Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to the Delusional Dev Podcast. This is episode one of this brand new show and we're going to be talking about the Philosophy of Fun, which is an article that my cousin Jesse wrote, who I'm actually joined with, and it impacted me in such a great way and impacted everyone else who read it. And as we've talked about before, so we're going to be talking about that today and what the philosophy of fun means and how gaming can influence your life and how viewing things as play can help you overcome, in my case, anxieties of doing things that are naturally scary. So, Jesse, I know we've been planning this for a while and it's been a while since you wrote it, but I'm excited to record this first episode with you. So thank you for taking the time to come talk to me. I know this will be. This will be interesting as it's a first for both of us.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, thanks so much for inviting me. It's really an honor. It's a surprise that the paper even was so well liked by you and others. And so I'm just really happy to, you know, have any positive impact.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Yeah, it blew my mind when I first read it and it's like, holy crap, this is really good. So why don't you, why don't you tell us, like, how did you come up with the philosophy of Fun and the idea behind this wonderfully written article?
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Well, thanks. So for context, I am in school for computer science and I'm looking to apply that by making some video games. And so I thought to myself, well, I have to take an elective to graduate, and the closest thing that might be useful to me would be to take a course about games, how to make a fun game, what makes a game fun, that sort of thing.
So I thought I would be learning, like, really practical knowledge about, like, how to position scenes in a world so that they're better for exploring and such like that for video game development, when I. I should have read the course outline better because it turned out to be more of a social justice kind of course where they're really focused on indoctrinating the student, in my opinion. And, and so they ended up just making us talk about, like, capitalism and how it perverts gaming, allegedly, and, and all these weird things. And so reading the course material, we had to read a book.
And it was behind the scenes of the streaming industry.
Gee, I forget the book title right now. But it was basically an expose on the streaming industry and how there's a whole lot of evil going around the streaming industry. And I thought, well, this isn't surprising, there's a whole lot of evil in every industry.
But I think the person who wrote it was a little bit naive from being a streamer day in, day out and not really, you know, they play their game and they have their opinions that they learned from school and they don't necessarily have too much life experience and so they see all these slimy business tactics and, and virtue signaling and it was basically like, whoa, is the streaming industry?
But reading that book, and it was maybe like a 300 page book, but it just left a really sour taste in my mouth because my mentality surrounding anything is a lot more like I'm going to expect things to be hard and that's just the nature of the game and then I'm gonna win if I can.
And I'm not gonna complain about the pretext of my situation because that's not productive.
So anyway, I got like all those red flags from this author of just like, what is his end goal here? It's like he was trying to flag down a referee for his life.
And so it was very like exhausting to read and totally wrong. And I even felt that I wished that the other students weren't exposed to this because it's a poisonous mindset to have and I'd rather them have a healthier mindset than that. And so my response to this, it was so necessary because I would have been angry otherwise.
I had to write my own philosophy towards fun.
Especially because I found it ironic that this guy made a living gaming but he failed to actually become invigorated by the morals of the games that we play as a society, which was the subject matter of the course.
So I thought how ironic that the course focused on this is getting it wrong in my opinion. And I just had to try and get it right.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: And so that inspired this philosophy of fun, which was, like I said in the beginning, an amazing article. It's crazy how you took what was arguably a very frustrating article. And I remember, I think it was, if I'm remembering correctly, the streamer article was the one we sort of poked at together at least. But you told me about. Oh yeah, yeah, it was, it was very.
Is victim mentality the right word?
[00:05:58] Speaker B: That's what I'd use.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And so that leads us into this whole article about the philosophy of fun and basically how it affected me. And I'd like to hear how it affected the people in your family, which is coincidentally for those listening as my family Too, but on your side, because I don't think we've really talked to anyone outside of our conversation. But it helped me understand, it helped me approach different aspects of life with this carefree attitude. Because we're just playing.
That's all that life is. It's a great big game.
And so your inspiration for writing the Philosophy of Fun was sort of driven by this anger towards what was, I guess, an unjustice, in your view, a victim's mentality and a. So objecting yourself to, I think, a life that is less than best, that is less than optimal.
And so that would inspire this sort of article. So your writing of the Philosophy of Fun, like, what. What approach did you take? What conclusions did you draw while. While writing that? And how did you approach writing it? What was your. Your starting point? You. You turned this victim's mentality, this article that was very weird, and turned it into this. How did you go about that?
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Good question. Well, I'd say it's not something that I had to study or think on. It's more so something that we just live out being put into words.
