Are You Playing For Yourself Or The Chat

He calls it a prison sentence, then hits Go Live anyway. When Destiny 2 moves toward maintenance mode, Marcus feels that familiar sting of something you love changing forever, and the fastest cure is surprisingly simple: open the stream, let the community walk back in, and see who still remembers your name.

We dig into why people stream video games on Twitch and YouTube in the first place, from the social “living room” vibe to the strange comfort of lurkers who never type but still choose to be there. Doritos shares what it is like to stream when you are not naturally chatty, and we talk about how live streaming is a completely different craft than edited video content. Along the way, we translate streamer culture basics like screen names, fireteams, and the relationship between the game on screen and the people behind the chat.

Then we go deeper: what happens when a hobby becomes a business. Marcus breaks down the pressure of a rigid streaming schedule, what streaming burnout looks like when your viewers can read your face, and why switching games can quietly break your audience. Dr. Gameology connects it all to parasocial relationships, streamer personas, and the way an online identity can be both a mask and a path to your best self, including the discipline and “Mamba mentality” that makes morning streaming sustainable.

If you have ever wondered whether you watch streams for the game or the person, or why streaming can feel both freeing and exhausting, this one will hit. Subscribe, share it with a friend who lives on Twitch, and leave us a review with your answer: what keeps you coming back to a stream?

Transcript

Prison Sentence And Going Live

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Because we have a running thread of so many episodes of me doing life a certain way and Marcus having the moral high ground, the seat of judgment, saying that I have a prison sentence. But you know what? I saw someone get sentenced pretty hard last night into a destiny of entertaining people online. And would you like to know who got sentenced? Marcus B814 on Twitch and YouTube went back to prison. Not even high security. He is eating the same slop as all the regular sentencees, and he's got at least seven more years on his sentence. Marcus, welcome to the streamer life.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Wait a second. Like let's let's let's let's just pump the brakes. I would say I was on trial yesterday, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:10

I haven't seen you were back in prison. There was no trial. You were having fun. You streamed for two hours. That's a prison sentence.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

And you had loyal followers who were ready to jump into that chat and be your friend again. Friends that, by the way, you have not been taken care of for a couple years. You are so lucky to have amazing people in your life, Marcus. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

The I'm gonna try to hear remember everything you guys just said so I can rebut it. I did have fun. I did have fun. It was fun, it was really good to see some people. It was awesome that Wargus was already joining my fire team when I started to do stuff, and Ven ended up being the knight in shining armor when we couldn't clear the content, and he had to come be him is always like the badass self and just help clear the content. It was a lot of fun. As you guys heard last week and maybe the week before, no, last week, Destiny 2 has announced that they're shutting doing their last update for the game, and then it's going full maintenance mode, which you'll still be able to play all the content, but their active development on the game, seasonal activities, all that stuff is over. So through the process of my four stages of grief, uh kind of it's like the it's like the backwards version of uh the hero's journey, and I yeah, or I should say the gamer's journey. My four stages of video game grief is the backwards version of the gamers' journey. Um anyway, so I was in Discord and we were all talking about it. Atrax is just bashing destiny because he hates it so much, but I also think he's just trolling Goldie the entire time just to get him triggered. But my point is, I said, you know what? There's so many awesome people that I have met through Destiny and played with. Like, why not go one last time? So last I said I was gonna do it Wednesday. I Wednesday night, I logged in and I opened, I said to myself, I'm gonna open Stream Labs, and if it works and I don't have to like reinvent the wheel to get it to work, I'm gonna click go live. The only thing I had to do was log into Twitch. The YouTube was already linked. And I went live and I had fun. We finished the final mission of all the second to last mission of the final shape story. That's the last time I played. Last time I played, it was June of 2024. Uh I forgot how pretty the game was, I forgot how good it is, and I forgot how to play a first-person shooter. I was terrible.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

I don't I don't know Destiny, but it did not appear to me as a non-Destiny player that you were doing that bad.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

