Stephen Machuga

From the time I could walk, I’ve had various video game controllers in my hands at all times. So it should come as no surprise that video gaming helped acclimatize me back into normal life when I redeployed from a 13-month tour in Iraq.

My particular problem was trash pickup day. In Iraq, insurgents hid explosive devices in piles of trash littering the sides of every road in the country, so every time we would drive by one, you would just wait for it to blow up in your face. Fast forward to coming back home, and imagine driving to the mall on trash day, where there were piles of trash all over the place around my house. Sure I was safely back home, but the subconscious search for wires coming out of garbage piles made it extremely difficult to leave my house.

Fortunately for me, a little game called World of Warcraft came out a few weeks after I got home from Iraq. I remember standing at the

[Programming descriptions are generated by participants and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SXSW.]