Here’s the transcript of the panel for those who can’t watch it, or have hearing issues!
Another big thank you to my wonderful panelists – Mxiety from mxiety.com, Becky Frost from SpecialEffect, Alex Kanaris-Sotiriou from Polygon Treehouse and Johnny Chiodini from Dicebreaker. Remember to check out all their content and follow them on Twitter – @johnneh, @Kanaratron, @mxiety, @beckyfr0st! Plus follow me – @OurMindGames/@CaitlinRC đŸ˜€
INTRO:
CAITLIN Hello everyone, welcome back to EGX Digital! If this is the first panel you're watching, make sure you go find the others, also thank you for choosing this one. CAITLIN (cont'd) I'm - You won't know me, I'm Caitlin, I run a very small site called MindGames where I talk about video games and mental health, and today I am doing, just that, with four very lovely people who will introduce themselves now: BECKY F Hi! My name is Becky, I am the community events co-coordinator at SpecialEffect, which is a UK-Based charity who help people with severe physical-
Dog bark in the background.
BECKY F (cont'd) Immediate dog interruption there! Severe physical disabilities to access video games. ALEX Hi, I'm Alex, I'm one of the co- founders at Polygon Treehouse, we just released RĂ³ki which is a modern adventure game, which as well as being a fantastical adventure, dealing with Scandinavian Folklore, it also tackled the themes of loss and grief and reconciliation. MXIETY Hi! I'm Mxiety, I'm a mental health talk show host on Twitch and I'm also an ambassador for SafeInOurWorld which is a charity dedicated to bringing mental health awareness to the gaming world. JOHNNY And I am Johnny, I'm Head Of Video for a site called Dicebreaker, which is all about tabletop games. Before then I used to work in video games as part of the video team at Eurogamer where I did a series involving video games and mental health and how they intersect. And I once did a Ted-Ex talk! So that's me, blowing my own trumpet. CAITLIN No, everyone here is very good at what they do, I've- thankfully everyone said yes, we've got a range of people who help out with charities, people who have spoken about mental health themselves, people who have worked on games. CAITLIN (cont'd) Rough overview of how this is going to work, it's going to be about three sections. So, we're going to talk about representation of mental health in gaming, both the good and the bad, we'll talk about using gaming as a coping mechanism which is a big part for me, and we're going to talk about the communities that get built around games both as genres, as worldwide communities such as those for Dicebreaker and Eurogamer and then we'll round it off!
REPRESENTATION:
CAITLIN We'll hop right into representation. Personally, I'm very open about my mental health. I suffer from depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. I'm very open about these things and obviously, not everyone is and seeing people who suffer from the same conditions as myself in video games can be a very positive or negative experience. So, for example, one of my favorite games is What Remains Of Edith Finch and it's representation of depression with Edith's brother. It's a brilliant sequence, if you haven;t played the game I definitely recommend it, but it is a very well told story of someone who is struggling and yeah, if we open the floor to where people have seen representation they like, maybe one's they don't like. Go for it! MXIETY There is - I'll just start, I'll run on, cause I do love this stuff and I discuss it on my channel. There is some awesome representation of how to help somebody through a mental health crisis in Stardew Valley. A lot of people in general find that game relaxing and soothing, it puts you to ease, its very, you know, redundant tasks that as you approach them they become easier and easier to do, so it's very easy to lose yourself and lose the time that you've spent in this game. As you get to know the characters, you have different events that happen and one of the events that happens is you encounter, if you get very close to Shane, you encounter that he has a suicidal episode where he wishes to end his life and you get to have a few choices and it generally steers you in the proper direction of what to say that would help him and the ultimate goal is, he wakes up, it flashes over to the medical center and he wakes up and thanks you for bringing him in and tells you that he will be getting help from professionals and that you did a really good job not trying to take it on yourself but by bringing him where he would get the help he needs. And I think that overall that's a very well put together message and