‘A space to feel at ease with dying’: how video games help people through grief

Players have long found a refuge from grief in video games - and a recent wave of games is tackling this difficult theme head-on

When James's father died, he did what any of us would do in the throes of grief: he sought comfort. He went looking for it in the expected places - friends, family - but he found it somewhere unexpected: in the video game The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

Dad had always loved games. He gave me his NES when he got the SNES, and my formative memories were playing Mario Kart 64 with him, my uncle, and my little sister. Shortly after my father passed, the Wii added some N64 games to its catalogue that I had loved to play growing up, and that started the journey I needed to take to forgive him," says James. I had felt abandoned by him - when I was right at the shifting point of puberty, about to learn how to drive, he just wasn't there.