I appreciate you saying that. But I was doing bad. But anyway, so I did go live. I did say I'm probably I don't know how many episodes I've recorded the show, but I probably said that I was never going live again. Uh a few times. But this game, it hit the feels when you hear something that you love is going away in the way you know it, it definitely affected me, I'll say. Like mentally, like I thought about all those people, and last night proved to me that when I signed in, there were people that popped in to say hi, even if it was for just say hi, hope you're doing good and see you, or the people that hung out in the whole stream, or you have the one guy who trolled me the entire time because he took every single thing I said, spun it into something sexual, and called me out on it, and he's a co-host on the show.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

So that happened, but anyway, I never spun anything that you did not literally say. You just had really poor phrasing last night, and I was creating a time capsule of evidence that you trail off sentences in ways that makes everything sound phallic in a way Sigmund Freud would have been truly proud and inspired by.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

No, it's fine. I don't think I start sentences and not finish them. Or maybe I do. I don't know. Anyway, I'm moving.

What Streaming Community Feels Like

SPEAKER_01 6:11

There is one thing I want to point out for our listeners, because the people who play video games will hear this and they'll know exactly what's going on. But you said in your opening description of what you did with YouTube and Twitch last night, you mentioned things like Atrax, Wargus, Venn, Goldie. These are all human beings with screen names, just like I am Doc, and over here we have Doritos, and we pick these names because Doc.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

And so when you create these names, these are how you get called in the game by other people. That's essentially your identity to them. And the list of people that Marcus listed, these are all people that had played Destiny or watched lots of destiny from his streams in the past and saw that notification that he went live and decided to spend that time watching or actually playing and being a part of the Destiny activity. It's really neat how streaming works because it's an opportunity to interact with people over the internet in a way that's got gaming as a background activity. You're hanging out in a living room, someone's presenting a game, but the chat can do its own thing, people can jump in and out of certain games depending on what you're choosing to play. It was a really cool social atmosphere last night.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

Yeah, and for the people that don't know about streaming or that, I found in the beginning it was really hard to communicate while playing a game. It's like walking and chewing gum. I can't do it naturally. Um like playing a video game and being able to conversate while playing the video game, that's an art form. And the only reason why I can do that is because I raided in MMOs. Because you actually had to play the game and talk. Yeah. Or maybe I just like to talk, so I had to learn how to do it. Because I'm pretty sure some of the raid members muted me. Like my co-tank, who's also a co-host.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

I don't think I ever muted you. You weren't a tank. I know. I never was a tank for you. There is a tank that I did have to mute in my past, but they really deserved it.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

So I forget what that guy's name was.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

It's not worth adding to the transcript of the show history.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

But anyway, it was a lot of fun. I saw a lot of virtual names that popped up, and a lot of these people I've talked to on the phone or texted with or Discord messaged with over the years, and it was really, it really felt good to see those people. Now, am I gonna get a prison sentence? I'm not sure. I had fun streaming. Am I gonna do it again? Probably. But am I gonna get a set schedule and do that? I don't think so. I'm too busy with the work and life. But if I can go live once a week, sure. If I don't, it's not the end of the world. Because I realized last night that there's I think uh there was 18 people that came to the stream. That was 18 people that I haven't seen in a long time, except Doc, which I see every week. Or there are people there that I don't know are there because they didn't say hi to me. But either way, they still chose to be there. You guys know what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Yeah, that's an entire thing, too, is the lurking is lurking is when you don't participate in the chat, you have something else going on, and you want to watch it, but you're not there to actively chat, and you can announce that you're gonna do that or stay completely in the background. The streamer will see a number on the screen, but they won't know who that is. You had for someone who has not streamed in quite a while, you had a really good showing. I had lower numbers than that for years when I was doing Sotor, and that was with a consistent schedule.

SPEAKER_02 10:52

And that's where I was I'm glad you actually said the game Swotor. Then maybe not the next time I do it, but I'm gonna talk to Doritos offline off the show. Definitely gonna reach out to uh in Intasar and ask them if they'd like to do a stri a raid with me in story mode, but on stream. I thought about what's happening to Destiny and how I would actually feel if Swotor made the announcement of that, and I would be doing the same thing. So I'm like, why am I gonna waste my time when I could play the game? Excuse me, the game is current. Why wouldn't I play it and play with friends? That clearly means both of you come from that game. So why not do it? Because what's gonna happen? I'm gonna get the same feeling right now, probably even more, when they announce that someday, that they're shutting new content off.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

If we mention Intisar next week, that's an entire month of him getting mentioned on our show. We should mention him every week.

