Zoe Quinn's Depression Quest

The only "good" thing to come out of the harassment campaign against Zoe Quinn is, perhaps, that it will bring her game to the attention of people who would otherwise not learn about it. "Depression Quest" is free to download here. (Players choose whether or not to donate to the suicide prevention organizations that are the recipients of any profits.)

It is designed as a text heavy "interactive fiction," a form of "game" I happen to enjoy. There is no "winning" or "losing" in this game. The objective of the game is to take the player into the mind of someone suffering from severe depression. In other words, it aims to educate players about depression, and to develop empathy for people who suffer from that condition. And in that objective, it is almost unbearably successful.

It is estimated by the World Health Organization that 350 million people in the world suffer from depression. According to the Center for Disease Control, one in ten Americans report being depressed. Severe clinical depression is debilitating and notoriously difficult to manage medically, as the suicides of David Foster Wallace, Robin Williams and many other brilliant artists have demonstrated.

Lost in the fracas surrounding #GamerGate is that its creator was a young woman who was motivated by her own experience of depression and love of game creation to raise awareness about a medical condition that cripples the lives of many of the brightest and most creative minds.

And somehow this makes what happened to Zoe Quinn even more... well, depressing.