Kelli Dunlap to Take This interviews Tammy McDonald at TIGS.
Kelli Dunlap to Take This interviews Tammy McDonald at TIGS.
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A survivor’s view of a game developer’s suicide

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 12 min

Eleven months ago, veteran game developer Matt McDonald died from suicide. His wife, Tammy McDonald, has to pick up the pieces and raise her three sons on her own. Recently, she spoke about it publicly for the first time at the International Game Summit on Mental Health Awareness.

Kelli Dunlap is a psychologist and community manager for gaming mental health nonprofit Take This, and she interviewed Tammy about the experience and its aftermath in an intense session. They alternately talked about what a good man he was and how he went into a cycle of mental health episodes over 17 years that ultimately ended in his death.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.