Transcript of AE 1345 - Walking With Pete: This Video Game is Taking Over My Life

G'day you guys. Welcome to this episode of Walking with Pete. Aussie English. I'm not walking again because I don't know, I was inside and felt like, felt like sitting down. I guess maybe I should go for a walk. Um, but yeah. Uh, what are we doing today?

I thought today we could talk about the new video game that is ruining my life. It is ruining my life. It is the kind of video game that you sit down, you start playing, you look up, and all of a sudden, it's 3 a.m. in the morning and you're like, Shit, I got work tomorrow or Shit, I got, I got to get up and take the kids to school at, like, you know, 7:30 a.m., 8 a.m., whatever it is.

So yeah, this has been a bit of fun and it's been a while since we've talked about gaming. I think I talked about gaming on here with my brother in law, probably. Oh gosh, it would have been like 3 or 4 years ago, but I'll see if I can find it. Gosh, yeah.

Growing Up as a Gamer Down Under with Rory Douglas, that's my brother in law. That was episode 530. So go check that out if you want.

But today I thought we could do it again. We could talk a bit more about gaming as I am a bit of a keen gamer at times. I do find it quite relaxing and I like doing it probably in the evenings.

Mostly I sit down and some of the games that I had been playing up until recently, until this one took over my life, which we'll get to shortly, was Civ 6. So, Civilisations 6, which was a strategy game, or is a strategy game.

And I guess the idea with this one is you build a civilisation, so you start the game, you kind of looking down from a bird's eye view at the map. It's like a really, really complicated board game, turn based board game with many other players that are other teams. And they can be either humans that are playing somewhere else on a computer or a PlayStation or something, or they can be computer AI, you know, um, CPU, you know, enemies, ones that aren't real people.

And that's typically the way that I go, because then, yeah, you get to just sit down and play whenever you want. Um, so yeah, I play Civ six. I was pretty addicted to that. And you kind of start with, you know, a small, a small group of people. You got like a little, um, would you say a guy that starts a city and you've got some warriors, some dudes who fight and you have to kind of set up a city somewhere.

It's like 2000 or 4000 BC, you know, you go through the ages and you have to sort of build and level things up and try and expand your civilisation, build other cities, take over other cities from other civilisations, trade with them, fight with them, all that sort of stuff. And it's just very, um, It's very complicated and in depth and it's a lot of fun.

I grew up always playing those sorts of strategy games, and I love them. Things like, uh, Red Alert. So, Command and Conquer, Red Alert on PlayStation. Um, what did that become? That became Red Alert 2. You know, there was a whole bunch of these sorts of games that I just loved where you have to build a base and you've got like soldiers and you have to go and explore terrain around you. You have to mine resources and then bring them back and all that sort of stuff. You know, you got to find the enemy and destroy their base.

I used to love, love, love those games, but more recently it feels like they've turned into the only games that I know like that are now on your phone. And they're typically, uh, like pay to play games. You know, it's sort of annoying that these strategy games have, have pretty much just all dried up and disappeared and now turned into, um, mainly phone games that you need to really pay to kind of level up.

There was one a while back that was like, I guess it was sort of like Viking type, um, one that you would play on your phone and it's okay initially, but the higher you get, the slower you are to improve. And you have to kind of really buy resources with your money on the phone to actually get anywhere.

And at that point, it's kind of like, feels like you're cheating, like you're just using money to level up. It's like, well, what's, what's the point then? It's not really skill-based at that point, right? It's more you try and get people hooked and addicted to the game early on, and then once they are, you're like, Oh, but if you really want to get better, you're gonna have to pay us money.

So yeah, I always felt those games made me feel like a bit of a sucker. Um, as opposed to, you know, someone who's working hard the entire time. I'd rather pay for the game once and then just play it. Anyway. So, yeah, I was always into those.

What other ones? Crash Bandicoot, Crash Team Racing. So I think it's Crash Bandicoot Nitro Team Racing or whatever it is. I started playing that and my son got into it and it was really funny watching how initially he was awful. Like awful guys, you know, picture a four year old trying to hold a normal PlayStation controller, tiny little hands trying to manage the sticks and all the buttons and everything. Just terrible. The worst. One of the worst players I think I've ever seen. Anyway. I'm joking. I'm just gonna take it easy on my son.

