I get the impression that it's basically that he has never known defeat in his adult life and now he is eager tho find his limits. Supported by the old midlife-crisis mechanism, is this all there is? Now or never! And VR is likely a bit of a childhood dream thing: to people who grew up in the home computer era virtual reality is just as much "how the future was supposed to be" as space rockets and flying cars are to those born twenty years earlier.
