Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome to the Victory Show.
Hey victors. Welcome to this episode of the Victory Show. If this is your first time joining us, I'm Travis Cody, best selling author of 16 books and the creator of bestseller By Design.
I've had the privilege of helping hundreds of businesses, consultants, founders and entrepreneurs write and publish their own best selling books. And through that journey discovered a really fascinating pattern. A lot of businesses struggle to break past the seven figures per year in revenue. So on this show we sit down with some of the world's most successful founders, CEOs, leaders and business owners to uncover the strategies they use to scale way past that mark so that you can do the same. So get ready for some deep insights and actionable takeaways that you can implement in your life and business. Starting now.
Today's guest sits at the intersection of cutting edge technology, world class game design and the future of medicine. I know those things normally don't go together. That's why today's episode is such a treat. Sam Glasenberg is the founder and CEO of Level X where he leads a team of top tier game developers and physician experts building neuroscience based video games that accelerate medical adoption and education.
Level X is the only company creating games that offer AMA Category 1 CME credit with over a million medical professionals playing their content. Their platform is now used by NASA, major medical societies and 20 of the top 40 medtech and life science companies worldwide. Here's the awesome thing. Before Level X, Sam was CEO of a leading Hollywood game publisher, producing titles based on hit movies like the Hunger Games, Mission Impossible. He also led the DirectX graphics team at Microsoft, earning a technical Emmy for advancing visual visual realism in video games and launching his career creating Star wars games at LucasArts. How cool is that? He's a pioneer in both gaming and healthcare, a frequent speaker on the global stage, and an emerging voice at the frontier of generative AI medicine and immersive training. Sam, thanks for being here. I'm going to make an admission. You're the, you're the first Emmy winner I've had on the, on the show.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: It's a technical Emmy. It's not the ones they show on tv.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: An Emmy is an Emmy and I should also.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: It was, it was on behalf of my team at Microsoft. So, so it was, it was one. On behalf of, I accepted it on behalf of DirectX and the incredible work that team does.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: Well, look, I was just, you know, they, they announced, they, they're, they're doing an Oscar and stunt work. Right. And so next year is going to Be the first one. And I, and I, and I was laughing because I'm going, you know who the first person who's going to win the very first Oscar for stunt work?
Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise is not going to have an Oscar for acting, but I bet you by the time his career over he's got five or six for a stunt work. That to me is hilarious.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: So. Well, I mean an Emmy is an Emmy and his Emmy. That's all I'm saying.
So, so here's like the. Why I was so excited to have our conversation today is that, you know, a lot of the people we speak with are, are traditional MBA guys that study business or entrepreneurs. From a young kid, they're sort of groomed for this sort of thing.
And you were in games and then somehow ended up as a CEO. And so I'm so fascinated about like that, that journey. And you know what, what have been some of the, the roller coaster rides you've had to go through of, of, of managing that. Those two, two things. And maybe they're the same, but I think most people think engineer and, and visual designer and CEO and they don't really like put those things together in one hat.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: I don't know, maybe they should. I still, I still at this point, I do not have an mba.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: That's what I'm saying now.
But how many exits have you had?
[00:03:57] Speaker B: 3.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: So like who cares that there's no NBA there? There's plenty of people with MBAs that have never had a single exit.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: So, you know, nothing, nothing wrong with getting an NBA. Sure. You don't, you don't necessarily need a.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Well, I was look again going on Hollywood because that's my background. Like how many people have won Academy Awards that have never had a day of actor acting training? Right? And then how many people have gone to, to Juilliard that have never even been in a film?
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Right?
[00:04:26] Speaker A: So like that doesn't, doesn't really. Everybody has their own path. And what's really fascinating is. So let's go back. So did you from a young age, did you know you were going to go into video games? Is that like you started out going like someday I'm going to be or how did you, how what was, what was the juncture point there that where were you headed and how did that you veer into to designing games?
[00:04:52] Speaker B: I'm, I'm so. I'm very lucky. You know how they say like you're supposed to, you know, when you figure out what you should do, you know, look at your Hobbies and try to make your hobby your full time job. I've done that I think like three or four or five times.
Um, so I did like in high school. In the 90s I did computer animation as a hobby, which in the 90s was like not a. Yeah, I mean.
