Wait what? Why are so many people against the asylum idea?
They are quite common in videogames nowadays, specially in the horror genre. I think its fair to say most devs who implement them in their stories never had any “training” in the area to know what it is about, much less know how things operate inside a real mental institution… yet that never stopped them from implementing it into their games. So why is it so bad to let the OP do the same? It doesn’t have to be an accurate description of how the real thing works - its a work of fiction after all.
I believe that those who have issues with an asylum being portrayed in this game, also have issues with the way they’re portrayed in other media as well.
There’s also a number of people with mental illnesses, who’re saying, please don’t further demonise treatment facilities and increase the stigma attached to them.
I guess I can see where they’re coming from… but at the same time I’m like - I grew up with the horror genre and I’m well aware of the fact that asylums in videogames are usually portrayed as institutions than torture their patients just because they’re seen as “lesser, problematic individuals that don’t belong in society”. Yet I know that real mental instituions work much differently from that - there’s a difference between fiction and reality here. In fact, the stereotypical “evil asylum” that we all know from the media has been outdated for decades!
Yeah, man, that’s bad. Like. Shit. Showing mental illness and things related to that as something “horrifying”, dangerous, or even on the opposite end of the spectrum, romanticised in a violent “gritty” sort of way.
Yeah, that’s why they all fucking suck and mentally ill people don’t want those video games within 50 feet of them.
Unless when it actually harms people in real life. Hello. It’s me. I’m mentally ill. I’ve visited friends in mental hospitals. I have two close friends who were forcibly put in them. This game isn’t very good at showing mental illness. I really doubt it’ll be respectful at showing a fucking mental hospital.
Generally horror stories/games/films using mentally ill people as the backbone of their “horrific” acts trivialises and demonises mentally ill people, when those that should be demonised are the damn system, the abuse, lies and dehumanisation of mentally ill patients, further egged on by this kind of media.
As i see it, in other gaming mediums the asylum setting always worked since you’d have music and visuals to really sell it as horror. Specifically horror.
I agree with @FairyGodfeather. I dont think it should be so that anything set in an asylum is always scary, spooky, and horrible. Its long overdone and tiresome to be frank.
So in written form I have reason to believe that unless the author is exceptionally talented, that kind of setting would just fall flat in written format in this genre. Its unlikely to be accurate, or even scary ( if that were the purpose ).
It has, and it is out of date. The portrayals that movies and games present bear little resemblance to real life facilities.
But the stigma’s still there. And this game is meant to be trying to be realistic? At least slightly. So why have an inaccurate portrayal of an asylum in it that feeds into people’s fears and further demonises those with mental health issues?
You mean they bear little resemblance to modern facilities.
Despite what people may think there is a reason why some videogames tend to demonize asylums as evil instituions and is because 100 years ago there were a bunch of procedures that were considered legal and functional, such as the infamous lobotomy, electro-shock therapy and treppaning. I wouldn’t be too surprised if we still had a few medical reports from back then secured away just for historical and informational purposes, depicting how patients were treated and what procedures they underwent. One doesn’t simply demonize an institution throughout the ages based on nothing alone.
Unless that’s false information too…?
But if videogames portrait asylums based on things that were done 100 years ago, does that make it any better? Or worse? In a way its almost like talking about the inquisition - since neither of them exist in our day and age anymore.
Yes I’m well aware of the barbaric history of how people with mental health issues are, and have been treated. It is horrific. It isn’t even all in the past.
Should these horrific things people have had to undergo should be used as fodder for entertainment material.
Well… if its any consolation then maybe it could prove to be educational, specially if its based on realism and historical accuracy. I know some people may dislike this idea but the truth is humanity as a whole tends to find entertainment out of anything, even the darkest of subjects. Take comedy for example - making fun out of religion, politics and other heavy subjects - the idea is that so long as you make them laugh, most people will look the other way.
I agree that in written format, simply saying the word asylum is not scary. Visuals do play into horror.
For the COG community, most readers are not used to a traditional horror in a COG game and readers don’t want asylums and mental illnesses used as a horror gimmick.