So philosophies aren't something we think of. They're something we live out. Right.
So being Christian, and I just think that alone gives us the framework to really be aware of the tendencies in our lifestyle and where they come from, because we are trying to hone our tendencies toward the ideal ones.
So I'd say for the whole frustration of that course, it was because I knew what was being taught to be a contradiction of the ideal lifestyle taught by Christ.
And so I just put that into words as best that I could. And it started with Ecclesiastes. I love Ecclesiastes. It's probably one of my favorite books, if not my favorite. And it.
For those who haven't read it, it starts off very dramatically and it says, everything is. Everything is vanity. And the direct translation means more like vapor or dust. And so it's like everything is just dust. You know, you've all heard that before. It's nihilism. And it's. Well, you know, we're just a speck in the ocean of specks, and there's nothing that we do in our life that matters. It starts out from that perspective, but then it rights the ship. And so I call this book Ecclesiastes, the Antidote to Nihilism.
Because it.
Well, it just is. If you're feeling nihilistic and you read Ecclesiastes, you're going to see that, hey, actually, there is a purpose to things.
And anyway, so I'll leave you to read Ecclesiastes. I won't try to summarize it, but in there it talks about, you know, so if everything we do is essentially vanity, then what is our goals? What's our set of goals for life? And it.
I believe that Ecclesiastes makes a very good job of framing my argument for me. And it really had the idea first, I'm just copying it, but it talks about how the gift of God is to take joy and the toil of your life. Everything is mundane, everything's going to be hard, and it is toil to live. But if you can have fun, it's like that is the gameplay loop and it won't change for the sake of the life, right? The gameplay loop is use the washroom. You have to wipe your butt. It's a pain, but you know, you have to do it and none of that's going to change. And so to be able to take joy in the things that we do, that's the gift of God. And how do we unlock the joy in the mundane is by doing it for a good reason.
If you have faith in what you're doing, you're not going to be like upset about doing it. It's only when you're doing things in bad faith that you hate to do it. And so if you like, if your job pays you a killing, you're able to tolerate a lot of rigmarole. If your job pays you just a little bit, you might start to loathe doing it. And that is actually, that's a good thing because you should probably get a job that you feel is, is worth your time and that you can do in good faith. And so everything in terms of our enjoyment of our life is more of a check engine light. If you're not enjoying life, you probably need to fix something you're doing. And you absolutely will enjoy life if you are doing it in good faith for things that matter.
That's that.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: We talked about that before and I think this tangents into burnout because on a separate occasion I remember mentioning I was feeling burnt out. You're like, ah, there's no such thing. You can't feel burnt out if you believe in what you're doing.
Maybe therein lies the issue, but, well.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: Hyperbole aside, I mean, Jesus would have had a pretty good case for burnout. But the greater good was that he do what he's doing. And I think that stands for anyone, like, there's a time for rest and There's a time for work. And those are. I mean, if you read my paper, those are basically two forms of play because there's learning by doing and then there's learning by resting.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: I wanted to mention the note about Ecclesiastes. Essentially, how I interpret that book, and I think how most people who have read it would interpret that book is basically everything or nothing matters. You work and then you die, and everything sucks. But I feel like in that, in and of itself is a freedom because of, like, if everything sucks and nothing matters, and I'm being hyperbolic, obviously, then that really takes all of the pressure off of doing anything. If it's all just like a fart in the wind, if it all just doesn't matter, then there's really no reason not to do something that you want to do.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: I see. Although I would argue that it doesn't suck. I think that's the gift of God, right? Is that we can acknowledge that our life is minuscule in the grand scheme and that there's nothing new under the sun conceptually. But then that means that we cannot put our pride in our own life, you see? So it's like the whole point of the nihilism there is. And this is not nihilism. This is the antidote to nihilism. But the trick to nihilism is you put your faith in your own life, and then you realize you're a speck. The antidote is that you take your faith out of your own life and be ready to sacrifice it for a good cause. Because then you become a knight for lack of a, you know, just an analogy. You become a hero. You become someone who's ready to write the wrongs, turn against the stream, and take the path less traveled. And that is a really fun, rewarding life.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: And so what conclusions or what threads would you draw between the principles that Ecclesiastes teaches and how that can be translated to apply to learning and playing and having fun, like your paper suggests.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: Well, that's mostly through our psychology and just the way that God made things to work. So when we play, fun is not instantaneous and it's not continuous. Fun is what happens after. It's the release of dopamine, after you've accomplished an objective. So if you. You might be playing a competitive multiplayer game, and if you lose, you will not be having fun. And that will have been a horrible time.
