Welcome back to What the Tech?!, a miniseries with Micah and Nathan!
This series is focused on empowering parents to talk about healthy gaming with their children.
In today’s episode we talk all things e-sports: What is it, why does it exist, and is it just a flash in the pan or will these games be around for awhile? This conversation is especially focused on helping parents wrap their brains around why the word “sport” is attached even loosely with the idea 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.
Transcription:
Purposely. Your life. God’s purpose. Listen at onpurposely.com.
Micah:
The goal is I just want to give parents the tools to know how to be able to encourage their child to pursue a game competitively if they want. But know the trappings of it like you would in a soccer or a football. Yeah. You need these pads. For this reason, for smash players, they have hand warmers to make sure that they have proper warmth in their hands with how stiff they are to make sure that there’s good blood flow to make sure that their hands are healthy. And carpal tunnel’s a huge issue with melee. That there’s different controllers that are more keyboards now instead of the tiny game cube
Nathan:
Controller. Oh, is that true? They’re using the pads
Micah:
I can show you afterwards. Yeah. I’m not going to explain it to parents cause I barely understand it, but there there’s a bunch of different ways. It’s like they’re only going to think about the game.
Nathan:
They being the kid.
Micah:
They being the kid. So you need to what? Just encourage them because it’s cool. eSports is so cool. It’s just fun to play games. It’s fun to do things competitively.
Nathan:
Yeah.
Micah:
And sometimes 2020 and 2021. It wasn’t possible to do normal sports. And because of that Twitch viewership exploded and eSports exploded.
Nathan:
Welcome to the Gospel Tech podcast. A resource for parents who feel overwhelmed and outpaced as they raise healthy youth and 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 and welcome to the Gospel Tech podcast. My name is Nathan Sutherland and this podcast is dedicated to helping families love God and use tech. Today we have a special episode of what the Tech podcast With us is Micah Roberts. Hey Micah.
Micah:
Hello. Hello. Yes,
Nathan:
And we are continuing our conversation because last time we talked about gamer rage. Quick overview of that is basically if you have controller throwing and screen smashing happening in your home, there’s a gamer rage occurring.
Micah:
Talk lots, lots of yelling, lots of funny words.
Nathan:
Yes. Lots of just sweating while sitting and doing nothing in front of a screen. That’s going to be a good sign. Today we wanted to continue that conversation into eSports. So I’m going to put Micah on the spot because this is fun for me. Micah what are eSports?
Micah:
What are eSports? It’s playing a video game competitively in its most basic sense.
Nathan:
So it’s very similar to a normal sport in that right? You have a bunch of people who have agreed to follow the same set of rules and they’re going to try to designate a winner. Can you do it for money? Micah?
Micah:
You can do it for money. <laugh>,
Nathan:
Indubidably. Yeah. So the eSports are a thing. Parents, if you’ve ever heard of this, I guess I just want to kind of demystify this process because I don’t know, sometimes it sounds a little bit like the Land of Oz to some people are like, there’s this magical place out there where people get paid for playing video games. The premises, there are usually a select set of games that are picked for this. They’re usually highly competitive player versus player or PVP games. So this would be things like Call of Duty would
Micah:
Be one Call of Duty Halo. Fortnite has a competitive scene.
Nathan:
Overwatch,
Micah:
Overwatch, inviting games like Mortal Combat, street Fighter, super Smash Brothers, ultimate stuff
Nathan:
Like that. And if you go really old school like StarCraft two, Counterstrike, also known as CSGO. Yes. So these have competitive scenes. What that means is there are players who are very good, they often join a team because there are actually professional ranks. And by that we mean you get paid to do it for a team. Whether or not you win, you are going to get paid by a team to train to be a part of that team, to do their social media blast for them.
Micah:
Yep. They’re sponsored by corporations mainly gamer focus, sometimes not.
Nathan:
Yeah, the 76 ERs basketball team own one. Yeah. Robert Craft, the New England Patriots owner purchased a game or a gaming team six years ago. I think it was like 2016, 2017. He was one of the first in. So just know that this is a big deal and it’s not led just by the world. So here’s some. Or by the United States. Excuse me. So for you, those of you listening outside the United States, you are probably already aware of this, but for those of us in the continental US, here’s what we need to know. Just a few stats about gaming. So the gaming industry as a whole made a hundred and nearly 180, excuse me, 180 billion in 2020. And that went up and in 2021, thanks to Covid. So, we are talking a lot of money and a very big industry when it comes to the backing behind these. eSports, The market’s about 1.3 billion, which isn’t massive right now, but if you look at where it was three years ago
Micah:
It’s an insane, right.
