How Indie Horror Games Are Beating Cinema At Bringing Awareness to Societal Struggles

People are constantly trying to find new and innovative ways to bring their ideas to life by bringing awareness to social issues around the globe. Throughout the years, the gaming industry has had a reputation for giving its audiences an immersive gaming experience and compelling storytelling that exceeds that of a movie or book. In more recent times, famous cinematic industries have made a variety of movies based on video games or adaptations of them that exceed the box office sales of their original movie ideas. A recent example of this is “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” which originated as an Indie Horror Game by Scott Cawthon and has transcended to a multi-series movie directed by BlumHouse. Even though this transition from Indie to Hollywood is impressive, this hasn’t altered the community itself to pursue Hollywood careers; instead, most of them stick to the Indie Horror genre because it brings awareness to people about real triggering issues that are experienced on both a social and individual level, both cheaply and effectively. These triggering issues include topics like Rape and Corrupt Medical Facilities.

While many movies in Hollywood try to accurately represent ‘rape’, it often only ends up being a misleading plot point and can be perceived as a ‘rape fantasy’, which catches the attention of the wrong audience. Unlike Cinema, Indie Horror games are made by your average development team, ranging from one person to a team of ten. While it seems counterintuitive for an entire team to falsely portray rape, especially when more people on the team might have similar experiences, most of the writers are just trying to include all the representation they can, not focusing on the long-term psychological impacts of such a horrific event. On the other hand, a recent release that went viral for its accurate representation of rape and its consequences is the video game “Mouthwashing” (2024), created by Indie video game developers WrongOrgan. The game tells the tale of five crew members living together on a space shuttle who have to take responsibility for the loss of their captain and an unplanned pregnancy conceived through unconsensual sexual intercourse. Not only did they accurately portray the agonizing emotional and physical pain that comes with the assault, but they also did all of this without disturbing their audiences with a “rape scene”. Thus making people understand the complexity of the story and also being aware of the abuse of power dynamics between the members on the crewship.

In formal law, Medical Facilities are meant to protect and heal others in their most vulnerable times; however, in practice, a majority of these health regulations are ignored. “Hieldwald Loophole” by Jan Malitshek is a game that brings awareness to medical corruption by exaggerating the everyday living experiences in a psych ward. In this video game, we see a variety of inhumane characters representing a different segment of their broken Chiropractic Oath. The game utilizes vulnerable and abnormally sick patients along with a disease-filled environment to further elaborate how Medical facilities are not only corrupt in their actions, but also in their lack of attention to giving patients a clean and safe living environment.

All these games range from reaching Hollywood-level status to getting gaming awards, or just being very popular for being a well-received game that accurately demonstrates modern social issues. A majority of people can agree that Indie horror games, unlike other forms of media genres, motivate people to consider how real-world issues affect them on the personal and social level. By engaging a wider and more immersed audience, indie games and their fanbases have already surpassed box office titles in trying to fix social issues within society instead of just profiting off of them.