I still remember loading Assassin’s Creed around 2008 on my old PC and watching it crawl at just a few frames per second. Frustrated but determined, I cracked open the case, swapped out parts, and kept tinkering until it worked. What started as a way to play a game quickly became something bigger: my introduction to how technology works.
That moment wasn’t unique. For decades, gaming has quietly driven the same kind of curiosity — and major leaps in technology itself.
The demand for more realistic 3D graphics in the ’90s, from titles like Doom and Quake, pushed companies to create powerful graphics cards. Initially, those GPUs were designed specifically to make shadows sharper and explosions look cooler. But today, they’ve become the backbone of modern computing. Artificial intelligence, medical research, video editing, and cryptocurrency mining all run on the descendants of hardware built for games.
And here’s a fun twist: even the U.S. military got in on it. In 2010, the Air Force strung together 1,760 PlayStation 3 consoles to build the “Condor Cluster,” then one of the fastest supercomputers in the world. Why PlayStation 3s? Their processors offered exceptional efficiency and affordability compared to traditional supercomputer components. Gaming technology was literally powering national defense.
(Condor Cluster)
Crypto tells a similar story. Those same graphics cards made Bitcoin mining possible in the early days. Looking back, I sometimes joke that if I had mined a few coins with my old rig, I’d be a billionaire today. Instead, I walked away with something just as valuable: an early lesson in how fast technology changes, and how curiosity pays off in the long run.
Today, the semiconductor arms race that gamers once fueled has gone global. NVIDIA and AMD—companies once known mainly for making PC games run smoother—are now among the most important players in the world, powering everything from AI to self-driving cars.
Looking back, I realize gaming was never “just screen time.” It fostered problem-solving, curiosity, and discovery. Whether you grew up in the arcade, on a Nintendo, or cracking open a PC tower, gaming has been a teacher all along. In chasing better games, we accidentally built the future.
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