20 May 2016

Portraying Social Anxiety in a Game

In a game called 'The Average Everyday Adventures of Samantha Browne (Samantha Browne)' it is possible to explore social anxiety through a simple lens: players help college student Samantha go down into her public dorm's shared kitchen to make some oatmeal. Stand up, walk down a hall, make oatmeal. Sounds easy. Yet all along the way, there are these tiny obstacles in Samantha's mind. She is hungry, but is afraid of what she will run into when she steps outside of her safe space. Will she have to talk to other people if she goes to the public kitchen? What will she say if she does? What if those people talking in their rooms are speaking about her? Are those girls in the kitchen laughing at something she did? Should she speak to them? Is she making her oatmeal right? Should she ask for help, or would people judge her for that? Her mind is a quagmire of ways for life and the people around her to make her feel bad about herself. The possibilities of screw-ups and embarrassments swirl in her head. For the player, every decision also contains a small failure, and the every decision, no matter how small, can lead to the culmination of Samantha's fears. Had Samantha Browne featured an optimum path, it would encourage the thought that people with social anxiety just need to make the right decision in order to get through it. With a stress-free route, it shows a correct way through the game's challenges. From Ayres' own experience, this is not what social anxiety feels like. Hiding and not feeding herself seems the least stressful option. It means she can stay in a safe spot and hide from her fears. But this will lead to harm to her body. For players who've saved the universe or fought ancient evils, this should be easy. How hard is it to make the right decisions and succeed at making a meal?
 

One of the important aspects of what Ayres wanted players to experience with Samantha Browne was the simple ways in which social anxiety affects people. It is something more than regular nervousness, and affects every aspect of a person's life when they have to interact with others. A grand moment might have helped players instantly connect with the fear, but it is the disorder that Ayres wanted players to experience. Samantha Browne catalogues these failures in various ways, showing the player a gradually increasing the stress bar, Samantha's inner monologue, and her movements and pauses. Samantha stops to ask the player what to do often, which is useful for keeping them engaged, but also shows how often she has to halt her actions and think them over. Every step to the door and through the hallway asks the player to consider what they are asking her to do, as she runs through every possibility that can go wrong. This can stir up several emotions surrounding the character. It can make players frustrated that they have to navigate something that seems to be so simple to them, mirroring Ayres' own frustrations with social anxiety. It can also show the player just how the mind works in these situations, drowning every decision in a torrent of ways it can go wrong. No matter what, these decisions make the player feel something along with Samantha, giving them a little sense of what it is like for her. Part of social anxiety is acting like you're fine and that none of this is bothering you, even though your mind is a raging storm of horrible possibilities. In that, Samantha Browne's exterior works best when it appears happy and fun. The art style tells the player that this will be a light-hearted romp, and in its action, it can be. There is still that awful stress that runs beneath everything, though. The game says that your loved ones, happy as they may appear, can be hiding some pain within them that makes their lives extremely difficult. It tells us to look deeper.

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