Depression Quest

Zoe Quinn, Patrick Lindsey, and Isaac Schankler made a piece of interactive fiction in 2013 called Depression Quest. Let's put a pin in all the gamergate stuff for now and just focus on the game (in very short form: Depression Quest was one of the main targets of #gamergate, a collection of what we'd now call alt-right internet trolls who doxxed and harassed Quinn for months, so much so that it made the goddamn New Yorker). The idea was to simulate the experience of having depression through a series of choices (or, as the in-game experience goes, a series of crossed-out possibilities). The way you try to fight your depression has consequences for later situations. A run of the game in which you intentionally pick all the self-defeating choices leads to an ending in which you can barely move, lose your girlfriend, and entirely alienate your well-meaning friends, whereas a run of the game where you force yourself to make the choices "you" (or, perhaps, you the player) objectively know are healthy causes a gradual uptick in your energy, motivation, and self care. Throughout the game, reaching out to friends and loved ones tends to help more than bottling everything up; even trying to explain things to your unsympathetic mother is helpful in that you feel like you tried, even if her advice itself can't help you.

It made me think about the very fine line between depression and everything else. At multiple points in the game, I felt more than a flash of recognition. Quinn's game aligns depression with antisociability, introversion, and anxiety, all of which are often ways I describe myself. Thanks to someone on the internet deciding that introversion is a real thing several years ago (thanks Buzzfeed!), I've happily bought into the narrative that my hatred of parties and (often) people in general is, if not charming, more than manageable. Books are people too, and parties without an associated activity can veer quickly into drinking for the sake of drinking, which is rarely fun. And anxiety, hell, that's just being a good grad student in a terrible job market while living under Trumpism. No but seriously, am I depressed? Or am I/she responding in a reasonable way to stress? The main character's depression is so well-reasoned. She hates her job and has trouble motivating herself to go—but, yeah, the job sounds completely awful. Because of that drain on her time and energy, she doesn't have a lot left for after-work socializing or passion projects—and, yeah, that again makes a lot of sense, working a miserable job can be completely draining and recharging with your cat honestly seems like good self care. She has trouble connecting with her girlfriend sometimes and worries about being loveable/having a strong relationship—and this is also abundantly understandable. So. Hm. I felt like the game did a wonderful job of evoking the apathy, anhedonia, and spiritlessness depression can feel like; and perhaps if I haven't been calling myself depressed whenever I feel like this for a month or two, it's more a problem with my definitions than with this game.

Quinn's game was vilified by gamergate for a whole lot of reasons (to name a few: threads of blatant (and proud) misogyny in the gamer community, anti-intellectualism from the protoTrumpkins who felt like games should be "fun" and "fun" should be mindless, overly eager "well, actually" definers who didn't think interactive fiction made for a "real" game (which I begrudgingly understand but also disagree virulently with), people on the internet generally being the absolute worst pieces of shit imaginable). There's a strong thematic resemblance to Gone Home (queer relationships, serious games, interactive fiction, similarly despised by the gamergaters). But Gone Home is a story. Depression Quest is a simulator, an empathy generator, and it's trying to evoke an experience of choicelessness. Since games are, often, all about giving one *more* choices, more ways of interacting with the world than one typically has (how many dragons do you typically get to slay in your everyday life? how many magic swords do you have in your real-world inventory?), it's fascinating to play a game that turns that hyperagency around. Quinn gives you the hint of choices (and not even exciting ones! Choices like "open up to your friend about how you've been feeling") and then crosses them out, removing them from possibility.

#women #narrative #struggle #agency