Nathan:
Basically tripled. So just keeping in mind that this is escalating and as it escalates, you see players like Google is jumping in and Amazon is jumping in with their online sports and online gaming platforms, where they’re now trying to woo, yes, people in the United States, but people globally to join. So maybe they can’t get the hardware. Usually the buffer is like, oh, well I can’t get an Xbox. Right? There’s not enough of these things. They’ve been on back order; microchips. So what these companies are doing is they’re now hosting the video games on their servers. So, they use all of their hardware and they allow you to stream it directly to your just regular tv. And you don’t have to purchase it, you just pay a subscription,
Micah:
Which we can we’ll talk about in a later episode, most likely.
Nathan:
Yes. I think we’ll have to come back to that. But just know parents that we’re not just talking about well, my kid doesn’t even have one of those in here. They might. If you have a screen and the internet, they could so be aware. That is something we’re going to be talking about. 449 million was the amount of people who viewed in 2021 eSports. So they watched the professional tournaments. 449 million viewers, and the biggest tournament in 2021 brought in 73 million. So, that’s right. About three quarters of how many people watch at peak levels, the most watched Super Bowl which was the ’21, 2021 Super Bowl that same year. So when we talk eSports, we are talking a growth rate that is much more rapid than any other sport globally right now. They are not the most money of any sport, but it is a real thing. And there are multiple professional teams. So, right now there’s about a hundred professional gamers in any given game.
Micah:
And I mean, it’s backed by long-standing sports industries likes ESPN, shows eSports on its channels on just normal TV from time to time. It’s not YouTube and Twitch, which are dedicated streaming platforms now. Or Twitch,
Nathan:
Which kind of a big deal. YouTube’s No, not a small player. In fact, it’d be bigger deal than ESPN as far as amount of money in it and the amount of influence they have.
Micah:
But most tournaments are streamed on Twitch, but the biggest of ’em are streamed on Twitch and live on espn.
Nathan:
Yes. So parents, as you hear this may be the first time you’ve ever heard of an eSport. So know we’re talking major video games. They’re the exact same video game your kid plays at home. So
Micah:
Same just people take them very seriously and get very, very good at them.
Nathan:
They do. And so because I was growing up, video games were regular Nintendo then Super Nintendo than 64. And the question you’d always get asked is, how are you going to make a living doing that? Right? This is what my grandparents would say, right? And now the conversation is actually like, all right, it is possible. There are actually colleges that have eSports courses. there are young people that hear about this dream. They go, I want to be a streamer and I want to be a professional gamer. And so, in today’s conversation we’re going to talk about, all right, what does that actually look like? What do we need to know heading into that? What’s the viability of this? And how do you love your child, support your child? And have that conversation in a way that is respectful of their dreams and goals, but also intentional as we talk about this in light of gospel tech. Like, all right, what would this look like to love God and use tech in this way? Can that be done? What does it look like? So, that’s kind of where we’re headed in this. Micah, want to get us started? So, eSports, let’s talk a little bit about, cause I kind of gave the big picture. Here’s what the industry roughly looks like. Yeah. Can you walk us through a little bit of, I guess let’s go personal to start with. what is your kind of interaction with relationship with eSports? Because you’re not a professional gamer.
Micah:
I am not. No.
Nathan:
So, what would you say is your kind of relationship and experience with eSports?
Micah:
Just a really passionate watcher. I just like eSports in general. I don’t follow one particular game. The one I follow mainly is Super Smash Brothers Melee, which isn’t the newest one on the Switch. that Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, well, two games before that on the Game Cube.
Nathan:
And why would that matter?
Micah:
It without getting into it, Cause that would be a whole podcast episode on its own, It functions in very unique ways, actual gameplay wise that make it unique from every other Smash Brothers game that has ever been made. It’s also a lot faster. just punching and kicking stuff that is faster than in the new games by a slight amount. But it’s enough to make it more interesting to watch than other games.
Nathan:
And that’s going to be a concept that some people have a hard time understanding. So, let’s actually start right there. Interesting to watch. We’re not the ones playing these games. We don’t even know the people for the most part, playing these guys personally. Sometimes we kind of feel like we know them because we watch their streams or whatever.
Micah:
But it’s called Parasocial relationships.
Nathan:
<laugh> called Parasocial Relationships. important, parents, we’ll come back to that. Parasocial want to talk about that with your kiddos. But why is it interesting to watch someone else play a video game? I mean,
Micah:
It’s so different than watching Tom Brady win how many season?
Nathan:
More than we wanted. Exactly.
Micah:
Too many fun to watch people win. Especially when I found watching people play games competitively that I play and have an understanding of the game. Yeah, it’s just fun to watch. It’s fun to watch them go insane and
Nathan:
Do stuff insane when they get mad or insane. Oh, when
Micah:
They do amazing. Do insanely good.
Nathan:
Yeah.
