An early scene in the documentary Thank You For Playing sees a video game's lead designer, Colorado resident Ryan Green, and his wife, Amy, talking in their kitchen about making a certain part of his new game, That Dragon, Cancer, "fun." Amy suggests having players run from the game's titular dragon in a Super Mario kind of way, all while hearing a story about the dragon in the background.

Ryan expresses reluctance about adding such a fun moment to the game, and the following scene, in which he and his oldest sons read a story out loud in a recording studio, shows why. That Dragon, Cancer, is named after this very story, one in which Ryan explains to his older sons why their four-year-old brother, Joel, acts different than other kids. Joel was diagnosed with cancer at around the age of 12 months, and Ryan compares the cancer to a mythical beast that Joel is trying to fight. The sons talk about other people they know, including kids, who lost to that dragon, and Ryan responds with his own views on death and God.

The past decade has seen a rise of "serious" video games, but none quite like That Dragon, Cancer—and none that have invited a camera crew into the creators' homes, especially while the figurative dragon has a real, considerable impact on the game-making process. Joel has cancer—as in, the present tense, throughout the film—and the documentary Thank You For Playing hinges on that present-tense perspective, and how that fuels his parents' desire and difficulty in making a video game as a tribute to him.

"Excellent end-of-life care"



The film's screening at August's Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle (PAX Prime) precedes its wider release via PBS's POV documentary series next year, and it was held in a spacious conference room—the kind whose walls couldn't dampen the echoes of viewers crying as the film played on. The subject matter is undeniably tragic stuff, but it's the filmmaker's treatment and decision-making that drives Thank You For Playing's emotions in easily the most memorable documentary about video game production ever made.

For the uninitiated, That Dragon, Cancer (which has yet to see a retail release) is a narrative-driven game, meaning players walk slowly and click on elements in the game world to activate spoken passages of text and interactions with other characters. It stars the creator, Ryan Green, and members of his family, as they bounce between hospital rooms, days at the park, and weirder, out-of-body experiences. The film's opening sequence appears to be taken from the game itself, putting viewers in a first-person perspective where they see a hospital waiting room filling with a thunderstorm's rain. The only noise competing with the thunder is the sound of hospital workers shouting about "excellent end-of-life care!"

But while the game in question has modern peers, Thank You For Playing doesn't bother building up a lengthy treatise about "games as art." For everything Ryan says about video games in the film, he isn't quoted talking about how only a video game could tell his son's story, nor do the filmmakers present any montages of other arty games. This is a film about a family and its game creation as a coping mechanism; what it says about gaming as a legitimate art form comes more indirectly from the ways in which the Green family's life play out both in the real world and in the digital one Ryan has created.

(Viewers do see a brief montage of more mainstream-styled, gun-loaded games, but these are presented as a foil to That Dragon, Cancer's first public demonstration, at the 2013 iteration of PAX Prime—players had to walk through arcadey game kiosks to find Ryan's booth, which contained a closed-off desk, a box of tissues, and a lot of hugs between players and developers.)

No technical learning curve

Snippets of highly technical stuff appear on occasion, though mostly to punctuate the film's emotional scenes. We see Ryan and an artist work out how to make the characters look—to avoid the uncanny valley and have an abstract-looking Joel come to life. We see animators picking through wireframe models to have father and son hold hands, or to replicate Joel's real-life laugh seen earlier in a smartphone video.

But mostly, we see the human versions of Joel and Ryan, meaning there's very little technical learning curve in understanding why Ryan elected to make a video game. No buttons, no joysticks, no jargon; this is a project made by a father for his son. The film's most poignant moments strike at the tendons connecting the game world and the real world—like when Ryan records a monologue for the game about a "cowardly snake" taking his son away, then re-records it until he's become a mess of tears; or when Ryan reads Internet comments accusing him of exploiting tragedy to make a buck off of a video game; or when Ryan finally tells the camera crew why in the hell he has invited so many people into his grieving process, both through the documentary and the game itself.

An early conversation in the film about the game appears to bear out for how the film will be handled, by the way. Ryan and his wife, Amy, are seen talking about whether to have Joel's real cry in the video game. His real, recorded laugh is in the game, after all—so why not use his cry, as well, since they already use someone else's sad cry sounds in the game? Here, Ryan is firm: He doesn't want that, and he doesn't want to explain why. As such, Thank You For Playing doesn't show little Joel suffering, choosing instead to use interstitial screens of text to indicate any turns for the worse.

Many other details appear to have been left on the cutting room floor, and the result is a very, very lean film—80 minutes—with a few key questions left unanswered. Where are either Ryan or Amy's extended families? How did Ryan get started in the video game business? We never see either of the parents at a day job, the kind you'd expect to pay for raising four children—not to mention the potentially incredible healthcare bills that come from cancer treatment for an infant—so how are they getting by? (Also, on the gaming-wonk side of things, how did the game's involvement with the beleaguered Ouya microconsole turn out?)

Understanding those omissions might make sense when considering another thing we barely see any of: Amy crying or being sad. Not that she's made of stone, but her most memorable scenes involve her looking for the brighter side during bad times; holding back tears while offering bittersweet praise about certain game-design decisions. She is the film's rock—the companion and creative equal who exists as a source of wisdom and love, not a mere supporting prop.

Having played some of the game, it's also fair to say that the film omits certain details to preserve the video game's emotional impact. Parts of the game are certainly spoiled, but the act of playing the game—and any argument over how interactivity helps or hinders Joel's story—is left for another time. That leaves the celebration of the Green family as the film's lead focal point. In spite of so much suffering, this is a movie that crystallizes memories of Joel at his happiest—and makes no bones about the game's creators wanting such a time-freeze opportunity, all while mourning the reality in which loss is hard to freeze on any screen, whether through a film projector, over a DVD, or within the pixels of a video game.

Ryan, Amy, and the rest of the Green family may not be able to press pause on Joel's life, but they, like many other artists processing loss and grief, have found a beautiful way to celebrate someone who is gone but not forgotten—and this film, by not getting hung up on its stars' video game angle, does the form of gaming a great service. We can argue about games' artistic merit some other time; these 80 minutes are Joel's, and they're well deserved.