Amy Green: A video game to cope with grief
إيمي جرين: لعبة فيديو لمواجهة الحزن
Amy Green creates narrative video games that focus on innovative stories. Full bio
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huddled around a cell phone
of the Game Awards,
industry's biggest nights.
لصناعة ألعاب الفيديو.
for the Game for Impact,
الألعاب الأكثر تأثيرًا،
to a thought-provoking video game
message or meaning.
that winning an award like that
have stuck with me,
with a rare and aggressive brain tumor.
ابني الثالث "جويل" بورم دماغي نادر.
that his tumor had returned
and radiation that they could offer him.
الكيماوي والإشعاعي المكثف.
had perhaps four months to live,
سيعيش لأربعة أشهر تقريبًا،
my two older sons in bed --
how much they understood,
كم فهموا،
very brave knight named Joel
a terrible dragon called cancer.
more of the story,
أكثر من القصة،
that they could understand
would be answered
have to tell them that that knight,
finish that bedtime story.
to palliative treatment,
our dying child with all of our hearts.
that shameful feeling
just a little pain
even if that love could crush us.
حتى لو حطّمَنا ذاك الحب.
vulnerability has changed me ...
called "That Dragon, Cancer."
(ذلك التنين سرطان - That Dragon, Cancer)
in the shadow of death.
with doubt is a part of faith --
هي جزء من الإيمان،
do you like that?
الأب: تقفز، أتحب هذا؟
into a witness of Joel's life,
we as a family felt and experienced.
like analyzing interactive poetry
were trying to express and why,
that Joel taught us,
في تصميم اللعبة.
to offer them branching narrative
يكون للألعاب مسارات متشعبة؛
that they make feels important
of game design,
that will change the outcome for Joel.
لتغيير ما سيحدث لـ"جويل".
as deeply and desperately as we felt it
in our arms praying for hours,
ونحن ندعو لساعات
that we could not create for ourselves.
لا يمكننا تحقيقها لأنفسنا.
that really change our lives,
of our hardship -- and not our glory.
through our video game --
and I helped direct scenes.
a video game is telling a story,
and symbolism are there,
with player agency
in a totally new way to do it,
that without Joel.
of terminal cancer through a video game.
من خلال لعبة.
like so many people before you:
to any pediatric cancer parent
and blown it up into a balloon,
into a rocket ship,
through the hospital halls
experiences something traumatic,
that their life feels like a game
لتجعل حياته تبدو كلعبة؛
explore their worlds through play.
many things from a family,
and you're trying to imagine this family
around a dying child,
as part of that picture,
كجزء من تلك الصورة،
to share our story with you,
experienced since.
to share that world
experienced it before,
that world until it became ours.
إلا بعدما أصبح عالمنا.
to invest emotionally
will break their hearts.
with a new and a deeper compassion --
and try to help tell them
won the Game for Impact Award,
بجائزة اللعبة الأكثر تأثيراُ،
that we shared with him
التي أمضيناها معه
about life and love and faith and purpose.
والإيمان والهدف الأسمى.
as even a single photograph of my son,
ما قد تمثله صورة واحدة لابني،
who his life has impacted,
الذين أثّرت حياته عليهم،
even though they never met him.
رغم أنهم لم يقابلوه قط.
that they've shed for my son,
just a little bit lighter
with a 10-year-old
with a smartphone,
to her first-year philosophy students.
لطلابها في صف الفلسفة.
we could ever accomplish.
I could ever see come true.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Amy Green - Video game designerAmy Green creates narrative video games that focus on innovative stories.
Why you should listen
Amy Green writes and designs video games for Numinous Games, whose first title, That Dragon, Cancer, was an intimate autobiography of the life and death of her son Joel Green. Along with her husband and a team of six other developers, she used a video game to artistically portray the surreal emotional landscape of raising a child with a terminal illness. In May 2017, the Peabody Media Center and the University of Georgia awarded That Dragon, Cancer a Peabody-Facebook Futures of Media Award for Best Video Game.
Green's current project, Untethered, is an episodic virtual reality mystery that allows the player to speak out loud to the characters within the game. These characters speak back to the player, including the player as an integral character in the quirky story that is being told in the game.
Green's work with Numinous Games has been recognized by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, South by Southwest, Games for Change, the Independent Game Developers Association, the Game Awards and has been featured in press coverage by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Wired Magazine, Popular Science, RadioLab, CBS Sunday Morning, the BBC and the Guardian.
Amy Green | Speaker | TED.com