Micah:
Do things that I’ve never even thought of. Stuff I didn’t think was possible. And just push the envelope. Because in eSports I’ll, I’ll probably mainly talk from the view of fighting games. Okay. Because I don’t watch very many first person shooter eSports. The only one I ever watched was Overwatch when it was first a thing. And yeah, it’s kind of, eh, okay. I didn’t really get much into it, but mainly for fighting games. This is true for A, most things that you can do a lot and get good at, but B, I’m be talking to the lens of fighting games. They’re two types of ways to seriously, or I guess competitively play a fighting game. And you’re either an innovator or you’re like a honer. Okay, so the honer just takes existing mechanics. This button does punch, this button does kick, this button, does your special attack, this button blocks, and just finds the absolute best way to combo those to get your life down to zero. They’re all about punch, punch, kick, kick will lead into punch kick. Uppercut will lead into this.
Nathan:
But if you’ve got Excel spreadsheets and
Micah:
The frame rates Branching Tree and Oh, I do this, punch it. Leave me vulnerable for this long, so I should follow up with this. But if they do this, then I can do that and just ad nauseum. You just gain all this knowledge of the game.
Nathan:
So this is the honer?
Micah:
Yes, this is the honer. They just want to get as good as possible at a thing. Which is fun. It’s fun to do that. It’s fun to get good at things. It’s fun to say you’re the best at something. It’s fun to win. But then there’s the second part, which is the people that I think are more interesting, which are the innovators, where they take that and they’re like, what can I do that no one else is doing? What’s an attack that no one really uses? And how could I use that to trip people up? Cause they won’t be expecting it. And then just find ways to, what we call breaking the game, which is like there is, it’s called the Meta where there is a set order. This character is this good, this character is this bad, and everyone knows that. Or in Cs go, this assault rifle is better than this assault rifle. So everyone uses this and the sniper is better, but this pistol is slightly better. It’s stuff like that. And then innovators just try ways to play around what people don’t expect. And then sometimes that becomes the new meta because of what they find,
Nathan:
Which at, if they’re newer game, so if they’re not melee, which is kind of locked in time, but they changed the meta. So it’s like, oh, everyone’s now playing this person as their main.
Micah:
Melee is a bit of a funny case because at the end of the day it is people taking a children’s party game very seriously because that’s what Super Smash Brothers is. It’s a party game. That’s what it was a immediately designed for. It wasn’t designed like Street Fighter and Mortal Combat. It wasn’t designed to be one-on-one. in the old games you could have up to four people fighting at one time and Smash Ultimate the one on the switch. You can have eight people playing at a time. Super insane. But competitive and Smash Melee tournaments and Super Smash Brothers Ultimate tournaments. It’s only one B1’s
Nathan:
And I think that’s, I love that idea. You’re like, this is a game. At the end of the day, you’re taking a kid’s party game, right? Yes. Super Smash Brothers, you’re all these Nintendo characters, from Star Fox to Mario to Peach, and you’re now fighting each other in a martial tournament like a Bruce Lee movie. Right? Exactly. So you have that as your, that’s your premise. And that’s really what sports started out as. Most sports were like, all right, baseball’s my favorite example because my sons are getting into it. And oh, you can literally see how this was two dudes playing catch. And then they said to play Keep away with the dude in the middle. And they’re like, all right, you get a bat and I’m going to throw it to the guy behind you. And if you can hit it, you, you’ll get to that base. But you’re not safe until you… you can watch as they like, well, I’m just going to throw it really high. No, you have to throw it between my shoulders and my knees. You can watch the rules progress. Except think the interesting thing with video games now is that some of the big name, the big money makers, are being designed for tournament play. Yeah, this was a fun game. And hey, let’s, it’d be funny if we all got good at it. Now let’s see who’s the best. Yeah,
Micah:
It’s like when Melee was made, there was no competitive Smash Brothers scene. There was a game, there was a Smash Brothers before Melee, it was just called Super Smash Brothers in the N 64. Absolutely no competitive scene for it as far as I’m aware. Before Melee started hosting tournaments, there were no Super Smash Brothers 64 tournaments. And then one guy in California was like, I’m going to hold a tournament to see which of my friends is the best at Super Smash Brothers Melee. And then the next year he did it again. But some people online were like, Hey, can I join? And then it spiraled out of there until that tournament, I think in its sixth the year, got over 2000 people. And then now the biggest smash tournament, which is called Genesis. There’s like, oh, what? I think there’s like 50,000 people that attended and over a hundred thousand people that watched it live streamed on Twitch.
Nathan:
And if you go to major tournaments for League or Dota, yeah, you get a hundred thousand people turn out and packing these stadiums. Yeah,
Micah:
That’s another thing. These tournaments, they are held, they’re not online. Most of ’em are held in person where you go to a venue and watch them play video games and yeah, <laugh>, you cheer and yell. And
Nathan:
They’ve got commentators, they have former gamers.
Micah:
Yeah, they have commentators that are either have played the game, currently play the game. There are some people that are just there to commentate cause they’re really good at commentating. Yeah.
