July 22, 2004 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Players who enter the world of Ben’s Game must destroy cancer cells and collect the seven shields that offer protection from the common side effects of chemotherapy. Winning is far from easy, as fearsome creatures like the Qball Monster and the Robarf Monster guard the charms that protect against hair loss, nausea, and other ailments.
The new video game sprang from the imagination of Ben Duskin, a 9-year-old whose leukemia is in remission, and came to life with the help of the Greater Bay Area Make-A-Wish Foundation and LucasArts, in San Francisco.
Ben made his wish to create the game in the hopes that it would help other children who have cancer. He was 5 1/2 when doctors diagnosed his disease, and he remembers how frightening the chemotherapy treatments were. “I thought it was really yucky stuff that really scary doctors put into my body,” he recalls.
With Ben’s Game, he hopes other young cancer patients will come to think of the treatments as a positive force doing battle with the disease.
“When they see a shot — it might just be one out of a million — they’ll say, ‘Yay, there’s going to be really good stuff going through my body,’” he says.
For almost seven months, Ben met weekly with Eric Johnston, the software engineer at LucasArts who programmed the game. At the end of each meeting, Mr. Johnston gave Ben a homework assignment. One week it was to come up with the names of the seven monsters that represent the most common side effects of chemotherapy.
The game’s main character is modeled on Ben. However, players can add their own photograph to a generic boy, girl, or even dog character to become the stars in their games.
Since the beta version of the game went online in May, 75,000 people have downloaded free copies, and last month, the University of California at San Francisco’s Children’s Hospital installed the game on computers for its pediatric cancer patients. When the final version of the game is ready, the Greater Bay Area Make-A-Wish Foundation will work with the hospital to get the word out to other treatment centers.
Patricia Wilson, the charity’s executive director, says she is touched by the selflessness of Ben’s wish. “Here he is trying to change the world and make it a better place for other kids,” she says. “It’s a very grown-up wish.”
To get there: Go to http://www.makewish.org/ben.
