Big games come in small packages.

I was five when I was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of brain cancer. My parents were told there was a strong chance I wouldn't survive, and that if I did, I might be deaf or blind.

They ran IQ tests on me before the surgery, to measure what removing the cancer would do to a child. It changed my mind forever. I came out with severe damage to the left side of my brain. The neurologists who read my MRIs still can't explain how I talk.

I spent about a year in the hospital afterward. I couldn't move much, so I read, watched movies, listened to music.

Then I found video games.

They gave me something nothing else in that room could. Agency. A world outside four walls. The characters on the screen were my friends, and they helped me survive.

Soon I was making my own, terrible pen-and-paper games I passed around the ward. I haven't stopped since.

Because I was considered terminally ill, Make-A-Wish offered me anything I wanted. Meet a celebrity, go to Disney, anything.

I told them Disney is a few days at most, but a computer will change my life.

It did. I taught myself to program, then everything around it: fixing PCs, networking, woodworking for arcade cabinets, electrical engineering to wire them up. Every road I've taken leads back to games.

For years I made games and showed almost no one. It never felt like enough. But that kid in the hospital bed didn't learn to make games to keep them to himself.

That changes now.