Twitter and modern media can make you hate technology, even if you build technology everyday. Hot takes consistently slander modern technology as an awful and isolating venture, driven by people who only want to make money. Which is partially true. The truth is that modern technology is an astounding achievement and can help us lead better and happier lives.

Modern media also paints every tech venture as either too short sighted and pointless, or too grandly ambitious. Food delivery services are blasted as coddling millennials even though they provide the most valuable resource ever known to man: time. SpaceX and other grandly ambitious plans are slandered as being too purposeful, and that we have plenty of problems on Earth that we should be focused on.

The moral of all of this is that no one will ever be 100% satisfied with what you build. So you might as well put your head down and build something that resonates with you, because if you like what you build you’ve won, and no hot take can ever take that down.

And that takes us to games. Too deride video games is to dismiss the biggest entertainment market in the world, and also fail to understand why it’s so big, why it matters, and why it is so personally special.

Video games are huge

Why Games Matter

Games aren’t the cure for cancer. They’re not going to fix the ozone or save the elephants, but they can bring people together to form truly meaningful and impactful moments. Some of my fondest memories are gathering around the N64 with my family playing Mario Kart, and as teenager playing Halo 3 with my friends. Humans are natural game players. Sports are a game. Money and power is a game. Social media likes and followers are a game. They matter because they matter to everyone around us. We find value in the experiences they provide for the watchers and the participants of the game.

My Reason

My mom loves escape rooms. My brother and I both moved away from home, and whenever we’re both back together my mom organizes an escape room visit. For those that don’t know, an escape room is a real world puzzle. You’re locked in a room, and have 60 minutes to solve clues in the room in order to get out. It’s an intellectual challenge that requires teamwork and creativity. If you’ve done a good escape room you’ll know how much of a blast it is.

As great as they are, escape rooms have some logistical challenges. You need to book a room, which is often a hassle, with rooms filling up and needing to corral up to 10 people to agree on a time.

Escape rooms are also expensive. The ones I’ve been to have been around $30 per person.

It was August of 2017 and my mom and I had just finished an Escape Room in Boston. ARKit, Apple’s developer tools for making augmented reality experiences, had just been released. As soon as I waked out of the room the first thing I thought was “this needs to be in AR”. You could place virtual puzzle pieces in someone’s room, and they’d have to investigate the puzzle to solve the mystery and “escape”.

My dream for this app is that it brings people together for a short bit of time and helps them bond and overcome a challenge using teamwork. This app will democratize escape rooms. People who were previously unable to afford to go to an escape room will now be able to. People will also be exposed to the wondrous possibilities of AR. Most of all, my brother, mom, and I will have a fun thing to do when we’re together.

Where I’m at Now

After I had this idea. I immediately started learning all that I could about augmented reality. I started using Swift, which is the language I write in for my day job. I ended up transitioning to using Unity’s ARKit Plugin because of ease of use, and also because I think VR/AR will be hugely impactful and understanding a game engine will be massively helpful for building future applications.

Along my journey I realized that I’d need to learn 3D Modeling, so I dove into Blender to learn how to make my own assets. Its been a blast learning all these new tools, and I’m extremely excited for what’s to come.

One of the 3D assets in the game

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