But the point is within about, I don't know, a few weeks he was whooping my ass. You know, he was. He was all of a sudden doing really, really well and playing the game like he'd been at it for years. It was truly astonishing watching how quickly he learnt how to navigate the controller and to play the game, you know, do all of these complex tasks simultaneously and everything.

And I was just astonished that such a young child can learn that so quickly. It was honestly. Yeah, I was shocked.

So anyway, we'd been playing that heaps and he'd been playing Ratchet and Clank. That's another kind of, I guess it's like a first person RPG shooter type thing where you're going around alien planets looking for stuff and you know, you've got different weapons and you can switch through them all and shoot and do all sorts of stuff, you know, fight aliens. And that's a lot of fun. It's a good kid's game.

But then we had more recently one of these Woolworths or Coles, these ColesWorths supermarket promos, right, where you buy something, you spend over $30 and you get a pack of cards or a pack of whatever, or a toy or something.

And that was for Minecraft. So I've probably just let the cat out of the bag and mention the game, right?

Minecraft. Now, I had never played this. It's been out for I think 15 years now.

So what, 2010, I think, is when it came out. It's the most downloaded game in the world. I think there's like 300 or 400 million players. It's ridiculous.

The owner of it or the creator of it sold it for like 2.5 billion USD to Microsoft a few years back and just tapped out. I think, you know, he was just like, See ya! You know, went went and bought an expensive house in, in Hollywood and was just like, Let's party.

Um, but I'd never played the game. I sort of saw it and was just like, it just looks lame. It's all pixelated. It just looks like a tiny little kids game. You know, maybe I'm too old. I'm too old for this. I'm too cool for this. I'm just, you know, I'm way too cool for this kind of thing. Tongue in cheek. Guys, I'm being sarcastic again. You probably can't see my expressions.

But anyway, so for years I, it was on the periphery. I knew what it was. I went in and out of playing video games and just never got around to playing it. Didn't really know anyone my age playing it. They were always young kids, you know, like eight years old, ten years old. And no one wants to be the nearly 40 year old dude playing this online or something. And all of your team-mates are under ten. There's multiple reasons that's strange.

So anyway, yeah, it was never really on my radar.

I never thought about playing it until my son started doing chores around the house. You know, he helps take out the bins, he helps clean up the house. Sometimes he does a bit of sweeping, you know, all sorts of stuff so that he can earn a bit of pocket money.

And he's got this little plastic safe that has a code on the front that he puts his money in, like a money box. And he's been saving up for probably 4 or 5 months with this little safe money box thing.

And opened it the other day and I was like, Holy shit, Noah! I didn't say that to him. But I was like, Whoa, you got a lot of money in there, you know? What are you going to spend it on? What do you want? You saving for something, you know, do you want to get a toy? Do you want to get a video game?

And I said, well, what about Minecraft? I know that's a kid's game and you like gaming, and maybe Minecraft might be something up your alley that you enjoy because you can build things. You can, you know, you have to solve problems. You have to go and gather stuff and then create things.

And I thought maybe this would be the good kind of video game for a young kid where it's not really violent and there's a lot of that. Yeah. Spatial reasoning, um, problem solving. And you get to be creative inside it.

And he was just like, I want to get Minecraft. I want to buy it. Buy it now, dad. Let's get it. And I said, look, dude, you've got, you know, 50, 60, 70 bucks in your safe. If you want to buy it with your money, then we can get it. But it's your money. That's the whole point, you know, of you having pocket money and saving up. You're meant to save up for something that you want. How badly do you want Minecraft?

Because it is one of those things where I'm like, quite often the kids will be like, I really want this thing. And if you go buy it, they're really just chasing that dopamine hit. They kind of just want to feel like, oh, I got something new. And within ten minutes they're kind of like, can I have something else, dad?

And I really didn't want that to be the case, which it often is if it's my money. So that's why I was saying to him, if you look, you think about what you want to do with your money. You think about whether or not you want to buy Minecraft. You've saved up this money over a few months, and you can use some of it to purchase Minecraft.

