(Daygon07) What’s up game geeks and tech junkies, welcome to A Gaming Moment, a weekly 30 minute podcast about everything gaming and streaming related, including the news, tech, and software behind it. Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram so you can engage with us as well as find out when we’re streaming the podcast and get a first listen before it goes out across all of your favorite podcasting platforms…. I am Daygon07 and with me is WildTwinsFan.
(Daygon07) OK Wild, Joe Rogan this last week on his podcast discussed how video games are pretty much a complete waste of time and are basically there because parents today don’t care about their kids, or that they’re not being productive role models so the kids turn to games as a form of stimulation.
Joe Rogan Comments on Gaming
As a 31 year old gamer, who didn’t go to college but yet found success because of hard work and determination, while still being an avid gamer, I was directly offended by these statements. Wild, you’re almost in the same boat as me, does this offend you or put you off in any way?
(WildTwinsFan) Gaming has been a controversial topic from the early days, people have been claiming it’s a waste of time and causes and encourages bad behavior or inciting violence. I think it’s just a scapegoat. It’s even gone all the way to the Supreme Court, where they ruled against laws banning violent video games, because there’s simply no proof and there’s been many studies by many different groups.
(Daygon07) Yeah this has been something we’ve seen throughout the years with unfortunate incidents of school shootings. The first questions often asked are “What movies were they watching?” or “What video games were they playing?” because that has to be the source of their anger or rage right? Instead they should be asking “How was their mental health?”. But back to Joe’s statements because that’s a whole ‘nother topic on it’s own.
(WildTwinsFan) So I’ll address two major issues I have with Joe’s statement.
One… Perception that playing games and “having fun” isn’t productive. There’s obvious benefits to gaming and they don’t have to be all measured or defined by hallmarks such as the color or your belts, or how much weight you can lift, or even how much money you make off it. I’ll argue the mental health benefits of using and exercising critical thinking are as critical as physical health benefits. You need both! and that amount can, and does vary for individuals.
(Daygon07) Actually Wildie, the Senior community is amongst the largest growing group of gamers currently.
(WildTwinsFan) Yeah, gaming has cognitive benefits that have been recognized to improve the brain functions and therefore the quality of life of the aging population.
I also give some credit to gaming for helping my own kids learn to read, with games like Pokemon on the Nintendo DS. It’s all text based and reading comprehension is a huge help to the game. Of course this is only one example, but I think there’s significant support to say gaming is highly beneficial to a lot of people.
(Daygon07) – Yeah, the education system has even adopted games to teach kids. My middle son, who’s currently about to start 1st grade, his whole curriculum has been gamified because studies have shown kids retain more information if it’s presented in a fun interactive way. Think about it, if you have kids, I’m sure they annoy you with songs and stuff they learn at school in order to memorize the alphabet, or numbers. You also have companies like ABC Mouse, which is an educational site for young kids that schools and child care centers are partnering with to use in after school learning programs. I think it allows them to express their creativity in my opinion. What’s your other argument with Joe’s take?
(WildTwinsFan) Then there’s the argument: You can make better use of your time. I think you could say that about any activity. Heck you could say we should only eat fast food, or we only eat the same simple meal every single day to save time and do more important things. I think that’s trivializing beneficial activities. For a lot of people art, cooking, gaming, or ANY other hobby is a source of fulfillment in their life.
For me, the satisfaction of cooking a delicious meal for us to eat, is worth the time and energy it takes.
Maybe for others their hobbies give them a boost, whether it’s their self esteem or the assurance that they can do great things. Or, maybe it’s the sense of accomplishment. It could be part of healing a wound that they’ve endured, proving they can do things others said they couldn’t do in their lives.
Some people can relish their time in creating art and the expression of their thoughts and feelings. They may not be able to vocally express them, but they can express in their own meaningful way with art, heck no one might ever see the art they created, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t have any useful meaning.
I disagree with Joe’s opinion that gaming is a waste of time. I think any hobby can also help people deal with success and failure. It’s an important life skill to learn from your experiences and the struggle to constantly improve yourself. For me, I love the challenge that gaming brings, the sense of accomplishment and the rush that comes with becoming better or winning and getting that chicken dinner.
Like anything in life, i feel gaming is good in moderation, too much of anything is a bad thing. But I don’t buy that it’s a waste of time, nor do I think sleeping in on occasion is a waste of your time. Sometimes I think you just need a little extra time for your needs. People need to learn to listen to their needs, and be aware of their mental well being. That can help make the world a better place, regardless of others thinking you’re wasting time.
