Kanye West Decided To Honor His Mother’s Memory With The World’s Most WTF Video Game
Love or hate Kanye West, there is no question that he is a loving father and devoted son. He has been very open about the influence of his mother, English professor Dr. Donda West, on his life, and his sorrow over her death in 2007. His most recent song, “Only One” was written about his mother and how she would have felt seeing his daughter, North West. It’s a moving song, but now Kanye is taking the song into a new direction by producing a tie-in video game in which players help get Dr. Donda West into heaven.
No, seriously.
According to IGN, Kanye West said that he is working on a video game about taking his mother to heaven. West said:
“Right now I’m working on a video game for Only One, and the idea is that it’s my mother going through the gates of heaven and you have to bring her to the highest gates of heaven by holding her to the light. We’ve been working on it for like six months.”
Making a video game is an obvious venture for Kanye West, who just saw his wife estimated to make $200 million in 2014 from her cell phone game, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. After her success, I genuinely do not know why every celebrity does not have a goofy cell phone game to his or her name at this point.
Everyone grieves in a unique way, and the impulse to take charge of the passing of a loved one and reenvision it as something beautiful and controllable is not without precedent. Playwright Michel Tremblay wrote a lovely and very moving comedy called For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again about his deceased mother, wherein he decides at the end of the play that rather than let her die slowly and painfully of a terrible cancer, he just declares, “Eff it; it’s theater.” Then angels fly down from the ceiling and she’s lifted away gleefully in a basket with giant wings on it. It’s beautiful and funny and I do not think I have ever sobbed harder at anything in my life.
But still, making a video game about getting one’s mother into heaven is a pretty out-there idea. I mean, what happens if you lose?
Photo: James Devaney/GC Images/Getty Images
