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Short answer: In a 2021 GamesBeat interview, entrepreneur and author Rizwan “Riz” Virk lays out a speculative idea: our reality might be a computer-generated world, with multiple possible timelines or repeated “runs.” The interview explains how he connects that idea to video games, virtual reality, quantum mechanics and the Mandela Effect. It does not establish that the universe is simulated; it is an edited conversation about a philosophical hypothesis, not a report of a scientific discovery.
What the GamesBeat article is
“The DeanBeat: Riz Virk interview — Do we live in The Simulated Multiverse?” is an edited interview by GamesBeat journalist Dean Takahashi. It was first published on September 24, 2021, and the page says it was updated on June 19, 2025. The page lists a reading time of about 27 minutes. The conversation centers on Virk’s book The Simulated Multiverse, which was then due to be released on October 15, 2021, and follows his earlier book The Simulation Hypothesis.
The timing matters: the interview appeared amid heightened discussion of virtual reality, alternate realities and the metaverse. Its technology references and forecasts reflect the conversation’s 2021 setting; they should not be read as a current assessment of how close technology is to reproducing reality.
Who is Riz Virk?
GamesBeat introduces Virk as an entrepreneur, investor, author, computer scientist, video-game-industry figure and indie-film producer. The article also describes him as founder of Play Labs at MIT, operator of Bayview Labs, and a venture partner with Ridge Ventures and Griffin Gaming Partners. It lists investments in companies including Tapjoy, Telltale Games, Discord, Funzio, Pocket Gems, Moon Express, Theta Labs and Bitmovin.
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That background helps explain why Virk reaches for games and computing as ways to discuss reality. It does not independently validate his claims about the nature of the universe. Experience in technology or investing is not evidence that a philosophical theory is true.
What “simulated multiverse” means in Virk’s model
The phrase combines two ideas that are often discussed separately:
- The simulation hypothesis: the possibility that the world we experience is generated by an advanced computational system.
- A multiverse or branching histories: the possibility of multiple outcomes, timelines or runs of reality.
Virk favors “digital multiverse” or “simulated multiverse” because he is interested not only in one simulated world, but also in alternate timelines or repeated simulations in which variables differ. He describes a “multiverse graph”: a way of picturing the present as one state among many possible states, with different paths leading to different futures or, in some versions of the idea, different pasts.
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That is Virk’s hybrid framework, not a single accepted scientific definition of “multiverse.” The term has different meanings in cosmology, physics, philosophy and fiction. Nor does describing a possible world as computational show that it actually is one.
Why games and VR are central to the interview
Virk says a VR ping-pong experience helped prompt his interest. He recalls briefly forgetting he was wearing a headset. In his telling, the persuasive part was not simply visual realism: the environment responded convincingly to his actions and behaved in ways that felt physically coherent.
Games offer an intuitive vocabulary for his theory. A game contains a state, rules and possible changes to that state; a player can replay it with different choices or starting conditions. Virk uses these familiar ideas to imagine how a simulated reality might represent possible futures. The analogy can make abstract possibilities easier to picture, but it has limits: video games have designers and rendering systems because people built them. The resemblance between a game and some features of experience does not show that the universe has the same underlying structure.
The “simulation point”
Virk uses “simulation point” for a hypothetical threshold at which virtual or augmented experience becomes indistinguishable from physical reality. In the interview he says he has a 10-stage framework and places basic VR and AR around stage four. The progression he describes includes more convincing VR and AR and, eventually, more direct interaction between digital systems and human perception through brain-computer interfaces.
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This is Virk’s conceptual framework, not a validated technical scale, measured benchmark or established industry roadmap. The interview does not provide a formal specification for the stages. His suggestion that reaching such a point could take several decades or perhaps a century is a personal projection from 2021, not a dependable forecast. Current immersive technology is not evidence that we are close to creating a conscious, universe-scale simulation.
Quantum mechanics: an influence, not proof
Virk connects his argument to quantum superposition, quantum computing and the idea that information may be fundamental to how reality is described. The interview also invokes physicist John Wheeler’s phrase “it from bit” and David Deutsch’s discussion of qubits. Virk uses these ideas to suggest that reality could be understood as information processed across possible states.