(Daygon07) So here’s how I think about it, I have a 14 year old son who is starting high school this year as a freshman and I’ve drilled into him, if you’re passionate about something like gaming and you want to make the decision to make gaming or streaming as a career… Then go all in and give 110%. But don’t decide a year or two down the line like “eh, maybe this isn’t for me…”. If you have an ounce of doubt that you’re not going to be happy with that decision then do not pursue it. Do it as a hobby, but focus on what you REALLY want to do, what REALLY makes you happy. But I would never be one to tell him that you can’t find success in this. There are too many people and too many examples where people have made a good living off of gaming, or streaming, or YouTubing. To be honest, I’ve never known Joe Rogan as a comedian… I’ve known him as the host of Fear Factor or an announcer for UFC, and for a while I thought him and the dude that hosts that stupid game show Cash Cab, were the same person. Joe mentioned in his spiel how gaming could be compared to comedy which is where I was gonna go with it… “Like real nice you know how to tell a joke how far can that take you in life?” but it’s about entertainment and entertainment value. Gaming and streaming are the same thing, acting… same thing it’s all entertainment. And people want to be entertained and are willing to pay for entertainment, plain and simple. So for me, it’s a little hypocritical for Joe to be coming out and portraying gaming as some sort of waste of time based on his career path. I mean hell, listening to his podcast is a waste of time, there’s no information that’s going to help people’s lives, it’s all about entertainment and talking shop with guests.
I don’t know if he’s thinking of how gaming was like 10 years ago, but gaming today is a lot different. You can become successful by playing games in different ways such as speed runs, role play, and by just being good. But gaming by itself is difficult to be successful. You have to marry it with streaming or some sort of content creation process like YouTube. Again, gaming is not like it was 10 or even 5 years ago.
I WILL give Joe Rogan some credit, there are more parents not being positive role models in their kids’ lives today than previous generations. At the end of the day, it’s a parent’s responsibility to give the kids the tools and support for success. Personally, I have real conversations with my kids, especially my oldest since he’s at that stage where he’s becoming a man. I show him and set an example, I work my 8 hours, I cook dinner, I help the kids with their school work, bathe and put my youngest to bed, all before I touch a game or work on this podcast. I do this to show him that yes, I focus on gaming, streaming, and content creation but only after I’ve finished my main responsibilities as a dad, husband, and employee and I have to be that example. So he might not like it, but during the school year he’s limited to 2 hours of game time a day and no games after 8pm. If he wants to keep those 2 hours he has to play a sport so he’s physically active, and he has to maintain at least an A/B average, if he gets a C his games are gone until the next report card or progress report and his only form of entertainment is reading books. And you know what? He makes straight A’s, he’s the starting center for his basketball team, helps and loves his younger brothers, and still gets to have fun with his friends because now he knows how to manage his time between school, homework, sports, and games. My 2 younger kids see this and follow that example as well.
Apologies for my rant there, but when a “prominent” figure wants to bash on something that I’m passionate about and my family, friends, and community are passionate about I get a little heated. Speaking of community, the broader gaming community felt very similar. Ninja posted a response on Twitter basically saying he believes Joe doesn’t realize how many different avenues there are to be successful in gaming.
There’s a whole slew of gamers on Twitter who have reacted to this, some calmly like Ninja, others with a little more emotion like myself. This goes to show you that people who are not in your industry have no clue about how your industry operates and the joy and success you can have.
(WildTwinsFan) Yeah I can hear your passion on the topic and it’s certainly caused some waves in the Gaming community.
Moving on to some tech news, Intel is causing some tension in the business and Tech world this week
Intel Delays 7nm Architecture… Again
(Daygon07) – Yeah so the CPU war rages on in the tech industry. Intel announced last week in it’s Q2 2020 earnings call that it has delayed the 7 nanometer architecture by another 6 months. This news comes shortly after Apple announced they are going to start building their MacBooks and Macs with their own proprietary ARM chips and migrating away from Intel. We mentioned this way back in episode 1 of the podcast when Apple announced this at their annual WWDC event. The repercussions of this don’t stop there, because of this delay Intel will be relieving their chief engineering officer of his duties and splitting up his team between 5 other top level executives. In my eyes this is a huge blow to Intel’s reputation and is providing AMD some great leverage with OEMs.