SPEAKER_02 12:01

That guy is if you're Dr. Swotor, but if you're Dr. Swotor, Dr. Gameology, formerly known as Dr. Swotor, he is like Mr. Swotor. He's the he's the best. He's such a good dude. And I remember it like it was yesterday. I went to Florida, and he told me that's when the Force Awakens came out and they had the porks, and I got him one of those ones with the magnet that can sit on their shoulder because he asked me, he's like, all I want you to do is bring me back one. And he didn't think I was. And when I came back, COVID just happened. Like the lockdowns happened, and I was going, I had to go to Boston for something, and I called him and I was like, hey man, I know we're locked down, but I'm in the city. I will just text me your address and I will put it on your front porch or I'll throw it to you from the street. I'm not trying to like spread germs, but I've got this for you. And it was so funny. He stood on his porch, I stood on the sidewalk, and it was like the weirdest interchange ever, but I actually got to see it face to face, and it was like just a great interaction.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

I now have this image of Marcus with the flashcards like from Love actually sending a message one card at a time to Intisar and then handing a port to him at the end.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

Yeah. But either way, that's uh that's my uh prison sentence story. And I think uh I think I'm gonna I think I have to create something for my office that represents like a prison, and it's gonna be in that empty square right there behind me, just cause it's just nostalgic.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

You can create an alternate persona of yourself like prison mic from the office. Knock out the dementia. That's so funny.

Why People Stream Video Games

SPEAKER_01 14:03

So, what are we gonna talk about this week? I've been thinking about that all day, and I want to just throw a topic idea at all of you live with no preparation between the three of us. I want to talk about why do people stream video games on Twitch or other platforms. Yeah, I've just been thinking because over the last several months, I've returned to my normal schedule, and there's been this running thread for at least six months of our show of Marcus calling it a prison sentence, which I think is grossly unfair, because I've not really felt like I'm sentenced to anything uh restricting me from my rights and liberties in the society where I'm allowed to function, just because I'm hanging out with people on Twitch and talking about the work I do and the way that I see video games from the perspective of kind of my professional identity has become a huge part of the stream. But that's not the only way people find their path to spending time on Twitch, and I just think it'd be really cool to talk about how people get involved in it and why they're doing this as a leisure activity.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

I'm gonna ask Doritos because Doritos did go live for a little while.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Yeah, went live for about eight months or so. It's not me because I don't talk a lot when I game. So that was one of my things is I what did I play? I played Horizon Zero Dawn, I played uh Scarlet Nexus and Temperator was it? Yeah, Shadow General Raider. Yeah, Shadow. I want to remember that. So I had a lot of fun doing it. Uh but again it wasn't I was part of it was trying to prove to myself what it was like to do it, and in case my kids decided, hey, we will we they wanted to do it because at that time they were both consuming a lot of uh streaming content from by folks, so just trying to help them understand how it is, how it goes. If they had questions, I can't answer them if I haven't done it, so but again, I'm I was not a good streamer because I don't chat a lot when I'm gaming. It's just a thing.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

No, and there's streamers out there that don't talk at all, they just play the game, and people just come and hang out and watch them play. And when they like finish a level, they like they catch up on whatever the chats happen. Hey, how are you? Blah blah blah blah blah. And then I've seen people have on the screen while I'm playing game, I don't talk. I've seen the ticker at the bottom of streams before. Everybody creates content differently, and I do believe that streaming is way different than YouTube videos, like creating that content, it's two complete separate realms.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

If you're creating static video or not live streaming YouTube, yeah, it is it's different content creation because you're you don't have to talk because you're most likely going to do a voice over on that, so it's slightly different the way you have to approach it.

