INTERVIEW WITH KELLI DUNLAP OF TAKE THIS

KELLI DUNLAP, MA, PSYD, IS THE ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR of community programming at Take This, a mental health advocacy organization that works in gaming communities and the games industry. Outside of Take This, Dr. Dunlap is a licensed clinical psychologist and holds a master’s degree in game design. She serves as an adjunct professor at American University’s Game Center where she teaches courses on the psychological, cultural, and social components of designing games. She is an award-winning game designer and has collaborated on game design projects with organizations including the National Institute of Mental Health, VOX Media, and McGraw-Hill. Dr. Dunlap, at the time of writing, is the current chair of the International Game Developer Association’s mental health special interest group and is an internationally recognized researcher and speaker on the intersection of games and mental health.

QUESTION: What is Take This, its mission, and some practical examples of its work?

KELLI: Take This is a mental health nonprofit organization dedicated to game players and game developers. We want to advocate for better mental health access and awareness in those spaces to destigmatize mental health and mental illness. We also want to provide resources and support to players and developers alike. That’s our core mission. We’re probably best known for the AFK rooms at conventions (AFK meaning “away-from-keyboard,” or gamer lingo for a break). At big gaming cons like PAX, we offer these quiet rooms staffed with licensed providers like me as well as other trained volunteers. It’s just a quiet space, so if you get overwhelmed by what’s going on in a con—if you’ve ever been to one then you know that they can be incredibly overwhelming—you can come in and color or just rest on a bean bag. And if you feel like you need to talk to someone, there are people like me who are there to help. In addition to that, we’ve done a lot of work in the industry: trainings with different developers, work with the International Game Developers Association, and work to help game companies “burnout proof” their studios. Being a game developer is really hard even under the best circumstances, so raising awareness about burnout, mental illness, and neurodivergence can be helpful if you’re running a company that makes games. We also do a lot of panels in community spaces where we provide a lot of education resources and outreach. We just want to be able to serve all aspects of mental health in the games community.

QUESTION: What connection do you see between gaming and mental health? Why focus on mental health in gaming circles?

KELLI: Humans have been playing games since culture began. There is evidence of people playing board games over ten thousand years ago, so we as humans have always played games. We have played games not just to pass the time but also to educate ourselves, to get better at things, and to socially connect with others. That’s just inherent in games. Digital games are simply our modern equivalent, and it’s a space where everybody is already. There is a cliché in mental health work, and that is you meet the person where they’re at. But that is exactly what Take This is doing! Two-thirds of the American population play video games, and I think the latest worldwide number is over two billion people play digital games. There’s also the age range of people who play, from my five-year-old son to my ninety-five-year-old grandmother: everybody plays games. By giving mental health care specifically in a game space, we’re providing resources to people that we might not have been able to meet otherwise.

QUESTION: Are there mental health challenges for streamers, such as on Twitch.tv? If so, what have you or your organization seen?

KELLI: The short version is “Oh lord, yes.” I actually did a research study in the summer of 2020 specifically on the mental health of streamers, looking at the impact of COVID. Also, I’m a streamer, and I stream regularly. In my previous life I ran an e-sports community, and I streamed two to three times per week. So I’ve seen a broad spectrum of streaming, and there are definitely mental health concerns when it comes to being a streamer. Probably one of the biggest concerns is just boundaries. People come into your chat—into your space—and they feel like they know you. You have no idea who they are, but they see you every Monday night or whenever. They feel like that they can transgress what you might feel comfortable with. That can become really stressful. In spaces like Twitch there are significant issues around abuse, harassment, and death threats, especially if you are any kind of marginalized person or if you dare to use any of the marginalized tags on Twitch. Some people will actually monitor those marginalized tags and hunt you down because of the tags that you’re using. That kind of verbal abuse and hatred can have a huge impact on a person’s mental health. I’ve known plenty of streamers who have had that spill over outside of Twitch: someone who has been abusing a streamer in their chat will find the streamer’s Twitter account or will try and DOX them—publish private information like phone numbers or home addresses—or call their parents’ house. It is a huge, HUGE problem that there’s very little safety in these spaces. A lack of safety is one of the fastest ways to tank someone’s mental health.

Another thing I’ve seen is the sense of responsibility that streamers tend to feel for their communities. I saw this a lot in my research. For a streamer, it’s like “I’m stressed. I’m also dealing with the pandemic. I’m dealing with grief and loss and my entire life turned upside down. But I can’t take a break because I’ve got a community of five hundred people, and they rely on me. I have to show up for them. I have to take care of them. I have to be their comic relief. I can’t let my own stuff show because I have to be there for them.” That kind of responsibility is huge. It’s crushing! Not only are you taking on the burden of everybody else’s stuff, you’re also not taking care of yourself. You’re not taking time off, you’re not taking breaks, and that can be really damaging.

