ted talk: superbetter

Sorry for the off-topic, but I felt compelled to reply.

I love games, and probably am addicted to them to some extent. Pretty much have been since I was a kid.

When I was a kid, I got a handheld game for xmas or a birthday or something. Can\t remember which one it was, but it was the equivalent of an endless runner, where you dodged objects while driving, or something. My dad and I would compete for high scores, and I often played while walking to school.

My parents were/are quite anti-technology, so it took us forever to get our own computer. My aunt brought in a Mac every now and then and we'd play games for hours. Every so often I was allowed to borrow an old Atari, with Pong, Space invaders, etc. At some point, my friends got Comodore 64s, later on Amigas, MSXs and Spectrums, and I was totally hooked. It took until 1998 and a government subsidized incentive for us to get a PC. It was a 286, with a VGA screen, and a matrix printer. Made by Philips. It weighed a ton (literally).

I promptly flunked my high school year, and really discovered a love for computer games. We would play the old adventures like Larry, Police Quest, etc. A group of us would tackle a game, and we'd update one another when we'd find a way past the next hurdle. It was slow, but tons of fun. We'd literally be stuck for weeks (this was before the internet). The whole experience greatly improved my English skills. I still got into tons of trouble with my English teacher, but that was primarily because I was lazy.

A few years later, the group of friends I was a part of were pretty much the biggest distributors of games for miles around (we were basically couriering between BBS's). We literally touched hundreds of games in a year. At some point my mom threw a fit and screamed at me that playing games would never ever allow me to make a living.

Fast-forward a few decades of games-filled quality time, and I now work for a game engine company, that is drastically changing the gaming industry as a whole (for the better).

FUCK YOU MA! (pun intended)

Games can be good or bad. They improved my English, and the earlier mentioned laziness means that I nowadays try to code my way around manual labour. Yes, some games are made like drugs. Be aware of this. Stay in control. You've got this.


Amazing games are being made. VR is finally taking off for realsies (must be the President's doing!). It has been talked about since I was in college. I now work for a company that breathes VR. As gamers, we live in amazingly exciting times right now. I literally played text adventures where we'd type shit into a parser, and hoped it'd let us move to the next room. We're about to embark on a voyage where virtual reality and hardware will convince us that we are in the middle of a fucking battlefield, or climbing Mount Everest . Games have been used to battle depression, and even solve medical problems.

Like everything, shit can go bad or right. The way if affects you, is up to one person only. YOU.

We live in extremely interesting times as gamers. Enjoy it. Giggle with glee every single time a game or technology catches you off-guard. Stay away from the poison.