More Than Play – ‘The Cat Lady’ And Mental Illness

There’s something terribly unique about video games as an artistic medium.

There’s something terribly unique about video games as an artistic medium. Something which, until recently, has only been touched on either accidentally or through a misguided direction. Perhaps while playing a game you felt a connection to the character, the story, the theme. Maybe the music gripped you. That in itself is special. It is a mixture of conveyance, mechanics, and flow. A state where the world around you fades and the story takes over. It’s deeper than immersion.

This by itself is special and should be striven towards, but it is not wholly unique to the gaming genre. Films can do it, and I definitely have gotten lost in a book far too many times than I can count. However, games do hold something unique over their artistic compatriots: in a video game you are the art.

Maybe that’s a bit confusing. Let me explain.

When you pick up the controller, you are engaging in something as live and volatile as a piece of theater. The world around you affects how you receive the game. While this is true in any art form, in games you are not a passive observer. You are engaging and enacting upon the art itself. This means that every time you play a game your experience will be dramatically different. You may be in a good zone some day and reach an emotional pinnacle by simply playing Ocarina of Time again. A jump scare in One Late Night might reduce you to tears one fateful evening while it might produce laughter in another.

There are psychological reasons for this which I won’t go into right now; that deserves its own article. This unique property in games is an amazingly powerful tool which we have at our disposal. Games can engage a person in a deep and psychological way. Personal wish fulfillment and fantasy is a clear end to which games are fantastic at achieving. But what if the psychology of the avatar is not of your own? Not a hero who wins in the end but struggles in a way differently than is immediately identifiable. What if it is something different and strange? What if your character is depressed? Bipolar? What if they are suicidal or manic?

In light of the complete lack of attention that a majority of less vocal mental illnesses are receiving as is evidenced since the tragedies of Newtown and other less recent horrors, video games stand alone in a place to do something about it. You can attempt to engage a person through fine art and hope that they will attach themselves with the tortured soul which the piece represents. You may even succeed. But with a video game the threshold is much lower. Engagement is easier and more readily accepted. Imagine how much more easily people might understand or seek to change if they could see what life is like in another lens?

In R. Michalski’s recent hit The Cat Lady , you control Susan Ashworth, a clinically depressed “cat lady” who has committed suicide; and returned. The story is a brilliantly-trippy artistic journey through the tormented and bleak psyche of someone who suffers from depression, and through it, one may glean what it might be like to experience such a painful world. It also gifts the player with the hope of something better. Play it if you haven’t, it’s available on Desuraand is up for review on Steam Greenlight.

Games have the ability to allow someone to take a glimpse into what another person’s life might be. To walk in another person’s shoes no matter how painful they might be. If this was explored further, video games may be able to show people what it is truly like to suffer from these silent illnesses which plague many of us daily. It is a difficult thing. Psychology and symbolism parsed out into code and vision. If it is done though, imagine who could be helped to see. To understand. To know and feel and be broken and remade. This is what video games can accomplish if they are explored in this way. What is it like to live with suicidal tendencies and depression? Play The Cat Lady to find out.

As for the rest of us: if we are brave enough to craft our own controllers and hand them to someone else to play, we might very well be able to share our very souls with each other. It will take bravery. But we can do it.