the whole scene is about like ten minutes, but it has a really big impact and I remember watching it and pointing at it going "THIS IS SO GOOD, SO GOOD!" ALEX One of the games that I played and I found really powerful was Celeste. I came to it quite late and I think I had an idea, I knew it was meant to be this super hard platforming game. It wasn't quite, I wasn't expecting it to impact me as emotionally as it did. I think just the-guessing in what we try and do with our game and telling a story through the game play and in Celeste you are gradually climbing this mountain and overcoming this great big barrier. I found that was really powerful even though second by second and minute by minute you're doing all this platforming and story, it was really well told. I think one of the really powerful things about games and tackling mental health is that it doesn't have to be in your face the whole time, in Celeste it gives you a breathing space. That's definitely something we tried to do with RĂ³ki,its almost like you have, you can deal with some of these topics and you can allow breathing space for the player to reflect on these things, they need time to take it all in. I think that generally it's really interesting that games tackle some of these issues on a big variety of levels and I think its really nice, its quite a powerful thing to allow people - a) if they have mental health issues to see people struggling or dealing with some of those issues and also for people who want an insight, a way of stepping into someone else's shoes a little bit and maybe encouraging a bit of empathy and less fear of mental health and what it is. JOHNNY Go for it Becky (Eye Gaze Girl). BECKY F I wish I'd gone first cause I was totally going to talk about Celeste! But just going back to what Caitlin said and What Remains Of Edith Finch, was something I watched my husband play through recently, we kinda play through together, and the variety of different issues, I'm aware of not wanting to give any spoilers, like the different characters that you visit throughout the game, represented so many different issues from like loss and grieving to PTSD to paranoia. There were so many mental health issues explored, going through a trauma, that kind of thing. It's one of those amazing games that seems, from my perspective that seems to present each topic quite sensitively as far as I could see from my perspective. JOHNNY I think for me, it feels somewhat obvious but I think Life Is Strange was a really big one for me in terms of its - particularly the first season and the prequel Before The Storm for me, were such a powerful exercise in empathy. Every character if you dig deep enough has something going on. Its not necessarily a diagnosable mental health condition or anything like that, it is so, its central themes are so wrapped up in the idea that being a teenager is hard, and that there is a lot to deal with because you are literally learning how to be a person whilst there's all this other stuff going on. Obviously it does tackle more direct themes for example in the first season there is a very poignant scene involving an attempted suicide, the repercussions of that echo through the rest of the game. There's also nice little incidental moments that you can miss as well, for example you can find some antidepressants in your best friends bathroom, and it never comes up in conversation between the two of them but the protagonist takes a moment to be like "Oh wow, they have been going through some stuff whilst I've not been talking to them." I think Life Is Strange has been really important in terms fob building a community that is comfortable talking about mental illness and supporting one another and accessing resources in a way that is really impressive and quite moving I think. CAITLIN I agree with that, I think a lot of that came during Before The Storm. As much as Kate was the main poignant focus when it came to tackling mental health issues in the first season but then you dig, in Before The Storm, you dig into Chloe coping with her father's death and the changes, and then Rachel dealing with well... all of that: JOHNNY Everything. CAITLIN Everything! And I found like a lot of people took moments from that and essentially managed to attach reosurces and things to it. So whenever people went back and revisited those moments they'd find lots of posts with resources and references - it was very nice. JOHNNY Yeah. MXIETY Its always between that and Stardew Valley when it comes to representation and then another one that I think people don't expect in- And I know I already went and I'm sorry!
Laughter from all.
