The Healing Power of Making Video Games Like ‘Minecraft’
After tragedy and trauma, some game developers have found solace in the poetry of code and the power of storytelling
Granada Hills, Los Angeles, August 1999. Ben Formaker-Olivas was nine years old and jumpy with excitement. He and a bunch of other kids were at the North Valley Jewish Community Center, waiting for a bus on a scruffy back lot just down the hill from the main building. They were heading to Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park, and it was going to be his first ride on a roller coaster.
“The counselors directed us to the buses, and I was in the line to get on,” Formaker-Olivas recalls. “There were these large planters that always had little pink and white flowers in them. I remember being in that spot when I heard the noise echoing down from the campus. It sounded like screaming and glass breaking. I thought it was just kids playing.”
What had actually happened would later make the news around the world. A white supremacist, armed with a semi-automatic rifle, walked into the lobby of the community center. He fired 70 shots into the building, wounding three children, a young counselor, and another employee. He then fled the scene and, 20 minutes later, shot and killed postal worker Joseph Santos Ileto.