If you win, then that was fun. And so it's almost betting. And so all of, like, our leisure is.
And I go into much greater detail in the paper, by the way, don't expect good editing on the paper. It was. I am not a writer by nature.
[00:15:20] Speaker A: But we'll include it and you can judge for yourself.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: Yeah, these activities that we do are not guaranteed to be fun, but what they are guaranteed is to teach us something. And when we learn, it's fun. And this is something that I think has been almost lost to the school system a bit is school is run much like a factory, and that's by design. And so you put in your time, you put, you know, you clock in, you clock out. That's not learning. Learning is intrinsically fun. And we know that from solving puzzles in video games and even, even narratives such as watching TV is. I like to think of it as like training the LLM in our mind. We have all these subconscious intuitions on dealing with other people. And when we watch narratives unfold, it is like it's food for teaching that aspect of us. And so I think every form of entertainment is a form of learning, but that these entertainments are also not enough to sustain us for the grandest fun. It just like continuing this betting analogy that I started, if you lose, you're not having fun. If you win, you are. Well, it's just entertainment is a form of shallow fun. And you might be able to guaranteed win a video game after you've tried long enough. But eventually these shallow funds, which are great for resting, they are not going to be enough of that dopaminergic drug for your ultimate satisfaction in life. And so for that, you need to take the habits that you've learned from trying to win games and trying to piece together puzzles and apply them and solve larger problems. And that is exactly the kind of thing that goes on in the workplace and in your life in general. And it's the kind of challenge that is waiting for us to unlock.
Not one person's life, I'm convinced, is lacking of challenges and trials to be taken on as if it was a game. And I think when you see it that way, you will enjoy the trials and trying to succeed. After all, this is promised by Ecclesiastes as the gift of God.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: And that is the hard part. It's very hard to go from essentially a surface level challenge where your comfort zone is, but you like it because it's easy. You don't really have to try. And it's good because there's no effort. But in that there's this deep root that grows that. That keeps you locked there. And in that place, I think, is a lot of sadness and unfulfillment. And what's funny is a lot of questions that you're asking about yourself and about your life can be answered on the other side of hardship. But a lot of us don't want to go that route because obviously it's hard, it's painful to go through these, these hard scenarios and situations. But like you said, on the other side of a challenge is a lot of dopamine and a lot of other things. And I think even Andrew Huberman said the same thing, that there is dopamine in curiosity. A curiosity can, can help you figure, not only figure out, you know, the things that you don't know, but almost in that figuring out you can get this, this surge of happiness in your. Sorry, go ahead.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: Oh, thanks. Yeah, I just want to touch on to that as well. That. I mean, I couldn't have put it better myself firstly.
But I also find that it ties in perfectly with why I was put into this situation in the first place with the course. Because the book we had to read, it was very evident that the guy who streamed all day felt a lack of challenge in his life and was very, very miserable.
And we'll have to add maybe in the description what I'm referring to, but.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: Yeah, you can send that to me after.
[00:19:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it was exactly that. It was a lack of fulfillment because the trials he was going through was just a video game. And even though he was very good at the video game, it's. It's not enough. And conversely, I want all of us to sort of envision ourselves as Mario or Zelda, you know, both of these games, in fact, pretty much every game ever, you have a main character that is put in a very compromising situation that is not enjoyable at all to be in. And through rigorous stress induced effort they manage to find a solution. And they're surrounded by things that are just trying to stop them every step of the way. And it's funny because Mario is just a simple little platformer and Zelda also very simple. And everything in between us and our solution is very, you know, easy to recognize as fun, but it's harder to recognize as fun in life.
And what I ended up finding actually comically ironic about the course is that.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: We would just comically ironic.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: Like I would literally just like laugh in the class because some of the stuff they were saying about like, about society being corrupt and everything was like just so out of line with the mentality of, of humbling yourself to the skill of a game to succeed at it. And so the way I see stuff like this course and you know, the general hostility of life to our existence is that it's basically the mobs.
How do. How do I put mobs for people who don't play games? It's like all the obstacles standing in your way in the game are.
That is what we encounter in the general hostility to our existence.
So every time you face hardship, you can just envision yourself as the hero of the story facing these mobs, these challenges that were placed before you in order to train you to be a better player. Of course, the game here is life. And all of those challenges literally were placed there specifically with a divine plan to train you to learn about the orientation of good and evil and make you a better player at life.