CAITLIN No it's fine! MXIETY Another one that I think people don't expect is Kingdom Hearts or I think they don't read into it as much. But one of the characters LITERALLY treads through darkness, her own darkness for TEN years and- CAITLIN Oh Aqua! MXIETY Yeah! And when she's constantly told that she's not worthy, her friends dont love her, theyre not gonna come save her, shes not good enough, she will never help anybody, like all this stuff that literally are things depression tells you, and so its not as like - Life Is Strange is very much "here are mental health themes" right and you're prepared for it. But I feel that Kingdom Hearts is one of those where you learn empathy through the means of "oh I'm just playing a game, I've got to save this person out of darkness!" Darkness is a common metaphor for how we feel inside and "bad things". You can totally gloss over it or you can stop for a moment and be like "woah, she's been depressed for 10 years." CAITLIN When you go from Donald Duck's voice to a heavy montage about depression, its a little bit jarring. MXIETY But they get you! They get you. BECKY F That's one of the great things about games and that form of storytelling, that you are in many cases playing through the protgaonist or playing through the person who is going through it or dealing with it or helping someone deal withh it in some way. And if you're a good writer you can write something that sweeps you off your feet and hits you in that way like you've just described. ALEX Probably one of the really powerful things about video games in tackling mental health issues is that, as a player, you're an active part of the story. And so, you're playing through a scenario in a different way to watching a film or reading a book, you have to make choices about the scenarios you've been placed in and it puts you in someone else's shoes and makes you consider things from different people's perspectives and maybe even if its tackling issues that someone maybe has dealt with, by taking you out of your skin and putting you in someone else's - slightly removed from yourself, you may allow people to work through things they're dealing with in the real world. CAITLIN It's interesting to see how games tackle it as some games do brilliantly, such as the ones we've discussed, such as big titles like Senuas Sacrifice which is very well researched into psychosis. Then obviously you have ones that try but often fall flat. For me, I appreciate them trying. ALEX From a developer point of view, when making a game you get quite close to it. Its hard to see what it is sometimes. I think we tried really hard with the story of Roki, in it the hero Tove, she's- you don't really get lots of exposition at the start, we just drop you into the game and don't really tell you whats going on and allow the player to explore the scenarios and what's happening but it does deal with themes of loss. When you're making a game, you're trying to make sure that you're making a game that takes the matter seriously but also engages people and isn't too didactic. At the end of three years you're a bit too close so you don't really know how the story or the themes are going to land. From that side it's really interesting and we were really relieved to the response that those things that we weren't that sure that people would even pick up on them, in fact we've been quite shocked by some of the-pleasantly shocked- messages we received from people saying "that really reminded me of this" and "thank you for doing this", we had some really amazing messages and sometimes things we hadn't even considered. That's the other thing. People will project onto your game, or onto a game that they're playing, will start to fill in some blanks with their own experiences. You'll find as a developer that things may resonate with people in ways that you don't expect and again, that's a really powerful thing about games. JOHNNY I think it's a relief that at least off the top of my head, while there are games out there that do get mental health representation wrong, I don't see malice in the intent to develop those games. It feels like where there are harmful depictions of mental health, its because they are playing to a cliche. For example, Outlast is a very scary game but its also set in an asylum for no discernible reason. Whereas, you know, there are other games like the Town of Light for example, that reviewed very well and people really felt like their depiction of the abandoned asylum in Italy was very tastefully done. I personally had issues with it, but that's another part of the puzzle, is that everyone is different and that everyone is going to bring their own stuff to the table. Where I felt like it actually failed the protagonist by revealing at one moment that the aslyum, which is shown as this horrible oppressive atmosphere, they've actually got it right and there is something wrong with her and you can't trust her as a narrator. It felt like it undid a lot of the games message for me but thats something I took from it and not necessarily others, so its a difficult ground to tread. And as I understand it, development is not easy under any circumstance so its a relief that there arent people out there deliberately trying to be like "We're going to tackle mental health, in a really awful way in this game." CAITLIN Yeah, I think mental health is you can't get it right entirely when it comes to producing a game. Whether you're dealing with loss like in Roki, whether you're dealing with depression and suicide, everyones experience of mental health is unique, its entirely based on your life experiences, how you react to it, your biological makeup. It's - you can't get it perfect but you can make a difference and I think that's what a lot of game develoeprs are going for now and its making a difference, which is the main thing. ALEX The interesting thing with Roki, I don't think we ever really set out to make a game about loss, we actually started off with a fantastical adventure and Scandinavian folklore, and then you know when you look and say - ok we want to make realistic characters. They are quite stylised and cartoony looking but the thing is, if you want to make realistic characters, everyone is dealing with something. No-one is "normal", everyone is working through something and actualy in some ways if you're going to make an interesting character, they're always going to be dealing with something, so what is "that", is it an exterior threat or do you look internally at what makes an interesting character and start to draw from some of your own experiences. I think more of the prominence of mental health issues in games are people drawing from their own experinces and wanting to make interesting and believable characters, comes from conflict and them having to work through something, which is exciting to see developers drawing on their own experiences or their teams experiences and creating characters that are more nuanced and working through things in their games. CAITLIN If anyone else has any other points, feel free to go for it, if not, I'm gonna segway. I wish I had an actual segway, that'd make that funny. I'd fall off though, its fine. JOHNNY They're not street legal in the UK! CAITLIN Oh yeah, they're not. BECKY F Wait what MXIETY Dissapointment. JOHNNY You can only use a segway on private land in the UK. BECKY F Oh man. My commute has been ruined. JOHNNY Sorry, we derailed your segway. What were you going to say? BECKY F Oh yeah!
