A great game achievement

EDITOR’S NOTE: Satirists in recent years have often complained that Christians are behind the curve. Does a pop singer have a hot new sound? Let’s find a contemporary Christian who can croon similarly. Is Grand Theft Auto a rock star among games? Let’s have Christians develop Small Theft Bicycle.

And now for something completely different: A list of 30 video games introduced from Jan. 3 to Jan. 17 includes Wild Gunman, Punch Club, Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India, Space Hulk, and—That Dragon, Cancer, developed by a Christian father mourning a terrible disease (see “Serious play,” Sept. 19, 2015). Media powers ranging from USA Today to the BBC have brought attention to this new departure in games, with a Forbes headline typifying the reaction: “‘That Dragon, Cancer’ Is Brutally Emotional Storytelling—And We Need More Games Like It.” Here’s a review (spoiler ahead) by games analyst Raymond Erikson. —Marvin Olasky

How does an artist choose one medium over another? Someone with a story to tell can sculpt a statue, film a movie, stage a play, compose a song. A question for Ryan Green, author of a computer game reliving the too-short years of his son Joel, who died of cancer at the age of 5, is why he chose to carve his memories in 1’s and 0’s instead of stones or paper.

It is an important question because the game, That Dragon, Cancer, only takes about two hours to complete and could have worked as a film. In many respects it is hardly a game at all, and more of a “walking simulator”—but this story of grief and pain works on a computer screen because a game, far more than any other artistic medium, invokes two paradoxical feelings: responsibility and powerlessness.

Those who prefer hardcovers over e-books will recognize the subtle psychological pull exerted by the physical act of turning a page—readers’ fingers move instinctively to the corner of the page before the eyes reach the bottom, in the anticipation of movement, progress, action. A computer game takes this little emotional tug and multiplies it by forcing the player to constantly interact. Look here—click there—move the mouse—click again. Click. Click. Click.

All those little interactions pile up to make players feel at a deep level that they are part of the story, involved, powerful, responsible—even though the player is no more free to deviate from the game designer’s plan than a book reader is free to turn or not turn a page. It is a powerful illusion, and most games work to hide that powerlessness from the player with invisible walls and other tricks.

That Dragon, Cancer shows our weakness. A professor once told me, “Power tends to corrupt, but powerlessness corrupts, too.” We see this in C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed, as Lewis rages against God and crumbles under the pressure. We also see it in That Dragon, Cancer. The game takes place through 14 vignettes and recreates the intense strain Ryan Green and his wife Amy experienced as their son wasted away. The Greens, like C.S. Lewis, do not present themselves as saints. They show their pain and anger and confusion—with each other, with God, even with Joel—as they fight in vain for a cure.

The Greens do all the right things—the chemotherapy that ravages Joel’s body, the unanswered prayers that ravage their souls—and the right things do not save Joel. They are acting, they are responsible, and they are powerless. And so too are you, the player, as you relive each of these 14 memories. Give Joel his medication: Click. Open a get-well card: Click. Talk with the doctors: Click. Make Joel suffer through another round of chemo: Click. Pray for a miracle: Click, click, click. And two hours of clicking—two hours of doing everything the game wants, everything right—still fails Joel. You feel responsible, and you are powerless.

What are we to make of all this? As an emotional vehicle for delivering unhappiness, the game certainly succeeds: I am man enough to admit I teared up frequently during the story and nearly lost it at the credits.

But the Greens clearly meant to communicate more than sadness and memory. Their game is explicitly Christian in a way no other game dares, and their message aligns with the book of Job: We love God and we trust Him, but we do not understand Him. Job asked that his simultaneous faith and confusion be preserved—Oh, that my words were recorded, that they were written on a scroll, that they were inscribed with an iron tool on lead, or engraved in rock forever!

The Greens chose 1’s and 0’s instead of stone and paper, but the responsibility and powerlessness showcased in That Dragon, Cancer are only resolved in the next verse: I know that my Redeemer lives.