So this is all like the parody is very, very strong between games and what they teach us and life entirely. The. It's only the attitude, which is, this is unfair. I shouldn't have to play by these rules, which is one way you can interpret reality. And that's the way that was taught in the course and that I object to. Or you could say that these rules are divinely set and I believe that there must be a good reason. And so I want to conform to these rules, succeed by them, and see what it teaches me. And in doing that, yeah, you, you get to become the successful player and then hopefully you get the wisdom to. To chuckle at the ones who are still believing that this game is rigged.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: The game is rigged. The game being life.
I mean, you're talking about definitely, I think a victim's mentality, which, I mean, I am not a stranger to that also come to figure that out, we.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: All have to unlearn it, that's for sure.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: In your article, you mentioned that holy grail, that life is the holy grail of game design.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: That was a quote, actually, from a game designer.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right, but. Koster.
[00:23:49] Speaker B: Yes, sir.
[00:23:50] Speaker A: If life is the holy grail of game design, then what are the rules or goals of this game? Like what? What's the goal of life then?
[00:23:59] Speaker B: Well, now, that's a very difficult question.
One you can find plenty of answers to, I'm sure, but.
And I also don't really think it's mine to answer. You see, Ecclesiastes doesn't tell you explicitly you will have fun when you've accomplished X. Because I think each of our goals can be different. We're all different characters, after all. But I think that the challenges you face and the Gameplay loop that you are exposed to by being born is designed and it isn't an accident.
And have faith in the path set before you. You don't know what the next level is going to look like, but you do know that you've been training for it. And so just learn what there is to learn on this level and move on to the next one. And don't begrudge this situation.
And after all, the ultimate goal to life is sort of subjective, but I do believe it is that we are made by God, for God, and that when we conform to how we were made, first we have to discover that. And we discover that through things like science and learning and having fun, which is learning.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:21] Speaker B: So I think just the discovery of that is the goal. It's like a sandbox game.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: I do love me a good sandbox game.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: All these game analogies make me sound like a huge nerd. I'm not really that big of a gamer, just so you know, but he.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: Is a huge nerd. You mentioned.
[00:25:42] Speaker B: That cult against urged.
[00:25:44] Speaker A: You mentioned earlier how your attitude is sort of a key factor in how you approach challenges and how you view them.
So how does that, how does your attitude and viewing life through a playful lens, through a lens of play, how can that change our approach to failure and success or like ethical decisions if we're viewing it through a playful lens and all that that encompasses?
[00:26:14] Speaker B: Well, firstly, I think it's really just to not have faith in your own life because we are a speck in the end of things. And so just don't put false hope in your own life. Being the be and be all and end all, be ready to sacrifice it. Be ready to be the hero that might be part of many heroes in accomplishing one thing.
I think that takes humility, but ultimately that is how you. You find the joy.
Jesus says, like those who seek their life will lose it and those who are ready to sacrifice their life will find it. And that's exactly what happens when you're ready to. When you're ready to set down your life for something. And I mean this in a, in the major way or even in small ways, like if you're ready to sacrifice your convenience, that is part of your life that you're sacrificing, but be ready to do it. And those who are ready to sacrifice will yield returns. And so, you know, you can't expect to make. You can't expect to make a return without sacrificing. So I think ultimately sacrificing is how we play and letting go of our fixation on what we need to sacrifice is the best way to start playing.
Now, you might think that sacrifice doesn't sound very fun, but sacrifice is akin to not taking your life overly seriously. And this is from where I quote Plato in the paper, is that Plato suggests that man is meant to be unserious because God is serious and man is meant to please God. That's coming from Plato, who wasn't necessarily Christian, but I do agree with him.
When we don't take our lives overly seriously, it frees us to have fun. And not taking your life over seriously means not having a death grip on those things you're afraid to lose. That's how we start to have fun with life.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: Yeah, that leads me to this. Well, ever since I read that paper, one of the things that's been a thorn on my side has been stepping away. And I think if we really wanted to get into it, which would be an episode all in itself, is how much our own pride affects how much fun we will have and how much play we will participate in. And when I was thinking about my own projects and things that I'm afraid of and how not taking your life too seriously and forming in and viewing things as a form of play has changed my. My perspective, I was thinking about my apps and marketing them and it really. Well, marketing things and taking something that you've made and introducing it to the public is inherently scary. And I don't think. Well, I don't. I don't know very many people who are, like, okay with just taking something they've made and throwing it out for people to see. Now they. It could just be me. And I wouldn't even be surprised if I'm the only person within my circle who has the mentality because, well, it's scary. And that's. You know what, that's probably a skill issue I have. But after reading the article, I was like, well, you can do anything that you're afraid to do. If it affects you. For example, like marketing your app, if you view it as a form of play, no one can hurt you. You can't hurt yourself if you're like, I'm going to craft this marketing message the best I can. I'm gonna try and use all the keywords and try to make it really, really good and distributed on the Internet. And it doesn't matter what comes of it if you're viewing it as play.