You know, I looked it up, went on to the PlayStation store, because you can just buy these games online via the internet.

And it was like $30, you know, 29 bucks or something. And I just said to him, look, here's how much money you've got, here's how much of the money you have you'll have to use to buy the game. Do you want to do it? It's up to you.

And he was like, Yes.

So he pretty much straight away just handed me $30 of his hard earned cash. And again, I checked, I said, are you 100% sure? Because there's no 'give these back'-sies, right? There's no returning the money after. If we buy this, it's gone. It's done. The $30 that you just gave me is gone. I'm not giving it back to you if you change your mind, okay? You need to make a decision right now and be 100%.And then stand by that decision whether or not you change your mind.

And he was like, Yeah, dad, let's get it, let's get it. And yeah, it was because of the Woolworths thing. So the Woolworths had thing promo, whatever it was, it was these little Minecraft blocks that you could collect. And both my kids kind of went berserk for however long that was, you know, three months collecting this stuff and filling out a box. And both of them completed their collections.

And I think we ended up with, you know, dozens of these bloody things lying around the house, spare ones. So that was how Minecraft got on their radar. And they were, you know, thinking about it and being like, what is it? You know, blah, blah, blah. And so yeah, that was how that was the origin of it.

Anyway. So we bought the game, I installed it, opened it up, and he's like, what do I do? So I was like, yeah, okay, I got to sit down and play this with him and show him how to do everything for a while. You know, it's gonna require me to get involved and take part in it.

And I thought, you know, it's probably a cool game where it's multiplayer. We can play together and I can, you know, run around in this world and do stuff with him. And maybe it's a good way for us to bond and hang out together and and just have fun and, you know, shoot the shit, shoot the breeze, talk and and yeah, bond.

And it is. It's absolutely brilliant. So we started playing it and we just like, you know, you have to keep looking up what you need to do. So the basic idea is you're this person that appears in this world and everything is made out of blocks.

And I think a big reason for that is that it allows the computer to not have to use loads and loads and loads of computing power to generate the world around you. It can just create it based on these blocks and they're easy to manipulate. You know, you can just chop these blocks, whether they're trees, animals, the ground water, lava, whatever it is, you can, you know, manipulate them and interact with them in the world around you.

So anyway, we're doing that and I had to look up, you know, what do we do? What do you you sort of appear and you're like, you got nothing. You just got your hands and you're like, what the hell do I do? Do I just go around punching stuff? You know, killing animals with my bare hands, punching trees to get wood.

And yeah, you have to go through this full process. And I guess this is what sucked me in. This is what got me addicted to the game.

It's one of these games where you start with zero and the world is beautiful. Like, you get- the world is new and generated every single time. You know, you could appear in a desert. You could appear in the Arctic. You could appear in a rainforest. You could appear in some woodlands.

And there's all different environments around you. And you can sort of walk in any direction and it all changes. There's mountains, there's caves, and there's things to collect in different places. You need you need to get food. You need shelter, you need somewhere to sleep. Um, and you have to build all those things from scratch.

So that's, I think, why I got sucked in, um, as I was learning more about it and trying to show Noah, here's what you need to do. Here's what you need to do. I was, I was getting hooked.

I didn't realise it initially. It's that's how it starts, man. You do the drugs once and you're like, yeah, that was fun. And then all of a sudden you're a full blown addict, right?

So that's how Minecraft caught up. And um, yeah, I guess, you know, body swapped me, snatched my soul, took over, took over my body. And so now I'm playing it more than him. Bloody hell. Like, it's it's honestly so addictive because yeah, you just, you end up building your own world too.

And so part of the fun was Noah and I would start. And you have to start by, like punching some trees, getting some wood. You then turn the wood into planks and sticks, and then you can make tools out of the wood, like a pickaxe or a sword or an axe or a shovel. You can then more easily chop things down, kill animals, dig holes, get more resources.

So you're meant to mine things. Hence the name Minecraft. You can mine stone, you can mine gold, iron, copper, coal. And you use that to make fires. And then you can smelt the iron. You can smelt the the copper. Turn that into iron blocks. You can then make metal tools out of, you can make doors, stairs, fences.

