A Reflection on - That Dragon, Cancer

That Dragon, Cancer is the most profound video game ever made. God that sounds pretentious and yet, you’d be hard pressed to call it anything else, anything less. That Dragon, Cancer is about Joel Green a 12-month old boy diagnosed with cancer and about a family’s struggle to deal with a terrible prognosis. What makes the game so powerful is that it’s real; the game was created by the Green family with help from friends and supporters. The game is roughly two hours long and its interactive elements are limited, this is less of a game than what people like to facetiously like to call “walking simulators” but That Dragon, Cancer isn’t concerned with moronic simplifications it’s telling a story about a specific time in the life of the Green family. More accurately it’s memorializing the life of a young boy whose life, tragically ended too soon.

The game begins simply enough, but it very quickly explores subject matter that is difficult to portray in any medium. Emotions tightly wound with contradiction, the thoughts and feelings two parents dealing with the imminent death of their child can only understand. The game doesn’t hold back. Joel’s parents use their actual recordings, letters, and memories of those years throughout the game, and it’s heartbreaking. Hearing their voices as they argue with each other, consul each other, and deal with the situation in their own way slowly becomes more and more difficult. What starts hopeful, gets grimly depressing and dark. Joel’s mother finds solace in writing everything she was feeling in a diary, which is read throughout one section of the game, her faith gave her the strength she needed to be there for Joel and for her family. Joel’s father on the other hand has a harder time depending on his faith. At one particularly gut wrenching point, the game puts you in the room when Joel’s parents are told Joel only has four months to live. You can jump into the minds of everyone in the room listening in on the depressing, angry, difficult to repeat thoughts that go through someone’s mind during a devastating moment like that. It was the toughest moment in the game for me to sit through and I had to take a small break to collect myself. And that’s only the beginning, the game doesn’t shy away from delving deep into the what the parents were going through and it makes for a remarkable and unforgettable experience.

That Dragon, Cancer devotes a large amount of its total runtime to the grieving process,and deeply personal thoughts of the parents. Which makes me think the game was possibly therapeutic for the Green family. It shows how the parents often argued, not just due to the high stress of the situation but because of their differing ways in which they decided to cope. Faith in God is a huge part of the game overall, the comfort it offers, the anger it instills, the hope it can impart. Faith has got to be one of the most difficult feelings to put into words, it’s incredibly complicated, oftentimes illogical, and deeply rooted, in one way or another, within us all. That Dragon, Cancer doesn’t have any answers to these sorts of feelings but it does portray faith in such a naturalistic and relatable way I thought it was worth pointing out. The Green family was dealing with something that is so difficult truly comprehend, and the way they go about handling it is in the same messy way any of us would. It’s a poignant depiction of faith.

All of this is very beautifully portrayed, by both the voice performances in the game (by the parents themselves) and the dream like visuals that try to depict what it felt like to experiences some of the moments in this depressing time in their lives. The game is paced as a series of vignettes that jump through time and perspective, I thought it actually serves the game really well in making it feel like someone reflecting on moments, in particular the strung together scenes and the often detail-less graphics evoke how we tend to recall memories but forget certain details, a sort of highlighted version of the past.

This is a very difficult game to talk about, it’s not like a traditional game where you can have this subjective opinion on what you thought worked or didn’t work. That Dragon, Cancer is more like being told a story by a loved one, it’s special because it’s personal, because it’s real.

I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been to make this game, not only on the technical side but displaying the raw emotions, having to relive those moments, sharing your personal experiences with a large audience. At the end of the game it says simply, 'Thanks For Playing'. And I simply wanted to say, thank you to the Green family for sharing this with the world, for opening up, for allowing us to see how amazing Joel was, and how strong you were and still are.

I don’t know what the goal of the Green family was when they decided to make this game, but it serves as a raw, uncut, and beautiful diary, a eulogy even for young Joel Green. A beautiful reminder of his time on Earth. These memories may be accompanied by great heartache and pain but there were times of joy and great love, even hope.