Zhenghua 鈥淶鈥� Yang (Fin, SRE 鈥�14) is the Founder and CEO of Serenity Forge, a values-driven video game development company based in Boulder. He was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2020. His games have saved lives, helped kids learn rocket science, and inspired gamers to turn enemies into friends.
We recently sat down with Z to talk about how Leeds and the SRE Certificate (Social Responsibility and Ethics Certificate) have impacted his career, the power of video games to create positive change, and advice for college students figuring out their next step. This interview has been edited for clarity. This article mentions depression, suicide and severe illness.
CESR: How did your time at Leeds, and particularly the SRE Certificate, help in establishing the trajectory of your career so far?
Z Yang: Serenity Forge would not have happened without Leeds. The professors and programs like the SRE Certificate made me think outside the box. That is how I got all of this started.
The most impactful classes for me talked about responsible accounting, communication and leadership. We learned about how companies greenwash and that鈥檚 bad, but there are ethical ways to talk about your work in sustainability.听 We learned how to tell what is being done just for marketing purposes or to drive up share price, versus what is truly giving back.
The Leadership Challenges class really helped me. I remember talking to leaders like Michael Leeds (former President and CEO of CMP Media, Inc.) and Larissa Herda (former CEO of TW Telecom). Being able to speak with these business leaders, learn from their insights, learn from the traumatizing experiences that they鈥檝e had and how they鈥檝e had to deal with them, was very eye-opening for me.
These experiences are the things that have stuck with me over time and now fuel what I do. Very often I think back to what I learned then when I鈥檓 making decisions about how to drive the company forward, and how to do the right thing by the stakeholders within the company and outside the company.
"Very often I think back to what I learned [from the SRE Certificate] when I'm making decisions about how to drive the company forward."
says Yang.
CESR: What excites you about video games? What does being a values-driven company mean in this space?
ZY: I am a first-generation immigrant from China. I moved to the U.S. when I was 10 years old, and I鈥檝e lived in Boulder since then. When I was in middle school and high school, I was a big gamer. I didn鈥檛 really have a lot of friends. I didn鈥檛 really speak English. It was pretty difficult for me to get into American culture. Video games caused a lot of detriment to my life at that time because I was so addicted to them and playing them in an unhealthy way.
At 18 years old I was that caused me to be hospitalized for two years. During my first semester of college, I had to go to the ER one night and wound up having to drop out of school and come home. It was a very difficult time. I was going through chemo. Doctors didn鈥檛 really know what I had. I was in and out of the hospital. I didn鈥檛 really have anyone there for me. I don鈥檛 have siblings, my parents were really stressed all the time, and the few friends that I had disappeared. I had to turn to video games again.
I was playing all sorts of games. I was playing single-player games that made me feel like a hero, going out there saving the world, and that made me feel good. I was playing multi-player games where I was able to connect with people from all around the world. I was able to build these friendships where they would check in with me. They would ask how I was doing that day, had I taken my meds, was I getting proper rest, because they cared about my wellbeing. Eventually I was able to meet medical researchers who connected me with some of the world鈥檚 best hematologists who gave me crucial advice and treatment that was vital to keeping me alive.
"I started thinking, games like League of Legends, they aren鈥檛 designed to help me, but in the end, they saved my life. What if I created video games with the intention to help people, what kind of power could I unlock?"
says Yang.
Two years into this I was able to go back to school, and I came to Leeds. I started thinking, games like League of Legends, they aren鈥檛 designed to help me, but in the end, they saved my life. What if I created video games with the intention to help people, what kind of power could I unlock?
I come from a low-income background, so I didn鈥檛 have the money to take extra classes. My first year at CU I used the course catalog to find out when the programming classes were taking place, and I would sit in the back and just listen, take notes, and borrow the textbooks from the libraries. That鈥檚 how I learned programming. I have always done art, so I just started making my own video games.
The summer after my first year of college, I created a non-fictional game that was based on the trauma that I had been through with my illness. I put it out there online for free just to see who was going to resonate with it. About a month after I put the game out there, I got an email from a kid in Spain who had been struggling with depression. He had been planning to take his own life, but he found my game online and after playing it he felt so inspired that he decided to stop his plans and enroll in video game design school so that he could share his story in the same way.
That was my first year at CU. I didn鈥檛 make a million dollars over night, but I saved someone鈥檚 life, so I thought that maybe I was onto something. I kept working on the company. By the time I graduated from college I already had six full-time employees working out of a basement. This is our 10-year anniversary. Now we have 40 employees, mostly in Colorado, some remote, and a new office that we just opened in Budapest, Hungary.
CESR: How do you think about social impact and sustainability as they relate to your business?
ZY: There was a quote that I learned from John Mackey, the Whole Foods founder, that really stuck with me. 鈥淛ust as people cannot live without eating, so a business cannot live without profits. But most people don鈥檛 live to eat, and neither must businesses live just to make profits.鈥�
That quote is so simple, but also so easily forgotten in the corporate world we live in today. Probably 99% of companies out there don鈥檛 have any concept of the fact that we鈥檙e out here to do something more than make money. At Leeds, we learned about the Triple Bottom Line of People, Planet and Profit. That鈥檚 the kind of mindset that permeates Serenity Forge.
The game industry is very much a money-driven space. It is a gigantic industry with big players out there designing games for your phone that will trick you into spending more and more money for another turn or whatever it is. However, we came out of the gate saying that鈥檚 not how we do things. We鈥檙e going to do things very differently. We think about sustainability and social impact. We think about games that are going to be able to change people and make the world a better place.