And then you can end up building insane things, like we built a massive castle that had like trapdoors, ladders, a secret basement, tunnels leading from one castle to another castle.

And at night time- so it rotates between day and night, probably every, what, 20 or 30 minutes. It goes between the two. And at night time, zombies appear in the darkness.

If you're playing the survival mode and they try and kill you, right. If you walk near them, they see you and they come towards you and try and hurt you.

And so you have to build bases for yourself to protect yourself and, you know, hide from the zombies at night and build a bed so you can sleep. If you want to skip through the night and wake up the next day.

And that was the really fun part I found about the game. It was building these bases, building a barn, getting animals. You know, you go and find sheep, cows, chickens, ducks. You put them inside the barn. You can shear the sheep and get yourself wool. You can skin and kill the cows and get their meat and their leather. You can make things out of it.

It's all, it's so much fun, man. So anyway, yeah, that that was the best part. Playing with my son and my daughter. Now she wants to play as well. Although she has, um, a lot more of a difficult time because, again, tiny hands and just like, what do I do? What do I do? Dad, what do I do? Constantly. Which kind of stresses me out a bit at times. Um, but it's just so much fun being creative in there.

And I kept saying to Noah, like, what do you what do you reckon we should do? Should we build like, a massive castle? And where should we put the wall? What should we do with the rooms? How do you want to? Do you want to have a trap door? Do you want to have a basement? Um. Where do you want to put the animals? Do you want to build a barn next to it?

So it's just so much fun creating this world with your son. Uh, and spending time just laughing. And, you know, we just had school holidays, and that was probably the cherry on top in terms of getting me addicted to the game. That was the final straw. That was the last nail in the coffin.

Because all of a sudden we had two weeks of being able to just sit around and hang out with, um, with my son. You know, he was at home for two weeks and constantly like, dad, I want to play Minecraft. Dad, I want to play Minecraft. Uh, so yeah.

Anyway. But yeah, to balance that out, trying to not be an absolute couch potato father and just, you know, raising my son on the couch. We've started going for many more bike rides and going out and kicking the footy around and trying to offset playing video games with that.

So pretty much every day, if he wants to play the video game, I'm like, alright, but we have to go out for a bike ride and kick the ball around for an hour or so, and then when we come back, we can play the game and you can, you know, do this for a bit and then we'll have a break. And um, yeah.

So, it's been really good, but I just thought I would share that with you guys. You know, it was an interesting topic to talk about.

And I think the reason that I thought about, you know, maybe I should share this because I think my demographic on here, most of you guys are probably late 20s, 30s and 40s, you know, around that age, maybe a bit older. You don't tend to be ten year olds learning Australian English, right?

But I was on Reddit and I got onto the Minecraft subreddit and was just sort of looking in there, lurking, having a look around and the number of posts from fathers, typically fathers. There's probably mothers in there too, but typically fathers who were like, I'm 34 years old and my son just got me addicted to Minecraft, and now I'm playing it more than him. I'm 45 years old and I've just started playing Minecraft because of my son.

The number of those posts made me laugh hard and made me think, there's probably a whole bunch of you guys listening with small kids who are playing these games, and you guys get sucked in as well, whether you're fathers or mothers, whatever you are.

And so yeah, I thought I would share this because it might be a fun topic for you guys to listen to. Learn a bit of the vocab about, think about and, um, yeah, I invite you guys to send me a message on Instagram or an email at pete@aussieenglish.com.au.

Shoot me an email, say g'day, and tell me what games your kids are sucked into at the moment and if there are any, uh, games that you've gotten sucked into that have that have become addictive because of your kids. You know, are there any that you're playing more than your kids?

Because I think at the moment with Minecraft, it's I- don't tell my son, but I've got my own world. I started a second world, okay. It's just between you and me. And, um, this is, this is for just me. And so, yeah, it's, it's become addictive. And I think I'm probably playing it more than my son at the moment.

Anyway, thought you'd like this episode. I thought it would be a fun chat. And, um. Yeah, I would love to hear from you guys. So let me know, you know what's going on with gaming and you guys. Anyway, thanks for joining me, guys, and I'll see you in the next one! Tooroo!