General laughter from the group.
SUPPORT:
CAITLIN We're gonna move into gaming as a coping mechanism which is a big point for me! I'm gonna show a little video from one of SpecialEffect's folks, Becky who is also as "Eye Gaze Girl". BECKY F She has severe quadriplegic cerebral palsy, so she uses eye-gaze which is an eye controlled system. So, Becky (Eye Gaze Girl) was kind enough to record this.
Video of Becky (Eye Gaze Girl) aka Eye Gaze Girl is playing:
BECKY (EYE GAZE GIRL) Hi guys, this is Eye Gaze Girl, also known as Becky. Video games are so much fun and I like designing things and exploring virtual worlds. I like the challenge of some games, and finding different ways to be creative. When I play video games, I lose myself in the game as it allows me to relax and forget my troubles. In my everyday life I am faced with many challenges and struggles. This cans ometimes make me feel upset and frustrated but over the years and with the help of SpecialEffect, I have had support to find the right adaptive equipment and what works well for me to enable me to plah video games and that help has been invaluable. There are lots of things that I cant do myself but I can play video games on my own which gives me a good sense of independence and achievement. I love playing video games with my friends and it has given me more in common with them and has allowed me to be totally included in the fun as an equal player. I think it has changed the way that my friends see me and it makes me feel less disabled. Having access to video games has changed my life and brought me happiness when I've felt sad. To others they are just video games but they are so much more than that. Goodbye.
Footage returns to the main panel screen with the 5
panelists.
BECKY F So Becky spoke a few years ago at one of our - we have a winter get together at the SpecialEffect offices, and she did a whole speech on how SpecialEFfect have been helping her and one of my favourite memories from that is she was just describing the games that she was playing. Like the stuff she was doing in Minecraft, she was building a theatre and putting on a play with her friends - which is that community and escapism element of games. And these shared experiences that I think everyone has with games in some way or another. Like she was saying how she loved playing the Sims and she loved killing them off in different ways! It was brilliant to see this really sweet little girl being like "Yes, I love to kill them in different ways nyehehe!" and all the adults in the room going "Haha...." and then anyone whose ever played the Sims before going... "I've done that." CAITLIN Anyone who has played the Sims... JOHNNY You just sell the pool ladder! MXIETY What happens if I remove this door? BECKY F Take that ladder out the pool, there you go! It's just that shared inclusion and community. CAITLIN I think especially right now with obviously the whole situation going on in the world, the worldwide nature of games has been a very big way to bring people together. Like, obviously its not the same as being able to sit down and play in person but you still get to talk to people, you get to meet new people, like I've got a couple games with brand new groups that I hadn't met before lock down, that we now all meet and play fairly regularly. Its a good way to meet new people and just be able to escape from the world for a while. ALEX I think one of the things that some games, even if they're not really intended to, can be quite meditative in the way its played. If its like a simple thing, something that's very absorbing, obviously everyone at the moment is very worried about all manner of things like - everything is very concerning at the moment. So having games as a way of unhooking your brain or hooking your brain into something else, and for a period of time getting out of a cycle of thinking about things is a really powerful thing about games. One of the games I really like to play to unwind is Baba Is You. It's really like, logic problem about how you pair things together and you really have to focus, there's no time pressure, the music is kinda cool... In weird ways some of the games that you dont expect to be that relaxing, for example I'm a big fan of the From Software games and I find them quite relaxing to