While I'm glad you recovered, and of course that you found further meaning in life through video games (I'm trying to do that too!), I'm extremely curious about what was that damned illness that came out of the blue. Thank you Z for sharing this experience, and I sincerely hope you are still doing well (:

Hi Z, I felt so identified with your story. During hard moments in my life, videogames were there to help me out and make me feel good. Thank you a lot for bringing this wonderful point of view to the gaming industry.

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That is one plan I've been having! I will be going to college to learn game design at Digipen and my first idea of a project was about suicide prevention. I hope more can do the same and make "help" driven games. Thank you for making the games you have and I wish you the warmest holiday wishes I can!

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LaZodiac from the story it sounds like cancer. I'm basing this opinion because Z's treatment include chemotherapy and low platelet counts can be symptomatic can be indicative of some cancer. But who knows...

It was a very rare form of an autoimmune disease. My immune system essentially thinks all of my platelets are evil and kills every single one it can find. This made it extremely difficult for any type of long-term cures. Truth be told, till this day I still have it, although it did get a lot better. I'm able to sit in front of a computer, type code and draw pictures, and I love every second of it.

*whistles* Damn. When the human body goes wrong, it REALLY goes wrong. I'm glad you're okay (ish). Keep up the good work, and good luck.

Serenity Forge Hey, you're the dude from the video, right? Hope you're doing well.

Beautiful story :)

Public Health Care at its finest, anywhere you live.

Winhert well what are they supposedly to do about it?

*supposed

Actually not much can be done to prevent frequent separate cases of "sorry we won't medicate you because its so expensive we'd rather spend that money on saving other 100 people" (I guess they could parachute it team of specialists in that case real quick but that would cost a lot) until maybe next century, when hopefully medicine would be cheap.

Not gonna lie, Public health care in most first world nations is a lot more caring and personal than the USA - not everywhere of course, but Australia, France, Germany...

Stupid ninjas cutting onions in my house again

I shed a single, manly tear. That's not crying. That's showing respect.

*we're crying

I want to know if am only one who was crying

I beg to differ.

Extra Credits Hey, I started doing graphic design because of Grand Theft Auto 5. My mom hates that game but loves what I'm doing based on it.

i just have to ask... what was the diagnosis? what causes someone to bleed out like that? i mean i guess it was a type of cancer cause of the remark about Chemotherapy at the end but what kind of cancer caused that

Was the disease a sort of bone marrow neoplasm?

Its odd... GTAV was the only game my Mom liked seeing me play due to the complex storyline and memorable soundtrack!

Extra Credits so if it's not too personal, what was the reason for his dropping platelet count?

2 years later, I discover extra credits and I see these amazing stories. That's when I think video games matter.

I actually hope this becomes a yearly tradition. I would love to hear more direct stories from people whose lives have been strongly impacted by games. Even not video games, but games in general, though of course this series focuses on video games. It's nice to see the personal impact and be reminded of why we promote this medium, why it's more than merely an amusement or a time-waster.

This isn't interesting enough to do a video on, but I've had Lyme disease for the past 20 years so I can't work or go to school. I've also had chronic pain in my hands for the past 10 years so I've played a lot less video games and almost always used an alternate control setup rather than holding the controller in my hands. I don't have any friends IRL and not many online, but I have met 2 really cool guys on Steam. By sheer coincidence, both are older than me (I'm in my late 30s) and both live in Australia. More recently, I've started a KZfaq gaming channel and it's given my life a renewed sense of purpose. I've never worked a full time job and haven't worked any job for over 10 years, but this is the closest thing to that. And I even enjoy editing videos which many would find tedious and boring.

Even longer than the 5 minutes it took until Namek exploded!

It's a very, very rare condition. So rare that not every doctor even knew about it.

George Harris The chance that you'll develop idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) is really low. According to the Internet, there are less than 30,000 US cases per year.

