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"You" and you, February 11, 2013The premise of this extremely brief game is that you're undergoing an intake interview for mental health services, and you're being asked to identify your gender and your feelings about how your gender is treated in society. When you pick an answer or category that doesn't fit the intake interviewer's expectations and bureaucratic forms, you're forced to pick an option you're less happy with.
I get the idea and I'm interested in understanding the problem it describes. But I also was distanced a bit from the piece precisely because the answers that I myself would have given were not always included in the initial option lists. (Spoiler - click to show)Do I feel oppressed or empowered? A little of each; it really depends on the circumstances, the day of the week, the people I'm interacting with. Sometimes I feel respected and sometimes I don't. But there was (unsurprisingly) no way to express that answer, or that kind of answer, through the interface provided.
To some extent that distance comes from the fact that, as a cisgendered person, I don't share the experiences of the protagonist -- but that could have been an opportunity for me to learn more about the life of people unlike myself, and the work as it stands occupies a spot where it doesn't feel like it's about me but also doesn't really feel like it's about someone else.
I think lengthening this work might have clarified the separation between the fictional "you" and the player, making for a stronger presentation of its core points.
