By Harold Goldberg

On Monday afternoon, Tom’s Guide’s Sherri Smith and I traveled to the DreamYard School in the Bronx to mentor the young people there. This is the same school for which we raised scholarship money, announced at our Awards ceremony last year.

Sherri was kind enough to bring two Samsung Gear VR’s with her. You could see the group’s eyes light up when she removed the headsets from her knapsack.

It was a wondrous kind of afternoon, at least for me. The 15 kids there had never seen virtual reality before. Two by two, Sherri placed the Gears on every head of everyone who wanted to experience the new world. As critics, we tend to become somewhat cynical or cavalier about the games and technology we receive. Or sometimes, try to outdo one another by exaggerating the positives of something we like.

But what you’ll see below in this short video is unfettered and pure. It shows the joy of setting foot into somewhere that’s completely new. It’s true.

In the months ahead, we’ll continue our work with The DreamYard. And we’ll looking into expanding our program to other schools as well. It’s not simply the fun thing to do. It’s the right thing to do.

Harold Goldberg, the author of All Your Base Are Belong to Us (How 50 Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture), is the founder of The Circle.