That is a philosophical interpretation of physics, not a result established by quantum mechanics. Quantum superposition does not, by itself, mean that the universe is searching through alternate video-game states. Quantum computers exploit quantum effects to perform particular computations; their existence does not demonstrate that the cosmos is a computer simulation. The interview offers no empirical observation showing that our world is being rendered or run by an external system.
A useful way to assess any part of the argument is to ask four questions: What exactly is being claimed? Is it an empirical claim, a philosophical proposal, a metaphor or a fictional analogy? What evidence is offered? And could the claim be tested or shown false? A hypothesis that can accommodate every possible observation may remain interesting philosophy while being difficult to evaluate scientifically.
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The interview discusses the Mandela Effect: reports of people sharing a memory that conflicts with the commonly documented record. The familiar example is the claim by some people that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s or early 1990s, although he was released in 1990 and died in 2013. Virk considers whether such mismatches might relate to altered variables or alternate timelines.
That is an interpretation, not evidence that timelines have changed. Human memory is reconstructive: people can misremember, absorb details from others, or become more confident in a shared recollection through social reinforcement. A group reporting the same mistaken memory does not establish a parallel universe, and the interview does not demonstrate that the Mandela Effect has a supernatural or multiverse cause.
NPCs, player characters and agency
Virk sketches two ways of imagining people in a simulated world. In an NPC model, people are like non-player characters—figures observed or controlled by a system. In an RPG model, people are more like players inhabiting characters, with some agency within the world. He connects the second picture to spiritual and religious ideas about incarnation, life purpose, death and another life.
These models carry different implications, but neither is established. An NPC interpretation could encourage fatalism or make people seem less worthy of concern. A player-character interpretation may preserve a sense of purpose and choice. Neither follows automatically from the simulation hypothesis, and neither provides evidence for it.
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The interview moves between the possibility that our own reality is simulated and the prospect of humans building persistent virtual environments. Those are related ideas, but they are not interchangeable. A metaverse generally means networked virtual or mixed-reality spaces in which people interact; the simulation hypothesis is a claim about the underlying nature of the world we already inhabit.
Virk points to game-like environments such as Roblox, NVIDIA’s Omniverse concept, virtual humans and avatars as examples of how human-built simulations could develop. Such systems can be useful for entertainment, collaboration, design or industrial digital twins. Their existence shows that people can construct virtual environments—not that our universe is one. Likewise, a digital agent or convincing avatar should not automatically be treated as a conscious person.
What the idea could mean ethically
Takahashi raises a serious concern: if people believe ordinary life is only a game, might they become indifferent to suffering or treat death as merely exiting a simulation? Virk argues that the opposite response is also possible. If actions have consequences within the “game,” the analogy could encourage people to act responsibly.
Neither reaction is guaranteed. The ethical questions remain real even if the hypothesis is unproven: Would a simulated world be less morally significant if its inhabitants could suffer? What rights would conscious virtual beings deserve? Who would control a future simulated environment, and could its inhabitants consent to being created or monitored? Speculating about simulation should not be used to dismiss real-world pain, excuse harmful behavior or declare other people less real.
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What the interview does—and does not—show
The article is useful as a map of Virk’s thinking: it brings together games, VR, science fiction, religious ideas, quantum concepts and questions about alternate histories. It is not a controlled investigation of those ideas, and it does not systematically test them. In particular, it does not show that quantum physics proves simulation theory, that the Mandela Effect indicates timeline changes, or that emerging VR and brain-computer interfaces are close to recreating reality.
Some arguments for simulation are conditional rather than observational. For example, a Bostrom-style line of reasoning says that if advanced civilizations can create many conscious simulations and choose to do so, simulated observers might outnumber non-simulated ones. That conclusion depends on disputed assumptions about civilization survival, computing capacity, consciousness and the number of simulations produced. Even if the premises were accepted, it would be a probabilistic philosophical argument—not direct evidence that this particular universe is simulated.
For readers approaching the interview as a documentary or science explainer, the distinction is important: it is an interview transcript, not a documentary film or a consensus statement from physicists. Its strongest contribution is cultural and conceptual. Whether reality is simulated remains an open philosophical speculation, not a verified scientific finding.
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