The Scariest Video Game Villain of All: Cancer
Amy and Ryan Green grew up in Loveland, Colorado. They were high school sweethearts living a charmed life. Until 2010, when their one-year-old, Joel, was diagnosed with cancer. After surgery, Joel needed radiation, which stunted his intellectual growth. But that turned out to be kind of a blessing, since it meant Joel was unaware of how sick he was. “It was sweet in a way, because he was our baby for five years,” Amy says. “But you always wanted to know him more than you could know him."
Joel did suffer sometimes. During his first overnight visit at the hospital, he was very thirsty. He kept asking for water, but drinking it made him throw up. At the time, his father Ryan was a data programmer, fascinated by video games. He kept thinking how that moment of suffering would play out in a virtual world. So he told Amy that he was going to make a game about Joel’s dehydration. Her reaction? "That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard," she recalls. "No one will play that game.”
But Ryan had a vision. With the help of a friend, he made a prototype and brought it to the 2013 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive. So Ryan enlisted a team of friends to help him build a full-length game that would chronicle Joel’s treatment called That Dragon, Cancer.
As Ryan worked on the game, Joel was defying the odds. He lived years beyond what his doctors expected. But he didn’t end up slaying the dragon cancer. Joel passed away at the age of five. After the funeral, his parents met with their team of programmers and decided to change the focus of the game from Ryan and Amy's experience as parents. Instead, the game would explore the question: "What is it like to love Joel?"
The game will be completed in the fall of 2015. While Amy and Ryan got a lot of support from Kickstarter, it's unclear how many people will take time out of their busy lives to play a few levels of That Dragon, Cancer. If the game succeeds, it’s because it’s not really about cancer or death. The object of the game is to love someone as much as you can before time runs out. In that sense, it’s a lot like real life.
This piece was produced with ‘Ken Burns Presents: Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies’ which will air on PBS stations March 30, 31, and April 1. Check your local listings for broadcast times.
