Suicide Livestreams in NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD

This paper argues that suicide livestreams in the Japanese adventure game NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD function as communicative appeals that call attention to a streamer's suffering, offering a critique of individual behavior, sociocultural pressures, and the player's own choices. Through close playing of the game, the authors examine two endings in which the protagonist Ame livestreams her suicide, alongside the game's "true" ending, in which she escapes the player's control and finds happiness independently. The analysis centers on how the gameplay processes leading to these endings, the representation of Ame's suicidal trajectory, and the unfolding of the livestream itself each contribute to the work's meaning.

The paper identifies a paradox in the game's critique: its depiction of Ame's deteriorating mental state frames her struggles as the result of poor personal choices, while the suicide livestreams themselves expose social failings. By making the suicide public without revealing the internal suicidal process to the audience, the livestreams challenge Japanese cultural norms surrounding the shame of failure and the dismissal of women's mental health concerns as attention-seeking. The work situates these representations within two Japanese discursive constructions of abnormality, hikikomori (social withdrawal) and menhera (a derogatory term for mentally ill young women in popular culture), both of which are shaped by stigmatizing narratives of individual failure.

The authors further contend that the player bears responsibility and complicity for Ame's suicide, since the player controls her for most of the game, even as the livestream sequences unfold independently of player input. This structure, they argue, offers the player an opportunity for moral and emotional reflection on their ethical involvement and on the broader social issues the game raises. The study is grounded in a qualitative, interpretive methodology drawing on game studies, ethics of play, and mental health scholarship rather than empirical data collection.