What The Tech Series #4: Let’s Talk about The Best and Worst of Video Games

 

About Your Hosts:
Micah is an avid gamer fresh into the adult world of work and independent living.
Nathan is a recovering gamer with a family and a passion for seeing people love God and use tech.

• This series is focused on empowering parents to talk about healthy gaming with their children.

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Transcription:

Purposely. Your life. God’s purpose. Listen at onpurposely.com.

Nathan Sutherland:

Welcome to the Gospel Tech Podcast, a resource for parents who feel overwhelmed and outpaced as they raise healthy youth in a tech world. As an educator, parent and tech user, I want to equip parents with the tools, resources, and confidence they need to raise kids who love God and use tech. Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Gospel Tech podcast. My name is Nathan Sutherland and this podcast is dedicated to helping families love God and use tech. This is the miniseries of the Gospel Tech podcast. This is What the Tech, and I am here with

Micah Roberts:

Micah Roberts.

Nathan Sutherland:

And we are here to go through episode four. This is a little bit of a gamer gush episode. We had lots of ideas. We almost took on NFTs for an episode. Yeah, no, <laugh> by almost, I mean, I suggested it and Micah was like, yeah, no.

Micah Roberts:

But yeah, we’ve had a lot of thoughtful, introspective discussion on topics, but we don’t want to think that we don’t just like video games.

Nathan Sutherland:

Yes. Yeah. But seriously, today you’re going to think we just like video games because it is a bit of a game or gush. We ended up coming with a compromise because, so that the listener knows I have a rather complicated love story with video games ending with basically 11 years ago, me not being able to play games anymore. Cause I don’t have a dial. I only have a switch, and I’m either 110% in on video games or I’m out. But that has not killed my love of video games. The fact that I played them for 20 plus years or any of those things, it’s just meant that to be a health fee healthful adult and intentional child of God, I need to put priorities first in games can’t be it. But Micah still an act of gamer. Yeah. So we’re going to go through three things we love about games and some games that represent that well.

And I am going to go through three things that kind of drive me up the wall, and especially in this decade plus of me not playing games that I’ve watched as the gaming industry is kind of pivoted and what we used to call a game almost doesn’t qualify anymore. So that’s going to be our kind of three awesomes and three cautions, I guess, about video games. Does that seem right? Yeah. Okay. Well, let’s, why don’t you give us, don’t you start us off. What’s one thing you love about video games? Why? Oh, better yet, because you might not be a gamer. Listen to this. What should non-gamers know about games that are awesome?

Micah Roberts:

Well, first they’re fun, but a lot of that fun I think comes from challenge.

Nathan Sutherland:

All right.

Micah Roberts:

Because there is a desire for games that are very hard, something, there’s a genre of game called rogue likes. I don’t expect you to know what that is. But basically you start out at basically nothing. You’re super weak and you go through a dungeon or what have you, a thing that’s level based. And as you go through levels, you get gear, abilities and upgrades that make you more powerful with the end goal of beating some final boss. And if at any point in this progression from level one to five, for example, you die, you go back to level one, a hundred percent restart.

Nathan Sutherland:

Okay. So just huge penalty for dying. And then do you just play through the exact same level?

Micah Roberts:

Most of ’em are randomized each time, so the room layouts will be different. The gear you find, the upgrades you find will be different.

Nathan Sutherland:

And this is fun.

Micah Roberts:

This is fun.

Nathan Sutherland:

Why?

Micah Roberts:

Just because the base game is fun. And normally as you get more gear and level up just a satisfying progression and then trying and failing and trying and failing to beat a boss, and then eventually the final boss, when you beat it, it was amazing.

Just the sense of success of like, yeah, I did it. It’s over. And this is I, what’s a game you have Then, for an example of this?

There’s a few of ’em. I play a game called Noita another one called Enter the Gungeon. Okay. But probably one of the best is probably a game called Hades.

Nathan Sutherland:

And the premise, the

Micah Roberts:

Story of it is your, it’s Greek, Roman God themed you’re Zagreus, the son of Hades. Okay. Stuck in Hades and you’re just trying to get to the surface and you have to progress through five layers of hell. And then the surface.

Nathan Sutherland:

Okay.

Micah Roberts:

And then

Nathan Sutherland:

It’s super cartoony, right?

Micah Roberts:

Yeah, it, it’s like a cartoon art style. It’s made by super giant. They got really good cartoon art direction. And the story’s really good because as you go through, you can talk to all the people in, you have a commons area. Before you do a run, essentially, you can talk to people. And this one, you can permanently upgrade yourself with some stuff that you find in your,

Nathan Sutherland:

So if you died, you don’t start all the way back at zero. Yeah. Eventually you can build up,

Micah Roberts:

Yeah, there’s like a currency system that you get that’s not gold. It’s something else. Because gold you get in a run to spend on stuff in a run. But when you’re out and you die, you lose all that stuff and you lose all your gold. But this currency stays and you can spend it in the little hub world area on permanent upgrades, an extra life, you can get more dashes, stuff like that.

Nathan Sutherland:

Okay. All right. So Hades is an example of a roguelike, an example of a game that you like. Yes. Because they’re challenging.

Micah Roberts:

Challenging, but not beat your head against the wall challenging. They’re fair to an extent,

Nathan Sutherland:

<laugh>.