(WildTwinsFan) – TBH not much of a war, I’ve been watching this, had multiple conversations with friends about the topic, Up to the last week or so, I was wondering if this was just some evil marketing ploy on Intel’s part, something dreamed up by some bean counter accountant (not to trivialize accountants) Where I wonder if they were just holding back because they could, and honestly I think without the reawakening of AMD’s development I’m not sure I’d be far off. It felt like they were squeezing every ounce of performance and every angle they could to hold on to the Skylake architecture as long as possible. Business wise, sure drag out your improvements as long as possible making bank the whole time. The longer they use/modify an existing product the more value and payback they get on their initial investment. Innovation, changes and development are expensive so from the business standpoint I get it. From a consumer’s stand I want the newest, fastest biggest changes, bang for my buck
Then this week, it kind of hit the fan with a report from Intel that things aren’t going well, a few heads rolled, now it looks like they’re more into damage control than being “thrifty” with innovation. It’s definitely a situation to watch, for me, since I’m looking into building a computer next year. They both have wins for their processors right now, but AMD is closing that gap fast and hard on the areas they are losing in. Intel is just keeping their heads above water. Now they are making “questionable changes” to features that were always available to all processors, they are limiting ram speed options on their lower tier processors and only leaving ram speeds open on their highest end processors, further pushing customer satisfaction in the wrong direction.
(Daygon07) – Yeah, I can tell you for sure I’ve been rocking my AMD Ryzen 5 2600X for a while now and I’ve had ZERO issues. When I get ready to build my next gaming rig it’s going to be a Ryzen 9 processor because I know im going to get more bang for my buck and it’s going to perform equal or better than an Intel chip of the same specs at a much lower price point.
(Daygon07) Wildie, what else did you see this week?
Halo Infinite Multiplayer Free To Play
(WildTwinsFan) Halo Infinite’s multiplayer will be free to play, and run at up to 120 FPS on the Xbox Series X! Not a huge surprise with the Free to play gaming world we seem to be enjoying, In fact it would’ve probably been a bigger surprise if it wasn’t free to play in some aspect, I think that’s what it’s going to take these days to be a competitive multiplayer title.
(Daygon07) – Yeah I was reading about this as well. Additionally, since last week’s episode where we talked about how people were bashing on the graphics, 343 Industries narrative experience director recently addressed the criticisms on Twitter.
I’ve been in your shoes. I know what it’s like to have expectations built + feel let down. I want you to know your voice matters + is heard. You’re not falling on deaf ears. I always want to live up to the legacy that Bungie pioneered. I personally care a lot about honoring that.
Dan Chosich
343 Industries Narrative Experience Director
Both Microsoft and 343 Industries promise Halo: Infinite will be a “visual showcase” when it releases in November, so we could see ray tracing in Halo which has a potential to fix lighting issues that in part plague the poor graphics in the first teaser video. So make sure you have a card that supports ray tracing to take advantage if the game does indeed get ray tracing.
Xbox Live Going Away?
(Daygon07) Also Microsoft is quietly making news. They’ve recently removed the ability to purchase yearly and multi-year Xbox Live subscriptions. This is leading many to believe that Microsoft might soon be making Xbox Live free or, atleast, allowing free-to-play games not require an Xbox Live subscription. Playstation has already been doing this since the PS3 days, not needing a PS+ subscription for free-to-play games. This is also probably Microsoft saying, “Instead of being able to just purchase Xbox Live, we want you to purchase an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and if you wanna play online, you don’t have a choice.” To me, that’s the more likely scenario, migrating users from Xbox Live to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which costs gamers a little more, but they get more benefits from the subscription. What are your thoughts on this Wildie? Are we seeing the end of the Xbox Live subscription and moving purely to Game Pass Ultimate?
(WildTwinsFan) I actually think Xbox live might just be going away as a paid service altogether, I mean, even now, xbox live Gold isn’t far off from the game pass with free games each month. To me it’s clear M$ is pushing their Game Pass Program. I’ve subscribed for a short time, but it failed to keep me. I’d actually be more interested in their PC only subscription, but depending on my kids, maybe the Ultimate pass. For me, it’s just gotta be worth it. Flight 2020 being included is a great start!
(Daygon07) I’ll be honest, I’m still going to have Game Pass Ultimate anyways because I like having that game library on both console and PC. Speaking of game library, Wildie, did you hear what Google wants Samsung to do?
