At 18, doctors gave him 3 hours to live. At 35, this founder built a multi-million game studio

At 18, Zhenghua Yang’s freshman year at the University of Illinois in 2008 was supposed to be ordinary—classes, late nights, and campus life. Instead, weeks into the semester, his world collapsed. On Halloween, a sudden nosebleed turned into a medical emergency. Yang’s body was critically short of blood platelets, and doctors warned he had only three hours to live. What followed was two years in and out of hospitals, fighting a rare condition that nearly ended his life, Fortune reported.

During that ordeal, Yang found refuge in video games like League of Legends, Minecraft, and World of Warcraft. “Games like League of Legends weren’t really made to help me, but in the end, they basically saved my life,” Yang told the publication. “What if I start making games with the intention to help people? What kind of power would that be able to unlock?”

From survival to startup

Those questions stayed with him when he transferred to the University of Colorado Boulder to study business. With just $1,000, Yang launched Serenity Forge—a game development and publishing studio built on a mission he wrote between lectures: “We create meaningful and emotionally impactful experiences that challenge the way you think.”