Micah Roberts:

Okay. Because if it’s good you’ll never die by some stupid game reason. You’ll die because you messed up and oh, I should have taken this perk instead of that perk. Or I should have bought this weapon instead of that weapon because I knew this boss was coming up or whatever.

Nathan Sutherland:

So you can, it’s a solvable puzzle,

Micah Roberts:

Not just essentially

Nathan Sutherland:

In infinite amount of time.

Micah Roberts:

Yeah, it’s a solvable puzzle, but every time you put a piece in the wrong spot, the puzzle resets.

Nathan Sutherland:

Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s a cool way thinking of it. I think I would’ve to say one of mine that would fit this from, again, we’re going nostalgia time because it’s been a decade, but Legend of Zeldas, that series and specifically linked to the past, there’s problem solving. You need the right tool in the right spot. You will get stuck for times. But when you finally figure it out and be like, oh, the bomb goes on that spot and then it blows up, and then I can get the 

Micah Roberts:

Bomb this wall, and then I use the lantern to see in the dark, and there’s a hook shot point over here,

Nathan Sutherland:

I can finally put all the pieces together. And yes, in the age of the internet, people can just google their problems a lot faster. But yes, please don’t do that with fun games because the whole point is that it’s a game. Just let it be a game. But anyway that’s the challenge of it. All right. Would you want to go further into the challenge or do you want to share your second?

Micah Roberts:

I mean, the second kind of leads into the challenge because there is a game studio. So the studio that makes games called from software based out of Japan, they make a series of games called Dark Souls.

Nathan Sutherland:

Oh

Micah Roberts:

Yeah. That are notorious for being hard.

Nathan Sutherland:

Would you put them on the fair end of things or are they edging towards unfair?

Micah Roberts:

For the most part, yes.

Nathan Sutherland:

Which side?

Micah Roberts:

Fair. Okay. All right. They’re certain bosses that are little jank. They’re not programmed a hundred percent that are unfair, but for the most part it is a hundred percent. Okay. Fair. It is more demanding than a roguelike, I’d say because the premise of dark souls not dissimilar from a roguelike, actually. So you spawn, there’s a story, it’s complicated. We don’t need to get into the story here, but you spawn, it’s kind of dark fantasy themed Lord of the Rings, but a little bit more depressing,

Nathan Sutherland:

Quite a bit. Yes. Go on.

Micah Roberts:

And you go through areas and at the end of an area is a boss, but it’s not like levels. It’s all one continuous thing. So you could run from the beginning of the game to the end of the game. There’s no loading screens or anything unless you, you can teleport between your checkpoints, your checkpoints, they’re bonfires at a checkpoint. Whenever you rest at it, you regain all your, any reusable items that you have, but also enemies that you killed are now respawned. Yes.

<laugh>, because you have healing and you started with three or four, and you can get more healing as charges as you go. So you rest, if you run out, you’re out. You got to find another checkpoint. If you ever die in it, you lose your currency, which you use to level up, buy weapons, all this stuff to make you make yourself stronger. If you die with 10,000, their souls, I’ll say that if you die with 10,000 souls, they drop exactly where you are. You respawn with nothing in terms of money, but your health and all your items are respawned. And you have to go through all the enemies you mowed down to get those toned thousand souls again to pick them up.

Nathan Sutherland:

What if you die in the process though?

Micah Roberts:

The souls are gone forever.

Nathan Sutherland:

Okay. So you get one shot,

Micah Roberts:

Go one shot, get all

Nathan Sutherland:

Stuff back.

Micah Roberts:

So it’s not, when you die, you lose everything. When you die, you lose currency and progress.

Nathan Sutherland:

And half of everything pretty much. And that’s fun. Why is that challenge enjoyable? If you were explaining this to me? I have not played this game because.

Micah Roberts:

It’s after it’s enjoyable. First off, if the game, the actual combat fighting the enemies and the boss and stuff wasn’t fun, this game would suck.

Nathan Sutherland:

Yeah.

Micah Roberts:

But the actual combat itself, fighting the enemies is a lot of fun. The bosses are almost always amazing to fight and the big challenge, but losing everything, I don’t know. It just makes you take it seriously. It just forces you to take the game seriously. Because with something like Uncharted, which is kind of a Hollywood movie in a video game, you don’t spend currency. You’re just going along a path. It’s like a rollercoaster essentially, right? So you just go,

Nathan Sutherland:

It’s like the old James Bond video game.

Micah Roberts:

Yeah. Pretty much. You just go into an area, kill the enemies, and then fight a boss, or get to this room to unlock this box that has these documents or whatever. If you die, you just respawn two minutes before. Right. Exactly. In the same place you were two minutes before. But in Dark Souls, it’s not like you die, you go back, it’s like a die. You respawn somewhere, but you’re still, you’re just always moving forward. You never lose progress, literally. Cause if you beat a boss, they’re dead. Dead bosses stay dead. Okay. And if you get items, those items stay in your inventory, it’s just the souls that you lose. So there is always progression no matter what. And it just forces you to take the game seriously, because most enemies can kill you even at high levels. So can’t just like, unless you’re really good and you can’t just run past them.

Nathan Sutherland:

Yeah. So you have to take practice. You have to know how your character works. You have to know your strengths and weaknesses, your builds, especially in the later Dark Souls can change.

