Video Games as a Lifeline
In 2012, during his first year at CU Boulder, Zhenghua Yang (Fin’14) received a life-changing email: A teenager in Spain wrote to thank him for saving his life.
The teen played “Loving Life,” an autobiographical interactive narrative video game Yang created in college about overcoming a life-threatening illness. The teen struggled with depression and wrote to tell Yang that the game gave him the will to keep living — and even inspired him to enroll in game design school.
Now, Yang is the CEO and founder of Serenity Forge, a multi-million-dollar video game development company. He hopes to change the world through play — one game at a time.
Video Games as a Lifeline
Yang’s first self-developed game, “Loving Life,” was personal. At 18, he was rushed to the hospital after developing a 14-hour nosebleed. There, doctors diagnosed him with a rare blood disorder, handed him a will and told Yang he had three hours left to live. Miraculously, he defied these odds, yet he remained hospitalized for two years.
Though Yang struggled with constant fear and uncertainty in the face of illness, video games emerged as a place of solace for him. In his 2016 TEDxCU Talk, he described how role-playing and multiplayer games like “World of Warcraft” and “League of Legends” allowed him to visualize himself as a hero and connected him to a global support system, providing the emotional strength and the medical means to survive.
“One of my virtual friends was actually a medical researcher. He connected me with some of the world’s best hematologists,” Yang said in his speech. “I met with doctors who ultimately gave me critical advice that kept me alive.”
Upon being released from the hospital, Yang enrolled at CU as a finance major — but he couldn’t get video games out of his head. He snuck into computer science lectures to learn advanced programming languages, taught himself graphics programming techniques with library textbooks and recruited friends to pitch game ideas. Eventually, Serenity Forge was born.
Yang initially invested $1,000 into Serenity Forge, allowing him and his peers to run the company from their basements. The company caught the eye of television personality Bill Nye and astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and landed the company a $30,000 monthly contract during Yang’s senior year.
Immersive Empathy
Unlike typical entertainment games like “Fortnite” and “Grand Theft Auto,” Serenity Forge games aim to create meaningful, emotionally impactful gaming experiences that challenge how players think about socially stigmatized issues.
For instance, “Doki Doki Literature Club” (2017), which has 30 million downloads, comments on the invisibility of mental health and depression. Other Serenity Forge games like “Lisa the Painful” (2014) and “Slay the Princess” (2023) confront the complexities of love, identity, trauma and addiction.
“Our games are able to push the envelope forward a little bit in how we talk about ourselves and our society,” said Yang.
To do this, Serenity Forge games adopt a narrative style. They often prompt players to develop memorable emotional attachments to the characters and plotlines — sometimes even breaking the fourth wall.
Handley Shelton, an art director at Serenity Forge, attributes this effect to the immersive nature of video games. “Video games have one thing that most traditional media do not: interactivity,” said Shelton. “By establishing rules and having someone interact with those rules, you gain a much more personal connection with consumers than other mediums achieve.”
Courage in Choice
“Our games are able to push the envelope forward a little bit in how we talk about ourselves and our society.”
— Zhenghua Yang (Fin’14)
Serenity Forge’s gaming model has proven to resonate with audiences.
In 2019, the company broke $1 million, earning Yang a spot on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list.
Now with 50 full-time employees and two international offices in Budapest and Shanghai, the company brings in an estimated $10 to $15 million annually.
But as a first-generation immigrant, money and status are trivial measures of success for Yang. He instead attributes his prosperous career to his courage and privilege in taking risks.
“When I was in college,” he said, “I thought to myself, ‘My dad is blind. My mom doesn’t speak English. The two of them moved to the U.S. and struggled for decades just to make ends meet. So no matter how I fail, that’s better than anything my parents ever had, and if that’s the case, then there’s really no way for me to fail.’”
During his final year at CU, Yang employed that wisdom. While interning at the Federal Reserve, the former chairman Ben Bernanke gave him a piece of advice that empowered him to quit his finance career and pursue his passion with Serenity Forge.
Yang reiterated the advice: “A lot of people in the world are very underprivileged. If you’re one of the few very fortunate people who are able to choose what you want to do in your life, that’s how you truly make a difference in this world.”
Photo courtesy of Zhenghua Yang