Nathan:
So I think I want to pause this here because parents is, we’re talking eSports, we’re talking about exactly what it sounds like. we’re talking about video game competitive leagues. It is a real thing. It’s actively going on. It’s growing rapidly. There’s a ton of influence and cash that’s trying to push this forward from major companies and just from consumer interest. So, we have that side. Then we have the what does it look like? And it literally looks like whatever game your kid likes that they’re playing. So, if your kid plays Fortnite, that exact same version of Fortnite is being played in tournaments around the world for either just standing or cash, depending on age level. There’s limits on what kind of tournaments you can join. But at a professional level, there are people getting paid to be on teams to play that exact same game, or Overwatch or League of Legend,
Micah:
Almost never special versions of the game. There’s no League of Legends. And then League of Legends compared pro
Nathan:
Edition, right? Yeah,
Micah:
It it’s literally the exact same game.
Nathan:
So that’s the second thing I really want you to know. And third is that these games are being designed for competitive play at the entry level because there’s no pro edition or competitive edition, where you can go play it for fun or you can play this other version that’s more competitive, It can change gamer experience because especially when I was, I’m older than Micah, so when I was a gamer, right? Games were just being designed for fun and then friends would make silly tournaments. So sure we had golden eye tournaments and we had halo tournaments, but it was people, we knew. that it
Micah:
Was for popularity in bragging race,
Nathan:
Which it still is,
Micah:
But also sometimes internet money is involved.
Nathan:
But thanks to the internet, those bragging rights can turn into money. And because companies care about bragging rights, we call it advertising, but that’s what it is, is they want their faces in front of more people. Yes, that all right, if you can get me in front of 400 million people, like that has actually a cash value now. And so that drives this market. So parents know that when your child gets into some of these games that are what are called AAA, top tier, big earning games from big companies, they will be exposed to this idea that someone is doing this for a living. And even the people who aren’t good enough to play professionally can stream, which means people watch them play video games and then can donate money and make money off advertisements and things like that. So yes, I guess the first thing I’m just trying to do in this is establish concretely that this is a real thing. It’s in front of your kiddos and if your kid’s in the video game world, they absolutely will hear about it. They will be interested because who doesn’t want to do one of their favorite activities for a living?
Micah:
Who wouldn’t want to play a video game and make money from it doing that? That’s their job.
Nathan:
So that just, it’s highly interesting. We do need to now build our ability to have the conversation, to understand it. And I think the third thing is to understand this isn’t going away. It’s not a fad. I mean it would go away at the same time as computer processing goes away. The concept of making competition digital is just a regular continuation of making competition out of anything. When I want my boys to help me in the yard, I don’t say boys, we’re going to go do three hours of yard work. I say, Hey, who can pick the bucket of weeds the fastest? Yeah. Competition drives humanity in a lot of very positive ways. It’s what makes us want to solve problems and makes learning the most fun is when there’s a goal, a challenge. something to figure out in the process. And so just know that video games are doing that really well.
So this can be really attractive. Go back to the gamer rage conversation and our idea of a reset. Actually I’ll touch on reset right now. if you go, well, all right, Nathan and my kid is in this. I can see them getting drawn into it. Are they healthy? I would just start you with this idea of a reset. A reset. As you look at your kiddo and you have a conversation with them and you say, all right, do video games improve or impede your relationships and your responsibilities, your emotions, your sleep, your enjoyment, and your time? And if you watch video games steadily take instead of build on these areas, then that’s the point for conversation. Say, Hey, I’ve noticed when you play that game or when you play it too long, or when you play with those people or when you get competitive… whatever it is, I notice that you don’t sleep as much.
You don’t enjoy regular life as much. You become of who you could be and not more of it. And what my hope is, whatever you choose in the video game realm, whatever you choose in eSports, that you get more of your child at the end of the day, not less of them because of their engagement in these. And that by the way, goes with all sports, because some of our kids sell their souls to any old sport or to school for that matter. And that’s not, I guess it doesn’t line up with their purpose. And so, I just want to give you that now. Reset is a wonderful tool to start this conversation. And I want to redirect us back to Micah here because man, I think I want to start here. <laugh> so many things I want to say all at once.
Micah:
It’s a big topic, especially if you have no context or no, if you have no knowledge of eSports, it’s so much overwhelming knowledge.
Nathan:
Lets go with this conversation on connecting with something we do know. Yes, sports, how are they similar?
Micah:
They’re similar in you got to practice and you got to build teamwork. If it’s a team sport, and you got to hone your skills to get good. you can’t just go play soccer and only play tournaments and eventually get good. That’s not efficient. You got to practice outside of tournaments to win those tournaments.
Nathan:
And at this parents, the number one thing kids always ask me to tell parents is you can’t pause an online game. Yes. So I’m telling you that now. And I will tell you that often. If your child is being allowed to play online games, just know that if you’re in this tournament practice situation and you’re there with other people playing live, you can’t pause. And if you leave, your team usually gets some kind of a penalty.
