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  • Two months ago, my kids and I huddled around a cell phone

  • watching the live stream of the Game Awards,

  • one of the video game industry's biggest nights.

  • They announced the nominees for the Game for Impact,

  • an award that's given to a thought-provoking video game

  • with a profound prosocial message or meaning.

  • They opened the envelope

  • and they read the title of our video game.

  • An award ...

  • for impact.

  • It was almost funny, actually,

  • because I always thought that winning an award like that

  • would have this huge impact on my life,

  • but I found that the opposite is true.

  • The big nights,

  • the accomplishments --

  • they fade.

  • But the hardest nights of my life have stuck with me,

  • impacting who I am

  • and what I do.

  • In 2010, my third son, Joel, was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive brain tumor.

  • And before that year was finished,

  • doctors sat my husband and I down

  • and let us know that his tumor had returned

  • despite the most aggressive chemotherapy and radiation that they could offer him.

  • On that terrible night,

  • after learning that Joel had perhaps four months to live,

  • I cuddled up with my two older sons in bed --

  • they were five and three at the time --

  • and I never really knew how much they understood,

  • so I started telling them a bedtime story.

  • I told them about this very brave knight named Joel

  • and his adventure fighting a terrible dragon called cancer.

  • Every night, I told them more of the story,

  • but I never let the story end.

  • I was just building up a context that they could understand

  • and hoping that our prayers would be answered

  • and I would never have to tell them that that knight,

  • who had fought so bravely,

  • was done fighting

  • and could rest now, forever.

  • Fortunately, I never did have to finish that bedtime story.

  • My children outgrew it.

  • Joel responded better than anyone expected to palliative treatment,

  • and so instead of months,

  • we spent years learning how to love our dying child with all of our hearts.

  • Learning to recognize that shameful feeling

  • of holding back just a little love

  • to try to spare ourselves just a little pain

  • somewhere further down the road.

  • We pushed past that self-preservation

  • because Joel was worth loving even if that love could crush us.

  • And that lesson of intense vulnerability has changed me ...

  • more than any award ever could.

  • We started living like Joel could live,

  • and we began developing a video game called "That Dragon, Cancer."

  • It was the story of Joel.

  • It was the story of hope in the shadow of death.

  • It was the story of faith

  • and doubt,

  • and the realization that a wrestle with doubt is a part of faith --

  • maybe the biggest part of it.

  • It was a story that began as a miracle

  • and ended as a memorial.

  • (Music)

  • (Giggle)

  • (Clapping)

  • (Music)

  • (Video) Dad: Bouncing around, do you like that?

  • (Giggle)

  • I love your giggle.

  • (Music)

  • (Giggle)

  • [A Journey of Hope In the Shadow of Death]

  • [That Dragon, Cancer]

  • (Music)

  • When you play "That Dragon, Cancer,"

  • you're transformed into a witness of Joel's life,

  • exploring an emotional landscape,

  • clicking to discover more of what we as a family felt and experienced.

  • It feels a little bit like analyzing interactive poetry

  • because every game mechanic is a metaphor,

  • and so the more the player asks themselves

  • what we as designers were trying to express and why,

  • the richer the experience becomes.

  • We took that vulnerability that Joel taught us,

  • and we encoded the game with it.

  • Players expect their video games to offer them branching narrative

  • so that every decision that they make feels important

  • and can change the outcome of the game.

  • We subverted that principle of game design,

  • collapsing the choices in on the player

  • so that they discover for themselves

  • that there is nothing that they can do that will change the outcome for Joel.

  • And they feel that discovery as deeply and desperately as we felt it

  • on nights when we held Joel in our arms praying for hours,

  • stubbornly holding out hope for a grace that we could not create for ourselves.

  • We'd all prefer to win,

  • but when you discover that you can't win,

  • what do you value instead?

  • I never planned to write video games,

  • but these moments that really change our lives,

  • they often come as the result of our hardship -- and not our glory.

  • When we thought that Joel could live,

  • I left the game designing to my husband.

  • I chimed in here and there

  • with a scene or two and some suggestions.

  • But after the night that Joel died,

  • the passion,

  • the possibility of sharing Joel's life through our video game --

  • it was something that I couldn't resist.

  • I started writing more,

  • I sat in on our team's design meetings,

  • I added more ideas and I helped direct scenes.

  • And I discovered that creating a video game is telling a story,

  • but with an entirely new vocabulary.

  • All the same elements of imagination and symbolism are there,

  • but they're just partnered with player agency

  • and system responsiveness.

  • It's challenging work.

  • I have to think in a totally new way to do it,

  • but I love it.

  • And I wouldn't have known that without Joel.

  • Maybe you're a little surprised

  • by our choice to share our story of terminal cancer through a video game.

  • Perhaps you're even thinking like so many people before you:

  • cancer is not a game.

  • Well, tell that to any pediatric cancer parent

  • that's ever taken an exam glove and blown it up into a balloon,

  • or transformed a syringe into a rocket ship,

  • or let their child ride their IV pole through the hospital halls

  • like it was a race car.

  • Because when you have children,

  • everything is a game.

  • And when your young child experiences something traumatic,

  • you work even harder to make sure that their life feels like a game

  • because children naturally explore their worlds through play.

  • While cancer can steal many things from a family,

  • it shouldn't steal play.

  • If you're listening to me and you're trying to imagine this family

  • that revolves entirely around a dying child,

  • and you can't imagine joy as part of that picture,

  • then we were right to share our story with you,

  • because that season of our life was hard.

  • Unspeakably hard at times,

  • but it was also pure hope,

  • deep love

  • and joy like I have never experienced since.

  • Our video game was our attempt to share that world

  • with people who hadn't experienced it before,

  • because we never could imagine that world until it became ours.

  • We made a video game that's hard to play.

  • It will never be a blockbuster.

  • People have to prepare themselves to invest emotionally

  • in a story that they know will break their hearts.

  • But when our hearts break,

  • they heal a little differently.

  • My broken heart has been healing with a new and a deeper compassion --

  • a desire to sit with people in their pain,

  • to hear their stories and try to help tell them

  • so that they know that they're seen.

  • On the night when "That Dragon, Cancer" won the Game for Impact Award,

  • we cheered,

  • we smiled and we talked about Joel

  • and the impact he had on our life --

  • on all of those hard and hopeful nights that we shared with him

  • when he changed our hearts

  • and taught us so much more about life and love and faith and purpose.

  • That award will never mean as much to me as even a single photograph of my son,

  • but it does represent all of the people who his life has impacted,

  • people I'll never meet.

  • They write me emails sometimes.

  • They tell me that they miss Joel, even though they never met him.

  • They describe the tears that they've shed for my son,

  • and it makes my burden of