play in a weird way. Even though they're quite hardcore, there's something about them being so absorbing and you have to be there, and focus on it, you can't really be thinking about anything else. Then there's games that are just chill like Animal Crossing. BECKY F I've been playing TownScaper recently. Its just this little tool where you build a town but the sound design, there's something about it that just mesmerises me, and I'm just like "Ooh, plinky plonky, put down the town. Lovely" CAITLIN Plinky Plonky? BECKY F Plinky plonky music! CAITLIN Thats how I program! MXIETY Tetris is another one that has been proven to help. First of all it helps prevent PTSD, the research if I'm not mistaken, correct me if I am, the research was that if you give somebody Tetris to play after a traumatic event they are less likely to lock in that traumatic event and therefore less likely to develop PTSD. And that was really interesting, as in my childhood, growing up with a rather traumatic childhood, I played a lot of Tetris! And looking back at it, I was like "Oh my god, I didn't even know it was a coping mechanism!" It was a way for me to walk away and step away, and then okay we're arguing here, ok I'm going to walk away and just play Tetris. Like I had this little, literally a screen that had five hundred games on it that were all block and cube based and so I had Tetris and to this day, when I get stressed out or something, I sit down and play Tetris. Although, Nintendo has made it a little stressful with Tetris 99, it's still awesome and I still love it and I still find it very soothing and removing from the current environment, like Alex was saying. And putting you in somewhere else. JOHNNY I think one of the remarkable things about seeking out that experience, and its something that video games are very well positioned to deliver is consistency. You know some people when they're stressed they'll go for a walk or they'll read a book or they'll cook something or whatever it is. Obviously variables can get in teh way, it might be raining, they might be fatigued and the walk just isn't rewarding or whatever. Video games by their very nature, every time you boot them up, they're largely the same. You get the same exprience from Tetris, be that playing against 98 other people on the Internet versus a 500 game screen. For me, STardew Valley is a really good game to you know, switch off and with that I know like I'll wake up, here are my animals, here are the tasks that I have to do today, the music is always a delight and its that consistency but combined with that sense of agency I think that really makes it such a useful media to step into. Although, I have to say, I didn't know anything about the mental health representation in Stardew Valley because when I play it, I don't talk to anyone. MXIETY That's a way to cope too right? JOHNNY Yeah! Exactly. My player is a hermit basically, I go into town every few weeks to buy seeds whereas there is still one person that I have not met and I'm on Year 3 or 4? Just cause I like plugging away at my farm. CAITLIN There must be urban legends about the farmer. JOHNNY Yes. The man with the mayonnaise empire. I think they call me.
Laughter ensues.
MXIETY Mayonnaise costs a lot of money! I get it! CAITLIN I get it too, I just don't like mayonnaise in real life so the idea of running a mayonnaise empire is horrifying. JOHNNY That's where the money is. BECKY F There's money in the mayonnaise stand. CAITLIN Stardew and Animal Crossing have been a big one for kind of a sense of accomplishment. BECKY F I was saying before we started recording, that part of my job with SpecialEffect is to go to the real world events, which are obviously... Hi EGX!
Waving at camera.
BECKY F (cont'd) I was saying that I miss certain things that I didn't think I'd miss, like the train travel and the Tube and the Underground and all that. I miss that to an extent that I've started building a SpecialEffect stand in Animal Crossing and we do a SpecialEffect stream every other Friday and we've had guests come to the SpecialEffect stand in Animal Crossing. There's this really nice kind of, familiarity and you can build that nice space to enjoy for yourself and yeah... It's been a weird time. CAITLIN That is an understatement.
Sounds of agreement.