Micah Roberts:

So you can be anywhere from using me, only the biggest sword feasible to man <laugh>. Or you could use two wielding swords and being really fast or use magic or range like bows and stuff. There’s a lot of options. And no matter what you choose, you have to, at some level to actually finish the game at all, learn the ins and outs of how your build works and the attack patterns of the enemies.

Nathan Sutherland:

And this is unique to video games specifically because one movies wouldn’t be challenged. There’s no challenge in watching a movie.

Micah Roberts:

The only challenge in movies is if it’s a challenging message or a challenging subject matter. Schindler’s List is a challenging movie.

Nathan Sutherland:

Just because you have to intellectually digest it.

Micah Roberts:

But not, games are sometimes both. Okay. And that’s what I like about games, which is the third game that I, it’s a less known game. Cause it’s what you’d call an indie game. A game made by an independent studio. Because Super Giant, which made Hades, they’re kind of halfway between a AAA big budget studio. From software. From software is huge studio owned by band Dyna Naco.

Nathan Sutherland:

Okay.

Micah Roberts:

Super Giant’s halfway in between there. I don’t even know the name of the studio that made Before Your Eyes. Okay. But before Your Eyes is nothing like the last two games, it is a narrative only game. There’s no combat, there’s no fighting. I don’t even think there’s like a fail state. You can’t lose this game. But it’s a unique way of storytelling that only video games can do. Because it is, the name Before Your Eyes is a reference to the fact that it uses your webcam. It uses iTracking technology through a webcam to track every time you blink. Which sounds weird, but it’s because you go through this story as a child in the first person perspective through being a baby all the way through life stuff. And every time you blink, you skip forward one year of your life, two years of your life, four years of your life, you never know. Every time you blink, you skip forward in the story. And the game’s not going to let you finish a thing if you accidentally blinked because your eyes were tired. If you’re in the middle of a hard conversation with your spouse and you want to navigate this conversation, but you blink, you’re just going to skip the conversation. You’re not going to know how it ended up.

Nathan Sutherland:

Is it interactive? Can you click? Yeah. Say No, you’re right. We need to talk this out.

Micah Roberts:

Yeah. You can choose dialogue options. Okay. And there’s one point where you’re learning piano and your mother is you to become good at piano and you can choose to actually learn the recital and get into this prestigious school. Or there’s like this love interest you’ve had since you first moved to your house and she wants to hang out that night. And you can go to that. And then the piano recital is way harder to do.

Nathan Sutherland:

And so then that is, I think that’s worth pausing on because that the first two I think were more of what we have in our minds when we think video games. We think games titled things like Hades or Dark Souls Games that involve challenge . Certainly when Mario first came out for people with my generation, it was challenging, even though,

Micah Roberts:

Even now, still challenging, but it’s

Nathan Sutherland:

A different kind of challenging. But I mean, we didn’t know how to jump stuff. We didn’t know you could carry momentum. Exactly. We didn’t all, we were still learning what can you jump underneath and have it react? Oh, you can jump out of the screen and find secret passageways had no idea that was even an option.

Micah Roberts:

But in the same way, Mario had no story. There was a,

Nathan Sutherland:

Excuse me, peach needed saving. Oh

Micah Roberts:

Wow. Yeah. That was where it started and ended. Yeah. The princess was kidnapped. Go save the princess. Yeah. To the right.

Nathan Sutherland:

Yes. She is typically over that flagpole.

Micah Roberts:

Yes,

Nathan Sutherland:

Exactly. Yeah.

Micah Roberts:

There there’s been a trend in games like Uncharted, like I mentioned. Were there way more games now are way more story driven than they used to be. Yeah. It’s no longer just, there’s a princess and a castle. In Dark Souls, the story is you are a being made of ash to relight the fire that keeps the world in order. And you’re made of fallen warriors that failed to light in the past because you’re the last hope and the last option. It’s insane. Yeah. And Hades, you’re the son of Hades trying to escape out of Tartarus and all of that. And Before Your Eyes is, it’s a way more challenging story because it’s in a similar vein to That Dragon Cancer. Because yeah, this will be spoilers for the game if you care to play it, because you go through your whole life from childhood to adulthood and eventually you can the path I chose, because you can choose a bunch.

Eventually I gave up music to pursue my relationship with this girl in high school. And then eventually we got married. I became an artist and lived my life happily. But then you get ripped out of that because you get ripped to this weird dreamlike dimension where you’re talking to this dude with a cat head and he’s like, that’s not how your life went down. And you’re like, huh. He’s like, you need to stop lying to me. How did it actually go down? What was your mother really like? And he’s confronting you and you go through the story again. But the options that were like, they weren’t there at the beginning, but they’re the ones you should take. You eventually find that this is, in the beginning, you are dead. You’re in the afterlife. And this dude, this dude’s like the ferryman to the afterlife. He asked you to remember your life and you were lying because the reality was you never got to do any of this because you died of a disease when you were nine. And the game

Nathan Sutherland:

That’s, is that the end of it?

Micah Roberts:

Yeah. That’s the end.

Nathan Sutherland:

That has to be absolutely wrecking you as a player.

Micah Roberts:

It’s horrible. Yeah.

Nathan Sutherland:

Well

Micah Roberts:

It’s amazing. The story is amazing cause it’s super moving and touching and makes you think about your life.

Nathan Sutherland:

Yeah.

