The Virtual World Is My Lifelong Ideal
As a child, closing my eyes was enough to enter another world. I want to build a virtual world: children can grow a rich inner life there, and adults can recover the original aspirations of their youth.
When I was little, as soon as I closed my eyes to sleep, I would enter another world.
In a quiet and peaceful village, at the end of a shaded path stood a simple house, and inside lived a boy a little older than me, full of positive energy. Everyday questions, the hurt of being scolded by my parents, the disappointment of exams, the excitement of going on a spring outing the next day—I would talk with him about all of them. He kept me company, encouraged me, and answered all my questions.
Later, I didn't really lose that ability; I just became more "rational and objective": I knew he was merely a fictional character in my mind, and that I was only talking to myself. And with that, the intense realism of those images and my capacity for empathy never came back.
I want to build a virtual world where children can develop a richer inner world, driven by intense curiosity and a desire to explore.
I also want to build a virtual world where adults can recover the original aspirations of their youth, explore their own inner world, and be shielded from the "viruses" of this world.
In Virtual Reality, Dr. Zhai Zhenming wrote that technological development will provide a solid foundation for the immersive state of virtual worlds and ontologically reconstruct ourselves—life in the future will be increasingly virtual.
The intersection that truly fascinates me is education. Learning is something that goes "against human nature": attention is naturally drawn to more interesting things. But games are different—curiosity, achievement, and reward mechanisms naturally bring people into a state of flow. That is why a person can focus on playing games for hours without getting tired, but cannot do the same with studying.
Combining games with learning and turning learning into something interesting, meaningful, and self-driven—this is what I am doing now.
Over the years, my path has changed several times: from the idea of gamified courses to using AI today to build small applications for education and productivity scenarios one by one. The means have kept changing, but the ideal has never changed. It was already decided on those nights when I closed my eyes and entered another world.