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Two months ago, my kids and I
huddled around a cell phone
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watching the live stream
of the Game Awards,
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one of the video game
industry's biggest nights.
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They announced the nominees
for the Game for Impact,
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an award that's given
to a thought-provoking video game
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with a profound prosocial
message or meaning.
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They opened the envelope
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and they read the title of our video game.
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An award ...
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for impact.
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It was almost funny, actually,
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because I always thought
that winning an award like that
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would have this huge impact on my life,
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but I found that the opposite is true.
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The big nights,
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the accomplishments --
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they fade.
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But the hardest nights of my life
have stuck with me,
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impacting who I am
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and what I do.
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In 2010, my third son Joel was diagnosed
with a rare and aggressive brain tumor.
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And before that year was finished,
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doctors sat my husband and I down
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and let us know
that his tumor had returned
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despite the most aggressive chemotherapy
and radiation that they could offer him.
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On that terrible night,
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after learning that Joel
had perhaps four months to live,
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I cuddled up with
my two older sons in bed --
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they were five and three at the time --
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and I never really knew
how much they understood,
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so I started telling them a bedtime story.
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I told them about this
very brave knight named Joel
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and his adventure fighting
a terrible dragon called cancer.
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Every night, I told them
more of the story,
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but I never let the story end.
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I was just building up a context
that they could understand
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and hoping that our prayers
would be answered
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and I would never
have to tell them that that knight,
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who had fought so bravely,
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was done fighting
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and could rest now forever.
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Fortunately, I never did have to
finish that bedtime story.
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My children outgrew it.
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Joel responded better than anyone expected
to palliative treatment,
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and so instead of months,
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we spent years learning how to love
our dying child with all of our hearts.
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Learning to recognize
that shameful feeling
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of holding back just a little love
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to try to spare ourselves
just a little pain
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somewhere further down the road.
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We pushed past that self-preservation
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because Joel was worth loving
even if that love could crush us.
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And that lesson of intense
vulnerability has changed me ...
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more than any award ever could.
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We started living like Joel could live
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and we began developing a video game
called "That Dragon, Cancer."
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It was the story of Joel.
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It was the story of hope
in the shadow of death.
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It was the story of faith
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and doubt,
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and the realization that a wrestle
with doubt is a part of faith --
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maybe the biggest part of it.
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It was a story that began as a miracle
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and ended as a memorial.
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(Music)
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(Giggle)
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(Clapping)
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(Music)
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(Video) Dad: Bouncing around,
do you like that?
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(Giggle)
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I love your giggle.
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(Music)
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(Giggle)
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[A Journey of Hope In the Shadow of Death]
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[That Dragon, Cancer]
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(Music)
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When you play "That Dragon, Cancer,"
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you're transformed
into a witness of Joel's life,
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exploring an emotional landscape,
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clicking to discover more of what
we as a family felt and experienced.
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It feels a little bit
like analyzing interactive poetry
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because every game mechanic is a metaphor,
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and so the more the player asks themselves
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what we as designers
were trying to express and why,
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the richer the experience becomes.
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We took that vulnerability
that Joel taught us,
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and we encoded the game with it.
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Players expect their video games
to offer them branching narrative
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so that every decision
that they make feels important
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and can change the outcome of the game.
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We subverted that principle
of game design,
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collapsing the choices in on the player
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so that they discover for themselves
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that there is nothing that they can do
that will change the outcome for Joel.
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And they feel that discovery
as deeply and desperately as we felt it
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on nights when we held Joel
in our arms praying for hours,
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stubbornly holding out hope for a grace
that we could not create for ourselves.
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We'd all prefer to win,
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but when you discover that you can't win,
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what do you value instead?
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I never planned to write video games,
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but these moments
that really change our lives,
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they often come as the result
of our hardship and not our glory.
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When we thought that Joel could live,
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I left the game designing to my husband.
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I chimed in here and there
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with a scene or two and some suggestions,
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but after the night that Joel died,
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the passion,
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the possibility of sharing Joel's life
through our video game --
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it was something that I couldn't resist.
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I started writing more,
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I sat in on our team's design meetings,
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I added more ideas
and I helped direct scenes.
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And I discovered that creating
a video game is telling a story,
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but with an entirely new vocabulary.
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All the same elements of imagination
and symbolism are there,
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but they're just partnered
with player agency
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and system responsiveness.
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It's challenging work.
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I have to think
in a totally new way to do it,
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but I love it.
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And I wouldn't have known
that without Joel.
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Maybe you're a little surprised
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by our choice to share our story
of terminal cancer through a video game.
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Perhaps you're even thinking
like so many people before you,
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cancer is not a game.
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Well, tell that
to any pediatric cancer parent
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that's ever taken an exam glove
and blown it up into a balloon,
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or transformed a syringe
into a rocket ship,
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or let their child ride their IV pole
through the hospital halls
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like it was a race car.
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Because when you have children,
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everything is a game.
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And when your young child
experiences something traumatic,
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you work even harder to make sure
that their life feels like a game
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because children naturally
explore their worlds through play.
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While cancer can steal
many things from a family,
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it shouldn't steal play.
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If you're listening to me
and you're trying to imagine this family
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that revolves entirely
around a dying child,
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and you can't imagine joy
as part of that picture,
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then we were right
to share our story with you,
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because that season of our life was hard.
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Unspeakably hard at times,
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but it was also pure hope,
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deep love
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and joy like I have never
experienced since.
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Our video game was our attempt
to share that world
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with people who hadn't
experienced it before,
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because we never could imagine
that world until it became ours.
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We made a video game that's hard to play.
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It will never be a blockbuster.
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People have to prepare themselves
to invest emotionally
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in a story that they know
will break their hearts.
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But when our hearts break,
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they heal a little differently.
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My broken heart has been healing
with a new and a deeper compassion --
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a desire to sit with people in their pain,
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to hear their stories
and try to help tell them
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so that they know that they're seen.
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On the night when "That Dragon, Cancer"
won the Game for Impact Award,
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we cheered,
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we smiled and we talked about Joel
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and the impact he had on our life --
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on all of those hard and hopeful nights
that we shared with him
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when he changed our hearts
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and taught us so much more
about life and love and faith and purpose.
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That award will never mean as much to me
as even a single photograph of my son,
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but it does represent all of the people
who his life has impacted.
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People I'll never meet.
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They write me emails sometimes.
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They tell me that they miss Joel
even though they never met him.
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They describe the tears
that they've shed for my son,
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and it makes my burden of grief
just a little bit lighter
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knowing that it's shared
with a 10-year-old
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watching a YouTube playthrough,
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or a doctor playing on his airplane
with a smartphone,
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or a professor introducing Joel
to her first-year philosophy students.
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We made a video game that's hard to play.
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But that feels just right to me,
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because the hardest moments of our lives
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change us more than any goal
we could ever accomplish.
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Tragedy has shifted my heart
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more than any dream
I could ever see come true.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)