Micah Roberts:

But I don’t, like nothing else can do that except video games.

Nathan Sutherland:

And why is that? Why are video games such a unique avenue? Cause I mean, you mentioned things like Schindler’s List, which is a powerful experience and had an impact on a lot of people.

Micah Roberts:

But it’s just a passive thing. You don’t interact with it at all. You interact with it by popping in the disc or pressing, paying attention play on Netflix. Yeah. But in Before Your Eyes, I made these decisions. And again, this is on the backbone of if I want to see this story, I have to keep my eyes open. I can’t blink.

Nathan Sutherland:

So it’s demanding something of you to be able to do it.

Micah Roberts:

There was a point as an example, where I was just in the school and I was sitting next to this girl, the girl that’s your love interest. And this was before you knew what your feelings for each other was. And you’re in school during a lecture and you had to take notes and eventually your eyes are open, not blinking, you don’t have to not blink for the rest of the whole game. But they’re like, it’ll go through the story section and then at a certain point a metronome will pop up. It’s like, if you blink from this point, we’ll go to the next scene.

Nathan Sutherland:

Alright.

Micah Roberts:

And I get this note handed to me, but the teacher catches it before I can read it. And he takes it up to the class to read it. And like I had your character’s name. I can’t remember Dave or whatever. Dave, please stop accepting notes from your G. And then I blinked.

I have no idea what he was going to say at that point. Was he going to say that? It’s my girlfriend, my friend. Was she my cousin at the time? I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything at that point. And I missed it. It wasn’t until four scenes later, which was the next scene with the girl. I was like, oh, I do like this girl. And she does like me <laugh>. Like if I didn’t blink, maybe I would’ve known sooner and maybe I could’ve made decisions sooner. Yeah. I don’t know. It’s not a one-to-one recreation of your choices in real life affect who you are, but it’s a good representation of that in game where the game is all about how your memories shape who you are.

Nathan Sutherland:

And I guess, so then that would be the question really of when we talk about the benefits of games. I mean, you’ve said the challenge of a game is huge. Games need to be challenging and others that they need to have some kind of storyline. It sounds like all three of the ones you’ve mentioned at least have this engrossing storyline.

Micah Roberts:

At least what I value in games. There are a bunch of games that a game I completed recently, Kentucky Route Zero. It’s just a point and click game. No, again, no combat or anything. You just go through a story and choose dialogue. And then the end, you’re sad <laugh> because it’s a good story. Yeah. Way too complicated for me to sum up. But yeah, the game is essentially if the next Great American novel like To Kill a Mockingbird or Catcher in the Rye was a video game,

Nathan Sutherland:

Which is because I mean, it’s effectively supposed to be a representation of the journey of covid, of individuals dealing with loss in isolation it and you can, the breakdown of society.

Micah Roberts:

You could see it that the original interpretation was like the, it’s a ghost story, but the ghost story is the American dream on the people who still believe in it essentially. Okay.

Nathan Sutherland:

Which I think is worth noting that a lot of video games that want to tell a story, have a story that’s really dark. Very few of these are coming out with stories that are hopeful or it’s worth being here. No,

Micah Roberts:

They are still hopeful. But video games, media in general, but videos especially now more than ever pre covid and especially post covid, have just been way more confrontational about just existence in general. Yeah. Because media, when I was a kid in the early two thousands, music especially was just only a distraction. Essentially. The music was, it was Cronk music and it was EDM and it was trap music. It was all party music. Look at the good time. You’re having Black Eyed Peas.

They literally will I am the lead singer of it. Like they said, they wanted to make escapism music in the time of the 2008 financial crisis. They wanted an escape for people in trying times they media that still exists. I mean, that is Call of Duty, League of Legends, CS Go. That is just dopamine food doesn’t really make compel you to think about anything other than your playing the game. But video games are, at least the games that I enjoy and indie games, they’re moving towards a direction that makes you think about yourself, the people around you, the world you live in, your place in it. It’s way more introspective than they’ve ever been.

Nathan Sutherland:

Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think as an outsider, one of my concerns is actually that’s sometimes the last spot that people have the conversation though, is because the experience was so powerful that it can almost make the real life outputs of those experiences. Great. You recognize whatever the frailty of your mortality and the limited number of choices and days that we get within the sequence of our short little feeble lives.

And then the outcome is, man, that was such a powerful experience. I want to experience that again now. I want to now go live my life to the fullest out here with these real broken people that are hard to deal with. But I want to feel that kind of alive and that kind of alive is hard to match in real life. That epic boss win in real life doesn’t come 11 times in a sequence of events. It just doesn’t like you don’t level up that often. And oftentimes you don’t realize you leveled up until years later. Yeah,

Micah Roberts:

Exactly. And there’s no meter that’s filling up. When you progress your mental health to a healthy stat, you’re not going to know you’re healthy basically, until you’re far enough removed from you being unhealthy to realize, oh yeah, I’m better now. Yeah.

Nathan Sutherland:

And a lot, even a lot of the man, this is why when I was actually not able to sleep this morning and laying in bed being like, man, one of the reasons I want my boys to and my daughter to understand the gospel, the hope that’s in the gospel, and then the understanding of why the Bible matters in light of the gospel is a lot of the Bible’s basically a guidebook for our hearts. If you want to know how our hearts work, read what God says about us and about him, and it’ll show us how to be healthy and well not as a list of rules to follow us, but as reasons for why we do what God says. And I feel a lot of times, man, I should have chosen B, I chose A, and I didn’t realize that B was the best. I often made the wrong choice on purpose, but I don’t see the consequence of that.