Timebolt well done

We have a similar problem, mine was also about failing and how helpful the voice inside me. it started to happen when i suddenly feel afraid to do literally anything (even for ex. taking a bath or go get some food). first times i really don't care, i thought i'm just a bit restless. but it got worse drastically when I failed to do something, it worsen dramatically when i consider myself a failure after failing to please my teacher (he was pleased tho, i just don't know and still consider myself a failure anyway). This was not end there, each time i failed to do something my fear grew, again and again. until i literally covered in fear. I cant do anything, something simple became scary, I failed certain class again and again because of this fear. I became depressed. I really a big disadvantage for me. this fear messed up my life. i gain weight because i workout less and less, i eat everything i can even tho not healthy, i cant sleep normally because my fear will spiked like crazy when i tried to sleep so the only option is slept when i actually too tired to wake. The only thing I can do to forgot about this fear was by playing game, i always like fantasy world, that's why i play a lot of MMORPG (guild wars 2 and FF14 at that time). Playing those games makes my brain and imagination free and runs wild, i always have a wild imagination about fantasy world. but the games did not solve the problem. Of course i ask my parent for help but they just straight think of me as being lazy. my PC got replaced by a low mediocre laptop, but hey, as long as i can play certain game in potato (lowest) resolution, im fine with it, but i was not fine with how my parents treat me, the last people that got to be my support became my threat. but my teacher who i always considered as a father figure always help me, he doesn't care about my failure and keep working on how i can control my fear. It change suddenly when I have a long silent thought when I walked to my home. I realize that until now, i'm not fighting against my fear, trauma, or anxiety. I'm fighting against myself, MYSELF. that explain why i always fell exhausted and never succeed. even achieving something that got to be meaningful for me give me no happiness. after realizing this, in my way home i found my friend that i kinda consider as my older sister, she also fight the same battle. there she told me about her story and it gave me another deeper meaning where i actually the monster. I WAS THE MONSTER THAT CAUSING THIS. I torture myself by thinking i was a failure. Everytime I feel like i was winning against the monster, i actually hurting myself even more. I feel exhausted that day, and decided to take a nap. I dream about meeting my other self. My other self that i always think as the monster, my other self that i genuinely hated, yet my reaction was I run toward him and hug him immediately. Tears pouring like crazy when i beg for forgiveness after what i have done to my own self and my other self. waking up my face was drenched with tears. that time was the time i began notice about my inner self. day by day passed and i know a lot more about myself. until the day when the fear started leaking again. I kinda angrily ask my inner self "what do you want ?" (which mean what my inner self wanted so that i can escape this fear) and in a split second, he asked me "what do you want?" (which mean what i actually want to do or achieve in my life). i paused in a moment, those fear just gone, everything seems quite and i suddenly ask myself (not my inner self) "what do I want ? " 23 years i never actually think about that question. I started to ask my decision, and rewrite my future, while keep searching for what i really want and like to do in my life. I started to explore my childhood and found out that my current background is way different than my parents, that explain why they cannot see the way i see my problem. I realize that to the point before i find my inner self, i always desperately ask attention and acceptance from my parents (that is impossible to get btw). I always try to make my parents proud and seriously never manage to get that sense of AchiEvement. My parents is not a bad parent really, they just did not realize that they chained me and planted that seeds of fear. I began to realize that they have always been one of my biggest threat and finding that i got second child syndrome make that matters make more sense. The sense of failing actually caused by how my parents treat me in my childhood, every failure i considered as failure, were because that's the way my parents think. maybe they did not realize it but the massage they give me in my childhood was that they did not tolerate any failure, until i realize that those failures are not failures in my eye, they are progress. today, I don't really care anymore about what my parents think, i already found a new goal (which is finding what i want to do). I don't hate them tho but I realize that their attentions are not worth it anymore. My life became much much better, i eat vegetable and fruits more. i always wake up at 4 to 5 am, i can sleep normally and i found a new hobby (drawing fantasy characters :D). the anxiety became much tolerable, i starting to see that my fear and anxiety are my other selves that i need to safe. I still play game to this day even tho it became less and less, because the number of game i can play is limited due to my below average laptop. but hell yeah i will someday bought my own high end PC and explore another new fantasy world with my other inner selves. Without game i maybe used drugs or alcohol to fight this fear, maybe i smoked also, but no, the game saved me, and now it times for me to save myself. my massage to you guys are, make peace with yourself, find what you want, accept your weakness till you realize those are not weakness but just how and who you are. Peace guys, hope for the best for those who have the same challenge and for those who have not yet gone through it. hope my experience helps.

I cried ;-;

BananaTassium And sad

I'm getting goosebumps right now. This is ... just wow. I can't find any words for this other than wow.

BananaTassium But what matters is that he survived

I almost started crying

Because it's December.

LucianoThePig I think they're talking a week of for Christmas.

yeah they need a break and i guess there aren't any further storietellers who contacted extra credits yet (?)

spectacle creep? the first one was about how games cured her eyesight, the second about how games fixed his social life and now is about how games saved his life, if this tendency keeps going on the fourth chapter needs to be how games saved the city

Maybe we can tell our own stories here and help them make it a series. :D

Extra Credits don't stop with this series. This series is incredible.

Extra Credits bring this back next year

Have a nice xmas and new year

I'm 100% all for this. I loved this series and it reminded me just how much games impacted me in the past. I haven't been able to get into games for a long time, due to work and life, but video games (especially Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies) shaped how I interact with people. Awesome.

Merry Christmas for you guys!!! Have an amazing 2017!

Those are the bad ones. The ones who lack something known as "Bedside Manners". An important skill that most doctors unfortunately lack.

Fromaster24 Honestly if they started showing me off to groups of med students as if I was in a zoo I'd he fucking pissed.

Sadly the only way to fix this is more money. a Lot of things are lost in the medical industry because there's simply not enough time and money available for Doctors and Nurses to give everyone the attention they need. And sadly few countries see the point in allocating more funds to healthcare when it could go towards the military instead.

Different people have different world views. I know for myself I would always want to face reality head on, which means I want to know the truth of my situation, and if I only have two hours to set my affairs in order I want to get started on it asap. Sometimes "help" can be just letting someone make their own decisions, on their own terms. They can't do that if they don't know what's going on.

The worst part is just "Hey you're gonna die. Here's your will. Kthanxbai". You don't just leave someone there like that! That's insane!

smilly456 no you're crying

Lance Dagon no you're crying

it's ninja and their onion!

it's ninja and their onion!

why not this one

Andrew Bondarenko See: November 8, 2016

So are you talking about the elections? If so, why not just say so?

Guy It's called subtlety.

MagnuMagnus But this is the KZfaq comments section. There's no point in being subtle.

Now 4 :(

now 8.. ._. but its the internet..

TheApoke and there's 45

Bud 10001100101000 no they really haven't I can think of a number of games that were meant to be a thought provoking experience first and a game second, and would not at all call them an abysmal failure", Soma springs to mind immediately.

Bud The Cyborg But only 2 more people disliked after a month... Maybe we need to be more open-minded.

Combinemon the description of the illness made me feel faint myself

Yeah, what I experienced here was similar to what I'd go through in biology classes discussing the circulatory system. In some contexts blood just squicks super hard. Something about almost literally feeling the blood move through yourself at high pressure in sync with the words and pictures explaining it, making it real. Which is odd, since I can deal with gore just fine.

You too Mr... Nothing. May your life get ever brighter!