Political correctness invades the world of virtual reality

As a current healthcare management professional who spent several years overseeing business operations of a large mental health department for one of the largest health systems in the United States, I've had some experience working with scores of psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, counselors, nursing staff and clinical social workers. They will tell you that mental health stigma is a very real thing, even within healthcare care organizations and among their clinical and support staff who should know better from first-hand experience, training and education.  For example, mental health patients are commonly assumed to be inherently more dangerous than "regular" patients like those receiving primary or specialty care services, leading to a greatly increased demand for more defensive measures to protect staff from patients.  However, we've found that actual data regarding historical disruptive behavior incidents does not support this view, as there were equally as many violent incidents in primary care settings as mental health.  Consider, for example, patients presenting to their primary care provider or pharmacy for opioid refills, only to be denied due to dependency risks from overprescription.  That's a pretty frequent setting for disruptive behavior.  The patients are in pain and pain meds make them feel better.  But opioids are also highly addictive and prone to have diminishing benefits to manage pain when over-used.  Still, tell a patient in pain that and you have a possibly combustive situation.

But I really have a hard time seeing a game, as this original topic describes, as fitting the bill for encouraging unhealthy stigma in the real world.  For that, the game would have to have a setting that bears a resemblance to contemporary America and modern medicine.  Instead, this appears to be a haunted hospital setting, probably one of which fits the classic imagination of the "institutionalized psych ward" (see American Horror Story: Season Two), which actually doesn't (legally) exist anymore in America, just as we no longer see doctors bloodletting patients in order to release demonic pathogens.  So this is fantasy.  Seems a bit like oversensitive hysteria, the like of which contributes to alarmists who blame violent video games for all that's wrong with society.

LZoltowski said:

I get your point @AndyW1384.

Its just from reading about what it actually was, im getting a sense of overreaction, I understand that the main advocate for the shutdown was a father who lost his son to a brutal police beating (he was mentally ill), but a possessed demon girl in a clearly grotesque American Horror Story Assylum style psych ward?

About the attraction:

"After viewing a very tongue-in-cheek video that clearly depicted the danger as a telekinetically powerful, demonically possessed patient, guests were led down a hall, seated, and strapped into chairs fitted with physical effects that were synchronized to the action they were about to see. They were then fitted with a VR headset and noise-cancelling headphones. Once the experience began, guests became a patient, strapped into a wheelchair, at the mercy of the staff that were trying to maintain control of a hospital as Katie, the monster, continued her attack."

It does somewhat sound like there was an overreaction. Then again, with a topic that's likely to be highly emotive to people who suffer from mental illness and their families, an overreaction is exactly what one might expect, and Knott's and Cedar Fair should have managed things better - either reaching out to mental health advocacy groups in advance to find out how they could present the core experience in a way that didn't upset enough people that it generated bad publicity, or thinking up a setting that avoided the whole issue. Like, for example, being a passenger on a subway system who is injured in a ghost attack and becomes dependent on an ambulance crew to help them after being put in a wheelchair. Or a wheeled stretcher (gurney).

From what I've read it doesn't sound like the company was deliberately being provocative; just that they didn't really think (or care) about whether they were making a faux pas, and were too arrogant to apologise when it became clear they had.

LZoltowski said:

[snip]

I pose a challenge to this:

What about games the glorify violence and war? Why arent these getting banned? Where you can walk up to a person and shoot them in the head in 100's of ways and get points? Where its "cool" to be a criminal and shoot police officers with bazookas?

As I said earlier, there's no fixed standard when it comes to what's considered offensive. And often no consistency. In the case of the GTA series, for example, there have indeed been outcries and expressions of dismay, but the popularity of the games (and the potential losses from shutting them down) was great enough that, rightly or wrongly, the publishers decided to stick to their guns (pun intended ;)).

Also, soldiers and police officers aren't generally regarded as a vulnerable group, and are well able to speak up for themselves. Where a game depicts horrors being inflicted on people who are defenceless, and who are a real-world identifiable group, then it's likely to be offensive to some degree or another. Where the real-world group are vulnerable and less able to speak out for themselves, I feel the offensiveness becomes worrying. So a game where the player is rewarded for defending themselves from mercenaries is less offensive than one where the player attacks soldiers, and that's less offensive than one where the player attacks unarmed civilians.

Personally, the more fantastical the violence the happier I feel about it. And the less I can empathise with an aggressor in a game the less uncomfortable it makes me. But I wouldn't want a game inculcating me or anybody else with the feeling that any real-world group of people needn't be empathised with.

@AndyW1384 Some very good points.

Although your suggestion: "Like, for example, being a passenger on a subway system who is injured in a ghost attack and becomes dependent on an ambulance crew to help them after being put in a wheelchair. Or a wheeled stretcher (gurney)."

God if that happened youd get all the train crash/terrorist attack victims going after it ...even though it is some kind of scenario in a fictional setting in a real world caricature with a supernatural twist. No different than a possessed demon girl with telekinetic powers in a twisted grotesque mental hospital. 

Mind you, they should have gone with being strapped to a wheelchair in a queue at local DMV .... much more scary and realistic :)

LZoltowski said:

@AndyW1384 Some very good points.

Although your suggestion: "Like, for example, being a passenger on a subway system who is injured in a ghost attack and becomes dependent on an ambulance crew to help them after being put in a wheelchair. Or a wheeled stretcher (gurney)."

God if that happened youd get all the train crash/terrorist attack victims going after it ...even though it is some kind of scenario in a fictional setting in a real world caricature with a supernatural twist. No different than a possessed demon girl with telekinetic powers in a twisted grotesque mental hospital. 

Heh, that just rather goes to make the point that a 2 minute idea is a bad one :D

However, to flesh out the suggestion a little (as I think you read some assumptions into what I wrote), some random person who is injured by a suitcase flung by a poltergeist isn't really a member of an identifiable group. No need to evoke the spectre of terrorism or train-crash in a scenario that renders the participant helpless and dependant on others - which as far as I can see was a large part of the Fear VR experience.

Lol, but as a person who was involved in the London Terrorist Attack on the tube and seeing people pulled out on stretch carts by ambulance ....... I AM OFFENDED! ... see where I am going with this? :)

A VICTIM no matter what scenario someone can identify with :)

Greenfire32 said:

I wouldn't really call it an issue of political correctness, I'd call it more an issue of people being afraid of things they don't understand.

I've heard that same excuse used before. Don't kid yourself, it's the cancer of PC.

I guess - and that's where the question does become one of real offence caused (even if unintentionally) or offence taken on behalf of others because taking offence feels good.

I think the point I'm trying (and clearly failing) to get across is degree of offence depends on whether you're misrepresenting a vulnerable group who might suffer as a result of your perpetuating harmful stereotypes, or if you're just portraying non-specific people in a traumatic situation.

It's understandable and arguably correct to be genuinely offended by one, it's self-indulgent to take offence at the other.

[edit]
"portraying non-specific people in a traumatic situation" can, of course, be genuinely offensive depending on context and how they're portrayed. If victims are portrayed as being in some way responsible for their misfortune, or somehow to be despised rather than sympathised with, that can be highly offensive.

I've got an urge to replay the Shalebridge Cradle mission of Thief Deadly Shadows.

kojack said:

I've got an urge to replay the Shalebridge Cradle mission of Thief Deadly Shadows.

Offensive to orphanages and orphanage staff everywhere! Tarring them all with the same brush, it's outrageous, that's what it is!

:D