However, many games and horror stories do take place outside of asylums with the MC’s own home being the most common place or someone’s haunted house. There is a whole game jam (asylum jam in November) dedicated to horror games without using asylums or mental illness as a scare tactic. COG gamers would probably prefer a horror game like Wounded by Words (I never played all routes, but I know there’s a trigger for ptsd ) on the app store about a group of people trapped in the mall after a terrorist attack. It was too preachy for me, but there are an autistic person, gay person, disabled person and the MC has ptsd. . So, it’s more an issue of audience and writing skill than it is of it being possible to write a good asylum horror game.
My therapist once threatened* to have me committed and I broke down in tears because my only conception of inpatient mental health treatment is from movies, books, and games where it is hands down fucking scary. 99% of the time, mental health treatment is a setting for horror. I think I’ve seen one movie in my life where an inpatient rehab center was treated warmly as a place to recover, and I can’t remember the movie’s title. It’s that rare.
Culture affects people. We don’t always have the ability to intellectually deconstruct the things culture tells us. People who are stressed and emotionally drained don’t always employ their cognitive abilities to their fullest (or maybe it’s just me).
Anyway. I’m not necessarily against people using mental health issues or settings in their games. Just please think about how you’re using it - are you exorcising your own demons or are you just doing it because other people have and you think it’s cool?
*I say threatened but it was really more like she asked me to consider the possibility of going voluntarily, because if I didn’t improve she would have to involuntarily send me for safety reasons. It felt threatening because I was that scared of mental health facilities.
Don’t get me wrong, outlast was literally one of the best horror games I’ve ever played, especially the DLC. But inthe game most were either turned into monsters(I still don’t understand why, some sort of mutagen from that spirit guy? Idk)or the circumstances brought out more of their darker desires. Most of the inhabitants were just sitting around anyways. If they did something like that then sure, changing people into creepy, evil, monsters who used to have mental disorders that have now evolved due to the change would work, but using a standard mental disorder to label them as crazy monsters doesn’t.
I think the author here should totally go for it if that’s their goal. Also after coming back and reading this thread I agree with pretty much everyone else. Now, i don’t have experience with it, and, for lack of a better word, it doesn’t really bother me as much as it would people with who do, but, most does seem “cliche”. The plot could really turn out well though if they did it right.
New version up, nowhere near as long as I wanted in terms of in game time, however I have been writing at least two hours a day since I started this new version about this time last week or so(and usually a fair bit more than that), and considering if the criticism is as negative and I’m not even getting close then I’ll just scrap it, thought I’d post what I’ve got and see how it’s received.
As for the asylum issue. Interesting conversation, but with regards to this game already agreed it’s not a good idea to include it.
So yeah tried to write this version with all the feedback in mind, and looked through all the posts a couple of times, so if I’m not getting close this time will scrap this idea and start writing again when and if I think of another idea I’m interested in, so hope you like it, at least more than my last version .
Edit: oh and with regards to the private alpha idea, not sure…will definatley think about it, lets see how this part is received first .
The story is better, but it’s too short for me to give too detailed feedback. I like how you showed MC’s perspective and made the dad a more dimensional character.
You should mention that the MC was recently visually impaired earlier in the story. That makes needing help and not being adjusted to their sight easier to understand.
For the dialogue, it would look better and be easier to read if you added line breaks in between when different people speak.
There are a whole bunch of choices at once for what MC chooses to do that day and that can be overwhelming for the reader. You could fix this by lessening the number of things to do (I would definitely keep the talk to Emma and Dad scenes and the candle scene). Or, you could make it more rpg-y and have different actions connected to different rooms, but that’s kind of hard to code and doesn’t add that much to the story. Or, you could keep all the options, but restrict them by time, which is less difficult to code than a map.
What’s your overall plan? Is it still horror, or is it going to focus on an adventure with Emma, or something else? You don’t techniquely need different endings like Choice of the Dragon and Counting Spoons and some Tell Tale games have pretty much one ending, but the journey and how the MC chooses to arrive at that ending still makes the game interactive.
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