Becoming, Not Being: Rethinking Mental Illness at theCrossroads of Videogame Representation

Traditional frameworks for analyzing mental illness in media frequently rely on fixed representations that treat complex conditions as metaphorical devices, narrative problems to be solved, or stable markers of difference.When applied uncritically to video games, these paradigms risk flattening the medium's distinctive procedural and interactive capacities.Instead of recognizing that games can model mental illness as a lived, relational, and evolving phenomenon, conventional approaches tend to frame it as a static trope-an obstacle to overcome or a puzzle to resolve before the story's conclusion.Such readings neglect the unique affordances that video games offer, particularly their ability to engage players directly in dynamic experiences that resist easy categorization.This paper argues that Gilles Deleuze's concepts of "becoming" and "assemblage" provide a more productive framework for depicting mental illness in video games.By drawing on a non-representational approach, we can move beyond the limitations of symbolic depictions and toward an appreciation of mental illness as an emergent, affective multiplicity that unfolds through the interplay of the videogame, player, and sensory design.