And with that mentality, it almost really just frees you up to conquer anything that you might be holding yourself back from doing like, even this in itself. Like, this is the first episode of a podcast that I wanted to do because I wanted to have a place to talk about the things that I enjoy talking about. And it's inherently scary because you're not sure how it's going to be received, how it's going to go. It's inherently weird, especially when you're, you know, talking to your cousin about something that you've already talked about. It's kind of a put on piece and it's not something that's comfortable for everyone. But if you're just, if you're viewing stuff like this as a form of play and just having fun and just seeing what you can do with it, you've got this challenge, you have this unknown, and now you're here trying to, trying to take this lump of clay and instead of being afraid to put your hands on the clay that you have no experience with, you just put your hands on it and you start molding it without fear of what it might become, without fear of it flying off and taking someone's eyes out.
You just start and you have fun and you try to, within all the toil, within all the unknowns, make the unknowns known. And in that, I think you find that there's a lot of joy and there's a lot of challenge. And in this challenge, like we talked about earlier, there's a lot of, a lot of success to be had, A lot of. I don't, I don't like to use the word dopamine because it's like we're not, we're not dopamine fiends, but there's a lot of joy to be had in this, this kind of struggle.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: I couldn't have said it better myself. I totally agree.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: And what we talked about earlier actually sort of aligned with the next question that I had in mind, which was, and I'll read it out just for the sake of reading it out, but we won't spend too much time on it because I think we already answered it and it was. Plato and Aquinas link play to a virtuous life, suggesting that living as play aligns with divine or moral purpose. If life itself is the ultimate game, as Coster suggests, how do we reconcile the sacrifices and struggles, death or hardship, with the idea of play being inherently joyful? So that was my next question, which I think we answered already. So with that said, we'll actually move on to the next question, which I think is going to be a very good talking Point, at least in my mind, because it's. It's deep and that is.
[00:32:59] Speaker B: Sorry, before we do the next one, I would just like to summarize the quick answer to your question there, which sort of was what I said more verbosely a minute ago, but it's that not taking your life too seriously is the fun part. And that means you're ready to sacrifice. And the fun is actually the deferred success of a solen investment. And so you need to invest in order to reap, which is fun. And in order to invest, you must sacrifice. And so the sacrifices in life when seen as investments toward fun, that is living in play. And in terms of the divine purpose, well, of course that's for us to.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: Discover in play, you sacrifice your pride and start having fun.
All right, the next one was how indie and corporate games compare and how that sort of ties into life in general. So your essay highlights indie games as preserving the philosophy of fun through passion, contrasting with corporate games driven by profit. Does the commercialization of gaming inevitably dilute its educational or cultural value? Or can large studios still create meaningful experiences? And I think this talks to a bit about how you can live your own life. What's your purpose? You know, indie games are driven by passion and a love for the craft built by the ideas of the developer. And then you've got the corporate side of it where it's how can we increase the dopamine loop to the nth degree? Take all your money, give you 80 hours of gameplay, but realistically it's only about 3 hours, totally devoid of any kind of passion and purpose. What are your thoughts on that?
[00:35:00] Speaker B: Well, there's so much to bring into that conversation. It deserves a whole topic of its own.
But the.
And I don't think corporate games like trying to make a living and trying to feed a corporation, that they're honorable enough causes. They are. But I think we've certainly seen a decline in the effectiveness of corporate games.
And I think it is from bad faith towards the. Towards the actual play of making the game.
There's been a lot of politicization which kills gaming. And I actually don't think that these, these corporate games are trying to increase the dopamine loop. Like you were saying. I think they're trying to increase the number of paywalls between any dopamine at all. And they're capitalizing on the market sparsity to even sell their product knowing that it's not as good as it could be. And so I think there's a lot of this being like asleep at the wheel in these corporate game studios. And we even see that with the tendency of large studios to hire out and lock under NDA, these indie studios and indie developers under the name of these AAA studios because they want to sell it under their name.
