his crying worse; only after he sat down and prayed to God did Joel stop crying; Ryan recalled how that reminded him of a video game with subverted game mechanics. He wanted to relay his experiences of raising Joel to a larger audience, and felt that an interactive video game would be a better medium to express a message of grace. Ryan stated that with video games "you can create this world and ask the player to live in it and love what you have created". The name of the game is taken from a story that the Greens had told their other sons about Joel's illness through an allegory about how Joel was a brave knight fighting a dragon named Cancer. Ryan and Amy worked with Josh Larson, a game developer that Ryan had met in 2010 while working at Soma Games, a developer for Christian video games. Their friendship developed further after a game jam in 2011. The two began talking about co-developing a game, and Larson had suggested that their hardships with Joel would make for a strong project. By late 2012, Larson agreed to forgo contract work for a year to work off savings to help bring the game to life, and after discussion with Amy, Ryan also agreed to spend three months to help develop the title before returning to work. Once those months were over, Amy could not force Ryan to go back to work, both feeling that the game needed to be completed at this point. Amy, a writer, had already written a self-published book about their experience with Joel, He's Not Dead Yet, and participated as the writer for the game, bringing in some of her existing narrative into the game. The Greens and Larson created the studio Numinous Games to distribute the title. Though the continuation of the studio will depend on the success of That Dragon, Cancer, they expect to be able to continue to make similar emotional games using other third-party stories for inspiration, with expectations that being less involved will help to make further projects run smoother. Ryan began to seek funding to help support the project. He had initially developed a short demonstration of the game based on trying to calm Joel during that night at the hospital, which he and Larson demonstrated at the 2013 Game Developers Conference. The translated scene in the demonstration had the