In case you hadn’t seen it, your game makes a (admittedly very) minor appearance in my Christminster analysis because of its unique take on the inspector archetype. 
5 Likes
Oh, I’m guilty of doing that from time to time.
I will say, it’s not a social tactic for winning popularity contests or fortifying long-term relationships.
4 Likes
Can confirm. I Am Prey was strongly based on a vivid, reccuring nightmare I was having for years, and was starting to really wear on my waking life as well. Ever since I made that game, the nightmare has become extremely rare, and when it does return, someone usually appears in the nightmare to undo everything.
Catharsis really does quite a lot.
12 Likes
Funnily enough, I was just unpacking some books (we have far more than we have space for, so even though we moved a year ago we’re still slowly getting them back into operation) and this happened to be among them, so based on this synchronicity I’ll share my one semi-interesting Against the Day factoid:
So midway through the book, there’s a sequence where one of the four brothers who are basically the main characters of the novel is laboriously crossing a desert somewhere in the American West. And there’s one place here where Pynchon slips and calls the character by the name of one of the other brothers – said brother I think at this point being somewhere in Europe, gallivanting around on an airship having steampunkish adventures.
(All of the details here beyond getting the name wrong could well be wrong, I have to admit – I read the book 15 years ago and the plot is shaggy-doggish even by Pynchon’s standards).
What’s fun is that this is clearly a symptom of one of the cleanest digs against Pynchon, which is that he only knows how to write like three characters (cynic, naïf, wise sexpot) and within those categories they’re all interchangeable – look, even he can’t keep them straight! But I also can’t help but wonder whether it’s there intentionally, as a meta joke at his own expense, since I’m sure he’s aware of the criticism.
I suppose I could collapse the wavefunction and find out which it is by tracking down a newer printing of the book and seeing if they’ve corrected it in the meantime, but I have to say I prefer not knowing!
5 Likes
Adding in perhaps the wistfully karmically compromised and the ludic mystic. Plus the Tyrone Slothrop types who are somehow all five at once.
6 Likes
I’ve written an article about this phenomena actually:
The TL;DR is that not all dark games with trauma are necessarily autobiographical or a way to process traumatic events. Rather, they are strategies and discussions on how to identify trauma. It’s a kind of game design problem.
Much like how the player needs to know that Bowser can be defeated by the axe behind him, games exploring traumatic subject matter are all about finding problems that are related to mental health and turning them into interesting pathways for players to understand a different side of life that they may not be privy to.
I personally view it as a kind of challenge to discuss the undiscussable. I’m not that interested in being understood per se, but I am interested in the same way a horror writer wants their stuff to be scary or comedic writer to be funny. How do people communicate some pretty complicated ideas about trauma or politics or any “serious” subject matter in game mediums? It’s a pretty interesting question if one is allowed to entertain it.
I didn’t come into making my games to do therapy myself. I just thought it would be interesting to tackle some aspects of real life and try to parse it in the mediums interactive fiction can give you. Hell, I want to make large puzzle parser games in the style of Zork, but I gotta start small and simple. A very fictionalized episode of my life gives me a good start on how to make compelling game scenarios without a lot of research in how fantasy and science fiction games work.
So, to me, writing “personal” and “sad” games is a more pragmatic matter for me. I could write something as large as Blue Lacuna and that is my ultimate desire, but that may not be enough time to reiterate and game jams tend to be quite short. I wanna learn how to make games, so I want to make short and simple stuff. If I can write a compelling short game with a pretty emotional ending, I think I can take on something larger for IFComp or Spring Thing.
I just don’t think writing games because I need people to cry with me is a good approximation of why I make stuff like this. I just write what I know and learn how to program that way.
20 Likes
I’m pretty sure that’s what half of in-person therapy is about. I think me and the people close to me can agree that even if you don’t get advice from them, telling people is really helpful really find them interesting and if you don’t like them, don’t play them. But sometimes they can be important to people. I think lots of popular games have themes regarding this.
3 Likes
To me, a lot of art is sharing a piece of your soul with someone else, and consuming that media is an act of receiving that bit of soul (metaphorically). I imagine that when people write these personal games, many of them are trying to process or express what happened, kind of like journalling, and the act of creation helps them understand themselves. Those who play and consume that media are signifying ‘I see you, I understand you’. By writing it and putting it out there, you’re basically trying to see if your experiences matter at all to anyone.
(not everyone does this, but it’s my main mental image)
I’ve enjoyed that in several games like Bez’s A Single Ouroboros Scale or Ann Hugo’s You Couldn’t Have Done That. Getting to understand a piece of someone else, even a negative piece, can be rewarding.
But there are two other factors here independent of that. Those are tone and quality.