So there's a lot of these market tendencies that are.
That are lending the.
Sorry, they're just hinting that these corporate games are not very. They're not very focused on the actual practice of their craft.
[00:36:58] Speaker A: You mentioned that you don't think that corporate games are worried about increasing the dopamine loop.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: No. So, for example, like, you see, like, we'll just take the latest one, Assassin's Creed Shadows. There's been a large number of these games lately that are more involved with race swapping characters, for one. Regardless of where you stand on that, that's not about fun, that's about politics.
Combined with these extremely unimaginative formulas for games that we've seen time and time again, I don't think there's a single thing new. It's just basically reskinned. So I think all of these things are.
They're not really developing for fun, they're developing for sales, and that's why they're going to mine that vein till it's gone. And that's why so many franchises are ending.
I think if they actually were focused on fun, they wouldn't be declining as they are.
[00:38:07] Speaker A: I brought that up because I was thinking about. And now it's not a game, but an app, but Snapchat and how it introduced its snapstreaks or whatever it is, which has no function whatsoever, but is purely to try and manipulate you into staying in their app as long as possible, which is once a day. And I mean, that's kind of a good metric for apps, I guess. How many times or how much time are you spending in their app and coming back? And that's literally the only person or the only purpose of Snap Streaks is to try and get you to stay in their app. And if you have this expectation that you'll receive a snap because someone wants to send you a picture of their wall to fulfill the snap streak, then you've kind of got that, the dopamine on a stick that's just waiting to fall into your mouth, but it's always just out in front of you until you get that one nonsensical Snapchat that has no meaning and purpose, but is only there to get you and the other person to stay in the app, which I think is what games like to do nowadays, corporate games at least. And you mentioned Assassin's Creed. And you can see this in prior Assassin's Creed games. I think when they started out, they were great. But since then it's become about like, what kind of side quests can I put in this to get this seasoned battle hardened assassin to spend time running around chasing chickens and delivering them to an npc? And that's kind of like the meat and potatoes of a lot of these big games is they've become soulless, they've become without purpose. It's just chasing chickens to no end. Meanwhile, you've got a small piece of the pie that actually serves a purpose to further a story. And that's what I mean about games becoming all about the dopamine hit and trying to elongate the time that you spend playing them and this and that. Even if the 80 hours that you spend in any particular game is 80 hours, what is the ratio of actual purpose time spent in that game doing things that actually matter?
And that's, that's why I brought up the dopamine thing, because I was thinking of Assassin's Creed. Now you're just running around chasing chickens rather than furthering a story, rather than acting out a purpose.
[00:40:32] Speaker B: Yes. And I think there is, there is like a grind to a lot of games that reward you for your time and effort. And there's nothing like necessarily wrong with diluting the reward like that either. At least I haven't taken a stance against it. But I like what you said there about Assassin's Creed too, because I believe that it's a result of the people. Right. At the end of the day, these are all people who make these things. And I think when the people are doing it out of good or bad faith is when you get a good or bad product. And I think the equation is as simple as that, and that's why we see indie titles a lot of time overtaking these corporate ones, is because you have to have really good faith in order to make the sacrifices to make an indie game. Whereas if you're at a desk job in a huge office working on a corporate game, you're less inclined and less invested in the final product. And it shows.
[00:41:40] Speaker A: Do you think you'd be able to tell, playing an indie game Sort of the love and passion that went into it? Obviously, rather than being able to really see that in a corporate game, it becomes diluted.
[00:41:52] Speaker B: Exactly. And that's just one of countless examples since I wrote this paper for a games course. I chose that example But I think it really does apply to every aspect of life that whether you're acting in good or bad faith depends on your product. Depends on that.
[00:42:11] Speaker A: I really like that the essay that you wrote. It posits that fun is the feeling of proven advancement. If fun is tied to learning and growth, does this mean activities that don't challenge us or teach us new skills, like mindless scrolling, repetitive tasks, doom scrolling on TikTok and Instagram can ever truly be considered fun? And with this in mind, how might it redefine our leisure choices? Because if you decide to relax by doom scrolling TikTok and getting those quick hits of dopamine, how likely are you to default to that rather than actually pursuing something that would be considered a challenge? Because you're now we're talking about quick dopamine hits versus drawn out dopamine hits versus reward. Really? You want that quick reward or we're going to get something more long and drawn out and more meaningful?
