to reflect the dullness, the drudgery, the emotionlessness inherent in actual depression.” And then I sort of caught myself. I actually don’t know what depression feels like. Especially not from playing a game. And if I claimed that I did have some deeper understanding, especially to anyone I know who has actually gone through depression, said person would probably (and justifiably) be very angry with me. I feel like this is a dangerous line of thinking that players could potentially fall into; because I played the game, I get what depression feels like.

I want to note that the game doesn’t directly acknowledge its purpose as didactic. The homepage states that “the goal is to spread awareness,” not to actually teach anyone anything about what it means to be depressed. But with “social message” games like Depression Quest or Hurt Me Plenty, you can’t help but feel like you’re supposed to learn something. Nathaniel hints at this feeling too, specifically the “guilt of violating the terms of your BDSM interaction with your partner” (in Hurt Me Plenty). Nathaniel states Yang’s goals as “a better public understanding of consent and kink.” Are these really Yang’s goals? In class, we similarly asked if Yang’s gang was supposed to be didactic. In their week in review, Noah and Todd eloquently paraphrase the conclusions we came to in our discussion: “whatever pedagogy Hurt Me Plenty has within it is located in its affect and simulational excess.”

But isn’t it all too easy – especially with Depression Quest – to mistake these games as didactic? Is it problematic to feel like you’ve learned something without actually having learned anything? I’m quoting Nathaniel here, but Depression Quest similarly “doesn’t make me feel like I really get to explore the systemic and internal obstacles that are the life of a person suffering from mental illness.” I’m not deciding on the option based on what someone with depression might actually choose to do , I’m deciding on the option based on what I, a person without depression, would actually choose to do. And in the end, I “win,” meaning the “me” in the game is feeling better, getting treatment, taking medication, whatever. If Depression Quest is supposed to closely resemble the real, does that mean I (or whoever) can “win” at actual depression? Hardly.