Micah:
If you’re in the middle of a Call of Duty match and you call in to do something and you force them to quit out of the game, leave it before it’s done… <laugh> games nowadays because it’s more competitive focused, will penalize you if you do it too much. You can’t play the game for an entire day.
Nathan:
And the reason for that being people would just leave every time they’re losing in order to not have a count against them.
Micah:
And now every time you leave a match, mid, mid-game, counts as a loss. It does.
Nathan:
And your team gets hosed and it’s a whole thing. So just know that there is a lot of social pressure to finish through and to do that. So yeah, be aware. Know your timelines, talk that out with your child about what’s your expectation. maybe you don’t mind and you say no. If you’re going to be playing online and I need you, I’m a hundred percent of the time taking precedent and you need to know that that’s going to drop. And that needs to be an understanding upfront. So maybe just have that conversation. I think if your family has that agreement, it’s understood and we get that. Yeah, but just know that that is a thing. They can’t pause it. So you said it takes practice and then there’s competitive play. What does it look like to practice a video game?
Micah:
I just play it. I mean, there’s the whole mindset playing, just casually playing a game and practicing it for competitive play. For me with Smash Brothers Melee, I don’t play competitively, but I want to be good at the game amongst my friends. So there will be a certain combo that I want to get down, so I can do it consistently. and I’ll just do that combo over and over again. Or in Overwatch, for example, where you have different roles. You have a person who heals, a person who’s a tank, so they take damage. So the people who do damage that have less health can get in there, get kills to get to the point to win. you just keep playing. learn vantage points in the map so you can be out of the way, but still heal your people. Or if you’re a sniper, find different vantage points, stuff like that. It’s just increasing your knowledge of a game for the purpose of getting the advantage over the other team, or the other person in terms of fighting games, because fighting games are one-on-one.
Nathan:
And this is where I often start when parents come to me and say, Hey, my child just approached me and said they want to be a professional gamer. How do I even begin to process this information as an adult? Who cares about my kiddo as someone who sees them with purpose usually will have a conversation, well, are they healthy in their gaming? And they’ll usually be like, yeah, they’re a good kid, they get good grades. I’m like, all right, that’s not exactly what I asked. Let’s take it from this angle. And often when a kid tells me this is the exact same conversation I had, so parents, here’s kind of a roadmap for this conversation. Your child comes and says, Hey, what do you want to do when you grow up, kid? I, I’m a child of mine. I want to be a professional gamer. Cool. what does your practice look like? And if your child is not repeatedly getting better at the things that are important for their team, if they don’t watch gameplay and watch what the best of the best are doing, if they don’t record themselves and watch themselves play, they’re leaving a lot on the table. Because guess what? Those are the same things we do If we want to be great at any other sport. I love cycling. I do all those things. <laugh> like, yeah, I guess I don’t record myself cycling very often, but…
Micah:
I don’t know stuff like that. It’s important, but it’s really easy for someone to say, oh yeah, I just want to be good at competitive. And then they literally, all they do is just play the game for 10 hours a day. If that’s not efficient, just cause with soccer you do drills, you practice kicking it from the corner or certain angle or certain defenses. So if two players ever come at me from this angle, I know where to go the ball. And if I have a teammate over here, I know where to kick the ball. It’s the same thing that with Super Smash Brothers melee. If I get grabbed and thrown in the air, I’m now in the air. What can I do from this position? And today I’m just going to practice what to do when I’m thrown in the air.
Nathan:
You’re actually practicing, right? Yeah. You’re getting repetition. You’re building in, yeah, scenarios.
Micah:
It’s, first off, it’s not a joke. eSports is serious. I feel like it should be taken as serious as any normal sport. And from that, you should be encouraging your kid to actually practice. What are you doing to improve? What are you going to try and improve on today? And try and teach ’em good practice habits. Cause it’s really easy to just be like, oh, I’m just going to try and win a bunch of fighting game matches today. And then you lose a bunch and then you’re mad and then you make no progress because you’re mad <laugh>, right? It’s like, oh, well maybe I’m not going to focus on trying to win today. I’m just going to try and focus on getting this combo or getting grabs off, stuff like that.
Nathan:
So what you just described is process goals. So parents, video games can be a great way to teach our kids process goals. Like, oh cool, you have a goal. You want to be good at this e-sport, right? You want to be good at this video game. Here’s how we’re going to work on a process goal. You’re going to set a time limit. You’re going to have a number of times you’re going to practice, you’re going to have the people you practice with and you’re going to keep it in a box. In the same way. You’re not going to let your child go play soccer for 12 hours in the day and forego food and sleep and friends and anything else that’s going round them out. You’re not going to let them play video games to a point where they are losing the wholeness because there is this idea that you can gain the world but lose your soul in a way.