Schedules Burnout And Viewer Expectations

SPEAKER_02 17:52

Yeah, I don't know how I can describe my journey. It was we were doing working class nerds, and multiple people said to me, Marcus, you should stream. Why would I do that? Because you're entertaining, whatever. And then I one day I Nick and I were talking, I said, Nick, I think I'm gonna click go live. And I started, it was the support was incredible. They have their like affiliate program on Twitch. I think I did it in whatever the minimum days were, and it was great, it was awesome, I appreciated it. And then I was talking with somebody, I don't remember who, and they said you have to decide if it's a hobby or it's a business. And I think this was a turning point for me because I felt because I have that alpha business mentality, I was like, all right, great, it's a business. I'm gonna make a schedule, I'm gonna create my prison sentence, and I'm gonna be married to that. And years later, after doing it, I know how many things that extra, I'm gonna say extra things that I missed in my house, like with my family, because I was married to that schedule. If I was going live at eight, you better know at 7:45, I was sitting in front of my computer, and exactly 10 minutes before I went live, I was clicking go live, turning on the music, and I'm going to the bathroom. And whatever is happening in my house at that time is not important. Going live was. And I did that for a while. And when you create that repeated schedule over and over and over again, and you're married to it, people come back because they know, hey, this is my relaxed time. I'm gonna play a video game and put on Twitch. Who's on? Oh shit, it's Wednesday at eight o'clock. Marcus is there, rain or shine, do or do not. He's there. I'm I he's my guy, and I did that for a long time. I played Star Wars Yellow Republic exclusively. I had a lot of fun doing it. And then burnout happened. And when burnout happens in streaming, you think that your viewers don't see it, but you seem to forget that if you're live 246, six to eight hours a week, those people see how your emotions are on your face, they see how you talk, they know if something is bothering you. And towards the end of my SWOTOR streaming, people would say, Marcus, are you all right? And it's man, that's not me. I'm I'm energetic, I'm excited, and that's when I knew I had to walk away from SWOTOR. And SWOTOR as a whole is a smaller game, so you when it's a smaller game, you have a better opportunity to grow your channel because the pool is smaller, there's less content creators creating that content, so you're noticed more. There's one page of streamers versus I switched to Destiny 2. The top streamers are have 8,000 people watching, and then there's a hundred people with one viewer, you're not getting noticed, and it was a really hard transition for me. And some of those names that were with me from day one weren't there anymore. So, like that, I'm gonna say I'm gonna say Chuggalugga as a fake name. Chuggalugga for the first two years or yeah, first year and a half was in my stream every single stream, at least for 10 minutes, every stream. When I switched to Destiny 2, Chuggalaga's name never came back. And I don't, I'm not angry at that person because they don't play that. They play Smootor. Fine. And there's nothing wrong with that. And occasionally you would get that one or two or three people that came from SWOTOR would pop in and say, Hey, Marcus, just wanted to say hi. Destiny's not my jam, but we wanted to say hi to you. You should come back to SWOTOR at some point. And at that point, I was just like, no. And it really was hard. Now, over time, I met a whole new group of people. But at that point, I my prison sentence was years. And I was tired. And I wasn't having fun anymore. So eventually I just stopped. And I realized, and then immediately, I would say after about a month, I noticed that oh shit, I should be live. And streaming ruined playing video games for me for a while. But on those nights that I was streaming, I was sitting on the couch with Carrie, or I was writing an estimate for work, or I was doing I filled the time with something else. But it took me a long time to come back to video games. Because I felt like I could never play a video game unless I was live, because I didn't want people to miss whatever I was doing. Why? That's a great if I think it's uh what's it called when you get that happiness hit in your brain? What's that called? Dopamine. Yeah, dopamine hit. I think it's because when we uh Doritos, when we killed the tanks in nightmare mode, like that was an all-time achievement for me. I cried, I was so happy. And I was in stream was there for that. These people watched for months us trying to beat this boss in that pinnacle, the pen ultimate moment when we finally did it. That was raw emotion. Or beating a boss in that was probably the highest high I ever had in streaming. Now, beating a boss in Elden Ring, yeah, it's awesome, but it's not like an MMO boss that you spend months and hours trying to beat. And I don't know. I think I was addicted to the reaction from the chat when I was successful in a game. I hope I answered that why correctly or well. It's just it's an answer.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

It's Breakley's perspective.

