'Washington Post' journalist Gene Park was diagnosed with cancer in 2022, but found solace in video games.
depicts a world full of neon lights and cybernetic enhancements, and it had recently received a big content update. Controller in hand, Park vividly recalls directing ato try and stop a murder, all while medical tubes protruded from his body. The tubes plugged into a port on his torso, and they were ready to pump chemicals inside. Unlike the digital augments that buffed his video game character, chemotherapy is corrosive in a way that makes the experience invasive, even as it was helping.
Being a gaming reporter is an unusual job, and not one that he planned for, exactly. Before settling down at the newspaper, he’d done everything from sleeping on a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and has judged beauty pageants. While he couldn’t have predicted where he’d end up, Park knew one thing from a young age:were more than a mere distraction. At first, he was convinced that games were going to be the defining art form of our lifetimes.
“It helped me embody someone else,” Park says. “My body has betrayed me, my body is trying to kill me. And so if I can envision myself in someone else’s body, it’s a transformative experience.” was an outlet, but it wasn’t entirely an escapist experience. In some ways, it let him forget about his circumstances, but in others, it helped him process his situation better.
The game largely deals with the cost of survivorship, and how living through trauma can weigh on the soul. Park wanted to live, he says, but surviving was a complicated thing in itself. Park fended off colon cancer, only to learn in 2023 that he had a new malignant tumor. Treatment was successful in both cases, but the process took a permanent toll on him. He can’t walk or go to the bathroom as easily as he once did. Park was also plagued with an ongoing sense of survivor’s guilt.
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