It’s not like the hammer drops right away. Oh, that really set me up emotionally. So very specific example I would use would be, all right, in middle school and high school I knew that I should practice writing. I knew that. I know that I was told by my parents, I was told by my teachers I was given poor grades to reflect my lack of effort. And I just didn’t care because I was getting good enough. My goal was finish and move on. And as an adult, I am paying for that 20 years later. And I became a language arts teacher. I knew it well enough to teach eighth graders, but when it comes to getting my ideas concisely down, I hear Mrs. Aylerd, my high school English teacher, just loved. She was gentle and sweet and kind. She never harped on me or just yelled at me, but was always like, you, you’re better than this.

You need to do steps one, two, and three. And literally steps one, two, and three are now what I’m doing at 39. And that idea of it’s not a video game, I didn’t find that out 15 minutes later. I found that out two decades later. And I think that that idea, just with what you were saying is it is really powerful. And that’s honestly one of my, when as we transition the conversation from what’s awesome about video games, well storyline, challenge, interaction, the power of the narrative is amazing. And I think one of my concerns is the narrative is so powerful. It can be hard to move past one of the ex explanations I hear from a lot of people, well, why a game is because it’s such a powerful experience. And it’s not just the Call of Duty people. It’s not just the people that are getting the fast drip dopamine or the instant wins, but real life and real relationships. I don’t know that they’re always that powerful compared to some of the video game relationships. They feel a little mundane, if that makes sense.

Micah Roberts:

I could see where you’re coming from, but from the person who came out on the good end of this, cause I definitely was that at some point I wasn’t looking for the dopamine hit of the next valor win or whatever. But from 2014, so since I was 13, I played my first game that impacted me emotionally. And I was, I’ve always looked for games like that since. And I guess I did just kind of fall in to a point of that was how I lived was the emotion I got from that. But at some point, I guess I just kind of snapped out of it at the point where I can’t pinpoint what caused it. Sure. But I don’t know, for me now, I think stuff like that Kentucky Route Zero or Before Your Eyes, or that Dragon Cancer or something like that, it just makes me think about my existence more. And I do think it, for me personally, it does. I can think of actionable steps from those games that I can think of

Nathan Sutherland:

That that you’ve taken that

Micah Roberts:

I’ve away. I even shows and stuff. I feel like I’ve gotten the same way from this. I have tried to steer away from just playing a game because I think I should or because my friends are playing it, even though I don’t like it. Yeah. Cause I mean, the most impactful quote in my gaming life comes from Reggie Fils-Aime, the now retired CEO of Nintendo of America in some, it was during packs or E three I think when it was the time where they’re announcing all their new games for the year. He just comes on screen. He like, the game is fun. If the game’s not fun, why bother? Yeah. And that’s the quote. I dunno, I think anyone who plays games should live by that and should figure out in their mind what a fun game looks like. For me, it is a game that I can get really good at that has a challenge. And I prefer single player games for that. Not multiplayer. Something that I myself can get really good at or something that is narratively interesting,

Nathan Sutherland:

Which for me, that was a growing up would be missed. Those are the OG walk into a room and try to solve all the puzzles. Right? Yeah. They’re interactive. And I can hear that. And I think that I absolutely love that. I think that those are all the positive, those are the best parts of games. And my encouragement of parents always. And as we think of this video games in a big picture, and as we have two individuals having this conversation who come from different sides of being able to play games making sure that games are healthy for yourself parents and listeners and healthy for your child and for your friends. The reset is the way that I’ve made a little acronym, there’s lots of ways to assess your health, but really the idea of is this improving or impeding your relationships and responsibilities, your emotions, your sleep, your enjoyment, your time, and as long as it’s improving and it’s it making you more of who you can be, that’s awesome.

If it’s impeding, something needs to change. Maybe it’s just the game, maybe it’s the time of day. Maybe it’s how often may, I don’t know what it is. But you don’t want to be both on the habitual brain development side. You don’t want to be making neural pathways to bad habits. And on the spiritual development side, our time is in our own. When we’ve been bought with Christ, we now live in him. And the days we have are meant to be for his glory. And as Micah’s very eloquently pointed out, absolutely, these powerful narratives can help us see aspects of life and experiences that we won’t experience in real life. Just like a normal story we would read. And they can also be so engrossing in that they actually kind of seem more awesome which would be me and Animal Crossing. If I was still playing games, I,

Micah Roberts:

I’d love to go to just some abandoned island where I don’t have to worry about food or money with a bunch of cute animals and just build a house. Yeah.

Nathan Sutherland:

and decorate

Micah Roberts:

decorate it as I want.

Nathan Sutherland:

Chill. Yeah, exactly. The Sims was my jam. Yeah. And so I think just to transition, if I were to say some concerns I have with games and I won’t be too grumpy on this, folks, but I do think that to play honestly off the points that Micah made is when they don’t play like games meaning, and I would put an asterisk in this because Micah has brought up multiple awesome narrative games, where they don’t have really a fail option. It’s just a matter of it’ll take you more time. It might end up differently than you desire, but you will get through it because it’s more about that narrative experience.

