Quitting Achievement Unlocked and Fortnite

Hello. Welcome to Daily(ish) for 05/07/2018. 2018, it's, 15 degrees and actually feels like 15 degrees. So for once the weather guys and gals aren't lying to us, this is not a weather podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Patreon folks.

Supporting me on Patreon, patreon.com/ichris. So you can check that out. So this is Monday. I didn't record an episode on Wednesday. I didn't record an episode on Friday even though I checked off the box in my my I've changed to do apps again.

That's probably why I didn't get as much done in the last couple weeks because I was changing to do apps. TickTick is now my app of choice, changed over from Todoist. If you care about that kind of stuff, you can tell me to talk about it more in the future episodes because some people love that kind of meta getting things done analysis workflow stuff, and other people probably it's the bane of their existence because they just actually spend their time doing stuff and getting it done instead of fiddling with systems to get stuff done. But, this morning when it popped up on my phone to remind me to do Daily ish, and I remember that I hadn't done it on Wednesday and Thursday, there's, 51% of my brain is like, well, what's the point? You broke your streak.

You failed. You didn't keep up your bargain. Your promises are meaningless, etcetera, with regards to the podcast. So just stop doing it. And what what really do you have that's useful to say this morning anyways on a Monday morning?

And then the 49% or maybe it was 40% and there was like an 8% in there that was like, wanting to just go surf the Internet. But 40% was like, no, you should do it. Just try it. Keep going. So this time, anyways, pressed into the went with the 40% instead of the 51% shutting me down.

So here we are. And I don't know about you, but that's where, like, those lots of apps now have sort of gamification in them, streaks, building up a streak of like a if it's a reading app or, exercise apps, obviously, that kind of thing, food. They kinda like try and encourage you to build up a streak of keeping your goals, keeping working towards your goals and all that kind of stuff, which is great. All that kind of stuff. I should have a app that zaps me every time I say that.

But for me, I know sometimes it's like a reverse motivation once I because inevitably you will break it. You're not gonna do it for the rest of your life. And so it's often it can be like a once I've broken a thing, then it's like a extra little hammer that that 51% or whatever percentage of my brain uses to sort of beat me with and remind me that it's not gonna you're gonna fail anyway. So what's the point? But would encourage you on this Monday, where the weather actually is what it says it is, that press on through.

Keep doing the thing you think you should stop doing because you're lazy, tired, scared, worried. I guess I was kinda scared. Whatever it happens to be, and and press into it. Keep going a little farther. See if you can get one more one more level in the video game if that's what it is.

People can have goals in video games. That's just as valid as having reading goals or podcasting goals or exercise goals, I think. Just don't want my son to listen to this and think I'm advocating that he should be playing Fortnite more than he already does. There's he he already has attained all his goals, all the goals that we have for him in Fortnite anyways as parents, which let me just follow that rabbit trail for a second because if you're not a parent of a I don't know what age, seven to 15 year old, let's say, or involved in the gaming world at all, you're blissfully unaware of this game that's kind of taken over everything in a in a similar way, but slightly less less positive world benefits, think, than the way Minecraft kinda like was just like it's Minecraft became kinda like the Lego phase for parents where every parent kinda goes through a Lego phase with their kids and their toys, and they they may never leave then. That's fine.

Like, Lego's awesome. But every a lot of parents went through a phase where their kids all of a sudden discovered Minecraft at someone else's house, and then all of a sudden their entire world became Minecraft. Minecraft videos on YouTube, playing Minecraft, talking about Minecraft with their friends, drawing out plans for what they're gonna build in Minecraft, and kinda just like consumes them for at least a two year kind of phase. And it's waned a bit in our family, not not just because of something like Fortnite coming along, but also just, you know, there's only so many so many times you can play it, I guess, and other games come along and distracted or whatever. But there's still like times where I'll go out and our kids will be just be playing Minecraft together and building and trying to explore the world that they're in and created.

And there's always like obviously other video games that were out there that were popular, like whether there was it was kind of more splintered though, like people were playing Call of Duty and other people would be playing, like the Minecraft folks and the other folks would there's other groups playing like the sports hockey games and stuff. And that's sort of where oldest was often lying ended up in this more of the hockey stuff. And then, just after Christmas here, Fortnite came out. And in the gaming world, just for a little bit of a backstory if you're not completely aware, there was a game that was really popular online just on the computers on Windows only, I think called Player Unknown Battleground or PUBG for short. And it was really popular amongst gaming nerds.