ALEX With Animal Crossing its almost like a bonsai tree isn't it, you can get things just how you want them, almost like you're constructing this safe space, somewhere you feel really comfortable and have control over. Yeah, I've played it, I've made a Twin Peaks island, so I've made like the lodge and then I had a diner and its the kind of thing like "Oh I'll get this" and you slowly build up this thing and its a very rewarding thing to keep on leveling up and leveling up until you step back and go "my kingdom". BECKY F My mayonnaise empire! CAITLIN That's the name of the panel now. JOHNNY Nooooo! My hidden shame! CAITLIN No, I've found... I had an experience the other day, I had a really down day. I managed to get up and do, I've been doing Ring-Fit Adventure. I managed to do my Ring-Fit for the day and that was my only achievement for that day, apart from getting out of bed which always counts. But it's... games do have that, like with Stardew, you get to the next day and you've sold your items and fed your animals and you do feel like you've achieved something. Its something that is tangible, compared to the rest of the world. BECKY F Grounding. CAITLIN Yeah, grounding, that is a word. JOHNNY I've started using Ring-Fit adventure a lot recently, as like a lot of people I've stopped leaving the house very much because of COVID restrictions, I've stopped exercising at all and yeah, it's been really nice, a really nice motivator, just to go on it and be like "alright, well I may not do as much as I did yesterday or maybe I'll do a bit more, it doesn't really matter as long as I strap a joy-con to my leg and sort of bounce around the living room for a bit. I think that game is a really good example of "gameifying" - as annoying as that word is, things that are good for you. Its a very, its all positivity. It doesn't guilt trip you at all as a game, it doesn't say "oh you didnt do as well today as you have before" or its been X number of days since we last saw you, its all just like "You're doing great! Keep going! You need to stand up now but take your time! Are you drinking enough water?" Like, its a game that is just delighted you've shown up. And I think that is something that is really nice for people to get as a targeted form of feedback, especially if they may not get that from other avenues in life. ALEX The fact that it has the Yoga stuff in it, the relaxation things in it, its not just about bulking up or getting stronger, its also about balance and relaxation as well which feels very well rounded. I really enjoy it, I was really skeptical cause I thought it might be quite gimmicky, so I think a lot of people have maybe expected it to be quite gimmicky, and then given it a go and were like "wow this feels like really well considered and really fun to play and really inviting." I find it really, quite a chilled place to be. MXIETY Unlike, if everyone remembers the Wii Fit Board which was a judgemental bastard.
Laughter.
CAITLIN Yes it was! MXIETY It had a lot to say about your weight, about how long it's been, you know, that was an attempt at creating a fitness game that did motivate quite a few people and got people into exercising but like I feel that Ring- Fit adventure does a way better, way more inviting approach, to kind of echo what you were saying. A way more inviting job of doing the same thing. CAITLIN Its a bit like that person who walks past you in a crowd that just gives you a side-eye for no reason. BECKY F That's hopefully a good example of Nintendo getting it, not quite right the first time, and then listening to community feedback and I think, just going back to what we were saying about how you can never really get it 100% right with mental health representation in games, and that's ok, as the experience is different for every single person, any community manager can tell you, you're never going to please everybody. But there are things that people can do as writers, developers, game makers in general to try and get it as right as possible, and talking to charities such as SafeInOurWorld can really help with that so I encourage people tor each out, speak to your community, cause there will be community members who go through different things and just... talk to people and SafeInOurWorld are a fantastic resource for that. MXIETY Thank you for plugging the charity that I should be plugging. BECKY F You're welcome! Cross charity plugging there! CAITLIN Everyone plug each other, it makes things easier. ALEX I think from an indie developer point of view, as well, its really good to get, if you are making a game that's going to tackle some issues, whatever they may be, its good to get extra eyes on your game, especially if you're a tiny team - like we do a lot of user testing and focus testing stuff, not just about if the puzzle is too hard, its also about the themes and the writing. I think if you are quite close to something, its always good to get an extra perspective and different things will resonate with different people, its always good to see not just you as testing your design but also the story and themes and seeing how they land with people and just like whether people, whether there's anything they find problematic about it, and sometimes it can be quite subtle things but its always good to do. Yeah, I think user testing and getting other eyes on your game cause you're quite close to it, is just a really good thing to do - just to get different people's perspectives on things and see what things they take from it. MXIETY I think that really nicely segways into community! CAITLIN Yes! BECKY F It's as if we planned it! CAITLIN Planning here? In this house? At this time of year? - BECKY F In this house we do not plan! CAITLIN I love how you go for "in this house we do not plan" and I just immediately went for- JOHNNY Steamed hams. CAITLIN Steamed hams. JOHNNY There it is. CAITLIN My age is showing. I went for the meme.