What we were talking about, because the textbook definition of a game at the bare minimum has to have a win state and a fail state in most games, that means you win the match or you beat the boss or you die. That death is the most common fail state in a game.

And so the narrative ones don’t have a fail state because you generally finish the story at some point. And I do believe that, I mean, Halo does that. Many of these games don’t actually have a fail state. Cause they want you to beat it. It’s meant to be that experience. I would say one of my frustrations is when they don’t if you were to break that down even further games, they have to have a goal, something you’re trying to accomplish. So Pong, you were trying to get it past your opponent’s paddle. They have to have rules you follow. And this goes for every game. I mean, this is from Bocci to baseball. When you’re like, well, you have to throw a baseball pass the batter. Well, I’m going to throw it really high. No, it has to be between the shoulders and the knees. Like fine, I’m going to throw it way over here.

No, it has to go over a plate. There’s rules that you have to obey to play this game. And that’s true in digital games as well. And then there’s a victory condition, which is your, how do you know if you want or lost? And there are games that they use those, but then they break those because people, the attention expires and people will only play the game for a week or three weeks or a month and a half. And then at some point they’ve done the stuff and the game’s over and they’re like, okay, I did my thing. I beat the game. Or I accomplished the story and now I’m going to move on. And the game developer’s like, yeah, but we’re not okay with that because we want more money out of you

Micah Roberts:

Because we don’t want to make a new game that you want to play.

Nathan Sutherland:

Just want we use this one. And

Micah Roberts:

Because games are doing that. Before you’d buy a game disc, play the game for anywhere.

Nathan Sutherland:

From a game cassette, you mean? Yes,

Micah Roberts:

<laugh>. Buy a disc or a cartridge, play the game for five to 20 hours, whatever it was. And then you’d done, and then you’d be like, what game should I buy next Paycheck? But now it’s, and then there were exceptions as World The Warcraft.

Nathan Sutherland:

I think that’s a great exception, which will be in my next example of things that, but yes, exactly. Yes. But games, they

Micah Roberts:

Don’t have games. Games now. They’re not, they’re Call of Duty. They still make one every year. Yes. But I could still go play the one from four years ago and spend my money on it in more ways than one. And the games are now being supported past launch. So they used to just come out, maybe there was updates to fix some issues with it, but that was it. If there was ever more content, it was basically a bite sized little expansion

Nathan Sutherland:

Or a full separate game. I mean, what a Frozen Throne for World Warcraft three was a separate game that you purchased and you needed the original game to play it.

Micah Roberts:

But it’s, that’s the DLC model. It stands for downloadable content. It was basically game expansions. It was more playable content. And it was like, oh, there’s this new section of the map and there’s new raids and new bosses. You can fight new enemies. There’s a new playable character type in something like Far Cry there would be, so you have this island explore play that, and now there’s this sub island that we added that has its own story. That’s like an extra four hours of content and pay 15 bucks for it. But now the DLC has become micro transactions, which we’ve talked about before. That’s the buying skins, buying outfits, that kind of stuff.

Nathan Sutherland:

or just straight up paying to win

Micah Roberts:

Or just paying to get good items.

Nathan Sutherland:

And I love shouting out Diablo immortal on that because they’ve made themselves a meme, so they deserve all the recognition they’ve earned. But when you break those three, when it’s not just a game anymore and you add things to it to try to get people to return almost against their will. I mean, this is using behavioral psychology to its Max, the book Hooked by Nir Eyal does a great job where basically you have a trigger which might be like, I’m bored, or it might be a notification, or it might just be you loaded up and the level shows up and you click on it and then from your trigger, you have your action, then you have a variable reward than you have your investment. And that makes you more likely to respond to the trigger the next time. Yeah.

Micah Roberts:

I mean, that happened to me. I’ve the Game series Destiny by Bungee. Yeah. I do not like that game.

Nathan Sutherland:

I don’t think we’ve talked about this.

Micah Roberts:

I’ve never really, really enjoyed that game. It’s fine.

Nathan Sutherland:

Yeah. I got friends who loved it,

Micah Roberts:

But the only reason I played is because all my friends played it and that that’s not a hyperbole. All of my friends played it. There was a point in time where that’s the only way I could hang out with them that translate to me playing that game series for almost eight years and spending money on every Expansion and Destiny two when it came out and playing several hundred hours of a game I don’t like. And that’s stopped playing it now as I’ve grown up and realized that I hate this game. And also because my friends have grown up alongside me and we realized that we can just hang out.

Nathan Sutherland:

I was going to ask about that.

Micah Roberts:

I don’t know. We were young. We felt like we needed a catalyst to hang out. We were just uncomfortable just being in a Xbox party or a Discord call and just talking.

Nathan Sutherland:

Yeah. Or being in person. That was another option. Yeah.

But it’s true. It is something that takes practice. I guess I was going to ask you that exact question and maybe you could expand on it. I get a lot of parents who are like, well, all of my friends, my kids’ friends play X game and I’ve seen this workout in multiple people’s lives. But I’d love to hear your thoughts first person. What would you say to that family? If eight years on you’re out a grand but you’re still friends with these people without the game what would you say? If there’s seven friends who play this game, they’re not hanging out with friend number eight, unless friend number eight plays the game. So it’s kind of a friend of circumstance in the situation. Yeah. Should friend number eight play that game?