[00:05:16] Speaker A: Like you're doing computer, computer graphics on the apple IIe.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Right. I was like, I mean, Toy Story, the first animated film came out in 95.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: So that was my hobby. And I also was pursuing like an engineer and I went to University of Illinois for computer engineering, but did animation as a hobby. I wanted to work in feature film. I wanted to work at like Pixar or dreamworks or ilm. I applied at lucasfilm in the film division and was offered an opportunity in the Games division at LucasArts.
I was actually hired. My first job, I was an animator. I flew Star wars spaceships for, in engine cutscenes for Episode two games.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Ah, that's cool.
So did you did. Was there a time when you were doing that where you're like, how did I end up here?
[00:06:06] Speaker B: Oh, I mean it was so I, I got there, I was like, oh, this seems interesting. And oh boy, immediately I realized this is far more interesting than feature film.
Like, all right, great. You can spend six hours generating a frame. Okay. In video games you have to generate 30 frames a second.
So from an art standpoint, from an engineering standpoint, from a math standpoint, it's way more interesting. And it's totally up to the player.
The player controls that you don't. Player controls every, you know, a lot, the camera. And so the whole neuroscience behind video game design and how do you create things where the player is a part of it and it's interactive and you know, they're not just sitting down and watching something for an hour and a half. They're, you know, they're engaging with the universe for 40, 40 to 80 hours.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: Wow. So, so even back then was. Was Lucasarts like heavily invested in neuroscience and bringing that as part of their game design?
[00:07:06] Speaker B: Yes. In fact, the early, it's like so some of the early, like rules of game design. So game design is sort of this art and a science. People aren't even aware of of it or the depth to which. I mean, the video games industry now is. Generates $200 billion in revenue a year. It's bigger than music and movies combined. Yeah, it's crazy. And the way we do that is because we have, you know, distilled the neurochemical recipe for, for how to engage audiences, how to drive learning how to drive behavior change. And a lot of that early figuring out what that means was happening at companies like LucasArts. There were industry geniuses like Noah Falstein, who actually became an advisor at level X. Decades later was one of the early, like him and Hal Barwood. And some of the designers of the early LucasArts games realized what they were doing. They were creating this new medium. And so they sought out to identify like they had these projects around, like, what are the rules of game design? Like, how do you, you know, how do you distill this from an art to a science? And that was the very beginning. And now we've, you know, over the last few decades that we've been testing this on and iterating on, you know, 3 billion unwitting test subjects. It has become an incredibly deep discipline.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Wow.
So you said something earlier, the rules of neuroscience in game. Like, is there like a. Do you have a cheat sheet? Is there like five unbreakable rules of neuroscience and game design?
[00:08:33] Speaker B: No, there really is.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: I was hoping you had a secret there.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: The brain is far too complicated. There are, there are a few neurochemicals we play with.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: Yeah, dopamine being one of them.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Dopamine is a big one.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: And.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: But you know, the toolbox that the game designer is working with is literally filled with thousands of tools at this point, leveraging cognitive biases, balancing reward and frustration, challenge and skill. How do you keep people in the flow state?
You know, all of these things, you know, become, you know, part of the design of puzzles and strategy games and everything.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: Now is that like level of detail? Is that sort of baked into the pre production of the game where you have that all figured out before you guys ever go into production?
Like the frustrate, the rewards and the frustration and all that sort of stuff?
[00:09:30] Speaker B: Yeah, some, I mean, some of the, the, the high level, you know, that you, you generally are incorporating neuroscience into that design.
However, the only way to hone it is through iteration.
So you know, you, in order to like it, you're making something. It has to, you know, there's scientifically, you can look at it and you can set up the timing and you can say, all right, you know, there should be this many seconds between this and this and this is how I balance it. But then you really need to start playing with it and you need to iterate and you need to hone and tweak. And so that's what game engines are like. They're actually tools to allow game designers to turn dials and tweak things and make the game very different without necessarily having to edit code.
There's a whole design strategy around how you create games, such that expert game designers can come in as teams and. And tweak things and hone things and play things and. And quickly be like, oh, that doesn't feel right. Let's make that. Let's. Let's adjust that.