You don’t have to play games with a tone you don’t like. I first played IF in 2010 on the Frotz app. I loved Curses and Anchorhead, but Varicella and Vespers seemed so dark and unpleasant and rape and cannibalism filled that I quit IF for 5 years. Later, when I encountered Porpentine’s games, I loved the craft but felt sickened by some of the games like Cyberqueen, and wished that the best Twine games weren’t so filled with visceral gore and so, so many body fluids (that’s why I liked Brendan Hennessy so much, because he was just as good an author but I liked his tone more).
As for quallity, games made fast aren’t as fun, for me, much of the time. Short games can be amazing (like Victor Sobol’s Out or Chandler Groover’s Skull Scraper), but competitions with longer crafting times will tend to have games that I enjoy more. Small comps though aren’t always targetted towards ‘making the best game ever’, a lot of times they’re just small workshops to try out ideas, get feedback, experiment, and grow. And it’s fine to ignore them if you don’t want to play them. I don’t have the capacity to review all of them, and that’s fine.
19 Likes
Then don’t play them.
Also, not all depressing games are reflective of personal experiences. My game After the Accident is analyzed in @Kastel 's article, and it’s a huge bummer, and it’s not personal at all. It’s entirely made up. None of that ever happened to me.
You don’t have to understand. It’s not for you, and that’s OK. Just don’t play them. They all have CWs.
Like every game of every mood. Unless you’re being paid to write a particular thing, which I don’t think is the case for any of us, you’re writing for yourself.
Again, that’s you. Other people feel differently.
It’s like you’re trying to piss off the choice community here. Why don’t you just bypass them? Why be insulting about it? Why keep doubling down? Again, not every sad game is autobiographical, so you can’t assume that. And even if they are, why do you care so much? Are you trying to convince people to write things they don’t want to write?
What exactly are you hoping to accomplish by continuing to harp on this?
21 Likes
While everyone has taste–myself included–I think there’s a significant difference between not enjoying something and publicly questioning if it ought to published. Or suggesting that people should write about something other than what they wrote about.
I sometimes read posts asking why someone would share something or why does something exist as “why are the [insert vulnerable group] talking again?” I’m sure that isn’t anyone’s intent, but as thoughtful people who enjoy thinking about and discussing text, I hope it’s easy for us to see how
and
Could be read that way. I’m not really inviting debate here. They can be seen that way. They already have.
I also think that psychoanalyzing authors and asserting their motives with confidence is rather… condescending. Nobody really knows why authors do what they do. Sometimes even the author doesn’t know.
Finally, I haven’t finished an IF game that I didn’t like in over a year. I enjoy almost every IF experience that I have. It’s quite odd to play several entries in a jam, then publicly declare that the subject matter is a bummer, then wonder why people even share their work. It’s like saying “this cake tastes awful” while shoveling handfuls of cake in one’s mouth. It is so easy to find joy in IF, there is so much of it, more than anyone would ever play. Playing games one doesn’t like is a choice.
22 Likes
Thanks to everyone who responded to Lance in a more diplomatic way than I have the capability to at this time.
13 Likes
Don’t mind me. Just putting a frame around this quote. I don’t think you realize how effective this was at putting words to something I was struggling to communicate for years.
EDIT: Added a word. Don’t reply on the forum right after waking up, y’all. 
15 Likes
(also note: as an example, I have never experienced depression or other mental health issues, nor have I l
had traumatic experiences before. And yet games like Bogeyman and Eat Me are so … Personally, amazing. They are dark & horrible, sure, but they unearth these unspoken words and study them, while still following the rules and crafting them in subtly clever and crazy ways.
These have, for no reason I can explain, inspired me to write dark games about sensitive or heavy matters such as extreme obsessions and intrusion of personal thoughts (Method in my Madness); conspiracy to murder, cults and theft (BEER); & less dark but more depressing things like destruction of biodiversity (To Let Go).
None of these I have been involved with. None I ever want to be. But it’s interesting to explore them. So yes, I do like playing games like that.)
9 Likes
I think it’s cathartic for those who release those games and, yes, it’s most likely therapeutic as they connect with like-minded and supportive souls. It’s like a public diary entry in an odd way… and a call out to any that may care.
I struggle to call depressing IF an art form; I think it’s more of the former of what I described. But as @AmandaB mentioned, it’s just not for me. I can accept that. I have to wonder though…
Are there many emotionally dark IF games that don’t provide an adequate warning? Are players accidentally stumbling into these mature, uncomfortable, depressing stories?
What we need is more beer, monster trucks and pro wrestling in IF. I really think that’s an untapped market. I’ve been mulling over an awesome text adventure puzzle that takes place in a Jello wrestling match. Everyone’s going to love it! 