SPEAKER_02 25:04

I'm saying I'm trying to I'm trying to give you my emotional answer because that's a really good question, Doritos. It's I felt like I was screwing over my viewers by not letting them see what I was doing.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

And that's why you felt it was a prison sentence because you felt like you couldn't play any other any games if you weren't streaming, because you wanted people to enjoy watching you and all the enjoyment that comes with supporting a streamer. Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

It's well said.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

There are some games that I have played mostly away from my stream that I all the time have a thought, it'll just flip through my brain like a guilt thought. For example, Metaphor Refantasio. It's a game created by Atlas, the same company that does the persona games. It's high fantasy, but with social links and archetypes, and it's all the things I would ever want to talk about on my stream. And I did about six to ten short streams of that game, got to a certain point, and realized I want to push through this story faster than what I can do if this is a stream game. So I started a separate save off of the stream one in case I wanted to go back to the stream one. And then I just started playing on my couch, and I started pushing through the different months of the calendar in that game, and before you know it, I finish it, and I finished it so much faster than I would have if it stayed a stream game, and then I've never gone back to playing the game, so it's never become a stream game again, even though it won game of the year from many media outlets that cover games and games journalism. It's a fantastic game. It would be amazing for me to play on my stream, and I never let it become part of my streaming journey the way other games have been, like Final Fantasy XIV and Persona V and Star Wars The Old Republic for so many years. And one of the things that is actually challenging until you start finding people that help this not be challenging is there are people who are watching because you're playing their game, and then there's other people that you can find that will watch because of you, and the game becomes secondary, tertiary, doesn't matter at all. Because they're there because of you and your personality and the way you talk about things, and the feeling they get when they get to hang out with you on the internet. And when I was playing Star Wars the Old Republic, I had many Chugalugas. That's gonna sound like a slang word. Chuggalugas people that were there because they love Star Wars the Old Republic, and maybe they heard about my research from their favorite Botor podcast because there were four of them. Yeah, yeah, there were about four podcasts that made mentions of what I was doing, and uh Boutini cast really took that torch and let me run with it. But the AIE Escape podcast, I think Bad Feeling Podcast mentioned me one time. I think uh Sakari's show definitely talked about it because I got to guest on their four-person or five-person show after I finished my research, too. Uh basically, anyone who showed up for Swotor Unite was part of that group of people that really boosted me into becoming Dr. Swotor.

Parasocial Relationships And Streamer Personas

SPEAKER_01 29:00

And I just the history of me as a streamer, I just mentioned an event that we created called SWOTOR Unite. I'll get to that in a second. But I actually was not, I felt like I wasn't allowed to become a streamer or any kind of public influencing kind of figure about Star Wars The Old Republic while I was in my doc program because I didn't want my professors to accuse me of skewing my sample in a certain direction, which is something you do to your data where there's an extra relationship between you and the participants in your research that could alter the data. And so I wanted to make sure nobody knew who I was in Star Wars The Old Republic until after they participated in my research, uh or until after I got cleared to start promoting my research. And once I got that sample done and I defended, I got that PhD, I put it on my streamer name. My original streamer name was not Doctor Anything because I wasn't Doctor Anything, it was Infinite Outcome. And I did stream Star Wars The Old Republic more than a handful of times with that being my Twitch username. But as soon as I finished my PhD work, I changed it as quickly as I could to Dr. Swotor. I wanted to make sure that I got that name before someone else got it. Because you don't have to actually have a doctorate to name yourself Dr. Something on the internet. Nope. No disrespect, but you don't have to. That's a streamer joke for anyone. Anyway, so wow. Okay. So that's the number one thing, by the way. I have to clarify when people that don't know me from the professional world stumble on my channel or when I get to visit a new channel by rating. Is yes, the doctorate is real. The doctor part of my name is real because you just assume on the internet that people call themselves whatever they want. I just started streaming because I wanted to share my ideas about games, and I wanted personally to be better at doing it. Is my job is all about talking to people and getting them to see their lives differently. And streaming, I had always thought is a different way of doing that, but in a way that's not gonna bill your insurance and not gonna be so formal, and it's not like I'm people's counselor. There's a phrase that streamers will use where it's like, I'm not your therapist. And so for me, it's like I am a therapist, but I'm not your therapist, right? So, you know, I just started streaming SWOTOR, Star Wars The Old Republic, and then I started raiding. And when I started raiding and streaming Star Wars The Old Republic, I think that's when I really started to push that burnout side a little bit because I never got to the point, honestly, where I was comfortable being me and taking on challenging content at the same time. That is a you have to be so secure in who you are play high-level content poorly, repeatedly on a stream, and still maintain the kind of character that is magnetic enough to convince people to want to be there with you. Right Marcus, one of the things I miss from you, honestly, is the word boomba. Ha like that word meant success or victory or hell yeah. And I miss hearing you say that word all the time because that became part of who you were to me. But then you got mature and your kids grew up and you don't boomba anymore.