And then once the game goes live, when you think you're playing the only version of Angry Birds. No, you're not. There's hundreds of thousands of variations.
And what they're doing is they're making slight tweaks to the game in all those variations. So when you play, they're measuring, all right, you have this version, you know, if we shorten the tutorial, if we make this more expensive, if we make this a little harder, a little easier, how does that affect how long you play the game, how frequently you come back, whether you spend money and buy things? And so throughout, they're constantly just iterating and distilling this.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: So Fortnite, there's hundreds of millions of versions of Fortnite floating around.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: Yeah, they're constantly iterating. Well, Fortnite's a little bit trickier because you've got multiple people playing at once. Sure. You got to be a little careful because you can't tweak that. You can't have two people, you know, with different, you know, shield versions in the same game. But they're. They are. They do have other means that because there's so many different games running, so many instances, they, they. They do other. Have other approaches that they use to tweak that.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: So in modern gaming, is. Is like, how big of. Is the monetization aspect of this? Are they really, when they're iterating data, trying to push towards, like, how do we extract maximum money out of the game? Or is it more along the lines of, like, maximum playability? Like, how long can we keep somebody? Like, what's the metric?
[00:11:52] Speaker B: It depends on the business model. Got it. So for free to play games, like games where they're free and they only make money through micropayments, there's a lot of focus first on engagement, because they realize that only players that play a certain amount are going to spend money.
[00:12:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:08] Speaker B: So first, like, how do you actually get someone into the game and excited about it and wanting to come back? And then they focus on monetization.
But there are other. I mean, you still buy, you know, you still will buy games for a fixed price for your game console. Even for your phone. And there, when they're designing it, there's no monetization at all. The monetization happened when you bought the game. The focus is, how do we make this as fun and entertaining as possible? So, you know, you tell your friends about it.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: I love it. All right, so you spent some time at Lucasfilm, lucasarts. How did you end up at Microsoft?
[00:12:43] Speaker B: I had, I think Microsoft had been trying to recruit me since high school.
I won some, like, scholarship that they granted me for college and so.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: So you were on the radar.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: I was, I was, I was on the radar. And so I joined Microsoft in 2000, 2002 or 2003, and shortly after, join the DirectX graphics team.
So my, you know, what I realized when I was at LucasArts is I was an engineer on the art team. I was the only engineer on the art team. So what was great about being at LucasArts was I'm working with the most talented artists in the world.
I quickly realize I am never going to be as good as they are, no matter how much I try. But I'm an engineer. So I'm sitting there, I'm watching all the. Remember, we're making games for PlayStation 2.
The artists are running into, like, all of these limitations of the software and the hardware. Hey, they want to create this or that. They want to be able to have a planet where you can, you know, it's an asteroid and you can fly around it, and the software just doesn't support this stuff.
And so I was like, wait a minute, I can fix that with math. And so I started building tools. And I quickly realized my calling was not to be an artist, but to make sure that the technology and the hardware and the software doesn't get in the way of what the artists want to achieve.
[00:14:05] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: And so that is like, that paved the way toward my work at DirectX, where basically my job was. You know, DirectX is the technology layer that basically defines what graphics hardware needs to be able to do. So part of my job at DirectX was like, we would get the top video game graphics developers from all over the world together. We would sequester them in a resort in Western Washington once a year for a weekend and. Just.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: Sounds right.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
And like, all right, what do you want to achieve visually in a video game in the next 10 years?
And, you know, we would try, like, what do we need? Whether more realistic characters, better environments, you know, what is it? And then what are we going to need in terms of hardware and software to make that happen? So it's really just like the whole thing became. How do you make sure that super creative engineers, designers, artists who have a vision of the universe and the experience they want to create but they can't achieve it because the hardware or the software can't do it. How do you make, move the entire ecosystem forward of Nvidia, amd, Intel, Microsoft, everybody, Xbox so that it's moving in the direction the game developers want to move us into. So that was, that was a grand adventure.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: Wow.
Wow. So where did you go from, from there then you DirectX, like how do you end up and was DirectX one of your first exits? You were part of that team and.