Micah Roberts:

It’s hard because you never want to be left out. Yeah. That’s why I played Destiny. Yeah. Because it was literally, I would want to play something else and

Nathan Sutherland:

No one’s going to come with you. Yeah,

Micah Roberts:

They’d probably play it for a day, but they’d always be like, Hey, you want to play? This is like, no, I’m playing Destiny.

Nathan Sutherland:

Yeah.

Micah Roberts:

So it’s just hard. It’s a hard thing to answer because it doesn’t just hinder on you if your friend date. It doesn’t just hinder on you unless you are quite compelling to your friends. It requires them to be emotionally and socially aware of the situation as well, to know that them only playing this game, the only context they hang out with is ostracizing you. Yeah. And you can communicate that. But I don’t know, communicating a feeling as weird like that when you’re young is hard.

Nathan Sutherland:

It’s really hard. And I think what I find so frustrating is, man, we are putting these kids in positions. It’s hard to just be a friend and have a friend in middle school. If you get one or two, that’s epic.

Micah Roberts:

It’s hard to find a friend that is led is just your friend. Yes. Everyone did this. I always had friends that I’d talked to and I thought we were best friends in the second row out of school. I don’t think about them ever. And the second you come back to school, I’m like, oh, what’s up?

Nathan Sutherland:

Yeah. Friends of context.

Micah Roberts:

And now that I’m out of high school, I haven’t thought about them in two years.

Nathan Sutherland:

And I don’t think it’s bad, Anna, she had a whole conversation about friends, like your track friends. I ran track and I was friends with a really specific group of people. And if I saw them again, we would get along. But we don’t call each other up,

Micah Roberts:

Hang out. But I don’t know. Those type of friends I think are easier to realize then you’re friends of circumstance, gaming friends because

Nathan Sutherland:

Be around all the time.

Micah Roberts:

Because you’re around them way more than if you just hang out with them at school and you’re doing something. I don’t know. I feel like a very personal connection to almost every game I play. So it’s a personal experience for me. Yeah. So I feel, which in some way, no matter what, as simple as game as it could be, I feel like bonded to my friends when I play games with them. You

Nathan Sutherland:

Have a shared experience. You have a shared adventure. I totally get that. I, it’s a shared challenge you overcame together. It’s very different than we watched a movie of someone else overcoming. Yeah, we did that raid, we did that thing. I feel that with Mean Old School, final Fantasy three slash six was played with my best friend Jared and my cousin Corey. And yeah, those are still really fond memories. And that’s how we built those relationships. So I’m not downsizing that. Yeah, I wanted to ask that on a, that’s a side note, not my main point.

Micah Roberts:

It’s just it. It’s just hard. Yeah, it is hard. I don’t know if I even have an answer really.

Nathan Sutherland:

Well thanks for sharing. I think that, I don’t know. I bet some people hearing this feel heard especially as the parents watching their kids do it. Parents don’t have the right answer and the kids are still wrestling. And I will say the young people that I’ve witnessed go through that in the longitudinal run the friends that were worth keeping found a way to still be friends. And a lot of the friends expired with the interest in that game when it quit getting updated or whatever, got moved onto a new server. And I caution parents when that argument is used because it tends to be I dunno, tends to be more of a friends of convenience and not someone who’s going to really be there for a kid. I don’t. Okay. Can I share another caution? Yeah, go ahead. Help with the game. I, oh, I want to actually share a really specific example cause that may not have made sense.

Things that add extra layers to games to make them playable. That was my first, my annoying when they’re not just the goal, the rules, the victory condition, Call of Duty, which you brought up Prestige classes is the metal reward system. So listeners, that means that you play a game, let’s say you can get 40 levels you get those by playing multiplayer and playing story mode. You gain, you level up, you get to level 40, they’ll give you the option to cash in your 40 levels. For Prestige Class one, you go back to level zero, you get a couple perks. You can repeat that depending on the version of Call of Duty eight or nine times. And what they do is they allow, they’ll give you bonuses for playing online. Like, oh, if you get seven kills this match with a pistol, you’ll get X number of extra points.

So there’s replay ability built back in without any extra levels, any extra bosses, any extra programming on their end. And then it also builds that behavioral loop of investment where once you’ve prestige class two or three, why not go to four? Because it’s something to do, even though you don’t enjoy the game, even though it’s not fun anymore, as Micah pointed, if it’s not fun, quit playing it. It’s literally a game. It should be fun. But these pieces, basically in trap, young people, especially young people, will be playing a game, do you still enjoy this game? You can ask ’em, do you like this game? And they’ll be like, no, why are you still playing? It is, I don’t know, I was bored. And that answer is fair. What they’re saying is when they get bored, the thing they’ve practiced most is going back to this resource and it alleviates some of the boredom, even if they don’t like it.