COMMUNITY:
CAITLIN Community is a very big thing and the idea of one person speaking up encouraging another, giving someone else the courage to be able to speak up is actually why I started my site in the first place. It's very much like games recently have been doing a lot more where they are opening up those conversations and those opportunities for people to either reach out for help or to find people who- CAITLIN (cont'd) Mental health is a very isolating thing. You feel like something is wrong with you, you feel like you are the only one in that situation, you feel that people will not understand and I think games are doing a very good job recently of building those communities where you realise, as much as your experience is unique, you aren't alone. (which is dramatic) MXIETY I don't think thats dramatic at all! BECKY F No that was great! I have a great example of that from the SpecialEFfect volunteer squad. CAITLIN Go for it! BECKY F We have a great number of members, they're all absolutely amazing. Shout out to the squad. I'm still calling it a squad. I'm staying in 2016, thank you very much. Two of my volunteers both have BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) and one of them was talking about it on social media and they had followed each other and the other one was just diagnosed and really struggling with it. They ended up chatting and connecting and making good friends and just being there for each other really. And its just this wonderful example of how, if you're comfortable talking about your mental health struggles or just talking to people generally. And again, this word is a bit like gameification, in that its been going around all over the place but just normalising the idea of talking about mental health as something that everyone goes through in one way or another. And that's, I've seen first hand how much that can help people and its been a really lovely thing to watch. CAITLIN Normalising is spot on, the word, of kind of, because it is completely normal! Statistically, I think it's one in four people now will suffer from a mental health condition in their lifetime. And it's normal, its not, its not something that needs to be completely fixed or removed, like for me, I've very much accepted that as much as my conditions affect me, it is also a part of me and it does impact the decisions that I've made. Like I wouldn't be sat here doing this if it wasn't for what I've been through and obviously there are some bits I wish I could've skipped or hit "no thank you" on, but these experiences make you the people that you are and I think its... games allowing people to realise that and to go "No, you aren't alone, look around." And its more of a - cause obviously if someone tells you that you aren't alone, it's a bit like when someone tells you to calm down when you're having an anxiety attack. Really. I never thought of that. Thank you. MXIETY Very helpful. CAITLIN So helpful BECKY F Have you tried not being depressed?
General groaning from the panel.
BECKY F (cont'd) Oh thanks Barbara! MXIETY Nobody with depression has ever tried not being depressed. Or smiling, or just laughing or my favourite, just enjoying a sunset. You know, stuff like that, or doing yoga. The list is endless, you can tell, I can go on. But in terms of community, my community was literally built around talking about mental health in a open way and that has been the biggest honour from starting a community, I remember my first stream. Sitting very nervous, swallowing hard and being like "Okay... So I have depression and uhhh yeah." To a place where its bigger than any one person in our community, where its an idea, a concept, we've created this idea of Be The Light, which is you know, if you feel like the world is dark and people are crap and nobody will be kind to you, try to go out there and initiate that kindness and love and whatever else you're looking for yourself, give that to somebody else and maybe you'll get it back. Mental health is, like you said, just health but your mental health. There's physicQal health and then there's mental health and just because you don't suffer from a diagnosable condition in your life, doesn't mean you'll never feel down and like you're worthless or useless or your efforts were for nothing or any of those things that people will depression can get to extremes. Just recognising that it is - like if I have to listen to - poor Barbara we've been picking on her - but if I have to listen to Barbara tell me about her husbands back condition and you know, he's getting surgery and I sit in my - when I used to be in an office, I used to listen and give empathy, I feel like I should be able to also tell back to Barbara you know, I really felt depressed and I had a hard time yesterday and I couldn't get out of bed so that's why I wasn't at work and not be judged for it. If we can create, the more media in general that we can create that makes that normal, the more normal it is for people coming up in the world and that's it - that's the goal of SafeInOurWorld, that's the goal of really just being human and just accepting what the human condition is, with all of its negatives and positives. COOOOOOOOOOOOOOP##ILLLLLAITLIN Damn.;;OO ALL ThatY;O was awesome, really well said, wow. JOHNNY I think really, the only thing I have to follow that, like you know I've tried to do community facing stuff with mental