[00:15:28] Speaker B: No, no, DirectX was part of Microsoft. I was Microsoft corporate and had a great time. Had a great time. There are a lot of startup zealots that will tell you like, oh, big corporate is where innovation and creativity go to die. And I would disagree.
The work we were doing in DirectX was cutting edge and it was the kind of thing you couldn't do anywhere else while I was there. My hobby, see the theme.
I would spend my, my vacation time in Israel because there's like a tremendous technology ecosystem out there.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:00] Speaker B: But there was really at that point no games industry. And it was like, kind of like a tragedy because I would go around the world and you would find Israeli expats behind a lot of the cutting edge technology we were leveraging in the games industry. But it was coming out of Israeli expats living in Vancouver or Frankfurt or something.
So I was one of the, like, I kind of helped, I was helping out like an initiative trying to get underway to build a games industry in Israel nowadays. Oh my God. The Israeli games industry is like $8 billion in revenue a year.
It's like 5% of global revenues. It's massive. Massive. But back then it was nothing.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Well, it's interesting because I've spoken to several and I'm friends with a couple people that actually have pretty significant startups that are in Israel. Right. So I always look at it going, what is it about that culture that lends itself to like such the like proficiency with tech stuff especially things are a little bit forward thinking. So I mean it doesn't surprise me that that's, that, that that's where the games are. But like what a fun ride to be kind of in there from the inception and see, see what that's become.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: It was crazy. It was, it was a lot of fun.
Like I helped, I, I was helping company companies raise money.
One of them started really Kind of like put together a great team, built some great tech and actually left Microsoft to join as CEO back.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Wow. 2008, they were like, wait, you're moving to Israel? Because why?
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Well, that you. 2008. So I left my like comfortable job.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Great timing.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: Yeah, great timing. Six months before the world economy went to hell.
Running a pre product, pre revenue startup in a country with very little like hardly any track record in games ended up. Yes. Like getting through that gauntlet and on the other side sort of pivoted it into like one of the go to video game studios for Hollywood making games for Hunger Games and Mission Impossible and Rocky and big franchises was acquired back in 20, about a 10, 12 years ago.
But yeah, that was, that was, that was. I was not the founder.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Sure, yeah, they brought you on board and you helped, helped help Chrome.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: But, but it was, it was a lot of fun.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: So that's amazing. So I, I would love to like pivot into.
So you exited that one, you had another one. But I really want to talk about what was the sort of the genesis of Level X games. Because we talked about that, you know, when we, we spoke previously about how that came about. And it's, you know, you, you guys are the, you know, at the forefront of an industry that is of one right now.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: Which is amazing to me. And, and because most people think, oh, video games, they got all these assumptions and you're like, yes, you've done all those games, Rocky Hunger Games, Mission Impossible, super fun games.
And now you're building games that are essentially training doctors. So I don't think it's a stretch to say that what you're doing is fundamentally impacting and making patient lives better because you're helping doctors be more proficient.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: Yeah. We've actually just launched our first game for patients a few weeks ago really to manage type 1 diabetes. And oh my God, the feedback has been just literally like. Because when it's patience, you know, usually look at hundreds and hundreds of reviews of like my kid was diagnosed two hours ago. We're playing the game in the er, like oh my gosh, this is a lifesaver. People. Like, I've had this disease for three years and now I'm playing this video game and like I'm learning things I didn't realize. So that, you know, it's all look, games is super fulfilling because, you know, it's entertainment and you know, you're, you know, it's a, it's, it's a creative undertaking.
Making games for doctors. Over the last few years has also been. Been incredibly fulfilling. And we basically bring people, like you said, who've worked on everything, you know, Call of Duty, Mortal Kombat, using all that skill and knowledge to help train doctors and now patients.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: That's fantastic. So what, what, what. What was the litmus of the idea?
[00:20:00] Speaker B: Yeah, sorry. By accident.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: It's all, it's all.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: It's all happy accidents or did you have a hobby of. Of being a. A doctor on the side and then that was your other hobby?
[00:20:11] Speaker B: There are laws against that.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: You stayed at a Holly Holiday Inn Express and then.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: Right. Oh, yes, I stayed at a holiday in prison.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: Only people of a certain age will even know what we're talking about.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Right there really is that.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: They.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: They've gotten rid of that. That commercial.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: I haven't seen it in a while, but yeah, it's so.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Yeah, so the, The. It was founded by accident. So my, My hobby basically was one of my hours was making medical games for my dad.