[00:43:16] Speaker B: Yeah, that's an interesting question. So firstly, I don't want to redefine anything because I believe that the way things are is for good reasons. Like if something is working and popular, there has, like who am I to say that that doesn't deserve its place?
So there is something fun about this or otherwise it wouldn't be so popular. And it's a shallow form of fun. Like I had alluded to earlier in the conversation, these shallow funs, they are necessary and they don't necessarily, they don't necessarily mean that we can't be also doing longer term things. So if you just inherited a lot of money, you're going to start by paying your debts and then you're going to invest some. And so I believe that when you're investing properly into large pursuits with your life, the important things, you know, the things may be in the workplace or in, in your life that are more challenging and more rewarding, you ought to do those things, but their frequency is much lower. And so to get you say a year, you might need one or two major accomplishments. And to get you through a day, you might need one or two minor accomplishments. And so I believe that these doom scrolling things, they're enough mental puzzle and entertainment. And again, I believe it falls under the narrative of training, the LLM of our mind, the large language model. It's like the more contexts socially that we consume as people, it trains our subconscious about people and it trains us how to be funny, how to react to a silly prank. Right? So this doom scrolling, it has its own merit or Otherwise it wouldn't exist. And it does have its place in being some shallow downtime during our greater struggles.
The problem lies in not having greater struggles. And that is a problem that's completely separate from the existence of small entertainments.
[00:45:40] Speaker A: So we should be struggle maxing.
[00:45:44] Speaker B: Yeah, pretty much. I think Aquinas talks a lot about this too. That we play in order to work harder. Right. It's not that we play in favor of work, it's that we work until we must play in order to work again. And there's no dread in that equation. It's literally like, my body's tired. Maybe I need to sit down and do something else and then come back to it. And when you do, you're going to work more in the total than if you hadn't rested. Right. If you keep doing something, you're just going to grind yourself to a halt. But if you take breaks and enjoy the process and switch tasks when your brain is asking you to, I think you can be pretty efficient.
[00:46:24] Speaker A: Now, I would argue that Reels and tiktoks generally don't have a place, or at least their place sucks, because it's just brain rot as the algorithm. Well, the algorithm thrives off brain rotation, and I think that it could have a place, you know, if you had a long day and you want to just sit and doom scroll TikToks, for example. Sure. And, like, recoup. But overall, I struggle to see the place that it has because so many people just become chronically online.
But it's chronically tiktoked.
[00:47:01] Speaker B: Well, I think interpreting that as the social reality is the problem. And that's why I think it's only naive young people who see some dumb thing and decide to reenact it in real life to the cringe and dismay of everyone around them.
It. It's not. Yeah, I think it's not intrinsically that it exists that's the problem. But it's that people are leveraging it too much. And they need to be.
They need to be engaging in more challenging puzzles as well.
[00:47:43] Speaker A: They need to try and maybe take it for what it is, which is just a quick relaxation. I need just some quick entertainment. But overall, it shouldn't be replacing you having fun, you challenging yourself, and you trying to grow through said challenges.
[00:48:00] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:48:01] Speaker A: Having fun.
[00:48:02] Speaker B: And if you're utilizing yourself like, well, or even adequately in that regard, you won't be interpreting some banal stunt on Instagram as what to strive for in your life. You're going to be striving for things.
[00:48:18] Speaker A: If People were actually challenge maxing, they wouldn't be doing the Tide Pod challenges and stuff.
[00:48:24] Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
I like challenge maxing. I. I have never heard that before, but I. I like it.
[00:48:32] Speaker A: Well, you can just throw maxing onto anything and it becomes an instant hit.
Challenge maxing, playmaxing.
[00:48:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:44] Speaker A: Well, that is.
That is some good insights. I'll say again, like, I'll post the article, if you don't mind.
[00:48:52] Speaker B: Of course. Go. Right.
[00:48:53] Speaker A: There's the article.
[00:48:54] Speaker B: It's gonna be like, it's not gonna be the best article ever, but it's.
It's hack and slash together. And I just hope it resonates more so than is grammatically perfect and all that.
[00:49:06] Speaker A: Well, that's. That's what we need. You know, we have the ability to stream at 60fps plus on. On anything, and yet movies are still made in what, 24, 30 people like imperfect.
