Steven Drucker likes to watch – or, more precisely, the Microsoft Research software engineer likes to watch video games. In the late 1990s, Drucker, who holds a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, would wander down to Gameworks, a popular gaming emporium in downtown Seattle. He used to enjoy playing a game called House of the Dead, but by his own admission his games skills left something to be desired. He kept getting killed.

“My quarters would disappear really quickly. Frankly, I was awful,” Drucker explains. “But there were guys there who could play forever on a single credit. They really knew the game, when to duck left and swing right to deal with a really difficult zombie. I was in awe.”

It was while watching these gaming maestros that Drucker had an epiphany, one that would directly lead to technology that not only is included in Microsoft’s latest gaming console, the Xbox 360, but also become the 5,000th patent that Microsoft has received in the United States.

“I suddenly realized that it would be really cool if people could watch really good games players online and from a different point of view, as though they are watching the game play in the theater,” explains Drucker.

The concept drew on research Drucker did for his doctoral thesis, which explored cinematography in virtual worlds. When he started at Microsoft in 1995, Drucker joined the Virtual Worlds team, trying to marry sophisticated graphics with social content in a project inspired by "Snowcrash," the novel by Neal Stephenson.