This episode is about Video Games – bang, boom, pop. Trevor Alexander is a dad, podcaster, and avid gamer. His podcast New Dad Gaming brings all three of those things together. We start with the goods – our favorite video games. Trevor’s favorite game is Starfield which is a space game by Bethesda the makers of Fallout (a new television series coming soon) and Elder Scrolls. Starfield has looting, RPG elements, mythic elements, FPS elements, and Base-building elements. It’s a huge game! and he still isn’t through it yet.

Twitch, and Making Money Gaming

Trevor just started streaming on Twitch, and he’s seen people who are competitive gamers be successful and also channels from people who bring their twist to gaming entertainment. They have a good commentary on the games but aren’t necessarily great at the gaming.

A kid won 4 million dollars playing League of Legends, so a professional gamer is a more viable avenue to make money these days, especially with Twitch and Youtube around the scene. Some Video game channels have racked up millions of hits. We ask what would happen if his son wanted to be a professional gamer and Trevor says he would be supportive of his son if he wanted to be a professional gamer but there would have to be a plan, what being a professional gamer means, school of course, and then he would support his son as well as he could if the variables add up. Plus these days there are even coaches that will teach kids how to be better video game players. It used to be a joke like on the 90s comic strip “The Far Side” by Gary Larsen which had a running joke about professional gaming as a child’s career. These days, when Kids are asked what they want to be when they grow, a majority of them say YouTube creator.  The scene has been democratized, and you can choose your way to make it all work out for you. The audience is interested in you and the way you do something. If you’re consistent and relentless, you’ll find that tribe that is interested in your content. Another way we discuss money made in games is Roblox. Entire careers have been made by making games for Roblox and Trevor knows this firsthand because Roblox has taken over his household. In many ways, you control your destiny if you want to make a career out of it. 

It was stunning the number of kids who, when asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, a lot of them said a professional YouTube creator.

Making New Worlds with Games

Another favorite game we talked about was Minecraft, which created an entire genre of video games. There is a competitive scene, a mod scene, server scene. For example, there is such thing as a paid Minecraft server to play. Trevor likes Twitch better than Discord, he says he feels a little old and doesn’t get the process of Discord. He used to frequent internet chat rooms in the old days of the internet but Discord is somehow different. He has used Discord for a VR Golf Game that didn’t have a tournament mode, but someone started a Discord server that functioned as a tournament mode. The verdict is definitely that Discord is great for community building. Gaming and discord have produced quite a merger.

Talking Podcasting

His podcast started by just talking about gaming, and they narrowed it down to Dads who are into gaming. That’s their tribe, other gaming dads. Instead of being as broad as possible, they chose to narrow it down. Parents need to be involved with their kids when they’re playing to have an active conversation with what their kids are doing. It’s interesting to see the conversation become more and more mature. These days, we are the most educated in how to have conversations with our children

Violence in Video Games

Video games are violent, originally people thought that games like Mortal Kombat would ruin America and ruin the youth. Before that people thought movies would be just as destructive, and before that it was certain books. The glorification of violence in video games is not real, it’s virtual, and people know the difference between real violence and entertainment action. People can discern the difference. Would he let his young children watch a movie like Dirty Harry – no – there is a time in one’s development when someone can rationally process these types of violent content. There is a curve for how you mature in your video games, it starts in a low violent Comic-type games, later on it becomes more violent and then changes again as you get older back down the scale to say – a space simulator. Gaming, like life, goes in phases, where you are at that moment and what fulfills you at that moment.