To Persist/Exist/Endure, Press 1 by Anthony O
I was drawn to this game by the title, which seems to hint at the philosophical literature around endurance and persistence. It has absolutely nothing to do with that. Instead, the game is a short piece in Texture about receiving a call from the ‘Agency Of Neverending Happiness and Clearing Out Monsters From Under Your Bed!’ Even though they have called you, they don’t have a clue about how to help you, and in fact only make things worse by raising your hopes for a moment and then locking you in telephone menu Hell.
With To Persist/Exist/Endure, Press 1, Anthony O has found a very effective literary form for communicating a certain type – one hopes it is not the only possible type – of experience with mental health care. The frustrating phone menu, which is familiar and easily implemented as a game, is a smart metaphor for the endless chains of referrals and therapists and talk groups and waiting lists and closed doors. The most haunting scene is the one where you are asked to tell your story after the beep; and then, when you’ve told it, you hear that the recording didn’t work and could you please start again? This is what it must be like when you’re seeing your eleventh mental health professional and are asked to explain once again what you’re suffering from… only for them to say, at the end of the 35 minute consultation, that this is not the right clinic for you and they’ll refer you back to your GP.