health as part of my work but I have a group of friends that I play Sea of Thieves with a lot and before you go out sailing in Sea of Thieves, its a really good idea to stock up on cannon balls and fruit and planks of wood and just general supplies. I don't really know when it started but that time has sort of just become the bit where we check in on one another. Because no-one is doing anything particularly complicated but it takes up about ten to fifteen minutes and its always at the start of an evening, so it'd be like "Hey, hows it going" but more often than not its got to the point where its like "Hows it going" and you be like "Rubbish here's why" and bang we're straight into mental health discussion which is nice cause it carries on for as long as we need it to, then we go "right shall we go to see" like "yeyeyeye", and immediately just go into dumb pirate fun. And- I don't know but there's just something about Sea of Thieves and the small community of friends that I'm a part of, as we play regularly, they just sort of clicked and it meant that we've sort of accidentally built up a sort of boozey support group for one another. Which is pleasant. CAITLIN No I mean, like the people that know me more personally will know that I've been a big part of certain communities for a good few years now, through some of the more formative experiences of my life. A lot of these people that I play games and things with now, we have an unspoken system where it's - you do understand when someone is having an off day or when someone needs to step away because their anxiety is peaking or something. Having the games around that gives something that - I mean for me, one of my main issues with anxiety is that when you're about to have an anxiety attack, part of that anxiety comes from then being the center of attention during that moment. It's like "NO THANK YOU", and having something central to focus on like a game and stepping away from the mic for a while, has allowed a lot of people to be more vocal. BECKY F I mean, hopefully, in the future when things are "back to normal", although I'm loathe to use that term, that will make having that conversation and saying "Look, I'm not okay in this situation or I'm feeling really overwhelmed and need to go be quiet for a bit.", that'll normalise being able to say that and make it a more accepted thing that people just do. Its just so important to be able to just remove yourself from the situation occasionally, so hopefully that is a bit more normalised in the future. CAITLIN I've found that events have a lot more safe spaces and quiet zones nowadays, which is very much appreciated. Like they have quiet zone tents and stuff, I know CheckPoint had one at EGX in October - I don't know, time is a madness. JOHNNY There's also the AFK rooms at PAX, which are delightful. I went to one when I was really anxious before a panel I had to run, as I was interviewing Mike Pondsmith so it was proper bucket list stuff for me. So I went and sat there in this nice little atrium, at one point somebody came over and whispered to me to ask if I wanted some water and apart from that it was just this little oasis of calm. You know, occasionally you do accidentally make eye contact with someone and you both give each other a little smile. I was able to step out straight back into an Arcade Zone that had loads of laser sound effects going off at ear splitting volumes. And it was such a brilliant lifeline. Its nice that those spaces are becoming more common but I wish they would become a bit more prevalent. CAITLIN I think these big events where we can all come together about something we really enjoy, like video games - I think once we have a community understanding that "these are needed" rather than a fun little extra. ALEX I think also the presence of those sort of zones at the events is really good to highlight to people as an option there. People might not even have considered "why do I feel a certain way several hours into this day. There's this thing on the map, what is it?", they may not even identify that have a need within themselves. We were pretty fortunate that the CheckPoint one was very close to where we were demoing Roki so it was really nice to basically be able to step out, sit on a beanbag and just have some time. Yeah I think it's, there's a need there and the fact that the people who are aware of it can go and utilise it and its really good for raising the visibility of people who don't quite know if they need it, if that makes sense.
CONCLUSION:
CAITLIN Yeah. And on that note, I think we will round things up cause we may chat all day otherwise. And we all have other things to do! I want to say a big thank you to the four of you for joining me for this, it means a great deal to me and I hope it will mean a great deal to anyone watching this. JOHNNY And thanks to you for running such a nice, well-rounded panel. It's been really nice to come on here and have a chat. BECKY F Yeah absolutely. MXIETY Yes thank you! CAITLIN I hope everyone else enjoys the rest of EGX Digital, be sure to check out everyone's links. Be sure to check out SpecialEffect, SafeInOurWorld, Roki and Dicebreaker! [Awkward pause] And me as well! I forgot myself! JOHNNY Yeah absolutely! BECKY F Do go to MindGames, it's a fantastic resource, honestly. CAITLIN And I hope everyone has a lovely day! Be sure to take time for yourself if you need it.
END.