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So today, we have a bonus for you. It's my short conversation with Mark Merrill and Brandon Beck about how video games and digital technology are transforming the way we live for good, for bad, and in ways we don't quite understand. And they both have some really interesting insights about all of that. Now, of course, the main episode for Riot Games is also in your queue, but if you want to listen to this bonus episode first, go right ahead.
And however you decide to do it, enjoy. Because, do you guys have kids yet?Yeah.Are they little, little kids? I've got six, four, and two, and Mark has seven and six. Seven and six, yeah.
Are you guys, I mean, we are very restrictive with screens. It's very hard, and our kids fight us on this all the time. But you guys work in the screen world. Are you restrictive on screens?
Big time. Yeah, we are very restrictive. Yeah, we have no screen time during the week without very special exceptions. And then during the weekends, now that they're older, we do a little bit more.
But it's like two hours a day max. They're not like that. You invented League of Legends. Are you kidding me?
I can't play a video game? No, they try that. You know, now that my son's seven, and he actually really, really enjoys video games, it's fascinating. And he does try to use that against me.
Like, you're in front of the computer all day, you know, sitting and working down my office. Like, why can't I? And, you know, essentially just explain why it's important to be bored. Boredom is critical for creativity and problem solving, because when you're bored, you go, oh, I'm going to go pick up this stick, and it's actually a sword.
And whereas if you always default to the path of least resistance, where I can just grab the iPhone and instantly go play All-Stars for hours into that, that can have negative cognitive development and social development on the kids and implications. I agree a thousand percent. And by the way, this is why in my house we have no screen Saturdays. We just, that's a day we chose.
Friday night, all of our screens go into a locked cabinet, including mine and my wife's, and we don't even use our phones. So we are back in the 80s. We have physical maps that, well, actually, our car has GPS, so we don't use that. But we still do use maps sometimes.
If we get to a restaurant, it's closed, and we didn't call ahead, we move on. Like, that's our Saturday. So we do that to force ourselves to be bored. But, you know, it's a problem.
Like, the world that you guys have helped to create, and I'm not trying to shame you. I'm just saying the world that you've been part of and helping to create is a world where there is no boredom. And that is a really big problem. You know, I mean, do you ever think about that?
We do, yeah. I was just going to say, I mean, obviously, think about it in the context of our own kids who, you know, who we want to engage in that same kind of unstructured play that, you know, we had a lot of opportunity. And yeah, because I do think that without boredom, with constant stimulation, like we just, as a society, we don't know what that does yet, you know? Does it change the depth?
Like, have you contemplated as much? Have you been in your head as much, you know, as you grow up? And, you know, what do you, if not, what are you missing and what do you lose? I think we're at the very beginnings of understanding, you know, what it means.
Yeah. Well, and just to add to that, everybody's still figuring out what are the right ways to govern this new virtual landscape. And so, you know, how much should governments regulate and what types of content and what's appropriate? How much self-policing or moderation of content should happen under these platforms?
You know, how should we help try to nurture, you know, positive communities? And I think it's a really interesting challenge and really interesting problem. And we've spent a lot of time thinking about that, whether it's, you know, how we try to foster sportsmanship to parental controls to thinking about the types of content we create. I mean, there's just a lot of complexity.
You know, I remember I went to a TED conference a couple of years ago, and the founder of Twitch, one of the founders of Twitch, spoke at the conference. And he said something that really bothered me in his TED talk. You can find it online. He said that Twitch is, you know, is like the new campfire.
It's actually bringing communities and people together. And I just thought, if that is the, if that's the world we're going to live in, where everyone's connecting through using Discord and Twitch and, you know, that, that's not a world I'm looking forward to. Like, that is not the campfire. Like, humans need to be together.
And that really worries me. Now, maybe I'm a tinfoil lunatic here on this. Maybe everyone listening is like, you are, like, you're just, I just can't believe that that's the new campfire. I just, I don't want to believe that.
I don't know. Do you guys think that that's what, you know, sitting around and playing massive multiplayer online games should be the new campfire? So I think it's a new type of campfire, but I don't think it's, it replaces social interaction in a physical space. But I think, you know, it also depends on who you are, right?
And so as an example, if you have a, you know, physical disability, right, that could be pretty debilitating, all of a sudden, right, if you can engage in some of these online worlds or virtual games or whatnot, you can now have a, you know, to a certain extent, many people have reported a better quality of life in terms of forging social relationships and, you know, deeply meaningful connections to people. You know, to Brandon's point earlier, like I personally have made friendships that are going to be lifelong from playing MMOs. So like I went to a friend's wedding in, outside of London in the English countryside because I played EverQuest with him and brought my wife and we got to go hang out with his awesome English family. And that was, that was really cool.
And it's because we know each other so well because we spent a lot of time online. And so a lot of what players love to do online is just another way of connecting. Like if you graduate high school and you go off to college, you can stay more connected to a lot of your friends by doing some activities online. And that's positive.
And then you can come back, of course, and see each other, you know, in person. Or you can go to an eSports event or, you know, another physical event also where you get together with other people who love the thing that you like also in terms of productivity there too. This is a, this is a, this could be a whole separate episode, but I will just say one thing, which is with every technology, there are incredible benefits. YouTube, right?
Like has amazing videos, just unbelievable videos. And Facebook connects people who have lost touch and Twitter can be an incredible source of information. I mean, in Northern California during wildfires, it's wonderful