3 Likes
It’s completely fine to not like particular types of games. There are plenty of genres I don’t enjoy at all, and I’m under no obligation to play them; it’s not like I’m being paid to play every new IF that comes out.
But I want to remind everyone of the forum code of conduct. Reviving a nine-months-dormant thread asking for best practices in a particular genre, just to say you hate that genre, and following it up by snarking about choice-based IF as a whole, isn’t going to accomplish anything except making people upset.
I’m leaving this thread open for the moment, since it seems like good discussion is happening, but remember:
Don’t claim a type or style of game already accepted by the community doesn’t belong.
Respect game/story authors.
If someone’s writing isn’t to your taste, you don’t have to play it. Just ignore it and move on. There’s no need to question why these works are being published at all. They’re being published because the author wanted to write something and share it with the world, just like basically every other piece of IF in the last few decades. (Certainly the vast majority of them aren’t motivated by profit…)
20 Likes
As someone who doesn’t usually (I won’t say never, because you never know) play the types of games being dscussed here, I would emphatically agree that those works have value, both to the author and audience.
Authors should write whatever they want. The work may not have wide appeal, or it may unexpectedly resonate with large numbers of people. You never know until you try.
Much of the time, I don’t even know why I like the things I do. Give me a story about a grisly serial killer and I have zero interest. Make the serial killer supernatural in some way and suddenly you have my full attention. Why? No idea. Maybe I find reality just too boring.
When it comes to movies and games, my general rule is that there must be at least one of the following to interest me:
Spaceships
Robots (or AI)
Monsters
Pirates
Dinosaurs
Ghosts (especially Ghost ships! - again, no idea why as I don’t find ships particularly fascinating on their own)
Magic (and dragons)
Time (or dimensional) Travel
Hmm, I think my interests mostly align with Calvin, from Calvin & Hobbes.
16 Likes
I’m the same with horror: if it’s realistic depictions of fictional people suffering in pain and fear (“torture-porn”) I don’t want that, but supernatural or “tongue in cheek” slasher horror like the Scream movies or Grand Guignol horror with a clever twist or gimmick or message that is patently unrealistic like Saw, those are fine.
My mom was addicted to True Crime and the Discovery ID channel - which I referred to as the “…And then something horrible happened…channel” since it was always a lone college girl moving to a new town and trusting too much…and then… - but these are true stories and they rarely end well so I have to self moderate my exposure to them. They would run marathons of Hoarders and I’d tap out after two episodes - it’s mostly the same sad story. Same with Dr. Pimple Popper - I know watching cosmetic surgery is fascinating but there’s a limit.
Swerving back to topic: Serious IF about issues has always had its place and is a legitimate outlet for people dealing with trauma - both authors and readers. Infocom nudged a bit into it with Trinity which has delightful adventure puzzles I engaged with as a young person without comprehending the cosmic and terrifying context they are all set in. This is an example of a “message” game that still manages to be interesting and fun.
You’re going to get games that are personal accounts and not fun at all but still reflective of the human condition - either true stories, or fictionalizing real experiences. I’ve read some of Bez’s experiential games and thoroughly enjoy some and can’t engage with others. The whole point of art is illumination and understanding even if some people may not be able to understand.
Audience is a Venn-diagram and rarely are you going to get a complete circle with every person enjoying every piece of art.
12 Likes
This resonates so much with me. Give me a contemporary story about the problems and obstacles faced by a struggling family during the bank crisis of 2008, and I put it back on the shelf.
Push back the same basic story 600 years and set it in the context of the 100-year War, and you’ll find me completely absorbed a hundred pages into the book two hours later.
This is an example about historical literature. I have the same response to speculative fiction.
My personal tentative explanation is that this is a self-defense reaction. Realistic and contemporary novels are too direct, too close for comfort. Increasing the distance by setting the story in the past, the future, or an imaginary world eases off on the immediacy. It also provides a distorted mirror to look back onto our own world.
It’s precisely this movement away from the here-and-now, through distance and distortion, and then back to my present world, that allows me to digest the story more fully.
A fantastic novel about the depth, truth, and meaning underneath this escapist movement is Cloud Cuckoo Land by Jonathan Doerr. ( Cloud Cuckoo Land (novel) - Wikipedia)
7 Likes
A very good point! I hadn’t thought about it this way, but it makes sense. There’s probably also a novelty factor involved too, of course.
That said, I think speculative elements can also be helpful for this kind of thing because in addition to cranking up the novelty factor, in the hands of a skilled author they can be used to amplify and/or literalize the themes they want to convey. The Babadook is a particularly obvious (but good!) version of this, where the titular monster is a very straightforward representation of the mother’s grief, but there’s plenty of equally good works that have done it more subtly. You could probably make a non-supernatural horror movie about unprocessed grief but it would be way harder to pull off, at least in my opinion.
5 Likes