There’s this way that you could become really good and gain success. But I, I’ll just use the example. I have people I know personally who have done that in the professional world where they went all the way in on their work ventures and now they’re down the road looking back on, man, I did really, really well at that and I became excellent in this work venture, and I became really poor in things that matter to the Lord. I didn’t do the things I needed to do with my personal heart and condition with my family, with these opportunities to serve because I became really good at work. And that’s true in real world sports. That’s true in eSports. And I think keeping that in mind with our kiddos of going, all right, we’re going to pick process goals. And our process goals are always going to move us towards that little goal for sure.
But they always need to line up with our greater goal, which is know God and glorify him daily. When we talk gospel tech, that’s not semantics. I’m not just throwing a cross on the outside of a bigger conversation. that is our foundation because if we don’t have the gospel is our foundation, well then maybe safe and happy is the best we could do. Maybe being distracted with minimal damage isn’t all that bad. But if we have a purpose, and if Christ came died a death that we deserve rose to new life to offer that to us, then our lives are no longer our own. We now live through Christ. And now that means our purpose is no longer ours to pick. We now have to go, all right, Lord, what am I doing? And is this bringing glory to you, or am I just distracting myself so I don’t have to deal with my problems?
And that’s where the reset comes in. That’s where helping your kid learn to practice. That’s what those practice skills apply. It comes outside. And this is where I want to add a caveat. Here’s the caveat. In eSports, parents you r very rarely in a real world sport can get over stimulated. Caveat one. So, do know that video games can be hyperstimulating. Yes. Meaning when I said how does it impact your child’s enjoyment? How does it impact their sleep? It can get to a point where video games are the only thing that bring enough stimulation to make a kid feel awake, alive, excited. Because real life just doesn’t do it. Reading a book puts ’em straight to sleep. Now, being around real world people just isn’t a stimulating because they’re used to having three or four chat boxes open while doing something else. So, know that all can get fixed with just some time away.
Say, Hey, we’re going to take a month away. That’s all the research points to 30 days. We’re not banning video games forever. We’re taking a month and we’re going to just reset our family. We’re going to get back to a healthy spot. And then let’s talk about this. Because at the end of the day, if your child can’t learn a healthy rhythm, if they’re more like me, good thing wasn’t great at video games <laugh> because it would’ve been a harder call. But some of us do need to take a step back and say, Hey, there’s a bigger picture here. Video games are awesome, but they’re not the greatest. They’re not the ultimate good that we’re pursuing here. So know that that’s the reset process. So overstimulation is one. And I think the second thing here to know is that the secondary benefits we get require a lot of input.
So let’s been using soccer a lot. Let’s keep talking soccer. soccer practice, And up through high school, you’re practicing two to three hours a day. College, you’ll probably go up to four or five, you’re going to have a morning practice and an evening practice. Video games from what I’ve heard, I want to say it was Riot Games was talking about what their professional teams have to put in. And it was 10 to 14 hours a day, six days a week. And the, it’s possible because, well, you just sit there and drink a lot of rockstar and Red Bull, but that’s a huge amount of your life invested. Ninja was one of the top gamers in Fortnite for a number of years. And in an E S P interview, he actually talked through like, well, I don’t have a lot of real world friends because he would stream. So he’s like, I go to bed at midnight, I wake up at six. from six to noon, I practice and stream. And then I take an hour lunch break, I hang out with my dog and wife, and then I game from one till 11. And he is like, that’s my day. And I do that six days a week. And he can tell you how much money he loses if he decides to skip a day, because of the revenue he doesn’t bring in from viewership and ads and sponsorships.
Micah:
And I would like to preface, I don’t think that’s healthy in the slightest.
Nathan:
And it’s important. That’s hard though, because sometimes that’s what it takes.
Micah:
I know. that is what it takes. I mean, it’s hard to say that because Ninja best Fortnite player in the world, he, he’s partially, I would argue, partially the reason that game took off in the first place. Yeah. Because he is such a huge personality, also good at it. But I would still argue… just not healthy.
Nathan:
And I think, so actually reading that interview I came away with, he fails a reset. I was going through this for him. I was like, dude, just things you said right here in an interview, this isn’t your best friend. Yeah. You know what, this is. the things he was talking about was, I don’t think you’re well. And it turns out he wasn’t took a reprieve. He walked away from the game for a little bit and he’s taking it more balanced as we’ve seen people do.
Micah:
Definitely Now he’s, he’s a lot more active in the streaming community. So he’s not just playing this game and being in his own little bubble. He’s started branching out. He’s doing a lot more IRL stream stuff, which
Nathan:
Is in real life.
Micah:
So he’s still, I R L stands for in real life, but he’s still streaming a lot. But it’s more hanging out with other people and not just playing Fortnite to get good. But I mean, that wouldn’t have been possible if he didn’t make so much money playing it competitively.
Nathan:
I think it’s
Micah:
So tricky.
