Asylum Jam puts the spotlight on mental health in horror games

Asylums don't exist any more. The Victorian notion of locking our mentally ill away so we don't have to look at them died in the 1940s, to be replaced by the friendlier, more treatment-focused concept of the psychiatric hospital. But you wouldn't know it to look out our media. Video games are stuck in a view of mental health that went out of fashion before they were even invented.

Asylum Jam was born of this frustration. Inspired by an Ian Mahar editorial on Kotaku, it challenges developers to create horror games that do not include "asylums, psychiatric institutes, medical professionals or violent/antipathic/'insane' patients as settings or triggers". Other than that, you're free to do whatever you want. "The only rule," explains Jam creator Lucy Morris, "is that you can't use inaccurate stereotypes."

Mahar's editorial was spurred by the game Outlast, but it could just have easily been The Evil Within, or any one of a dozen games that use mental illness as a lazy shorthand. You know the script: You're set loose in an old asylum, it's creepy and gothic, the people there are scary and violent and the doctors probably experiment on the patients.

Is it any wonder we are reluctant to talk about mental health? Stories are how we shape our minds, and our stories tell us that those with mental disorders are best thrown away in a deep dark hole and forgotten about. Don't ever dare admit you might suffer yourself, or you'll end up on the waiting list for a lobotomy.

It's an often cited statistic that one in four people suffer from mental-health issues, but that is a rough estimate at best, it might even be as high as 50%. What we do know is that if you don't suffer yourself, you probably know someone who does. Lucy's grandfather suffered from Alzheimer's in his later life, as did mine. His memory came and went, and he sometimes suffered from bouts of paranoia. I was a teenager at the time, and I didn't know how to handle it. He scared and confused me and I kept making excuses not to see him. He died when I was 18. I still wish I'd spent more time with him.

Lucy and I have something else in common too: her brother is a carer on a mental health ward and for six months in 2008 I worked as a clerk in a secure mental health unit. I can assure you it was neither gothic nor spooky. It felt more like a cross between a hospital ward and a youth hostel, only with very sturdy doors.

The inmates defied expectations also. Some had anger management issues and could work themselves up into childish tempers if things didn't go their way. Others were sullen and withdrawn, or inappropriately friendly. They were neither terrifying nor funny, and they weren't romantic rebels either. They were real people with serious medical problems, just trying to keep going regardless.

What I remember most is how much everyone cared. Nurses would work 13-hour shifts, watching the patients at all hours of the day. They sat with them, talked and watched television. They brought them takeaway once a week, and sometimes they escorted them out into the town. They did everything they could to make the patients feel more normal. That's why it saddens me to see popular culture portray these staff as sinister manipulators. Especially when that is the exact justification many patients use to go off their medication.

Inpatients like this are only a tiny fraction of mental health sufferers. Most simply see a doctor once a week and go back to watching the same films and playing the same games as the rest of us. The ones that tell them they're dangerous freaks.

Game Jams lend themselves well to addressing common or problematic tropes. Only last month, Boobjam challenged us to make games about breasts without making them sex objects. "When I think about tackling social issues in the media, I prefer to do something positive," explains Lucy. "If you're doing something productive and creative, then you're giving a positive response to an issue." I suspect the games Asylum Jam produces will do more for this issue than any number of articles I write.

I'm excited to see what kind of games Asylum Jam will produce, because I have no idea what direction participants will go in. While some will doubtless simply deploy less problematic horror stables like ghosts and monsters, others will be inspired by the question to ask themselves what truly makes a horror game. Lucy tells me one of her favourite pitches, a game in which you're trapped in a diving bell with a limited oxygen supply. Is fear of drowning enough to make a game "horror"? What about fear of heights?

But the games that fascinate me most are those that are still about mental illness, but avoid the cliches. "I've already had an email from someone who suffers from serious schizophrenia," explains Lucy. "He wanted to make a game about the way in which schizophrenics suffer from hallucinations. I told him to go right ahead." As she explains this, I wonder if I might be able to make a game that shows how my grandfather would have seen the world, surrounded by strangers who claimed to know him intimately.

Those are the games that I want to see. Things like the excellent Depression Quest. The best horror comes from vulnerability, and what could be more vulnerable than being unable to trust your own mind? Too often the mentally ill have been depicted as enemies in horror games, powerful others that threaten the player, but they work much better as protagonists. The true horror of mental illness isn't that you might encounter its victims, but that you might be one yourself.

Asylum Jam runs from the 11 to 13 October. There will be physical locations in Italy and the US midwest. You can find more information at AsylumJam.com.

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