So I've had this impactful career in the games business, which has basically made me the disgrace of my family because I come from a long line of doctors.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: So when you said, you're going to be an engineer in games, they were.
[00:20:50] Speaker B: Like, yeah, that's not a real job job.
In fact, back when. Back when I, when I accepted the Emmy, I called home to be like, hey, mom and dad, you know, I'm accepting this on behalf of my team, and my dad, he's an anesthesiologist. Without skipping a beat, was like, huh?
Yeah, well, in this family, we only recognize Nobel prizes. You're not yet 30 years old. Stop wasting your time and go to med school.
And so basically, the whole way Level X got started was in 2012. He basically gave up and said, all right, Sam, put all this gaming nonsense to good use.
Use your hobby time and make me a game to train my colleagues to do a fiber optic intubation. It's this, like, tricky procedure they only do on difficult patients. So I sit down for. Again, hobby time. So I sit down for three weekends, and I throw together a terrible little game that I upload to the App Store to train fiber optic intubation.
It's like, all right, dad, here's. This is before test flight, like, you had to put in the App Store if anyone had downloaded. So I was like, all right, here you go, dad. Leave me alone.
And two years later, he calls me. I'm making. Remember all this time I'm running this Hollywood game company. This is really.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: So you just kind of put it out and forgot about it.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I was sure nobody was going to download this thing like it was going to be for my dad.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: Yeah, it's pretty specific.
[00:22:09] Speaker B: It's very, very much. So we call, he's like, hey, Sam, how many people download it? Dad, I don't know how many of your friends downloaded your fiber optic laryngoscopy game, but we can check. So I went on itunes, connect, and I discovered, oh, there are a hundred thousand medical professionals playing this thing.
So I google it to try to understand how this happened and I discover, unbeknownst to me, they've been doing efficacy studies at institutions all over the world that showed this like, silly game I made for my dad is substantially improving physician performance.
So I would love to say again, some grand idea or plan, but no.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: It was trying to get your dad to shut up and leave you alone.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: It's guilt. It's just really just trying to get my dad off my back. And, and then once you realized, okay, there's demand for this, then it's what if it wasn't just me?
Right? What if instead we, you know, basically took the top game developers, designers, artists who've worked on everything from, you know, I don't know, Mortal Kombat, Diner Dash, Words with Friends, team them up with hundreds of physician advisors across every major therapeutic area in medicine to advance the practice of medicine through play.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: Right?
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Use game tech, use that neuroscience to literally, like accelerate the adoption curve of new techniques in, in healthcare. So, yeah, no, not again, not a, not a grand idea. Just like it emerged from a happy accident.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: So what, what are some of the applications you're. You're using nowadays? I mean, obviously talk about the diabetic one, but on the doctor side, what. It started with the one specific procedure. How many procedures do your games cover now?
[00:23:49] Speaker B: Oh, I mean now it's already, it's split into two studios. One is focused on surgery.
So surgery and medical device. So they work with NASA and all the big device companies, Boston Scientific, Medtronic, in basically every therapy, every surgical area, from heart surgery to gastroenterology, brain surgery.
They're doing crazy stuff in spine. Like really like the biomechanical puzz of how to, you know, of spine surgery. And then on, on the other side, it's a, there's a clinical game studio services, life science companies.
So working with all the big life science companies, that's where the diabetes stuff comes from. But literally, like puzzle games to train your brain how to diagnose rare disease through reductive reasoning or strategies to manage a difficult patient, like longitudinally over time.
It's real game. It's real game mechanics.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: Design. But, you know, being applied in all sorts of different, you know, being applied in, in highly, highly medical scenarios.
[00:25:02] Speaker A: What a, what a remarkable journey.
I think, like you said, a happy accident. Right. But what is now, what has been some of the feedback that you're getting now that the games are, you're out there and you're the level. Are you like, do you have, are there medical schools, they're now incorporating this as part of their training? Or is this just kind of like if a doctor finds it, they, they find it.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So we have, I think something like half the medical students in the country have a level X game on their phone. But we actually, our focus is not on graduate medical.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: We're not going to teach you how to become a doctor.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: Our focus is continuing education. So you already are a doctor. Now there's a new technique.