Nathan:
This is the tricky thing that I want to bring up in this conversation about eSports parents, is it is real. It’s not bad. And yet most of the people who are making it early on have done it in ways that I would argue are kind of the puric victories. This idea that it costs too much to get the wins and to get good at it. So I think helping your child have that conversation rather than saying Nope, video games of the devil, were just never going to play them. Okay, then your kid won’t have this problem. I guess <laugh> have other conversations,
Micah:
Have other problems.
Nathan:
I don’t think that’s the hill the die on. And this is coming from a guy who doesn’t currently let his kids play video games. And let me come back to that point that might’ve just jumped the shark. But with this idea, have the conversation with your kiddos about, all right, what are your goals? What is this doing to you personally? Are you helpful in this way? And can you continue down this road? Yeah.
Micah:
You got to not separate video games from their life. You got to integrate it. Which seems weird because most parents that I’ve talked to, whether it be my aunt and uncle and their kids in video games, they want to make video games a separate part of their life. They have their video game and then their school and the rest of their life. But if video games, at the very least is a hobby, it, it’s very ever rarely a pastime. Video games, it’s a hobby just straight up. And if they want to play it competitively, then it’s like necessary. It needs to be just a part of their life. And with anything that’s in your life, school, work, anything like that, you got to make sure it’s in a balance with everything else. Yeah. Because you’re talking about the secondary benefits of sports. Yeah. It’s the physical workout too. With eSports. You completely forego that. That’s like that’s, that’s not even something I can defend. playing eSports yet you get sweaty when you get playing video games. Cause it’s intense. Your brain, your brain gets a really good workout and your brain is always engaged, which too much can be a bad thing, but there’s no physical. You have to find a way to get the physical movement in your life in some other ways. And you got to make that known to your kid.
Nathan:
And it’s got to be something you helped them Talk through because yeah, exactly. Right. Right. You played soccer for two hours, at very least you ran for two hours. Yeah, exactly. And let’s say you play it through high school and you don’t go on and play in college, great. You have multiple years of running for multiple hours, multiple days a week.
Micah:
You’re most likely going to be in pretty decent
Nathan:
Shape. And you understand the concept of exercise and healthy. And when you’re out of shape, most of us can look back to, I mean that’s why PE is a required class in school. So we get the experience of, oh, this hurts, but it doesn’t mean I am hurt. It just means this is a painful process. And video games get around most of that.
Micah:
But that doesn’t mean that they’re a hundred percent physically safe, because there is a unique issue with eSports and playing a lot of it called carpal tunnel.
Nathan:
Very true.
Micah:
Repetitive stress injuries are very not talked about in eSports. I’ve noticed at least within competitive teams. with melee, it’s a big issue because game Cube controllers, they’re very small and not very ergonomic. for playing casually and just playing Smash Brothers casually or Super Mario Sunshine, they feel great. But moving as fast as you are, getting all these inputs, it puts a lot of repetitive stress on your muscles in your hands. And there have been players who have had to just stop playing melee because it’s gotten so bad. And I could a hundred percent guarantee you, from the moment a kid first watches and hears about eSports to them getting in their mind this dream and goal of wanting to become a professional player, they will never consider that. They will. I never even considered it playing. I played games a lot, but even playing games a lot for long periods of time won’t really do that to you. But competitive eSports demands so much of you physically, at least in your hands and stuff, that it wasn’t until I started playing a game called Guilty Gear. It’s like Street Fighter and Mortal Combat. It’s a 2D fighter, but playing that on a mouse and keyboard, my wrist got so tired. Yeah.
And I had to start doing stretches to make sure my muscles didn’t tense up and start hurting.
Nathan:
And I think parents are big picture ideas. So man, we’ve covered a lot of ground and we have a lot of momentum that we could use. Yes. I’m thinking we’re going to wrap it up on this note. Parents I want to first share, I mentioned I don’t currently let my kids play video games, and that’s intentional partly because of me. So there’s no one in the house right now that can walk them through video games well, because their father can’t play video games well. so if you don’t know anything about my story, the short version is God convicted me. I fought it for a long time and about, I was trying to remember, I think it was 2010, 2011 May 15th, I remember the day, I’ll have to go back and look when it was, but it would be right around 11 years ago when I played my last video game.
And the idea behind that being not that video games were terrible, but that my heart was in a terrible spot with them. And that led me to working in young life. That led me to stopping being a teacher because I realized my passion’s actually seeing kids reach their potential. And it’s actually the reason I’m talking to you right now behind this microphone. So, know that that’s the first reason is my kids don’t have someone to guide that process. And the second is this is purely anecdotal, don’t have any research for this, but in a lot of life experiences, we say, well, if the kids don’t get this early, they’re going to be repressed and they’re going to kind of explode when they go to college. And I have found with video games in the growing number of young people I know in my circle of influence, through young life through school through personal relationships, that kids who have a full plate of exciting adventures and opportunities, they have things they love,
video games might be one of them, but they have a wide variety of interests and they’re able to pursue those interests. What be they sports or artistic ventures and endeavors or business and work. When those kids leave the house and they fly the coop and they have their own smartphones, their own video game systems I have found a lot of them opting out of these opportunities. In fact, a bunch of college students and just post-college students kids, drop in their cell phones and their smartphones and going to simpler options like dumb phones or even flip phones voluntarily because they know how to align their purpose with the vision of what they want to see in their life. They understand what it looks like to turn to the Lord and say, Lord, how do I live my life? Not just for the next feel good but with a purpose.
