Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.My first therapy client of the day brings a lot of emotional baggage to our session. Five hundred years’ worth, to be precise. Signora Isabella, as she’s known, is a vampire seeking help for her crippling bouts of existential thinking. It’s a tricky case but, as a vampire myself, I think I’m the right shrink for the job. Though Vampire Therapist, a new visual novel game, revels in the humour of its set-up, its approach to mental health is surprisingly grounded, created with the consultation of real-world (non-vampiric) mental health professionals.As the broader culture has started to bring more sensitivity to depictions of mental distress, video games have followed suit. In the medium’s early decades it was hard to find anything resembling nuance, where asylums were combat arenas and violent villains were motivated only by their “madness”, but today it is easier to find thoughtful representation, particularly in indie games. Still, games are supposed to be fun, and mental illness is anything but. So how do developers fit the two together to make something not only appropriately sensitive, but actually enriching for how we understand our own psychologies?Vampire Therapist casts you as Sam Walls, a vampire cowboy who has left his murderous ways behind to train in the art of therapy. Your clients fly in through the window as bats and transform before the open fire, among them a scientist addicted to synthetic blood and a maudlin thespian who was a contemporary of Shakespeare. Each has a distinctive package of neuroses to be untangled. The game draws from the framework of cognitive behavioural therapy, asking you to identify unhelpful thought patterns in their conversation and point them out. With smart pacing and witty dialogue, it feels more entertaining than educational, but you still might go away more able to identify and remedy similar patterns in your own thoughts and conversations.Games can smartly use characters to personify negative emotions. In platformer Celeste, you play Madeline, a depressed woman who decides to climb a mountain but is obstructed by a shadow version of herself who mocks her and undermines her confidence. In the wordless and elegant Gris, a grieving young woman is pursued by a shape-shifting manifestation of her inner pain. Other games employ diverse mechanics to explore anxiety and loss. Chicory: A Colorful Tale tells the story of a world without colour, where you use a magic brush to soothingly restore vibrancy to the world, and Spiritfarer casts you as the captain of a boat ferrying departed souls to the afterlife in a moving story of coming to terms with death.There are also games which frame the emotional wellbeing of their characters in a wider sociopolitical context, recognising that mental health does not exist in a vacuum. In Night in the Woods, the dissociation of hero Mae and the troubles of her neighbours are clearly linked to the economic decline of their hometown. Meanwhile, in Disco Elysium, your character is an alcoholic tormented by inner voices, wandering through a failed revolutionary state where the breakdown of society is reflected in the bitter disappointment of its denizens.While treatment of these themes normally lies in a game’s writing, some graft the concept of mental health more holistically into gameplay. In the brilliantly surreal Psychonauts series, your character literally enters people’s minds to help them with problems including addiction, trauma and self-harm. Kind Words is a cosy online game where you write notes that are sent to real people around the world. You can write anything, as long as it’s kind. While the set-up may sound saccharine, the experience is surprisingly moving, reinforcing the value of reaching out and the benefit of helping others in need.The games that best broach mental health are those which understand how gaming can be a powerful engine for empathy, since you experience its stories not as a passive viewer but as an active player. Yet in order to embrace the complexity and messiness of human feelings, developers must abandon some of the core precepts of gaming: whereas there is conventionally a win state to every game, when you beat the bad guy and save the kingdom, mental equilibrium requires more nuance. Emotional progress is not always linear. Sometimes you won’t be able to go back to the way you were before. It all takes time. To understand, as I keep telling my vampire therapy clients: it’s a process.‘Vampire Therapist’ is out now on PC and Mac
