I was drawn to this class due to the concepts of choice, agency, determinism, and interpretations of self-autonomy. Despite not being an avid gamer, I appreciate the opportunity to complete tasks within a framework of ‘play’ that is devoid of immediate real-world consequences. Games offer a cathartic experience by providing options to pause, restart, replay, quit, and essentially, try repeatedly. They encourage us to learn from our mistakes, creating a safe space for exploration devoid of real-life repercussions.

Exploring our options in the real world often involves considering everyday thoughts and decisions in common settings, such as running errands, cleaning, watching TV, and doing laundry. These are tasks that all individuals usually encounter, unless they have the luxury of hiring help or sharing these responsibilities with a partner or parent.

Instead of the narrative-rich universe typical of first-person games, the user will encounter options on how to perform everyday tasks from the perspective of a person practicing OCD techniques.

An example of a text-based game-play is as follows:

Experiencing intense cleaning compulsions. You decide to

1. Give into compulsion and spend 2 hours deep cleaning the sink, the handles, and the faucet to make sure there are no germs
2. Ruminate on how you cannot trust your anxious thoughts on how dirty the sink is. You write in your journal for 45 minutes about the conflicting choices presented in the name of ‘mental health’. Immediate satisfaction in ‘self-soothing’ activity for a perceived danger that, cognitively, you know isn’t real, must be avoided.
3. Decide he best course of action to distract from the impulse is to go running.

If 1 is picked

Your spend 2 hours of your day deep cleaning instead of writing that project proposal you’ve been ruminating about. You plan how you’re going to write this project proposal while getting into the deep crevices of the sink. Everything is going to work out. You feel in control. You feel like you can accomplish everything you needed to do without compromising your compulsion.

Your options are

1. 1. 1. Take a shower to clean yourself again after sweating from cleaning. You need to feel clean in order to begin writing this paper proposal. Once your thoughts are organized in the shower, and you brainstorm while doing a 7-step skin-care routine, you will surely feel ready to write this project proposal.
      2. Decide against showering, rationalizing that you already gave into your first compulsion to deep clean the sink (which was probably already clean to begin with, considering you deep cleaned it 2 days ago after your night shift from work), and guilt yourself into believing that starting on this project proposal is the ‘responsible’ course of action after you’ve gave into your initial compulsion.
      3. You feel overwhelmed with your decisions and decide to post-pone making one by brewing another cup of coffee. Surely, a caffeinated drink will clear your head and give you the motivation to pick the right decision.

If 2 is picked

You must decide which color of pens to use for journaling. You just got a new journal from MUJI; the sides are clean, the paper is crisp, and you don’t want to ruin your new notebook with the color that ‘feels’ incorrect.

Your options are

1. 1. 1. The navy-blue pen size .5
      2. The navy-blue pen size .38 with ink running out
      3. The gray pen size .5
      4. The dark-green pen in .38 that slides mores smoothly than the other ones; it is your favorite pen.
      5. The black-pen size .70 that is also your favorite pen, although you feel guilty for having 2 separate favorite pens, like they’re almost in competition with each other. You can’t decided which one you like more. You feel guilty for favoring one pen over the other, almost like they’re your children, or like you’re in a love triangle and can’t pick which partner to spend the rest of your life with. The consequences are dire, and the ambivalence you hold towards these two pens morphs in shame. Do you even know who you are? You can’t make a simple decision between two, inanimate objects that are designed to be thrown out and purchased again anyways? They are temporary and say nothing about you as a person. But the fact that you don’t even know your own preferences, your own likes or dislikes, or the fact that you can’t make a decision about two simple pens to write your compulsive thoughts is so embarrassing.
      6. The generic plastic BIC pen you stole from work. You hate the way it slides over the paper in uneven fashion, and how the ink is inconsistent. You know using this pen will bring your great discomfort, but healing is all about putting yourself through discomfort, and so this might be the ‘right’ decision for you to make.

If 3 is picked:

You have to decide which clothes to wear in your closet. You notice your closet is unorganized, as you haven’t sorted out your laundry from ‘worn once (still wearable) from ‘worn 3x but maybe nobody will notice any potential smells’ from ‘absolutely stained and improper to wear in public’ from ‘clean’.

Your options are

1. 1. 1. You decide to quickly sort your clothes into 3 piles just to get more organized for the future, and then finally wear an outfit for running.
      2. Haphazardly find the running pants and shirts that are either in the ‘worn once; still wearable’ category or ‘clean’ category without organizing.
      3. Grab any sort of shorts and t-shirt and endure the dirty feeling of running in somewhat-quetionably-clean clothes in order to alleviate your anxiety about a dirty sink that could potentially harbor COVID-19 viruses. This is the option that will bring you the most discomfort. And healing is all about enduring uncomfortable situations with dignity and strength. You already made the right decision to not deep-clean your sink, and so, this options also seem like the right decision for you to make.

Although, start thinking that you can frame it as a situation where you made the tough decision, and as a reward, you can spend a little extra time picking out the clothes that feel clean to you. I mean, you have to compromise somehow, right? Rewarding yourself for a correct behavior will only reinforce the notion that physical distraction is an effective coping mechanism. It’s kind of like your Pavlov’s dog, but you are the dog and the master at the same time. These are your choices, and your life is defined by the choices you make, whether short-term or long term. You have more control over your life than you think you actually do. It’s time to start monitoring your feelings on the spot and question whether your anxiety-driven obsessions are rooted in rationality or irrationality. It’s hard to decide because they feel so real and so rational. It’s almost an injustice to not feel anxiety in situations like these. But maybe I should reward performing one coping mechanisms by performing a compulsion, because then I’ll associate it with positive feelings.

Right?

1. 1. 4. Get overwhelmed and make your way into the kitchen to brew a cup of coffee instead.

The objective of this game is not to ‘successfully’ overcome a compulsion. Instead, it offers a first-person experience of performing everyday tasks while constantly weighing the pros and cons. This game aims to portray the ongoing struggle with OCD, not its defeat. It’s about enduring OCD in a way that minimally disrupts everyday life and managing the associated emotional stress. The ‘final boss’ in the game is not an external entity trying to defeat you. Instead, it’s your internal monologue advocating for your safety in harmless situations. The very voice trying to protect you is also causing harm, masked by intense compulsions driven by irrational fear.