And a lot of ’em go, you know what? I’m actually wasting time here. I’m actually like, this isn’t building me into more who I want to be. And your kids take those lessons into who they date, who they’re friends with, what they’re going to do for work. That conversation goes beyond just video games. So, what I’m trying to say is, the reason I haven’t played video games with my kids, and the reason they don’t have the systems yet, is we’re building up a solid base of stuff they love to do. And when I introduce video games, it’s going to be in tandem with stuff they still love to do. It’s going to give me a really clear litmus for if those things start to drop off and video games start to kind of consume these other areas of passion and interest. And by the time they’re 18 and they’ve flown the coop, sure they’ll have played a video game.
They’ll know what they are, they’ll know how to talk about them. But more importantly, they’ll know who God is, who God’s called them to be, and whether this activity is actually benefiting that or distracting from it. And that’s what I want them to do. And then if they go in eyes open and go, yeah, sure, I know this isn’t good for me and I’m going to do it anyway. That’s between them and God at that point. they’re an adult. They’re making that call eyes open and that’s called rebellion. And I’m going to pray against that and I’m going to call it out and I’m going to lovingly address them back to the truth. But I’m only so much in control of that. It’s not a matter of well good, they never played a video game. Phew. Now they grew up a good adult. I think we can all look to people where that’s not true. Bad people existed before 30 years ago.
Micah:
Exactly. So
Nathan:
I think and ending this conversation, eSports are real. They’re growing rapidly. You’re going to start hearing a lot about them. And there’s going to start to be money involved, which skews, honestly, it skews our hearts and it skews our idea on whether or not this is good because it’s something that used to just be for fun where we play video games because we like them. where we play ’em with people we like, and it’s just the thing we do too. Well now it’s also big business and Google’s involved and Microsoft. oh, we didn’t even mention Microsoft just made one of the biggest video game acquisitions in history. Oh yeah. Paid, I want to say it was 60 billion.
Micah:
No, I think it was like 42.
Nathan:
Is it 42 billion? I It’s 42 billion. And it hasn’t officially gone through. It’s not officially cleared as an okay merger because it’s such a huge deal. But tens of billions of dollars to acquire Blizzard.
Micah:
Who own the people who make Overwatch, which is huge competitive.
Nathan:
Heroes of the Storm, huge and World of Warcraft.
Micah:
But a very huge gaming organization. And there is competitiveness in that, which is part of what they factored in with that acquisition.
Nathan:
And they’ll get the licensing rights for that and they will be pushing this, why am I bringing that up? Because your kid’s school laptop might have Minecraft on it right now, which is a Microsoft purchase game. And it will have more of it on it. Like, yeah, this is coming out in more platforms, more areas. It’s not something that we can ignore. And so just be aware eSports are real. They are an opportunity. Certainly people that love the Lord need to be there, but we need to make sure that we’re making the proper intentions, trade offs. And just because we like games doesn’t mean we should go pro in them. <laugh>. Like there’s other things we need to go pro in loving people.
Micah:
First and foremost, if you take nothing out of this, at least take this. If the kid doesn’t like the game, but they want to make money, that’s not healthy. Yes. That that’s not how you should be going about. You should be playing a game competitively because you love the game. I play Melee because I love that game so much. And the competitive aspect just enhances my love for the game.
Nathan:
Yeah. And I think that’s an awesome stopping point. Thank you Micah. And a spot we can talk about with our kids and even reflect on our lives. Why are we doing what we do with our time, with our resources? How are we using the days the Lord’s given us to his glory? And is it doing… We can look at what you do for a hobby parent. What are you doing in your free time for enjoyment? And is that something that leaves more of you to your family and to the people God’s calling you to? Or is it something that we use to kind of self-medicate because it’s not just video games where that happens and just to be our focus today. So, thank you for joining us today. If you have any questions, you can find me, [email protected]. We’re also on social media at Love God Use Tech on Instagram and Facebook and you can join us next week. Actually, I say that normally, but this is actually, you’ll join us in the future. I don’t know if we’re going to release these as a bundle or slow roll them, but you will join us soon.
Micah:
Yeah, this is the second episode. So whatever we decide, you’ll see us however long it was between episode one and two.
Nathan:
That’s a, that’s when you’ll see us again next time to continue this conversation and what the tech about video games and technology.