As a result over the past 10 years, people have wondered about this philosophy and that distinct approach has created a ton of fans around the world. We鈥檝e created games that are raising awareness for mental health, war, and trauma. Games that make social commentary on family abuse or child abuse. These are topics that we鈥檙e talking about constantly, and our games are showing people through real and fictional stories how the world can be bad, but also how it can be better. A lot of the things I learned in school really resonate through Serenity Forge.
Our company mission is that we create meaningful and emotionally impactful experiences that challenge what we think. Anything we do has to be meaningful. It has to make the world a better place. It has to do something that pushes the world forward. And if it鈥檚 not that, then we won鈥檛 look at it no matter how much money it might make.
"Why not take some of the things that you learn from the SRE Certificate about values-driven decision making and apply them to yourself?听What are the things that you care about, that really define who you are? And then think about what you are doing every day to achieve those goals."
says Yang.
CESR: What are some of the challenges you鈥檝e encountered as a founder, particularly of a company that鈥檚 so focused on values?
ZY: Now that we鈥檙e 10 years into the business, one of the things I鈥檓 noticing is really difficult is sticking with your values. The world is changing so fast nowadays. In this industry, you see technology pop up left and right and with each new technology you have to decide if you want to capitalize on it or not. Every step of the way it鈥檚 almost like the forces of the universe are testing you to see, 鈥淎re you sticking by your guns, or are you just here to make a quick buck?鈥� All the time you see companies that are throwing money at new technologies, which can have big upsides and big downsides.
The founding fathers of Wells Fargo had a unique perspective relative to company values and technology, and that is that technology should never be the goal of what you do, rather technology should be a tool that helps you to achieve your goals. And that鈥檚 why we take our company mission statement so seriously. We look at whether any new technology fits with our goals of creating meaningful, emotionally impactful experiences and making the world a better place, and that鈥檚 how we decide whether or not to invest.
CESR: What advice do you have for current students looking for the right path for them after graduation?
ZY: I have two stories I share when asked about this topic.
The first story is about Shigeru Miyamoto, who was the creator of Mario. He met Hiroshi Yamauchi, the president of Nintendo, when he was 32 years old, and Yamauchi was 50. Yamauchi was owning the company from when he was 18 until he was 50 years old before he even met the creator of Mario. The way that I think about it is that someone like Miyamoto essentially messed around doing whatever for 10 years after graduating college before becoming the grandfather of a multi-billion industry that generated so much difference in our society.
When I was in college and when I talk to college students now, one of the common themes that I see is that there鈥檚 all this focus on a roadmap to a specific kind of job seeking stability, a Big 4 firm or something like that. But very commonly what I鈥檝e found in my friend groups from Leeds, is that once you actually get into those positions, many people realize it鈥檚 not a good fit for them, and then they go through a huge revelation in their mid-to-late twenties where they鈥檙e directionless before they鈥檙e able to find their real calling again.
A lot of times, I wonder what is the right way to approach your own career. I鈥檓 not trying to say that working for a Big 4 firm is bad. I have friends who work for those companies and love it. What I鈥檓 saying is, why not take some of the things that you learn from the SRE Certificate about values-driven decision making and apply them to yourself?听What are the things that you care about, that really define who you are? And then think about what you are doing every day to achieve those goals. Are you doing what you鈥檙e doing because your mom told you to do it, or because it鈥檚 on your roadmap to achieve your ultimate goal in life? I think that taking some time to examine those choices for yourself is going to yield better, healthier, happier results for you to go out there and achieve something great.
"Don鈥檛 be afraid to think big. Don鈥檛 be afraid to think about doing good for society, because you are already in the position to be able to do it."
says Yang.
The second story is about when I interned with the Federal Reserve in Kansas City. That was my dream job at the time. I realized that the Fed made all the economic decisions, and I wanted to understand how it worked. My time at the Fed was great. It had great benefits, and I really liked the work, too. For me, even if Serenity Forge didn鈥檛 exist and I had just stayed there, I would probably be happy. However, what changed my life was at one point we were invited to have lunch with then Chairman of the Fed, Dr. Ben Bernanke. That was very interesting because during the time I asked him what advice he had for kids like us coming out of college.
What he said was, if you think about it, a lot of people in the world are really unfortunate. People in rural Africa and China, these are people who have to spend hours every day just trying to get water and food for their families to survive. If you are one of the few people in the world who is able to choose what you want to do with your time, rather than be forced to do what you have to do to survive, then you have the ability to make a difference. That freedom of choice is what you need to find true happiness, and to change the world.
That moment is when I recognized my privilege as someone who is speaking English and living in America. I realized that if I wanted to create something that I wanted to see in the world, I was in the position to do that. That鈥檚 when I made the decision to leave the Fed and start Serenity Forge.
That is probably one of those things that college kids need to hear more. Life is not just about all the stuff that鈥檚 in front of you. You really can do whatever you want if you put your mind to it. Anyone who is attending school at CU Boulder is already in the top 1-2% of human civilization in terms of luck and privilege. So why not use that position and privilege to go out and do something good for the world?
So that鈥檚 my closing advice to college students: Don鈥檛 be afraid to think big. Don鈥檛 be afraid to think about doing good for society, because you are already in the position to be able to do it, way more than 99% of the people out there in the world.
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