Like Micah said, playing a game for eight years because friends are there even if you don’t like the game. And so we just want to be intentional. And that’s one of the things I get annoyed at. That’s a more modern thing that isn’t in old form games. They would, like Micah said, Mario, you’re going to play it for 30 minutes, beat it or lose enough that you quit and then leave and go do something else. Even if it is, play a different game. The second thing, I don’t like it when games don’t end again breaking one of the three things games are supposed to do. They are supposed to have an end. I don’t love it. Even the longest running tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons has an end. You have to start a new character at some point because they die of old age. The characters do age in that game. Yes, it could be a long time. People play characters for years, but there’s an expiration. And in some of these games, there’s not so you brought up World of Warcraft. That would be an excellent example. I would actually, you can technically just play that game forever. You can play it forever. And that’s by design. There is of course an end game, but the end game always comes back to, but Max Loot, but the next dlc. But chances, oh,

Micah Roberts:

You have done everything, but you’re only one character in one class,

Nathan Sutherland:

On one server

Micah Roberts:

On one server. Why not start another character on this server or another character on that server

Nathan Sutherland:

And pay a monthly fee? I don’t love that. I understand the concept. It is cool. One of my great gripes is with Minecraft. Yes, I know that I am hot taking Minecraft but I will throw it out there because it isn’t just Legos. That’s why Dr. Christakis from the Seattle Children’s Research Institute said it’s one of the most unhealthy games he’s witnessed young people play because of its scope. So you can build so much, you can build so fast, you can go so far. The storyline constantly gives you little goals. And those little goals are incentive to come up and try to do that. Let’s see if we can do it. There’s a lot of positives. I don’t love them. My number one issue with it is the amount of time that just about any player is willing to invest and the amount of outcome you will get from that.

Again, hot take, I would say if you’re going to do a private server and you’re going to host your own stuff and you’re going to have it in basically just creative mode, it’s just a giant sandbox at that point. And I think sandboxes have a wonderful amount of expiration. So they do technically have an end because it’s called you just get tired of it. But that’s my second thing that bothers me about games. Parents, I would encourage you to look for games that don’t have an end because there’s a reason. And usually it’s because dissatisfaction with reality. We are called to be present in reality, not escaping from it. It’s one of the big reasons we’re not supposed to get drunk folks and high. The problem with that is it removes us from reality and removes our capacity that we were designed for, which is to love others and to love God with all we are.

So that’s a frustration to me. And then I think, oh, I don’t know. I think the last one I’ll just say is that games that aren’t what they say they are. Doom and Diablo are what they say they are. If you want to go kill some demons, go play those games. They’re very clear. There are some games that kind of tried to pose as other things. I think you actually did a nice Far Cry would be an example of Not Far Cry. Oh my goodness, I’m forgetting it now. Yeah, Far Cry Five, where a game is supposed to be a first person shooter, but it also has these weird underbelly horror elements. So I get annoyed when games aren’t what they’re sold to be. Or even Bioshock. Bioshock is like, oh, this is a cool adventure game. But all of the BioShock’s have this really interesting, powerful narrative setting about faith and religion that isn’t at all even handed. And I’m like, well, that’s interesting. But

Micah Roberts:

The BioShock games just use it as an aesthetic more than a narrative catalyst. I think.

Nathan Sutherland:

Fallout uses it as an aesthetic. There’s an aesthetic of, oh, powerful corporations, powerful religious groups. There’s kind of some cults.

Micah Roberts:

That’s what I think Bioshock does. I don’t, especially in infinite, the story of Infinite doesn’t necessarily revolve around the white nationalist, religious cult of the game.

Nathan Sutherland:

No, you literally have to murder yourself in order to be able to win the game.

Micah Roberts:

But I don’t think that has anything to do with the religion.

Nathan Sutherland:

In a baptism, you have to drown your character in a baptism and in No, it’s an infinite number of iterations of yourself that you’re drowning as the cult leader. And in that never once in an infinite number of iterations, you ever have a good version of yourself. You’re always the horrible white cult leader who has to be drowned in a baptism by multiple versions of <laugh>. Another character

Micah Roberts:

In Story. I, it’s been a while since I’ve played BioShock <laugh>.

Nathan Sutherland:

It’s really troubling. So I don’t, I get it. I understand that religion is a really impactful piece. I think that people have some axes to grind, and that bothers me. I just be what you’re going to be like. I get it. So with that being said, the video games can be amazing.

Micah Roberts:

They can be so good.

Nathan Sutherland:

My family’s still wrestling with what that’s going to look like. I’m opting for board games because they’re lower pace, they still have cool narrative and they can be challenging and interactive. And it’s really hard for me to overplay them. And as long as I can encourage my boys to find them exciting and interesting, we’re going to keep doing that. But video games are awesome. If you guys like games, I’d love to hear from you. Micah would love to hear from you. Micah, you’re not actually on the socials right now, are you? No. So you can just reach out to me guys, and I’ll send a note. Do you have an email or something you want to pass along?

Micah Roberts:

Nope.

Nathan Sutherland:

Alright. Okay. So reach out to me, Nathan, at gospel tech.net. We’re on Instagram and Facebook @ Love God use tech. And we may or may not have future episodes from here. Had a committed to four. Yep. We are like, we’re at four. We have other ideas, but Real Life happens. But excited.

Micah Roberts:

Yeah. We might make this a season one. Yes.

Nathan Sutherland:

Season one. All right. You heard it here first, folks. There may be a season two. Yeah. Thank you guys for listening. Thanks for being a part of this. And we hope that this has encouraged you, challenged you, informed, and entertained you and that you’ll join us in the future as we continue to talk about What the Tech.

Micah Roberts:

Yeah. I hope you have a new perspective on gaming in general.

Nathan Sutherland:

Yeah. So with that, folks, join us next time.