That Dragon, Cancer is part adventure video game, part autobiography, chronicling Ryan and Amy Green’s journey with their four-year-old son Joel, who was diagnosed with a rare type of brain cancer.
Josh Larson grew up with video games.
“When I was younger I was pretty into adventure games and a lot of times those were more centered around story,” Larson told Silicon Prairie News. “I think that has been an interest of mine for a while, but one thing I noticed was that games were still largely about a lot of the same subjects and actions, violent things or saving the world as some hero.”
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Now the Des Moines-based game developer and co-creator of Weiv is working on his first video game, about an adventure he never could have expected: a family’s journey to find hope in the pediatric cancer of their four-year-old son, Joel.
Part autobiography, part adventure
When he first met Ryan Green, Larson says the pair connected over their Christian faith and mutual passion to create meaningful video games.
“I guess the idea of exploring meaningful gameplay came out of the desire for variety in games,” he said.
After collaborating at a number of game jams—think a hackathon or Startup Weekend for the game developing crowd—that Larson hosted in Des Moines, the pair knew they wanted to create something together.
As their friendship grew, Larson became closer with Green and learned a little more about his family, including Joel, his four-year-old son who had been diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer. 
“He told me about Joel and everything they were going through, and was saying he thought it would be interesting to create this interactive art installation that people could interact with and understand some part of the things they’ve gone through,” Larson (right) said. “We had a couple months so we started working on that, just kind of trying different, random ideas.”
That is, until just more than a year ago when Green had a vision to transform the project into a video game.
That Dragon, Cancer was born.
Part autobiography and part adventure game, Green and his wife, Amy—who live with their four sons in Colorado—share what their journey with Joel has been like over the three years since his diagnosis.
“It just seems to be how Ryan and Amy are wired together, that when they go through these hard things their initial reaction is to write about it or create things,” Larson said. “It doesn’t seem that creating this is that taxing for them. I imagine, in some ways, it’s therapeutic.”
While some may initially shy away from the idea of a video game about childhood cancer, Larson says he thinks the medium is a great way to help Green share his family’s experience and share Joel’s story.
“I think part of the reason of creating the game for Ryan is that it’s a way to honor his son,” Larson said. “You have the dads who show you their family photo album in their wallet, you know? This is the ultimate version of that.
“The game is a place where he can try to introduce people to Joel and get them to understand how precious he is.”
A story that resonates
So far that introduction has been nothing short of astounding. Showing first at the 2013 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last March, That Dragon, Cancer has garnered media attention from the LA Times, Wall Street Journal and The Guardian—to name a few—and touched more than 1,000 individuals who Larson says have tested the game at various festivals and conferences. 
“It’s been pretty surreal, unbelievable I guess,” Larson said. “We were just hoping to get some good, critical feedback and guidance. We just never expected people to connect with it in such a profound and intense way.”
With only a 10-minute demo of the game—which features one of Green’s toughest nights in the hospital with Joel—Larson says the team is planning for a full release sometime in the second half of 2014.
“The particular demo that we have is probably one of the most intense parts of the whole game,” he said. “Some people think the whole game is going to be this morose, depressing experience, but our intention is to make it a little more rich and varied than that.
“Some parts will be lighter, maybe even funny. I just hope people are willing to go there and play the whole thing.”
When the game is complete—which Larson says will be about an hour and a half experience in total—players will be able to explore a variety of scenes from the Green’s lives. From tough nights in the hospital to more lighthearted moments with family, the Greens both wrote the game’s dialogue and narrated its play.
Now, thanks to an investment from $99 Android game platform Ouya, Larson and Green are working on That Dragon, Cancer full-time along with a team of three other contributors. The game will initially be released exclusively for Ouya, with other platforms being added later, utilizing capital from the Iowa Demonstration Fund.
Sparking an open dialogue
After they finish the game, Larson says he and Green hope to keep creating games with similar meaningful themes together, potentially even a sequel of sorts to That Dragon, Cancer.
“We originally had envisioned this whole other part of the game that was going to be this allegorical fantasy world that switches between the real life scenes to draw parallels to their journey,” Larson said.
While the pair hopes to build out that half of the game as well, Larson says they’ll likely be busy for quite some time finishing the roll-out of That Dragon, Cancer. Once that’s complete, he says continuing his passion for meaningful game making seems like a logical next step.
“After this one we’d like to continue on and explore this topic more universally, as opposed to something really personal, to broaden the scope of it and the vision of it,” he said. “Maybe instead of trying to explore the cancer of a specific family, we look at the cancer of a community or something like that.”
Through games like this, Larson hopes to share the Green’s story but also to extend That Dragon, Cancer’s reach beyond the video game to open a dialogue for other families who may have had similar experiences.
“Part of what we’re designing for is the conversation that happens after you play,” Larson said. “That’s definitely a goal of ours: to get people to talk about things they don’t normally talk about and create a safe space for more intimate conversations and connections with each other on a community level.”
Credits: Game and family photo from That Dragon, Cancer. Josh Larson photo from Twitter.
