The answer's threefold. First, it was the discovery of litrpg as the perfect lens to say what I've always wanted to say. Second, there was a tipping point where I couldn't find the book I wanted to read so I decided to start writing. Third, it was the realization of the brevity of life and the decision to appreciate what I want to while I can.
I've always wanted to convey the beauty of the human spirit as expressed by gaming at the highest levels. I've witnessed some of the world's best gamers, and their dedication to their craft is utter beauty. Some more well-known examples:
Remember watching Boxer micro for the first time? No hacking or simplistic min-maxing or reliance on luck. His jaw-dropping brilliance elevated an entire generation of players.
Or what about Daigo's comeback, perhaps THE greatest moment in the history of competitive fighting games? I can watch that video over and over. And the more you understand, the more you realize how great this moment is. A casual observer would think, it's a great comeback. But then you explain that you have to parry every single hit from the super attack. Mindblown. Actually, you have to initiate the attack before the animation freeze. Whoa. And the last parry is a jump + parry to make sure the resulting combo has enough damage for a kill. Get out of here! Explain the danger of chip damage, the mind games to give his opponent the chance for a super, the ice cold nerves to pull that off in live tournament play. Speechless.
Whether it's the well-oiled teamplay of a Guild Wars I world championship or the godly precision of a roguelike beaten at impossible difficulty levels, I wanted to express the human drive, creativity, and perfection that exists at the edges of insanity. This is as close as you can get to people playing with their lives on the line, when you strip away everything else to touch the heart of gaming. I want other people to experience the sweat, blood, and tears.
I also wanted to explore character progression, in the gaming sense, as a device to illuminate character development, in the literary sense. How many times have you agonized spending each point in an RPG? Looking up GameFAQs, reading all of the help files, trying to decide which path of a skill tree to follow? I wanted a story where choices of stats and skills had a weighty meaning, and to connect them with a character's worldview.
That doesn't mean there's one right way to min-max a class, yet at the same time there is. An example of this is in old school kung fu movies. You would have the Praying Mantis Style, or the Tiger Claw Style, or all sorts of individual flavors. There wasn't a right way to learn kung fu. At the same time, though, there was. All of the masters would share the same overall understanding and realize that they were on different paths to the same end. But they still made their decisions based on who they were. Fighting and inner philosophy were linked. That's apparent in the highest levels of video gaming as well.
There's a lot of other themes I've wanted to explore. VR doesn't interest me so much as the convergence of AI and VR, which raises questions about perceptions, reality, life (Bladerunner style). The fear of death, which I think is the primary motivation for the greatest human achievements, is a long-standing fascination of mine, twisted in litrpg by the possibility of immortality. Basically, litrpg offers a new way to explore timeless themes. The difficulty is prioritizing them within the context of a great story.