SPEAKER_02 33:06

It yeah, you're right. But it's really crazy to think about the content creation journey, and for you, you're the reason why you're doctor gameology is because you did research on a video game, which drove you to do this, which turned you into this creator, which elevated your job, and it's like a full circle. For me, I just wanted to hang out with people and play the video games I love.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

At the core, I just want to hang out with people too. It's I work from home in both my jobs. The people I interact with are people that owe a deliverable to me or I owe a deliverable to them. And with streaming, those strings are loosened, and I actually do feel like a version of me that is here to enjoy themselves. Okay and the thing that sometimes I talk to parents or people that are not in gamer culture, and they might not understand what streaming is, or they might see something on YouTube, but they don't understand the difference between live content, long-form content, and shorts. They just are like, I'm on YouTube. And the reason I called out the username so early is because if you're not in gamer culture, you just hear all these jargon of words coming out of our mouths during this podcast. If you're even listening to it, but that jargon of words, those are people with identities and preferences and interests, and we get to know them even if the relationship is a parasocial relationship. Marcus, you and I did not have a parasocial relationship for very long because I showed up to the AIE Mandatory Fun Night, which is their community night, and we did Terror from Beyond. I was playing healer, and you needed a healer for that Sunday for the Dread Palace, and you got so interested in convincing me to heal for your team because you knew I'm assuming because you knew me from the podcast episodes I'd been on. Yep, and now I'm this kind of neat person, Votor beginning celebrity who can heal, and you needed that healer, and so you got in a Discord call with me after that raid, and you wanted to actually know me, the person, and you wanted me to understand how far you'd gotten in Dread Palace. And I was like, we can get through Dread Palace, and we did, and so you didn't so a parasocial relationship is where the content creator is there and you know them because they're putting their life out there, and then the people in the chat are less known, but we know your username, and we know what it's like to see your chat messages come up on our screen, interact with it, and then see what kind of thing you're gonna say back. So we build a sort of internet relationship, possibly friendship, but it's not equal because the content creator is more out there with more detail to who they are in the dynamic, but also that might not be authentically who they are as a human being because they are performing.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

Oh, there's there's definitely that, and I'm gonna say it. I'm the same person, whether I'm live or I'm not live, I'm the same guy, right? I don't hide who I am.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

Where I think it's I don't think that people that are different between those two are hiding things, though. I think that's what we call personas, that you have a situation and you have a role that you're expected to perform, you put that mask on in terms of like the Jungian concept of the persona. If you're a teacher, you're gonna behave in that classroom with your students different than you will in your living room with your family, but you still are you uh Doritos. I think that you'd be an interesting person to ask about this. What is what is the difference uh between Dr. Gamology and Daniel and Dr. Daniel Kaufman?

SPEAKER_00 38:12

Oh wow, okay. Uh, so you definitely have your streaming persona as Dr. Gamology is very much about sharing uh the concepts of your practice and what you've learned and how it applies to people. It's not necessarily acting as a therapist, it's acting as a you you you assume more of the teacher role because that is what because you do have that doctorate, you are a professor anyway, so you are in that mode when you are on stream, Daniel Kaufman as the person, is very much a father to rising college freshmen and make ends meet, as it were, in the game of life. So you're doing the things you need to do to sustain your family, and that is a very private person. Not many people get to know that version of Daniel, yeah, and then you've got so we got streamy guy, we got real life dad guy, and what was the other option? I had separated memory loss.

SPEAKER_01 39:40

Yeah, no, it's fine. I had separated Daniel just first name casual from Dr. Kaufman.

unknown 39:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 39:48

So in case you had a suspicion that Dr. Kaufman and Dr.

