Good morning.

Michael Coren, wrong thinking. Electric autonomous cars will hardly drive around empty; as they are not owned by individuals, they’ll be free to transport dozens of passengers throughout the day. On the contrary, the TaaS model will decongest traffic. One study in Sweden in 2019 predicted that, within a few years, electric autonomous vehicles would remove about 97% of current cars and buses on major city streets.

If self-driving cars just replace personal vehicles, we'll be doubling down on a traffic dystopia with cities and freeways choked by empty vehicles piloted by software. The system itself needs to change. Shared, electric and autonomous is one answer to urban transportation, say researchers I've interviewed. To Cruise's credit, the Origin is all three. Whether Cruise (backed by GM) can build it at scale and put a viable business model behind it is the next challenge.

This is really exciting news in the cell-cultured Meat sphere. The most interesting aspect, though, is the regulatory one. Memphis Meats is leading the effort to work with the USDA and FDA to set the standard for what regulators should expect from a cultured meat production plant.

Because so much of the world looks to the expertise of the FDA and USDA in regards to process and food safety, this will likely set a tone that with have a global ripple effect. The stakes are high and Memphis is being very careful and methodical as it moves forward.

I would guess that it’s further steadied by the fact that it can count Cargill and Tyson Foods among its investors. That will go a long way in terms of influence and votes of confidence as the company moves forward with regulators.

This article is an excellent walk-through of the evolution of the gaming industry and a future look-ahead.

Myself, I am a chess player-turned-a gamer, a gamer-turned-a game entrepreneur, and then became 1 of the very few female CEOs in this industry. The journey is so far the most rewarding, as well as the most challenging among my 3 startup experiences. Besides the fact that gaming is the largest online economy (1/3 of all mobile app downloads and 74% of mobile consumer spending as the article states), I want to share what games mean to me and attempt to provide a peephole into a bigger picture.

- What turns a gamer?

It probably has lots to do with being an extreme introvert and my unusual childhood growing up in China as a migrant kid. My family's unexpected loss of hukou, a residence permit issued by the Chinese government forbade me from attending a school. Instead of me discovering chess, it was more of chess stumbling upon me during those years of absence from school. Chess became my only toy, game, and friend since 8. Becoming the youngest national champion didn't only offer me a path to receive school education later bypassing the residence permit requirement, but more importantly, the foundation to build upon my self-esteem, characters, disciplines, and social skills. Chess is much bigger than just a game.

As time passed by, I started my 1st year in school at 13 after competing internationally for our national team. 4 years later, I went to Columbia University to pursue my undergraduate study, and the only problem was that I learned very little English. Keeping up with the intensity of Columbia's curriculums, making friends, or even having simple social interactions seemed extremely difficult to me.

The difficulties in life don't destroy people. The sense of loneliness, failure, and self-unworthiness do. I started to skip classes, shut myself in the doom and grew depressed. My parents had no idea of what happened across the Pacific Ocean. The pride and the fear of being judged kept me from opening up to anyone.

Just like chess stumbled upon me accidentally, this time, Starcraft did. During those days of skipping classes, I started to spend 8-10 hours in the game. At a glimpse, yes, I looked like a teenager being addicted to the game, and yes, it greatly affected my school. In the root, my problem was never the addiction, but the deep unhappiness and depression in real life. The lack of friends, the sense of not being accepted, and accomplishing nothing were the feelings I was trying to escape.

However, by playing Starcraft, for the 1st time since I arrived in the U.S, I made friends, friends from my game alliance, friends whom I coordinated and strategized together, friends whom I fought and achieved victories in battles together. Those game friends became my Facebook friends and later my real friends in life. After 16 years, some of them I still keep in touch until today.

- Gaming business from the perspective of a startup

In 2017, I sold my last startup, ai.Law and co-founded WafaGames with Joe, whom I met by playing Red Alert. It is extremely tough to raise funding as an early-stage studio due to the creative nature of game makings, therefore the highly risky and unsustainable side of a gaming startup. In fact, over 90% of the investments in the gaming industry flow to game publishers than game makers, to follow-up rounds and acquisitions of mature companies than startups. Gaming is possibly the most polarized industry.

It is also getting extremely expensive to make a game that stands a chance to compete with big boys like EA or Tencent. For instance, it cost us so far, almost 3 years and more than 3-million USD. The low cap of a budget to make a similar-genre game in big companies is likely to be around 10+ million USD per game. Publishing is even more expensive, averagely $5 to bring 1 android download and $10 for iOS for a mobile MMO game. It requires a minimum of 2000 daily downloads to break even.

Gaming is a highly competitive, risky, and polarized industry with a massive amount of money at stake.

- Besides money, what games are really about?

Games have evolved from a nerds' 'sport' in the '80s to today's 'glorified' field in which world-class gamers are viewed as celebrities, top game companies the richest companies among all, and 'gamification' suddenly the most popular design term across all industries. But what games are really about? What makes them so charming?

It is about fairness and equality that we could hardly find in the real world. In a good-designed game, one's intelligence, hardworking, and practices will be rewarded. As on a chessboard, if I am better, I will win. If I lose, I lose fair and square and will go back practicing more before coming back. One's genders, skin colors, or birthright privileges matter very little here.

It is about simplicity and transparency. When the rules are set, they are set for all. The path for growth and accomplishment can then be defined. There is little room for back-door tricks or under-table deals.

It is about sincerity and authenticity in building friendships. Many would disagree that the friends we make in games are sometimes far more real. It's intuitive and effortless to conclude that everything about a game is fake. How could it not be? But gamers are real, game makers are real, and our interactions can't be more authentic, and they cross nationalities, genders, and cultural differences. The things that are missing out in games are often prejudices, judgments, discriminations, and masks that we are forced to put on under social pressures. Sometimes, we can only be ourselves in a virtual world. Isn't that ironic?

I have a very personal story, the one I have never really shared with anyone. Last year my grandpa passed away from a sudden heart attack. I was thousands of miles from home, and my mom called me. I lost someone I care about deeply and close to my heart since I was a kid, and yet there was nothing I could do. At that moment, I remember sitting on the floor in the dark. Tears broke down and turned into sharp heart pains; I felt hopeless and numb. After many hours when the dawn was breaking, I reached out to my phone and started to play our game and chat with my alliance friends. Of course, they had no idea who I was and what I was going through. But I felt alive, better as if the real human connections in the visual game world provided me with an outlet, a safe escape.

We often criticize those who find their emotional comfort in the virtual world, don't we? We call them weak for avoiding real problems. But aren't we all sometimes need a little escape from a cruel moment, a desperate situation in this often too cold, too unfair world to cure our vulnerability, so we can continue to believe in dreams, beauty, and magic? Aren't we all wish to stay childlike and unpretending in our hearts?

- Excessive screen time as a social concern

I think this concern should first be addressed to game makers. It is first our responsibility to take pride in making games as a start-of-art intellectual quest and a meaningful interaction with players with respect, rather than a money-making tool to trick addiction, scheme human nature.

Chess is a beautiful game and very educational for both adults and children to train their thinking capacity and strategic minds. No one doubts that.

Good games ought to be the practice of thought discipline, the training of problem-solving skills, and fun. Games are not harmful. Bad games are.