Leave it to YouTube to poignantly explore the emotional ramifications of video gaming.
Los Angeles-based filmmaker John Wikstrom is having a viral moment on his channel right now thanks to a clip called Player Two — a roughly two-minute short about how video games impacted a father-son relationship. Most meta of all, however, is that the film — which now counts almost 600,000 views — was inspired by a YouTube commenter.
On a separate video by PBS titled Can Video Games Be A Spiritual Experience?, YouTube user 00WARTHERAPY00 shared how his father died when he was just six years old. The two used to play a racing game together called Rally Sports Challenge on the very first Xbox, 00WARTHERAPY00 said.
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Ten years later, when he pulled out the game for old times’ sake, he noticed a ghost car on the track. “You know, when a time race happens, that the fastest lap so far gets recorded as a ghost driver?” he wrote. “Yep, you guessed it — his ghost still rolls around the track today.”
Wikstrom took the entirety of the comment and used it as narration for his short film, with the actor Zac Pullam reenacting what turned out to be a heartrending revelation. Grab a tissue and see for yourself how it ends below:
