Episode 2 | New Dad Gaming

[0:09] welcome this is new dad gaming a show about fatherhood gaming and dads figuring out their gaming’s lives i’m trevor and i have a three month old

[0:21] i’m gavin i have a six week old and i’m jeff i have a five year old and a two and a half year old

[0:30] so jeff wins the number game so far i think he’s got a bit of an answer

[0:41] never say that in front of your kids i have the most kids i lose uh just kind of off the top of your head

[0:48] guys how was your week kid and gaming wise gavin uh fussy and sporadic i guess would be the two uh main

[1:00] descriptors i know right now my daughter is a little bit on the the fussier side but uh you know what’s to be expected it’s kind of

[1:08] that stage so uh it’s been some some later nights um which is kind of

[1:16] like because right now it’s hard to really get much done because she’s very very needy so

[1:22] um it’s kind of taken over the amount of time that both my wife and i have in regards to just getting things done like

[1:31] just simple tasks like housework um or sleep so those two have kind of used served uh much of our leisure time any leisure

[1:38] time that we have is like passive stuff like passive entertainment like uh watching tv shows or something like that um i’ve done a bit of gaming this week

[1:47] i’ve been able to uh you know play a couple hours here and there of dying light and uh also got to check out the start of um

[1:57] the uh lovers in the dangerous space time got to play a bit of that and that was a lot of fun uh as i already knew from playing at

[2:04] council’s times at various shows and whatnot um and yeah it’s just been a bit of a bit of a juggling act um just trying to find

[2:13] it’s again been a hit one of those uh prioritization walls you know that you get when you are a parent whether new or

[2:21] you know seasoned uh you know sometimes it’s just like okay well you know fun time or hobby time that’s got to be set aside regardless of what the hobby is

[2:30] because this thing needs to get done or or this this thing that this responsibility spilled over into time that i usually a

[2:37] lot for this responsibility and it kind of uh you know

[2:42] one knocks the other into another zone into another zone another zone and then before you know what that free time has been eaten up and you’re like okay well

[2:49] try again in a couple days or what not except for podcasts you always make room for podcasts yeah always make time for podcasts there’s always room for

[2:57] podcasts and jello how about you jeff how was your week um well if you asked me last week you i would have said great because it was the

[3:07] first week of school you’re doing a happy dance like just yeah yeah school tired them right out they came home fell asleep at seven it

[3:17] was great i had the whole night to myself this week they’ve adapted so it is the energy level is riding high all

[3:27] night and it’s kind of a kind of a chore to get them to bed but i can gain a couple hours at night to do some gaming but you know the first week

[3:35] was great first week back at school is awesome second week it’s just they they know that they’re not they’re gonna pace

[3:42] themselves during the day and keep that energy for home so it’s a little bit different yeah i would i would play tag but i need to torture my father when i

[3:50] get back so count me out i’m not interested yeah only so many good uh

[3:57] rounds of you know a tetherball and it’s like okay i gotta save some gas for later yeah

[4:04] yeah i guess for myself it was um it’s you know it’s great like as you’re watching your kid grow especially at this phase like gavin i’m sure you’re in

[4:12] the same boat with a one month old but this week and a little bit towards the last last week he learned how to grab things and seeing him interact for the

[4:20] first time he’s hitting this thing and he actually grabbed hold of something and pulled it so it played music it’s amazing

[4:26] but but a kid’s brain does not seem to have enough room in it because he forgot how to sleep so it was just a just just

[4:34] just like a terrible week as far as putting him down now now the world’s so exciting he doesn’t want to sleep now that he realizes that weight i can move

[4:42] this this this meaty claw at other objects and the meaty claw will

[4:50] adhere to these objects and then move them around in space like that that’s like a paradigm shift in his concept of reality so

[4:59] like i wouldn’t be able to sleep that’d be like somebody explaining black holes to me and i understand it for once and it’s like well i can’t sleep after

[5:05] that i don’t know if the um yeah you might gavin if your kid has a meaty claw you might want to talk to a

[5:12] doctor that’s what did the doctor just tell you don’t don’t worry he’ll grow out of it he’ll grow fingers okay it’s a family

[5:18] tree it’s okay the cabin family claw that’s very clean and nice it’s on our crest

[5:28] yeah and so we have a topic for the week but before we got into that i did want to propose something to you both for myself as far as gaming the only

[5:35] thing i actually was able to touch besides a little bit of lovers in a dangerous space time much like gavin which

[5:42] just uh unbelievable unbelievable what they were able to put together that was such a great game i’m excited to play the rest but otherwise i mostly played

[5:49] hearthstone and as you get into it there’s a whole meta game there’s a tournament about to start and i think you can win like a

[5:56] hundred thousand dollars and it’s nuts and it kind of gave me the thought and i’d like to pose it to you both

[6:03] now that professional gaming is a thing it can be a career like they reach

[6:10] a recent league of legends game where the team the winning team won like 8 million or something absurd like that you can climb the upper echelons of that

[6:19] and make a career of it if you went back and you were a young man with time on your hands to dedicate do you think you’d try to be a professional

[6:27] gamer um myself no uh like there i i hit kind of a similar

[6:36] fork in the road when i was younger as far as going into the sport pursuit of something that i was heavily involved in

[6:43] um and there was a opportunity like a viable one to kind of take it a little bit more seriously and and pursue it a

[6:51] little more seriously or would i focus more on my my academics and my my studies and art and stuff like that um i found that uh

[7:02] i kind of myself personally just kind of thought of it the long game in regards to okay well what sort of what happens after like what happens

[7:11] after i’m too old to pursue this this sport anymore like you know when my my hips just won’t do it or when these these young kids are

[7:20] uh you can say you can say it’s belly dancing totally um so yeah it was kind of just kind of

[7:27] thought about like you know with with most competitive pursuits or at least a lot of them there there is

[7:34] a bit of a shelf life to it and i think with something like gaming too um gaming is very much uh things come out so quickly and

[7:42] sometimes people get attached to one game and they don’t pursue the new one that comes out so i’m not sure what the shelf life to

[7:48] to that would be and what happens when you’re done like do you become a professional gaming coach you know it’s it’s not like another

[7:57] sports issue where like because like with each game comes a new set of rules a new set of strategy a new set of training

[8:05] it’s not like um like something like a like just a your standard sport competition or even something like like poker

[8:14] where the rules have been around for decades not really changing anytime soon and the method to get good at it is still there so if you’re experienced at

[8:22] it but you’re not really top of your game anymore you still have enough knowledge to pass it on to the next person

[8:29] i’m not sure if that’s applicable for something where the the arena changes so quickly and the rules change so frequently like one week it’s league of

[8:37] legends one week it’s first stone one week it’s rocket league um that things transition so quickly that i don’t know whether there’s like a

[8:46] career career out of it or whether it’s like a short career and then like you know you wind up

[8:52] either just living off of what you won or spend it all in lamborghinis and wind up working at gamestop i don’t know i’ll i’ll say i’ll say for one um

[9:02] when i was younger i played like a ton of counter-strike so i thought i was awesome at it like great then you get on a server and you just

[9:12] get your butt kicked so like to turn that into you know like a major league gaming kind of um career

[9:21] those dreams would have been shot down very quickly i thought it was the best in the world when you get online and no it goes out the window so

[9:28] i don’t know maybe more practice and i guess what kind of got me thinking about too i read an article on ign today

[9:35] where the current number one guy in that place with hearthstone is this or of a previous season anyways he’s a 14 year

[9:43] old kid and he’s going to school everything’s going fine and he’s playing like he roughly he said he roughly plays about

[9:49] 10 hours a week now you look at something like league of legends or um oh man i’m blanking on the other big one

[9:58] yeah you look at some of those like clickier games and those guys are dead like they’re playing 12 hours a day like it looks pretty miserable honestly

[10:07] much like anybody who any sport you know you’d have to put in the time to get that great so but ultimately just as far as like

[10:14] the to talk about the click ratios and the strategies but for somebody just to spend to be just good at it they just have a natural knack for it and be able

[10:21] to spend just like 10 hours 20 hours a week and you get to be like the man at it and you go to a tournament and maybe take home a hundred

[10:28] thousand dollars it’s fascinating but although let me let me turn on its head then so let’s say that the tsn or the espn

[10:37] one of the sports channels now has a dedicated or at least a bit of more of a following towards esports so it’s

[10:45] legitimizing a bit uh your kid comes to you and says oh god i i you know i want to take two years i don’t

[10:53] want to go to college i want to really dedicate myself and see if i can do become a professional gamer like what are you guys going to say

[11:01] it’s it’s i’m going to turn into my dad i’m going to be like you know i told my my parents i want to become an artist i want to be an artist full-time no

[11:09] artists don’t make money that’s going to be me like no gamers can’t make money and then you know prove they’re wrong right like that’s gonna be

[11:18] the whole conversation again i can feel it i can feel myself turning into my dad yeah well i think the thing like okay well the one difference between like

[11:25] okay an art career pursuit versus a uh like a competitive

[11:31] sporting uh pursuit uh competitive sporting like okay if you’re if you’re an artist yes they make

[11:38] not exactly the most it’s not exactly the most lucrative career choice i’ll say that um you know it’s it’s a long road to

[11:47] to success and and you know monetary payback um but it is a career and it is if you are

[11:55] diligent enough you get paid for the work you do um something like in competitive esports there’s no guarantee

[12:04] on being compensated for your time and i think that would be the one thing i’d be concerned about it’s just like you know you put all this effort into it

[12:12] um you know just for the hopes of maybe being that one person out of like

[12:19] thousands that might you know it almost becomes like a competitive lottery you know or like uh or like competitive poker and i

[12:27] i think my my response to my child was like yeah i want to take two years off before college and um you know join the world poker tour

[12:36] i think i would feel the same way i would be a little bit reluctant in the sense of like well you know it is a bit of a a gamble it’s

[12:43] a skilled gamble um but you’re putting yourself up against other individuals playing a game um that may or may not

[12:53] pay off and may or may not reward you with the ability to have the freedom to not have to just eat ramen i thought that was the perk frankly

[13:05] let me uh one last spin on it um and then i’ll drop it i promise because the the other avenue around this

[13:13] though like beyond the actual the competition perhaps gets you some of the name recognition um but with twitch and streaming and for

[13:20] instance uh pew pew die from youtube uh at this point now is a multi-multi-millionaire he’s done incredibly well

[13:28] that has incredible life that way and literally he was just streaming video games like here’s me playing this video game now i’m sure that like given that

[13:37] that’s a fresh market kind of a newer market i’m sure that’s going to settle in some ways it’s not really

[13:44] new or exciting in some ways as it was but streaming game playing games is still a huge amount of traffic on youtube and

[13:52] that could be an entirely different thing if you have any sort of interesting take a fun personality that you can apply as

[13:58] you’re playing games that might be something as well so given you know pew pew die and twitch and these other avenues of revenue from playing games

[14:07] that’s uh could you could you see yourself doing that or could you see your allowing your kids to do it

[14:14] i’d be far more receptive to that idea because you’re creating content um for broadcast and that and it’s a difference between winning a purse

[14:22] um and a championship or creating content that people want to watch and sure the the zeitgeist of youtube changes and people will want something

[14:32] different in a few years but you’re still creating something that an audience wants to view and then being rewarded for that creation and i think

[14:40] something like that would be like oh yeah if you want to pursue that pursue it and just do a good job and hope for the best um it’s less of a gamble

[14:47] because it’s less of just straight up everybody competing for this one prize

[14:54] instead it’s like you are competing with other tubers for viewers and for audience but it’s it’s based more on the merits of your work and less about how

[15:01] well you did that day yeah my thoughts on it would be like it could be more of a replacement for like a

[15:08] part-time job i guess you could stream at night go to school during the day and get your you know your excess money

[15:16] right um with and the beauty of it actually to stream to youtube um twitch i think has

[15:24] implemented where you can view past broadcasts but the beauty of youtube is that if you monotonize it that video kind of lives forever

[15:32] so um the amount of views can be um done over a number of years right and you’d still get royalties off something that maybe you created five years ago and say

[15:42] you have a hundred videos like that that could be an ongoing you know money maker for you so it’s interesting that you retain ownership of

[15:50] yeah that’s true yeah and you know in some ways with um both of you being artists to some degree like it’s

[15:57] it’s not entirely unlike your creation of content much like you said gavin and then taking that content and competing

[16:04] against other content yeah and trying to get out it’s just a different medium in many ways it all for me culminates to us being born like

[16:11] roughly 10 to 15 years too early

[16:19] man cause like because it was just like you know it used to be go to gamestop or access gb games or whatever it’s going to be like buy a used copy of final

[16:28] fantasy and just grind it like five hours a week five hours a day like in my house on the weekend like and that

[16:36] was it like that’s what gaming was just this like smaller little piece and now it’s this

[16:41] market it’s huge like it’s getting like jimmy kimmel isn’t creating a whole comedy set piece about it on his show like it’s definitely in popular culture

[16:49] we’ve we missed it guys we got kids now it doesn’t work well yeah yes and no because like if you look at

[16:59] a lot of the games that people refer to as classics we were around for when they weren’t classics we were around for when they were brand new

[17:08] on the shelf where we were like saving up allowance money to go buy them you know we might have missed we might have been a

[17:15] little too early to catch late night talk show hosts um trying to sell you on the idea of picking up the new version of uh

[17:25] you know destiny but we were there to you know pick up a fresh copy of super

[17:33] mario world you know and i think that was its own unique special experience um where

[17:41] like yeah right now it’s huge and there’s things like esports and and it’s becoming more of a mainstream media pop culture phenomenon

[17:51] um but i think a lot of it’s still trying to grasp some of that magic that happened

[17:58] back in the nes days in regards to the games that were timeless you know like the even like games that are slowly starting

[18:06] to scratch back at that again are games like uh splatoon where there’s just that it’s starting to scratch that itch for a fresh new mario

[18:15] kart that’s not just another mario kart um so yeah i think you know i agree like we were a little early in regards to

[18:23] catching the really cool it’s like hey it’s cool to be a gamer like yeah we missed that vote for sure um because back when we did it it was

[18:30] that thing where you’re like you know you hide that copy of chippendale rescue rangers in your backpack

[18:38] um yeah yeah but uh but in the sense like we got to experience a different phase in the

[18:46] birth of the medium itself um which you know is something different whether it’s more special or less special that’s

[18:56] you know that can be argued either way but i think it’s something very unique that we you know any of those times we feel

[19:03] like oh we missed the cool cool time it’s like yeah but we can be those old men shaking our cane in the sky going i was there when it happened

[19:14] you think you know hard do you know contra hard yeah exactly exactly i hate contra i hate that game

[19:22] ninja turtles ninja turtles see water level that battle toads battle toads oh god that’s the worst

[19:32] just like that the battletoads is my own personal measure of difficulty for gaming across like even if i even like if you know a

[19:40] brand new halo comes out i still it’s like yeah without i don’t know that’s that’s speeder bike level on battle toads that’s killer

[19:47] yeah that’s one and ultimately like that’s one of the most fascinating things for myself as we continue on with

[19:56] fatherhood is because we we were there like we were part of it like we came up with games we came up through just an incredible console war

[20:05] with their sony microsoft just going back and forth trading blows nintendo as well of course so we get it like we’re right in it and

[20:12] we’re still young enough at this point to follow the trends and understand it like mario maker comes like it’s not just

[20:19] mario world it’s mario maker people are sharing it online it’s social yeah and we’re still young enough in that development that we

[20:26] get to be educated about it so when the kids start to play it we’re there like we’re right there with them and that’s got to be one for me the

[20:34] most fascinating thing to see how this unravels is i you know i am a gamer like i’ve played games all my life and i still play games

[20:42] right now and i plan to for a long time like what happens when my kid becomes a gamer if if he does like maybe he hates him he’s like to read books or play

[20:51] sports or something but those are because those are exclusives it’s like my kid picks up a book i’m

[20:59] like well looks like you’re a reader that’s a shame slap it out of his hand no you’re not crying

[21:06] johnny do you care to explain explain this basketball to me found this under your bed yeah it’s my friends i swear yeah

[21:16] my friend yeah but so but if and when my kid becomes a gamer like what what does that relationship look like what what is this

[21:24] what does it mean to have a dad who plays games um well i can speak a little bit to that if you want to get into that um having a

[21:32] five-year-old right um we got him a 3ds for his birthday this year so he’s officially a gamer

[21:40] and he we got a mario kart because i figured that was the easiest um you just turn the 3d off i don’t think the 3d is good for his eyes so he

[21:48] just plays it 2d mario kart 7. the kid has cleared every level by himself rainbow road he’s five what

[21:57] he’s five so i’m thinking like you know back in my day i would beg and plead my parents to get a nintendo and i was maybe i don’t know eight or nine so he’s

[22:06] ahead of the game and it’s already in his system and that eye hand coordination is just it’s it’s natural so

[22:14] maybe that you know the major league gaming or whatever it is is something that he could do i don’t know

[22:20] but maybe games are easier here’s actually a quick little question will will gaming become so

[22:28] uh like just kind of like a standard competition thing that happens will we start to see the induction of esports into like a high school

[22:37] extracurricular yeah i don’t totally see it like something that’s not like fully like not like some provincial competition or

[22:44] something like that but it’s like like the new chess club you know or you know it’s like uh you see like uh improv teams where you know it’s a competition

[22:53] based on something that’s not exactly main mainstream but popular enough that uh you know high school students want to

[23:01] partake it’s like you start to see rather than just like a bunch of high schoolers being like okay well let’s all congregate in the same

[23:09] basement and play a game now it’s like no no we actually have like the student council has approved our club and we have access to

[23:19] you know the the common area from this hour to this hour you know

[23:26] the only thing about those i think it would go back to your earlier points i don’t know that it couldn’t happen but if there was

[23:33] a competitive advantage to finding additional time to play the game like the kid who spends like an extra 30 hours a week like

[23:42] clicking away like and becoming incredibly efficient at that game like i would imagine that would be slightly detrimental

[23:49] depending on how competitive it is like i’m just trying to think about how they would structure it like if it was something like league league of legends

[23:54] or oh god you guys got to help me out there’s another big one is it dota thank you

[24:01] man that was it yeah

[24:13] that’s where some of the biggest tournaments are and i’ve seen some competitive play and it’s just i know guys who play it competitively

[24:19] and it’s obs it’s crazy but as far as the click rate the strategy the time and effort it takes to

[24:25] be good at it and i just wonder if there’d have to be some sort of level playing field where it’s almost like there’s not going to be a lot of

[24:32] benefit well well it’s difficult to surmise because if you play a ton of chess and you

[24:37] continually play chess and you keep playing chess against better people you become an incredible chess player and there’s chess leagues in school and has

[24:45] clubs so is it you know what i mean where just feels like a club who’s like so good they’re

[24:53] they’re disliked like it doesn’t matter whether it’s track and field or uh chess club or improv or

[25:01] you know any sort of after school program there’s always going to be that one person who’s either just a complete natural

[25:09] you know like jeff’s kids gonna be um you know or or the ones who are just

[25:19] doing it because they enjoy playing the game or they enjoy doing that activity um like there will always be that one where

[25:25] it’s just like the other kids are so envious and they just kind of shake their heads and fist at this other child for being so bloody

[25:32] talented um you know and i think yeah there is that sort of idea too of trying to balance uh

[25:39] school work and extracurricular as well when it’s an extracurricular that could be somewhat addictive and could be something that you would do at home like

[25:48] it’s pretty hard to get addicted to football practice like you know that’s it’s an extracurricular but it’s not like you’re gonna go home

[25:54] and run stairs like son you have to stop doing burpees please go to bed stop just stop burpees go to sleep

[26:03] just ten more there’s ten more you don’t get me dad yeah my life is burpees in practice hello yeah

[26:09] that that’s that makes for a curious um concept about like would that be one of the first extracurricular activities that would actually

[26:18] start to interfere with uh with the student studies because it’s something they can also do at home and that doing it at home makes it better for them next

[26:25] time they compete with the group um yeah i think um like along those same lines i have a

[26:32] facebook friend that’s a teacher and he’s a media teacher and he has gotten approved i don’t know how it fits into the curriculum but an oculus dk2

[26:44] wow for his class and then he’s met with the vp of sony canada and microsoft and has got tons of donations of games systems

[26:54] and other like accessories for the kids and he’s going to put this into his um class so i don’t know how that fits in with what he has to meet in terms of

[27:05] like the curriculum goals or what he’s like a media teacher would um i’m trying to think of the exam that would be done like you beat battle toads

[27:13] and you pass the class like but maybe it’s just understanding something where they they have these dev kits and these consoles so that they can

[27:23] start making some rudimentary independent games um there’s a lot of post-secondary programs now that focus on game design

[27:30] and a lot of them would a lot of students would have benefit going into this like i remember my media arts class um the curriculum not the

[27:40] teacher like the teacher was great but the curriculum was very just like today we’re going to teach you how to copy and paste and i’m like i know how to do that

[27:49] and like i would see installed on the hard drive that there was a 3d animation suite i’m like can i just can i use this and she’s like i don’t we don’t know how

[27:56] to use that and i basically i convinced them to just give me the book like the the manual that came with the software and it’s

[28:06] like let me just can i just do this because the stuff you’re doing you covered in last year’s curriculum too and it’s kind of starting to become

[28:12] redundant so i i could see a media arts program thirsting um because when i was taking media arts it was that transition from analog to

[28:20] digital when it came to uh film editing and like i remember having to hook up a vcr to a video card to input footage from a camera

[28:30] um it was like this weird like slapped together duct tape and bubble gum mess um but it was during that weird transition where it’s like you’re using

[28:38] avid cinema and you have a camcorder recording on you know magnetic tape and there’s like a cue card uh reel to reel computer in

[28:48] the back room you know it was like a weird sort of like limbo um so i can see i think that that media arts teacher’s got the right idea because where things

[28:57] are going um and even just for kids to be able to get a hold of an old xbox one and be able to take it apart and solder it and put it

[29:05] back together gives them a better understanding of how to work things yeah the um and just a quick sidebar as

[29:13] a related story but and i think it was kind of interesting for all of us because we probably experienced the same thing where

[29:18] like we were the first wave of kids coming through where like we had computers at home so we kind of knew what to do with them

[29:24] okay now we’re going to learn how to uh you know copy and paste and it’s like uh yeah i’ve kind of finished all the course work already

[29:31] yeah yeah and i remember i i did within the first like two weeks of the course i’d finished like all the coursework and i asked like what i would do they’re

[29:38] like i don’t know like just find a program and mess around and i remember like for the entire rest of it i used i don’t know if

[29:46] it’s powerpoint at the time but some sort of slideshow i think to produce what was a 500 slide grotesque animation of clip art whereas

[29:55] like a flock of penguins like marching across like marching across the screen and like jumping off it just

[30:03] wildly inappropriate for school of slideshow presentation into a stop-motion animation

[30:12] yeah and then like you could set i remember you could set like automatically just predict like just move forward in the slideshow

[30:18] presentation so i said yeah just like jump forward like half a second so i just had this like terrible grotesque like penguin

[30:26] animation show and that was what i did for the entire semester because i already finished all the coursework

[30:33] the best day i’ve ever gotten you haven’t yeah anyway but um and i guess i mean one of the as you’re talking there gavin and even with the

[30:41] oculus rift and one thing that came to my mind immediately i suppose was minecraft and you hear about some really

[30:47] interesting projects where people have entirely recreated entire cities like they put copenhagen inside

[30:54] of a minecraft world and you’d set the kids inside of there and just let them run around and i thought that you could have

[31:00] you know four or an entire class of kids in the same world as building and experimenting and problem solving like he’s like all right

[31:08] kids like all of you have to get together and inside of this minecraft world i need you to build uh you know a sound structure like a

[31:15] bridge to go across this river like go and now like you’re forming teams you have to like cooperate and build like it could be like

[31:23] in that sense where you’re able to create these sandboxes where kids don’t have physical limitations or even material limitations i mean you can’t

[31:32] send kids to a river and have them build a bridge for very obvious reasons um so but at the same time you could send them into lava pits and minecraft

[31:41] in minecraft and just see what they come up with i could be as as far as i’ve heard from i don’t have any nephews out there or nieces at the right

[31:49] age to see them but apparently it’s just a phenomenon of kids getting together playing in each other’s minecraft world and creating yeah it’s it’s it’s got a

[31:58] huge following with that like uh i guess kind of almost like a tween age group um but minecraft is huge it’s absolutely huge

[32:08] um it’s digital lego right it’s this generation it’s lego where you can finally be the same size as the lego person

[32:18] in the kit build whatever you want and then run around it like

[32:24] it’s that whole playing make-believe in the rug in the middle of your living room and bashing things together but now like you have

[32:31] special effects and particle physics and it just makes it and then not only that but if you know you can play with your friend either in

[32:39] the same room or like over an internet connection on a rainy day and i think that a game like that is

[32:47] a very important thing to come along because it does become like as you said like digital lego and even companies like lego are jumping

[32:56] in on it have you seen that there’s like a lego um like basically lego minecraft yeah like you can get different build kits and

[33:04] basically like your character has like a build gun and you just spray a house together um and it’s just all sorts of wild stuff and i i think that’s that’s a

[33:14] lot of fun it makes it more of a toy and less of a of a game and less of just like an interactive entertainment yeah so i mean between

[33:25] yeah and you gotta wonder about like there’s a lot of talk about teaching kids to code like to program just like learning the

[33:32] basics of how to build something with song like building software and you gotta wonder if that starts to extend to building

[33:40] games and especially in building games where they can learn something like minecraft so between the oculus rift and being able to build

[33:48] through virtual realities like games within vr for all those different kits and building something within minecraft and everything else

[33:57] you could start to see some interesting curriculum choices and just learning and then those are the kids that are going to come back to our

[34:04] houses and we’re going to play mario kart with them i guess it’d be like mario kart 20 at

[34:09] that point yeah perfect so the actual um that was a decent sidebar just a wee bit

[34:21] the um and actually i think it’s pretty fitting because i’m not sure how much meat the actual topic we had has so but i think

[34:28] it’s gonna put together some what was the topic again i’m not sure i haven’t ever written down here so

[34:36] it actually it ties everything up in a nice bow actually so the kid is at school programming and playing minecraft all day

[34:44] or competitive dota whatever they are the new esports champion he comes home and he just drives you nuts like and now you are just in an agitated state

[34:53] terrible day at work kids going crazy are games at this point and i think jeff’s going to have the most insight into it because me and

[35:02] gavin are still pretty fresh to this but our game’s a outlet for you so like feeling sad or down feeling stressed

[35:10] and now i need to blow something up i need to punch some things in a game and you know ultimately just like even you can go back to your normal life

[35:17] gavin if you can remember what it’s like all those all those many months ago before before your bundle of joy

[35:24] have you ever used and are you currently using games as any sort of release or outlet uh i have in the past like you know

[35:32] there’s always but i find sometimes the thing i like doing in a game that calms me down the most um actually probably one of the

[35:41] the main game that i grabbed and play um or at least back when i used to do it more often in regards to uh therapy

[35:50] session would be the just cause series and it wasn’t as much for like mayhem and destruction and stuff although that game is wonderful for it um it was more

[36:00] things like just doing stunts you know it’s the same thing i do when i play grand theft auto it’s like can i jump this quad bike onto the back of a moving

[36:07] train and by the way yes i can but that that’s sort of the stuff that i find is the relaxing aspect of it is just like i just want to

[36:17] fly an airplane i’m going to see if i can weave it in around some buildings and maybe like you know crop dust highway and

[36:26] just things just just having fun um in an environment with no consequence i

[36:34] think that might be actually the therapeutic part about it is that like sometimes the thing that’s frustrating you

[36:40] or the thing that that you need to find an outlet to balance um sometimes that is a situation that you’re in where there

[36:50] are consequences to making the wrong choice and that can be very stressful um so to be able to play in a world where

[36:58] there are really no hard consequences um like you might your your character might die or fall in a pit and you got to start the level again

[37:08] um but you know oh well uh you get you get a do-over you get a mulligan um it’s that sense of being able to play without that looming sense

[37:18] of i i can’t mess this up or else there’s some responsibility to be had afterwards i think that i think that’s the escape of

[37:27] it it’s not the uh the catharsis although that can be very therapeutic in itself but just watching a nice big plume of fiery smoke

[37:36] over the horizon just because um the super mutant gave you a funny look that that could thirst us aside there is

[37:44] something about playing in a world where it’s just like nothing matters i can do something today and it doesn’t matter um no one’s gonna

[37:52] be hurt no one’s gonna be let down no one’s gonna be disappointed i can do whatever i want so that’s that’s kind of my take on games as a as a

[38:02] as a balancing act yeah i can i’m kind of on along the same lines as gavin um kind of a sandbox world infamous was great because you’re

[38:12] just filled with superpowers you go around yeah do whatever you want you can fly oh hulk ultimate destruction

[38:20] for that one that’s like my one of my all-time favorite just sandbox i’m gonna part around for a bit yeah and just blow off

[38:27] some steve yeah very hard to kill you you can do whatever you want now that being said there are scenarios where like say it’s the weekend i’m doing you

[38:36] know this big road trip with the kids i’ve got you know a cd spinning with you know the alphabet song and wheels on the bus i

[38:44] get home and i just don’t want to relax i just want a game that is fast and

[38:51] like cut throat and you just you go and you give her like energy you get out of that world for a second

[38:58] so um like hitting like racing games like the need for speed series or like even drive club now that’s kind of back up to par just

[39:06] fast quick motion yeah just kind of gets that out other days if it’s like too stressful and i don’t want a time limit or anything

[39:16] flower was a great one you just yeah part around on that and you just i don’t care i’m all serene zen um kind of get your mind recharged and

[39:26] then go to bed and it kind of puts you to sleep that one um whereas you know it it depends on the mood what you’re doing that day if it’s

[39:32] really like it depends on what mood you’re trying to counteract yeah and that’s that’s kind of the game you gravitate

[39:38] towards is it something where it’s like i i just need some high octane i just need to go for a rip that’s when you pick up something like

[39:47] burnout yeah that’s exactly what i was going to say just because the those cars what was great about burnos

[39:53] it just felt so crunchy yeah crunching like you would hit you would hit a wall or hit another player and it just felt like i really

[40:00] mangled that metal that’s great yeah that that was a uh that was a that that was a really good series i’m kind of sad to see it sort of slip by the

[40:10] wayside yeah because that was always a very that was yeah come to think of it like that was one of the ones where it’s like i need

[40:17] some i just need a good boost of adrenaline to flush my brain out yeah and that would be one of the ones i chuck in it

[40:25] they usually would be able to acquire some really solid music um so just be like just heart pumping you know

[40:32] grind a car into a guardrail until it does that wonderful little pop up into the air and a little flip and still

[40:39] holds it and then you see it wrap around the tree and you go back to racing you’re just like oh

[40:45] that was a that was a very wonderful uh um coping mechanism

[40:52] for when i was early in my art career you speak about it maybe that’s a little too frequently used that doesn’t go from

[40:59] that person you speak about adrenaline i actually kind of screwed myself recently with that um although i mean

[41:09] i swear to god i’m gonna play some different games soon but like it was hearthstone again i’m sorry okay i thought you’re gonna say the crew i was

[41:14] just gonna like close the stream like it’s over well it’s not that much better because i’m saying like you know you want to

[41:22] talk adrenaline let me tell you about this card game oh man yet have you seen the wizard yet no i’ve not seen the wizard yet i’m

[41:30] gonna bug you every week we gotta get that list going but i have not seen the wizard i’ve rocky rocky’s on that case i’ve not seen rocky have

[41:38] not seen terminator rambo rambo’s on there i’ve not seen rambo i’ve not seen jaws wow yeah it’s pretty uh it’s pretty sad

[41:47] i gotta get it was your family like in a bunker where i was yesterday i wish i could kind of did you like grow

[41:55] up in the different bunker so i’m actually from uh just outside toronto it was a cow town just like a thousand people in it but that wasn’t

[42:03] the excuse it’s just we didn’t have cable and as a really active kid and then on like downtime like so we didn’t have cable so at the time that those

[42:11] movies were becoming available just on you know channel flipping i didn’t get them and then when most of the free time it

[42:18] was either sports or video games so it just never came around and then college was busy next thing you know

[42:24] it’s now i’m this grown-ass man with a baby and i have not seen you it was more like my mom was um like a bit of a movie

[42:37] uh enthusiast in that and she actually worked at a theater for a bit when i was a kid so i got to see like

[42:42] like i up in the projector booth and stuff like she was managing a fighter in her town so i was watching like indiana jones and last crusade next to the

[42:50] projection so that was pretty fun stuff but yeah it would be like i think i had a i would

[42:56] jump between video games and movies because that’s what like the corner store would have the rentals so i’d rent one of each kind of thing it’s like i’d

[43:03] rent a video game like an nes cartridge in a vhs tape and then run home and that would kind of be it and

[43:11] bit of a problem too is like we had this video store in town and had all the good stuff too but my friends and i got into this habit of

[43:18] trying to find the worst movie so we got like all this oh yeah someone didn’t pop up so we we watched like just some of the

[43:27] most offbeat terrible god-awful movies and we just kept trying to one-up each other and find it so

[43:34] a lot of movie experiences with just these hilarious without trying to be movies of the the dump like you spent all your

[43:43] movie watching time exclusively on b movies yeah i’m terrible man i would call these c movies these things are so bad like i don’t know where they found

[43:51] them i don’t know why on earth the video store would have these but uh yeah sorry to get back

[43:58] besides movie time and my embarrassing list of things i haven’t watched the yeah i screwed myself because the baby goes down to sleep he’s finally

[44:07] down it was it was a really bad night and i was like okay i’m gonna play just a couple quick games of hearthstone there’s a couple modes like one is like

[44:14] ranked so i mean it ultimately doesn’t matter but it still matters a bit because if you win you go up if you lose you go down

[44:20] and there’s a scene every month otherwise there’s a thing called arena whereas you kind of pay some in game currency

[44:27] and if you do well you get a lot of reward back so it’s kind of the game’s quote-unquote means something and i remember playing a couple of this

[44:36] arena game and i had all this adrenaline flowing because i wanted to win like i was i want to make sure i win this game and but i was like okay time to put this

[44:45] uh lost two games did terribly like i had time to put this down and go to sleep and

[44:50] no there was no sleeping i was up for the next like two like three hours because i had all this adrenaline pumping

[44:58] like in combination i’m sure i’m sure with a hundred other things but my so by the time i finally get to sleep baby’s not going to sleep anymore yeah

[45:06] so i missed this beautiful little window of sleep because i pumped myself up with a damn card game of all things just kicking myself

[45:16] but um yeah i can remember as far as myself like i remember like there’s like snowboarding games um

[45:23] skateboarding games i found very lethargic where it’s just you find a line and you’re just like carving it it’s a slow like steady

[45:31] movement as you’re going down the mountain you come off this one jump and you’re doing like a couple flips around it is something about and you know that

[45:38] speed much like you guys mentioned before seems to play a factor into it but just that ability to get into that flow and

[45:45] release everything and just calm down and relax and in fact maybe that’s what i should have done i should have got all hyped up from a dumb card game come

[45:53] downstairs and play some snowboarding set myself back down go to bed yeah there’s games though that you i i

[46:02] won’t touch i don’t know about you guys but um like anything horror um anything that would stress you out uh pt

[46:09] if you ever heard of pt that demo on ps4 um yeah i still have it i will never play more than five minutes of it because i’m

[46:21] gonna scream like a little girl and the kids are gonna wake up so i’m not gonna play those games that outlast no i’ve installed them i have not played them

[46:29] but no horror games uh i’m playing a lot of alien isolation and lindsey how much i would scream because yeah i

[46:37] turned on and everything and i just be off in the corner i was playing it on the pc and uh and yeah it was a very like jump scare

[46:46] heavy game and just like uh you can hear it in the rafters and um like i really do love horror games and there’s been a few times where i’ve

[46:53] played a horror game a little too close to bed not been up because i’ve been scared um

[47:03] i got a night late i’m all right uh but no my adrenaline would be going and it’s just like that that sort of like your heart’s been

[47:09] racing and it’s like you’ve been chased around the tank space station by some giant critter you know it’s it’s uh

[47:17] it can get you going but yeah i think i hadn’t even really thought of that yet but i am a bit of a i can be a vocal game player

[47:27] so i could see yeah not wanting to play something like uh alien isolation or outlast um something that really can

[47:34] just jump in and get you out of the couch uh i could see myself screaming and waking up the whole family oh man that would be that way

[47:45] that’d be one of the worst just like you finally get the kid down i’m just gonna just relax a little bit here play a quick little game and then you scream

[47:53] from terror and wake them up and just no no you’re down like one of those leather things that like they make people bite on in the old

[48:01] west when they pull a bullet out of your leg you need like one of those in your mouth

[48:09] i’m sure your dog will lend you a stick if you ask nicely yeah you got one like i thought there was a chew toy somewhere yeah i got a squeak

[48:17] toy in my mouth like what was all that squeaking i was playing a horror game don’t don’t don’t ask you haven’t see your game stream is ready to go like hop

[48:27] up on twitch like there it is man with squeak toy and just saying yeah you just launched your new career there you go

[48:34] there’s like squeak toy going crazy because like the alien’s like coming up on you my dog’s just confused

[48:42] barking at me yeah man that’d be the highlight of the show like how long does your dog take before he attacks you to get back that toy because you’re driving

[48:50] them nuts that’d be perfect million dollar idea you’re done yep done retired that’s how it’s like so how do you put your kid through school well

[48:58] funny story yeah i played video games on the internet with a squeak toy in my mouth

[49:05] and no that’s it that’s it it’s your hook paid for uh four semesters of

[49:11] post-secondary also i’m an artist

[49:20] and with and with that guys i think i’ll uh suggest that we wrap it up for the week yeah

[49:26] let’s let’s end on a high note if we will the so everyone this has been new dad gaming

[49:34] if you’d like to get in contact with us come to our website at newdadgaming.com we do this once a week any questions thoughts or games that we should check

[49:41] out and we will see you next week i’m trevor and i have a three month old i’m gavin i have a six week old

[49:50] and i’m jeff i have a five year old and a two and a half year old so many babies a lot no more babies

[49:59] perfect that’s great guys see you next week everybody