Thank You For Playing film review: A beautiful, tragic attempt to press pause

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." Ryan 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.