Make Your Players Cry Grief, Loss and Identity in Games
summary
Clear claim: you can write grief and identity honestly by combining research and sensitivity readers with concrete, sensory scenes. Example project A Taste of the Past centers on May coping with her mother’s death through cooking; development used books, talks, interviews, cultural consultants and iterative drafts read aloud. Writing rules: prefer specific moments over labels, insert one shameful truth, add pockets of levity to amplify catharsis. Outcome: players report real closure and tears, so the method demonstrably works.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:54Who am I
- 1:50Why do people gravitate to games depicting their real life struggles
- 8:54How to write with specificity
- 17:19Mental Health
- 19:26Writing
- 22:04How to make your players cry
- 26:28Writing about difficult subjects can hurt
- 29:03Conclusion
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