It comes down to the platforms and the technology itself. One of the most important things that you can do for your own mental health, regardless of whether you’re streaming or doing any other activity, is to take breaks. When you do something nonstop, and it becomes a grind, then it’s no longer joyful or fun. It becomes draining instead of energizing. But if you’re streaming on Twitch, and if you don’t stream for a week, that can lead to a loss of followers and viewers and subs! If you’re relying on streaming as a source of income, then you’re literally losing money if you’re not streaming. And if you’re not doing it for the money, it always hurts when you log in and your viewer counts are a little bit lower. I remember when I was starting streaming, there was a phrase known as ABC: always be casting. That’s how you grow your followers. That’s how you grow your subs. That’s how you grow in notoriety and visibility. You’re always casting all the time. But that, of course, is not sustainable for anyone.

QUESTION: What can streamers do to better protect their mental health from some of the more damaging parts of streaming?

KELLI: One of the most important things is to know why you’re streaming. If you are doing it for the love of doing it, then it’s important for you to keep track of that. If you start to lose that joy, or if it starts to feel like work instead of play or a hobby, that is a really good indicator that it’s time to take a break, step away, take a holiday, or maybe play a different game. But essentially a red flag is if you start to dread the thing you used to enjoy. If you are someone who relies on content creation and streaming for financial support, you also have to take breaks. Schedule them in advance to let people know that you’re going on vacation. Even if you genuinely cannot take time off, you still need to be really protective of the off time you have. For streamers, they stream from home. They might be streaming in the same place where they’re supposed to eat their dinner or go to sleep, and that can really create some mixed messages in the brain. Like, wait a minute, this is supposed to be a relaxation space, not a workspace. Be able to say, “This is non-work time, and I need to protect that fiercely.” Have things that you enjoy outside of streaming and outside of content creation that are just for you, and fiercely protect that space.

QUESTION: What are some of the mental health challenges of working in the game development industry?

KELLI: One of the biggest challenges in working in game development is that making a game is really, really hard. Even making a small game requires a significant amount of resources, including time, money, and creativity. On top of that, games studios have traditionally embraced a specific kind of culture that valorizes overwork (i.e., crunch) and is also dismissive, harassing, or abusive of marginalized people. Your job as a game dev is hard enough under even the best circumstances, but add in impossible hours and expectations with a helping of microaggressions or straight up abuse and even the most resilient person will struggle. There are also external pressures from fans or critics, and many devs have been on the receiving end of harassing, abusive, or even threatening messages because they worked on a specific game. Lastly, job instability is a major stressor and worrying about if your job will be there in a week can cause significant psychological strain. I worked on a paper via Take This on the state of the industry in games, and there’s a whole section that addresses this question, if you’d like more detail, here is the title of the paper: “State of the Industry 2019: Mental Health in the Game Industry,” available on the TakeThis.org website.

QUESTION: Much has been written about unhealthy work environments in the games industry, specifically regarding intense crunch time expectations and burnout. Journalists and industry insiders often use the word “burnout” instead of using “mental health” or “mental illness” language. Why do you think that is? What language should we be using to talk about mental health in the games industry?

KELLI: Technically speaking, burnout is not a mental illness but an “occupational syndrome” as defined by the World Health Organization. This means that it’s a cluster of symptoms that are specifically related to and caused by work. I think burnout is absolutely the right term to use if someone is experiencing the core three symptoms: exhaustion, ineffectiveness, and detachment or cynicism due to their work. The working conditions in many studios are prime contexts for burnout to develop, such as with more work than can be done sustainably, lacking a sense of control of what you do or how you do it, pressure to produce otherwise you let the team down, etc. It’s essential to talk about burnout and how company structure and policies can contribute and how systems and structures can change to reduce the likelihood of burnout.

Mental illness is something that can be exacerbated by poor working conditions, but it is something that needs to be treated by a mental health professional or other provider outside of work. Workspaces can do things like offer unlimited leave or unlimited sick days in which mental health days are included and don’t require disclosure or a doctor’s note, and this can be a big help. But if someone has clinical depression or PTSD, that is not something that can be treated by the workplace. When speaking about the industry, it’s important to make it clear that mental health is a spectrum, similar to physical health. You can be physically healthy or physically ill or somewhere in between. The same is true for mental health. We need to talk about burnout as part of a larger conversation around the impact of work on the mental well-being of the people that work there.

QUESTION: What can a game company do to better protect their employees’ mental health?

KELLI: The good news is that there are definitely things companies can do better to improve the mental well-being of their staff. One of my favorites is flexibility in terms of working hours. By allowing people to be responsible for their own time (no clock-punching), you signal to employees you trust them and that they can get work done in the way that works for them. This is not only a huge help to caregivers, like parents or persons caring for other loved ones, but sometimes in a creative field like game dev the coding bug or artistic muse strikes outside of the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. hours. Another key is having a workspace free of toxicity and abuse. Provide good healthcare that includes access to mental health resources. Provide leave around major life events (weddings, funerals, birth of a child, adoption of a child, loss of a pet) without needing a doctor’s note or anything that requires personal disclosure. Have a focus on the work getting done, not how many hours the person was at their desk. “Leading by example” wherein managers take time off, don’t make requests outside of office hours, respect the off-hours of the employees, and generally model the kind of healthy boundaries and behaviors they want employees to have.