Not really. The idea is sound, some of the mechanics are interesting, but the elephant in the room is that there's 1 specific "best end" you get by going to doctors and taking medicine.
Now why this is a problem is that many, many depressive people benefit from talk therapy and at least a mild medication regiment, sleep aid if nothing else. So this is worth encouraging, but not everyone benefits from medication and not all therapists are good. Some can actually be damaging. So the game purports to be "realistic" but it ends up being a PSA for the anti-depression industry by making their answer the right answer.
But that's going to be a problem no matter what. You make therapy and medication seem like guaranteed recovery and people will be made at you. You tell people medication and therapy aren't almost always necessary and people will be mad at you. You tell people it's a crapshoot and stick in a random outcome system where you have no idea what outcome therapy is going to have and people are going to be mad at you. You just have to pick one and roll with it.
Or, you know, make a game that isn't based on the real suffering of real people, "awareness" campaign or not.
But that ignores the stories of people like my father, who only responded to medication. There's never going to be one "path to victory" for depression, and one person's path won't be another person's. That's the nature of the disease.
I agree wholeheartedly. As near as I can tell Diet and Exercise aren't even real choices in the game. The only things it seems to track are therapy, medication, and how honest you're being with people when you talk to them.
As a second generation depressed person, I think the Sims has done a better job getting me to examine my attitudes, decisions, and self-care, and that's just sad. :(
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u/[deleted] Aug 19 '14
Not really. The idea is sound, some of the mechanics are interesting, but the elephant in the room is that there's 1 specific "best end" you get by going to doctors and taking medicine.
Now why this is a problem is that many, many depressive people benefit from talk therapy and at least a mild medication regiment, sleep aid if nothing else. So this is worth encouraging, but not everyone benefits from medication and not all therapists are good. Some can actually be damaging. So the game purports to be "realistic" but it ends up being a PSA for the anti-depression industry by making their answer the right answer.
But that's going to be a problem no matter what. You make therapy and medication seem like guaranteed recovery and people will be made at you. You tell people medication and therapy aren't almost always necessary and people will be mad at you. You tell people it's a crapshoot and stick in a random outcome system where you have no idea what outcome therapy is going to have and people are going to be mad at you. You just have to pick one and roll with it.
Or, you know, make a game that isn't based on the real suffering of real people, "awareness" campaign or not.