It’s night in North Carolina in the early 2000s, and video game designer Cliff Bleszinski is driving his Dodge Viper around, feeling sad. He’s making a macho-but-ruminative video game about chainsawing aliens called Gears of War, and his marriage is failing. The song he listens to on the car stereo is Gary Jules and Michael Andrews’ melancholy piano cover of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World.”