Google wants Samsung to kill Bixby and their Galaxy App Store.
(WildTwinsFan) Google is apparently willing to open its wallet and pay Samsung to make it happen. Google wants to kill Samsung’s Digital assistant, probably to leverage further adoption of Google’s own digital assistant. Quite frankly, I’m on board. I tried Bixby a few times, and I don’t care for it. I’d also love to know who actually uses the Galaxy app store because I don’t like it either. It still feels clunky to me and I avoid it unless I’m forced to use it to update a Samsung app. If I were Samsung this would be a fairly easy choice for me.
(Daygon07) I mean it makes sense right? These are Android devices, why resist running the native Android software, assistant, and app store. This SHOULD in the long run save Samsung money since they won’t have to upkeep their assistant and app store. I know you rock an S8 Plus and you haven’t even set it up on your phone. I’d be curious to see if you’re in the minority or majority in that aspect. I rock an iPhone so this doesn’t affect me at all, but one thing I give Samsung credit for is their battery life and how they were one of the first to come out with wireless charging, shared charging, and quick charging technologies.
Qualcomm Teases Quick Charge 5 Technology
(WildTwinsFan) Well if you like that then you might like this, Qualcomm, the company that powers the Samsung Galaxy Book S, dropped a video this past week teasing their new Quick Charge 5 technology. It’s said to charge a phone completely in just 15 minutes and zero to 50% in only five minutes. Woo baby! Love it! haven’t seen a whole lot of innovation in phone batteries lately. Maybe the whole Note 7 battery debacle has scared manufacturers from moving forward, either way sounds great! Imma need one of those batteries and chargers for my laptop too!
(Daygon07) This is really cool. My kids drain the heck out of my phone watching YouTube Kids at restaurants and leave me with like 5 or 10 percent battery life. I think many parents and people who have crazy phone addictions will like this. Just being able to have your device charged sooner. Think about taking a 5 minute rest at the mall and using one of those charging stations and plugging in your charger for 5 minutes and you’re ready.
(WildTwinsFan) Yeah that would be nice!
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Twitter Hackers Caught
(WildTwinsFan) To follow up from last week’s story on the Twitter Hack, A teenager in Tampa, FL has been arrested as the alleged “mastermind” behind the July 15th Twitter hack. The hack targeted high-profile accounts and used them for a bitcoin scam, the Investigation found that he reaped more than $100,000 doll hair in Bitcoin in a day.
Also the United States Department of Justice announced that another 22-year-old man from Florida and a 19-year-old from the United Kingdom, have been charged in a criminal complaint in California. I suspected kids, but I’d say all three are old enough to know better.
(Daygon07) You called it Wildie. I thought it was someone definitely older than that. But kids today are getting smarter and more clever. They need to go outside and play a dang sport. Idle hands do the devils work. So if you have kids, kick their butts out of the house for a few hours a day!
(Daygon07) Hey if you haven’t already, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram so you can engage with us as well as find out when we’re streaming the podcast and get a first listen before it goes out across all podcasting platforms… SO DO IT!
Well now that you mentioned it, there’s no better reason to hit us up on the social medias than the Top Questions of the week.
Questions of the Week
Why do you play video games?
(Daygon07) It’s where I tend to make most of my friends, because I’m a recluse. That’s how I met Wildie and our best buddy Ron. Ron’s the best. I feel like with games I’m able to connect with people better because we have a common interest.
(WildTwinsFan) Yeah, Ron is the Best, I play to challenge myself, I
What kind of foods do you like more fried, grilled (includes seared and blackened), baked, or raw?
(Daygon07) – I love raw foods… Sushi, Carpaccio, Ceviche, stuff like that. Ugh… my mouth is watering thinking about it.
(WildTwinsFan) Yup I’m onboard, I love raw food too, I love all the same things, I like sushi so much I buy it at the grocery store, and though it’s not as good as right from the chef at a sushi restaurant, I don’t discriminate. Oyster’s are probably my favorite food of all time.
(Daygon07) That’s it for this episode. Let us know on social what you thought about Joe Rogan’s comments and when you build your next computer what processor you’re going to get… Are you Team Blue or are you Team Red? We’d like to thank our producer Billy. Thank you guys for listening in and supporting us. Subscribe to us on your favorite podcasting platform and be sure to check back every Tuesday for new episodes. Until next time keep grinding!