SPEAKER_00 39:51

Gameology are not exactly the same persona, they're different enough because Dr. Kaufman is the college professor. Dr. Gamology takes and applies the professorship knowledge while you're gaming so people can see the concept in action. I know that uh you're I don't say the recent bunch of uh participants in chat are very much now. A lot of them have read the book. I and that's this comment came up, was it Sunday? I think it was came up several times. That I now have the vocabulary to explain to my partner why I feel this way when I'm gaming, type of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 40:44

Yeah, we have one person in the chat that came to the chat specifically because their gamer partner said, Watch this guy, because I read his book, and I think you'll understand what I've been trying to tell you. And that's been a really fascinating set of streams for me, actually, is because there are a lot of things I hope will happen when people read The Gamer's Journey. That is not actually one that I had on my bingo card, uh, but they've been really pleasant in the chat and very open to trying to understand what is happening on the screen, and that shows a lot of dedication to that relationship to hang out and just turn on this person talking about a video game in the background of whatever it is you're doing. Um, also, Dritos, thank you so much for letting me put you on the spot without telling you I was going to. I just was asking you because uh Marcus has had a deep friendship with the part that we would call Daniel for nine plus years now. And so for you, I've known you for quite a while, but there was a lot of time in there where it was Dr. Gamology talking to Doritos, and right the part where our actual first names without the usernames and the handles and stuff, that is a much more recent part of our friendship history. So I wanted to see if the idea of the parasocial relationship shifting into a friendship, how that would play for you. Because there are only a handful of people too that have been in the chat with me over the years that I've gotten to convert into those kinds of friendships too. It's not a long list, but just because that list isn't long doesn't mean the people that I've only talked to on Discord or Twitch chat are less of a relationship, it's just it's a different category of relationship. Right. But when things happen to these people and it's frustrating or challenging or straight up sad, I get affected by that. I want people to have a nice life, and I don't want their struggles and challenges to overwhelm them. And so on that level, it doesn't matter what level of relationship we've grown into. And by the way, I just want to say persona and metaphor and all the games that Atlas makes, they have this social system in those games where you have these meaningful relationships with people, and the rank of that relationship goes up from zero to ten. And in those video games, the reason you want to do this is because it makes all of your personas that friendship represents more powerful. So there's a video game gain to that. But I think that actually is a metaphor. For what happens when you have those meaningful conversations with people and you level up the real relationship? Is all the things that they have meant to you eventually goes from a you know, hi, nice to meet you, to welcome back to parasocial relationship to let's talk on Discord, let's do a video call. Here's my phone number, let's talk. I'm not doc anymore, I'm Daniel. Actually, Marcus, you haven't earned that one. I'm still Doc to you for some reason.

SPEAKER_00 44:31

And that that was a joke, but it's it's good, it's gone all the way around, it's full circle now.

SPEAKER_02 44:36

Yeah, but it's but it's because you're just I my son's name is Ryan, but his nickname is Rhino. I call him Rhino. I never the only time I call him Ryan is when he's in trouble. In trouble.

SPEAKER_00 44:48

Oh, right, gotta have the full name.

SPEAKER_02 44:50

Yep, it but that's the way it is. You just like I know you're and you know why? Because I'll never call you Daniel, I'll call you Dan or Danny. Hey Danny boy, but that's my but that's oh that might be the new name.

SPEAKER_01 45:03

Hey Danny. So we know if Marcus yells across his house, Ryan Dirigible Fitzgerald B814, you get over here right now.

SPEAKER_02 45:14

Yeah, it usually ends with me picking him up and power bombing him onto the wrestling ring. But anyway, that's all good.

SPEAKER_01 45:21

Yeah, the point is the trivia question in 50 episodes. What does Daniel, what does Doc say Marcus's son's full name is when he's in trouble?

SPEAKER_02 45:31

But it's also like Doritos is always I know who Doritos is. And when I talk about him to my family, I say Doritos. What are you doing? I'm hanging out with Doritos. And now my kids know who Doritos is. They know what his real name is, but he's not, I don't use that name. You know what I mean? It's just I don't know why. It's just because real names are boring. No, it's but I'm Marcus. I don't have a fake persona.

SPEAKER_01 46:04

Whoa, okay. Those personas are names that we chose to represent us. They're much more us than me being named after a person with an old testament Bible book.

SPEAKER_02 46:17

No, of course. I'm just, I guess for me, it's like what I meant by what I was saying is Marcus is my persona, right? Like it's just who I am. The B814 is me, right?

SPEAKER_01 46:28

That's I never thought next thing you're gonna say is your birthday is August 14th. No, it's definitely not, but it's uh anyway.

SPEAKER_02 46:37

The my point is I never thought of myself ever as donut dip 111. You know what I mean? I never thought of myself as that. Donut dip. Man, we got some names tonight. I love this episode so much. But what you guys see what I'm saying? I just I it's just Marcus is me, and I never wanted to have a different name.

SPEAKER_01 47:13

Wow.

Mamba Mentality And Connection Takeaways

SPEAKER_01 47:14

That makes me feel like there's something I want to say that is incredibly vulnerable. So I just gotta think about this really quick. So I'm gonna say it. I just want to figure out how to really nail what I mean for this episode. Dr. Gameology is me when I fully believe in myself and what I'm doing, and nothing in life is dragging me down. Yes. And getting to go on to Twitch and be that is really powerful to the point where, for whatever reason, I've the algorithm on Instagram has been feeding me consistent insightful reels about Kobe Bryant becoming the black mamba. And he was notorious for his work ethic and having multiple workouts before all of his opponents even woke up. And there were some things early in his career that were controversial that made the person that was Kobe Bryant have some struggles, and during an off-season, he came back with this alter ego that he called the Black Mamba, inspired by Uma Thurman's character in the Kill Bill duology. It's an assassin, and it's also a type of snake that is incredibly lethal. And so that was his persona. And for me, this is all gonna come together, actually. There was an interview during the redeem team USA basketball, the Olympics after we lost, and then they come back, they loaded it up. They have LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, basically every single top-tier all-star from the NBA said yes to the Olympics after a couple times where the big names said no to the Olympics. And Kobe Bryant had an interview where he talked about Mamba mentality and waking up at 5 a.m. for his first workout every day. And I needed to do my dissertation about a year and a half after this Olympics. And that is when I just heard this interview replay on ESPN, and I was like, you know what? I'm always so tired when I get home from work. I need to work on this before everything else wears me down. And I started doing my stuff at 5 a.m. And that is where the work ethic that eventually became Dr. Gamology came from. That's why the book exists. That's why other research studies that I've done exist. Is I just started looking at 5 a.m. like that's my time to do the things that are gonna matter to me beyond just what I'm gonna do today as a regular person. And so that's part of why I stream in the morning too, is because I wanted to be a good streamer for so long. And I was trying to stream at nighttime, and I would just get so tired. I know we record this at nighttime, but we have accountability because there's the three of us, it's not a solo activity. If it was me saying I'm gonna stream every Thursday night at 9 p.m., it's not gonna happen. I can do 9 a.m. on Thursday every week. 9 p.m. is a no. I'll just be tired. And so getting to wake up and go straight into that identity of a person who gets stuff done and doesn't let things get in the way and doesn't get tired of the big boost to what it is I'm trying to do in life. It makes the other parts of my life better to start my day out being that part of me. So that's what I get out of streaming, is it's not just playing a game, it's not just talking with chat, it's not just seeing a new story or letting my imagination go or progression or leveling up my gear. It is those things, but it's also a chance to tap into the version of myself that is better at life than the parts of myself that are not Dr. Gameology, the content creator.

SPEAKER_03 51:49

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 51:54

I guess for me, I just don't need a different name to do that. In my brain, when I created this, you know what I mean? You created your in your original Twitch name as infinite outcome. You thought about a name you could go by for a while and do that. When I created my name, I was like, Marcus B814, it's just done.

SPEAKER_01 52:20

Yeah, I've always been fascinated with multiple timelines and alternate endings. And so that original name was just like there's an infinite version, infinite number of versions of this story. That's where my headspace was at originally. And some of that's inspired by Doctor Who, some of that's inspired by games like Heavy Rain, where you do get to see the story end different ways. I've always loved video games that have multiple endings.

SPEAKER_02 52:56

But the moral of this story and this outcome is that it doesn't matter what your persona is or what you're clicking go live or creating YouTube videos for. The connection is connecting to people, and all of our stories somehow, some way come back to that. And with that, we continue the journey.