Keanu Reeves in The Matrix was a big inspiration for Riz Virk.

The DeanBeat: Riz Virk interview — Do we live in The Simulated Multiverse?

Rizwan “Riz” Virk is a successful entrepreneur, investor, bestselling author, video game industry pioneer, and indie film producer. We’re also not quite sure if he exists, as one of his favorite subjects is discussing whether or not we are all living in a simulation.

You know, like the computer-generated reality that sci-fi author Philip K. Dick posited in the speech that he delivered in Metz, France, in 1977. Or the vision from the film The Matrix. Or the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One. That’s why we’ve signed him up as a roundtable moderator at our GamesBeat Summit Next event on November 9-10 and as a speaker at our upcoming GamesBeat Summit: Into the Metaverse 2 event coming on January 26-27.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.