It was popular on Twitch. Lots of streamers streaming it, which is is an indication of popular a game is obviously and how many people are watching it. You can see on Twitch the leaderboards as far as which game itself actually is getting watched the most, and it was steadily climbing the charts. And it still is really popular. But then it was a $60 game.

It was Windows only. And along came this competitor of this other game called Fortnite that was kinda like a copy of it. Some would say a direct copy. Some would say just taking the the idea of the game and implementing it in its own unique way, which the premises of both games was you're a bunch of folks being dropped on an island, and there's guns and and, ammunition and other toys of mayhem basically scattered around the island. And you all kind of shoot each other and the last person standing wins.

Anyway, if you're out of the game, you're out of the game. There's no it's not like other shooting games and stuff where you come back right away and you just keep going at it. This game is like there's in Fortnite's case, there's a 100 people I think dropped on the island, I think PUBG was similar, 50 to a 100. And once you're out of the game, you can either stay and watch or you just leave and go start a new game, join a new game. And so there's none of that, like, re coming back to life and just going back into the game with the same people over and over.

And so Fortnite came along with that same premise, a little bit more cartoony, a little bit, less like trying to be realistic, with violence and things like that, but more like cartoony graphics violence. And the big difference was Fortnite was free and with in app purchases to buy better costumes, better like, nothing that affected your gameplay other than just the visuals of what your character looked like in the game. And understandably, because the gameplay was as good or nearly as good as something like PUBG, but the game was free, it took off. Plus it was also multi platform. So it was on the computer.

It was on Windows. It was on Mac. It just came out for Xbox very quickly. It came out for PlayStation. It's from a bigger company than PUBG.

PUBG was like a indie development kind of game, and it wasn't the first game in the world to ever have the sort of like drop people on an island and see who survives thing either. So it's not like they can claim, you know, exclusive rights to that premise for a game, but it did feel a lot like Fortnite basically copied what seemed to be working from a big and had a big corporation backing it and was able to sort of race out ahead with more money, more developers, and get it out onto every platform. Because now, basically, every single kid that we come in contact with is playing this game, and even people that we didn't think would be okay with playing violent games. And even for us, like, we weren't really ready to, like, cross that threshold into, like, playing letting our kids play our oldest kid anyways play, you know, run around shooting each other kind of game. And all of a sudden we found ourselves in that situation.

Obviously, we're not helpless parents like without any recourse here. It has become in a similar way the like gaming is this like the cell phone was to kids ten years ago or so, where if you don't have it, you're not part of the communication or part of the conversation. So very quickly, all of a sudden, my son was, like, clued into the idea that we could get a headset and, like, be able to talk while he's playing with his friends, which is a great you know, it's a social thing. It's fun. He's playing and talking with his friends, making plans to, like, do stuff, cause mayhem, I guess, in the game.

Learning how to run a military unit, I guess, is basically what's the positive that's come of all of this. So anyways, if you're not a parent and you're blissfully unaware, like I said, of this whole phenomenon, good for you. The rest of us will try and sort it out here and figure out what to do exactly with our kids who are little, and every generation has, like, whether it was Doom or Wolfenstein or Quake and, you know, games that come along. These this one is like maybe it's more innocent in a sense because it doesn't, like I said, doesn't sort of glorify the violence. It's it's more like cartoony fun, but maybe it's more subversive because of that and allows them to sort of sneak under the radar like they kinda did in a lot of homes and to, all of a sudden kids are playing it that otherwise wouldn't.

So I forget why I took this rabbit trail of now six minute long or so rabbit trail away from Achievements and, recording the podcast. But, that's what, I guess, hopefully, you tune in for is random thoughts from Chris because that's basically what the episodes and the show is called. So thank you for listening to Daily ish. Let me know in the tweets, on the emails, [email protected] on Twitter, your thoughts on whether it's video games or things you've achieved lately, what you're working on, where you're stuck. Not that I have any, ability to help you really, but if it helps to talk to someone else about something you're stuck on, feel free to let me know.

And, hope you have a good day. Hope the weather isn't lying to you wherever you are in the world, and we'll see you again on Wednesday. Thanks for listening. Bye. Oh, and thanks to listener slash family member slash podcast co host during Good Stuff Jan for updating me on, Saint John's being forty seven degrees north, Saskatoon being fifty seven degrees north.

So I am the more northern good stuff HQ something or other. So thanks for that, geography updates. Bye.