Let's give you five lifetimes worth of difficult cases to practice, you know. Oh, okay, great. There's a new therapeutic. Let's now, let's play through the guidelines so you can actually understand how to dose it, when to use it, what patients are indicated for it, you know, how to manage a patient on it. But you know, like, they're, they're going to learn this through play. Like, they're going to learn this through practicing, but they're going to learn it through practicing on live patients if we. Unless you give them a video game that lets them practice on.
Unreal.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: This is phenomenal. So what is. What like, you know, where are you guys at with your company? And what, like knowing that you kind of ended up here as a happy accident. Like, what's the vision you guys have for the next five, ten years with this, with this tech?
[00:26:28] Speaker B: Yeah. So the, the vision is to advance the practice of medicine through play.
So there are few. Like, what does that vision look like? So, you know, when five years ago, if you said level X makes games for doctors, people would go, raise an eye, were like, what's that? Now you say level X makes games for doctors. I go, oh, yeah, love games for doctors. Like, I heard about that. I played.
Oh, okay. And then five years from now, when you say level X makes games for doctors, be like, oh, yeah, games for doctors. Haven't we always had that?
Wasn't that always a thing?
Because our goal is to establish games as a fundamental force accelerating the adoption curve in healthcare.
So, you know, 10 years ago, you come out with A new technique, there's a new therapeutic. You go, okay, I'm gonna go make a video about this or publish a paper or give a presentation.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: Yeah, boring.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean that's necessary work for 100 years, but it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's slow. And instead you go, you know what? Someone really, you really need to like when you get a new phone, you don't read the manual. They don't even come with manuals anymore, right? You go, I got to play with this. Like, someone needs to play with this. You need to develop a mental model of how this works.
We need to make a game for this.
And so it just becomes accepted as one of the fundamental forces in health care across med device, life sciences, medical education, space health, everything.
And so that's what we're doing in healthcare. And then on the game side, we're in the business of genre creation. Like the apex achievement in games is not creating a successful game.
Most of the team at level X has made games played by tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people.
The, the apex achievement is creating a new genre, right? Expanding the relevance of games, expanding the audience. And that's what we're doing. We're creating a genre of medical games.
[00:28:17] Speaker A: Wow. I mean, it seems, it feels fairly fitting knowing that you started it at LucasArts and Lucasfilm and that that brand of companies, because that's what their whole vision was, was how do we take this stuff and push it forward and give it bigger applications. And now you've taken that small little piece and done it in a way that most, you know, again, like absolutely completely unique.
A unique way. That's just, it's fascinating and exciting.
[00:28:44] Speaker B: It comes full circle in so many ways. I was literally at Lucasfilm when they shut down Lucas Learning. George Lucas had all these grand ideas of using games for education.
He was really struggling to get the business model to work and, you know, be able to compete with pure entertainment with his education products. He had to shutter that company. You know, here we are, like, you know, we found this amazing, call it niche, but like, application of this in healthcare training.
And then at the same time, you know, Level X is literally like, we launched a game on the SpaceX mission to train astronauts how to do ultrasound based procedures.
So there we are back on spaceships.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: Full circle. So somebody's listening, watching this episode. They're reading this chapter in the book again. They want to get involved. Either it's a doctor that hasn't heard of you before. How do they, how do they find you? And then flip side on, you know, patients in the diabetic space, like, how do, how do they track down level X games?
Yep.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: You can go to level x.com it's level ex, like expert level, level expert.
You can search for level X in the app store. A whole bunch of apps will pop up. Specifically, you know, the most Recent is type 1 diabetes. You can just search for level 1.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:29:57] Speaker B: In either the iOS App Store or Google Play level 1 a diabetes game down. All these games are free, so feel free to download, play, you know, tell your friends, give us some feedback.
[00:30:13] Speaker A: All right, Sam, thank you so much for your contributions to what you're doing. It's fascinating. I love it. And thanks for taking time out of your busy day to be here.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: Likewise. Thank you for having me, Travis. Anytime.