That's what we want. We want imperfects. But it's a great article, and I'll post it, and I think you all should read it because I think it'll open your eyes to just how having fun and viewing life as play and the tasks that you find to be scary really aren't that scary. But it's probably your own pride getting in the way. And if you can view it as a way to learn a way to play, then that takes all the pressure off. Because when you're playing, you're not worried about being right or wrong, because in play, you're just worried about having fun and figuring out the challenge. And you're not concerned about, you know, how good you're doing necessarily, and you're not concerned about all those things, I think that you'd be concerned about otherwise. So when you can turn off your brain like that in a certain sense, because, I mean, depends on what you're playing, you can really enjoy life and enjoy the task that you're trying to partake in. Really take it for what it is, which is just learning, figuring things out, and having fun. So I guess with all that said, is there anything else you'd like to include?
[00:50:26] Speaker B: Well, thanks. Yeah, I think what you said there is accurate, and I would even frame it as conceptualizing your challenges, that what is holding you back is not something that you need to call in a referee or social reform for. It's something that's meant for you.
[00:50:45] Speaker A: Calling in a referee.
[00:50:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. The world is meant for us to compete in and to conquer, you know, not conquer in our own right, in the. In the way that we Go about everything.
So when you see it as a challenge that invigorates you instead of a challenge that defeats you, that's the difference. And the key is just taking yourself less seriously.
[00:51:12] Speaker A: That would be a whole nother episode in and of itself.
A challenge that invigorates you versus defeats you. Gosh, I feel like you and I would be on opposite ends of the coin and be able to talk about that, because the amount of times that I've come to talk about that exact topic.
[00:51:29] Speaker B: But I mean, it's. It's one in the same concept in a way too, because, like, if you see the.
If you see the little troll people in Zelda standing in your way, you're not going to think, well, I'm just going to quit this game.
You go and you find a way to remove them, because you know within the context of the game that it's a puzzle that's meant for you to solve. And so having faith in. Having good faith in what you're doing in life means that you believe you are solving the puzzles that were meant for you to be solving. And so you're not just gonna quit the game and rage that there are puzzles.
You need to actually just sit down and solve them and take joy in it. And you can, because you know that the creator of the game planned it so that. Yeah, I think that invigorates anyone. If you can truly digest that and start in Ecclesiastes.
[00:52:31] Speaker A: And figure out how everything is just dust in the wind. Therefore you can have the most fun.
[00:52:37] Speaker B: Yeah, everything is a. Is a solvable problem that is meant to be in front of us. You know, there's.
The crux of it is that people don't have faith that their problems are solvable or they don't have faith that their problems should exist at all, but they should, because God put them there.
[00:52:56] Speaker A: Well, with that said. Holy. I think that's a perfect segue into the conclusion, which is basically, thank you for listening. I mean, how do you end these things? I have no idea. But if you have a challenge that you are currently facing, let us know how this helped you. Like what. What do you got going on in your own life? Sorry.
[00:53:18] Speaker B: Or if it didn't help, you let us know too.
[00:53:20] Speaker A: Or. Yeah. Or if you felt like this whole topic was abhorrent and you want to tell us about how much you actually ha. Having fun and hate philosophy, then make sure to tell us and share it with all your friends, because they might hate it too, and they might want to tell us how much. They hate fun and philosophy. So with that said. Yeah, let us know, like what challenges are you facing and how does this, if it does, how does this help you reframe it so that you can go and conquer that thing like I mentioned with marketing, something that you're making. So let us know and let us know what you thought about this first episode. And you know, five years in the future if this is still going on. Hello, hello, future you at 2030. I hope you're having a great day. But yeah, Jesse, thanks for making the time to come talk to me about this and I'm sure we'll have some spin offs and subtopics later on, but thanks for taking time out of your busy day to come chat about the philosophy of fun.
[00:54:19] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks again for having me. It's a pleasure.
[00:54:22] Speaker A: Now, is there a place where people can follow you for more Jesse Takes and Jessie Isms?
[00:54:30] Speaker B: I'm not much of a social person on the Internet, but you can follow Wild Growth software for some games and stuff that I'm actually working on.
[00:54:41] Speaker A: Well, there you go. I'd actually encourage you to go do that because it's pretty cool. I don't know if I can spill the beans too much, but I probably want to be over there following them.
[00:54:50] Speaker B: Well, it isn't much yet, but hopefully by the time you see this there's more to see and we're building a game engine so it'd be pretty great.
[00:55:00] Speaker A: Well, there we go. Thank you so much for listening. I'm glad that you chose this episode to listen to when you have so many options. I hope you have a great day and we'll see you in the next episode.
