Poll of the Day > Why are so many indie games about mental health?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Is mental illness common in indie game communities or something?

Mental illness is common in most communities. Artistic communities just tend to be more open about expressing and discussing it, which is why so many pieces of art in so many different media are about mental illness in some capacity (whether explicitly intentionally or just in the artist's mental illnesses coming through in the work). Games in particular are an attractive medium for that because their interactivity makes them very effective for helping the player understand the experience of the illnesses they portray, or to give them the opportunity to interact with a mentally ill character in a relatively safe environment (namely in that they won't drive an actual person to suicide if they screw up the interaction).

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Free sympathy bucks is my honest guess.

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Because Triple A games are busy being shallow ass copy paste cash grabs. Someone has to make games about the real world.

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kind9 posted...

Because Triple A games are busy being shallow ass copy paste cash grabs. Someone has to make games about the real world.

This.

kind9 posted...

Because Triple A games are busy being shallow ass copy paste cash grabs. Someone has to make games about the real world.

Also this. You generally won't see AAA games trying to tackle subjects like mental health because artistic exploration and reliable profits are generally at odds with one another. That leaves that market wide open for indie developers to tap into.

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kind9 posted...

Because Triple A games are busy being shallow ass copy paste cash grabs. Someone has to make games about the real world.

people freak the fuck out when you try to make something that actually has a message. look at the reaction to the last of us II. One of the most emotionally impactful stories Ive ever experienced with realistic and fleshed our characters.
people lost their shit

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DirtBasedSoap posted...

people freak the fuck out when you try to make something that actually has a message. look at the reaction to the last of us II. One of the most emotionally impactful stories Ive ever experienced with realistic and fleshed our characters.
people lost their shit

Because that "message" was hamfisted as fuck and Ellie is a shit character. "Oh shit, revenger and murder is bad, but that's okay for the 8 dozen people I killed to get to where I am now." Neil Druckmann is just a hack writer. Any game with a good message does it subtly and doesn't toss it in your face.

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https://i.imgur.com/tSnR52d.jpg

GanglyKhan posted...

Free sympathy bucks is my honest guess.

Certainly makes a crappy game harder to criticize and helps get exposure for otherwise mediocre titles.

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Cause they can and the big titles are barely covering them

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Probably because indie titles are made by smaller teams and feel more personal, and mental health is something that nearly everyone has difficulty with at least at some point.

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Sad girl walking simulator coming to steam early access this fall. In a genre defining appeal to your humanity, experience what makes us human as you stride humanly as a human in this once in a generation human experience of what it is to be human in a human world full of humans feeling emotions in this emotionally human triumph for humanity.

I've never experienced anything so human - 10/10 ign.
Quality, dependability and performance - J.D. Power
You remind me of my son - Random bus stop nana.

blu posted...

Is mental illness common in indie game communities or something?

BAFTA bait - Bafta changed their criteria for getting recognition; In order to qualify for a writing award your game story "must include: 50-50 gender balance, 20% under-represented ethnic group, 10% LGBTQIA+, 7% deaf or disabled"

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Im for real. The game is a masterpiece.

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GanglyKhan posted...

revenger and murder is bad

wrong, that was not the message

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Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a AAA game dealing with mental health issues, and it's fantastic

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Far-Queue posted...

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a AAA game dealing with mental health issues, and it's fantastic

Hellblade was very pointedly not a AAA game, actually. It can be considered a pioneer of a sort of "AA industry" in that it was made by a smaller team and on a lower budget, free from corporate and shareholder pressures, but still had a larger budget than most indie games and aimed to produce something comparable to AAA stuff. It's not quite right to call it an independent game, but it's also not right to call it AAA.

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PyroBlade1985 posted...

Masterpiece my ass. Dreckmann IS a hack. And no I'm not hating on the game cus "Muh lesbians." I'm hating on it because it's edgy and pretentious. It's not the Schindler's List of gaming, it's the Serbian Filmof gaming. Call me every name in the book. I don't care. I don't like the game. Deal with it.

congrats at not liking something

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dedbus posted...

Sad girl walking simulator coming to steam early access this fall. In a genre defining appeal to your humanity, experience what makes us human as you stride humanly as a human in this once in a generation human experience of what it is to be human in a human world full of humans feeling emotions in this emotionally human triumph for humanity.

I've never experienced anything so human - 10/10 ign.
Quality, dependability and performance - J.D. Power
You remind me of my son - Random bus stop nana.

7.8 - Too much Emotion
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adjl posted...

Hellblade was very pointedly not a AAA game, actually. It can be considered a pioneer of a sort of "AA industry" in that it was made by a smaller team and on a lower budget, free from corporate and shareholder pressures, but still had a larger budget than most indie games and aimed to produce something comparable to AAA stuff. It's not quite right to call it an independent game, but it's also not right to call it AAA.

Straight from the horse's mouth bruh:
https://www.hellblade.com/the-independent-aaa-proposition/

Ninja Theory was and still is a AAA studio that adapted their approach to a changing market. Founder of Ninja Theory directly contradicts the last line of your post, in that he establishes their new business model as being "Independent AAA"

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PyroBlade1985 posted...

I don't like the game.

I respect your opinion. Why are you so mad tho?

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With an indie game you get to make literally whatever you want no exceptions

With a lot of people that means venting.

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adjl posted...

It's not quite right to call it an independent game, but it's also not right to call it AAA.

I'm not sure how you're defining independent here. Ninja Theory, at least when they made Hellblade was not a publisher, not a publicly traded company, not owned by another corporate entity, and not taking money from such to make Hellblade.

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PyroBlade1985 posted...

LOU2 ain't shit.

Yes, it truly is not shit.

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