Here is what they see: a young boy, his facial features obscured, feeding bread crumbs to a duck, while his parents explain to his brothers why his treatment has left him unable to speak at age 2 a man sitting at a picnic table, ruminating on what his son must be experiencing without the words to express it a playground, where the boy rocks on a toy horse, swings, giggles, spins on a carousel, then disappears a path to a beach, where the boy is now strapped to a gurney, his tiny body hooked up to machines, the water filled with bobbing, gnarled tumors the shadow of a dragon against the sea a flight through the window of a hospital a doctor telling the family that a recent MRI shows the boy’s tumors have returned a nurse assuring them that the staff is very good at end-of-life care the boy’s parents sitting still and silent while the room fills with water the boy, now sitting in a rowboat, wearing a tiny life jacket that doesn’t look sufficient to protect him. Players sit before them, silently steering through the latest demo. The soothing reassurances to distraught gamers that Joel was, in fact, still alive.Įnter the booth. The emergency box of Kleenex, hastily procured and placed next to the monitors. Players breaking down in sobs and quickly exiting the booth. Green showed a demo of his game here in 2013, and you’ve heard the stories. As you reach the booth, notice the poster-a digital sketch of a large man in a hospital chair cradling a small boy, an IV delivering a toxic green fluid into the child’s body. There is a map find the game you’re looking for, That Dragon, Cancer, tucked away in the northeast corner. Work your way back to the Indie Megabooth, a collection of more than 70 independently developed, artsier titles. Walk past the long lines of gamers waiting to take a spin through forthcoming big-budget releases like Tom Clancy’s The Division and Mad Max. Enter the convention center and locate the escalator, just there, up the stairs to the left.
Walk outside and travel two blocks northeast to the Washington State Convention Center, which is currently hosting PAX Prime, the country’s largest annual videogame expo. You’re not sure you’re ready for this, but you don’t have much choice. You have come here to meet Ryan Green, who has made a videogame about his young son Joel’s battle with brain cancer. Take a second to get oriented, to remember where fate has delivered you. You find yourself in a hotel room in a strange city, like a character in the first scene of a videogame.
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