YOUTUBERS REACT! To Mental Illness in Video Games

To many of my friends, it is no secret that I love watching YouTube gaming channels. It’s my favorite past time, and I even have a playlist titled “Cheer Me Up” that I watch when I’m down that is full of Let’s Plays and Rage Quits by my favorite gamers (those being Achievement Hunter, Markiplier, and Jacksepticeye, mainly). A big feature of these channels are horror games, such as Until Dawn, and Outlast. While Let’s Play horror games are one of my favorite things in the world, there is definitely an underlying problematic factor in how each YouTuber reacts to the presence of mental illness in these games. Because of my familiarity with them, I will be focusing on Markiplier and Jacksepticeye. Since Achievement Hunter is a group of 6-8 members, it is more difficult to discern their reactions, especially since they usually do horror games in groups of 2-5 people as a Let’s Watch instead of a Let’s Play.

Until Dawn quickly became popular in October of this year despite being released in August. Every gaming channel that I knew of, and others that I’ve never even heard of, were playing the game and gaining subscribers because of it. The game is a simple ‘choose your adventure’ and survive the night, with the added bonus of mythical creatures. About halfway through the game, the player is introduced to one of the characters’, Josh, mentally ill state. He has been discovered to be the one terrorizing the other characters and, for their safety, they decide to keep him in a shed for the rest of the night. At this point, Josh’s mental state begins to deteriorate, and despite knowing that we are supposed to be at least a little sympathetic towards this character, YouTubers feelings on Josh began to shift at this time. Words like “crazy” and “psychopath” begin to come out in order to describe him and they stick for the rest of the game, especially in Chapter 10, when we see Josh experience a hallucination. Through the beginning of the game, both Markiplier and Jacksepticeye held suspicions that Josh was the culprit in terrorizing the other characters, but that validation quickly fell through the cracks when his mental state was made clear as their focus became entirely centered on what they were seeing on their screen and hearing through their headphones.

The most popular horror game on YouTube prior to Until Dawn can arguably be Outlast, where we play as Miles Upshur, an investigative reporter trying to uncover the secrets of Mount Massive Asylum. The DLC, Whistleblower, received a good amount of popularity as well because of its creepier characters and preferable ending. In the DLC, we play as a techie turned patient, Wayland Park, and traverse the Asylum at the same time as Miles Upshur, attempting to escape. While playing, we run into different types of characters throughout the game and are able to pick up different files that expand on their mental states. In the first game, the main patients we see are Chris Walker, Rick Trager, and Father Martin, each with different mental illnesses. The DLC explored different characters, Frank Manera and Eddie Gluskin, as well as the return of our good friend Chris Walker. One nameless character that appears in both games follows our playable character around, saying over and over, “I have an itch” and “Can I tell you a secret?” Markiplier’s reaction to this was a very loud, “Ugh, you’re weird!” and a frantic escape by climbing to the second story. Jacksepticeye didn’t actually notice this character, but had similar reactions to the main characters.

Both Markiplier and Jacksepticeye have the tendency to give long speeches at the end of their videos when the games deal with difficult issues such as depression or anxiety or other mental illnesses. They tell their viewers that they understand that they know that some of them are going through similar things and that all they can hope for is that their videos can make them smile or help them out in some way. While this is caring and nice to hear (especially on a not-so-great day), their reactions while in-game tell another story. Sure, they’re panic-driven, they’re in a horror setting, but it’s also not difficult to educate and train oneself on the words that come out of one’s mouth and how reactions are portrayed to an audience. A speech at the end of a video is one thing, but there needs to be support as well (just as there needs to be support when we write our essays). Their support comes in the form of how they act in the videos themselves.