Life Is New Game Plus

Starting over is overrated. What we actually want is the chance to replay a chapter with better stats, better tools, and the hard-earned knowledge we didn’t have the first time. That’s why New Game Plus hits so deep, and why a simple upgrade like a new computer can feel like stepping into a smoother, smarter version of the same journey.

We talk SWTOR and the buzz around 8.0, including what makes Star Wars The Old Republic so sticky after all these years: roleplaying that feels personal. When a game lets you shape your character’s voice, values, and choices, it becomes more than content. It becomes identity, and that’s a big deal through the lens of gaming psychology, motivation, and immersion. We also compare that to RPGs where you’re making choices, but you still feel like you’re piloting someone else’s legend.

Then we zoom out into replay systems across games, from difficulty scaling to carryover unlocks, and we share a wild Persona 3 Reload New Game Plus moment that turns the early hours into a completely different experience. From there, we make the leap to real life: careers, relationships, creativity, and even retirement planning. No time travel required, just a commitment to keep learning and to treat each new phase like a fresh run powered by everything you already survived, practiced, and mastered. If this resonates, subscribe, share the episode with a friend who’s in a “next chapter” moment, and leave a review telling us what your real-life New Game Plus skill is.

Transcript

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New Computer New Energy

SPEAKER_01 0:15

It's so good to see you, Doritos, with my new computer. Do I look any different?

SPEAKER_00 0:23

You look crisper, yes, and far more happy that and you're far less stressed about will my computer do something I don't want it to while we're recording.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Yeah, thoughts and prayers do not help you, it turns out, record podcasts. Yeah, I feel like I was playing a really hard video game with that other computer, and I struggled through it. I figured it out as best as I could, and I got a new computer, so I take all the skills from the really tough game that I just completed, and I bring them with me into this new game where I'm much more talented, things are flowing easier. It's like New Game Plus for podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

It is like New Game Plus for podcast. Because you've you completed the original journey on the previous version, and now you're going at it yet again.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Yeah. New game plus is a really cool concept, anyway, because you get to keep progressing on a game that you're replaying, like in school, whether it's K through 12 or college or anything else, anything beyond that. You don't start the next grade completely over. You carry over the knowledge that you gained the previous academic year, and the challenges can go up too. And so, for example, Elden Ring has a new game plus mode, and they call it journey two, journey three, journey four, all the way up to seven, and then it's plateaued in difficulty. But the fun thing about Soul style games is the challenge goes up with you every time you run through again, like in school, theoretically. So I think that life has a lot of new game pluses in it. That's the hypothesis for the night.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

That's a good one.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Yeah, it's been a couple weeks since people have gotten to hear us.

Catching Up On Recent Games

SPEAKER_01 2:33

I have made a return to streaming with Rise of the Tomb Raider and Persona 3 Reload. So people have seen me on the new computer. But there's a lot for our podcast listeners that we can catch them up on. So I just want to ask before we get into a topic tonight, what have you been up to, Doritos?

SPEAKER_00 2:55

What have I been up to? I have been doing a lot of SWOTOR, Star Wars, the Old Republic online. They're wrapping up the existing expansion. So 7.x is coming to a close in the very near future. 8.0 is on the horizon. There's lots of excitement and buzz in the community about what's new, what's coming up. So I've been playing a lot of that. I still having fun with the game 15 years later. What else have I been playing? Video game wise, I've been dabbling in Baldur's Gate, just having fun here and there. More, but more. We started my next our family's been doing kicked off our next campaign for actual Dungeons and Dragons. So we gather around every Tuesday night now and kick that off. So we're still playing the tabletop. And that's kind of been consuming the majority of my time and just those two are the main two big things.

SWTOR 8.0 Buzz And Updates

SPEAKER_01 3:55

It's really cool that you brought up Star Wars The Old Republic today, because I was able to attend a redacted last week, and I'm not allowed to talk about redacted on the show, of course, because I'm under redacted. So I just want to ask you, since everyone's like, why is he keep saying redacted? I theoretically know things about the game that I'm very excited about from Broadsword. And I can't talk about what I know unless I know what people are allowed to know. And Doritos, what you know, you are allowed to know because I've never spilled the beans. So what are some of the cool features coming up in 8.0?

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Wow. Let's see. I know we're getting a new three boss AWP. So there's gonna be a level cap increase. So as most major expansions go for majority of MMOs, there's gonna be a level cap increase of five more levels. So there'll obviously be another gear. And I think they're doing some class balancing tuning and some other stuff that I personally have not gotten too in depth with it because I like to be surprised. And since we're the test server for Star Wars Old Republic has just got updated with two additional classes now. Two new classes? No, not new classes, but they put two new classes up on the test server. They only had three, they had uh a Bounty Hunter and the Sage Sork and one other. And they just put up the operative and the juggernaut classes. So Sith Warrior and Agent classes up now. So they're slowly working them in. Obviously, let's test server time, figure out bugs, kinks, and all the fun stuff.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Okay. I'm listening to that. It sounds really cool. I'm glad I didn't open my mouth because you had not mentioned any of the stuff that I'm excited about.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Oh no, until some of the kinks get worked out, I'm not gonna get super excited because sometimes I'll get excited about an upcoming feature and then it'll be, oh yeah, by the way, it's not really gonna be this way because we had to tweak whatever.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Yeah, that happens with all kinds of live service games, though. I can easily see myself getting back into the game when this expansion comes out. Because at that point, I'll have about four years of content that I've never done, and that in and of itself would be a fun thing to dive into.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Yeah, so it'll be I think it'll be a good time for all. From I know that there are plenty of content creators out there who have gotten insights like yourself and several other people out there, so you seem to have the same buzz as a lot of the other hardcore Star Wars fans have for this game. It's exciting, not the not knowing is exciting, some can be a bit nerve-wracking, but hey, it's that's part of it.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

I got to catch Swotorista on Twitch this morning when I raided some of my viewers onto her channel because I had to go. And she was talking about just the little blip that I got to hear when I was still in her chat before I had to jump into a webinar that I was the speaker for.

Roleplay Choices And Player Identity

SPEAKER_01 7:41

She was talking about what class she picked and the character selection choices and what kind of personality she was aiming for with the dialogue choices with that character. And of course, that's the central crux of my dissertation and my love of Star Wars, the old republic from a psychological perspective, is how well you can roleplay your character. It's your Star Wars story. And there are some games that I've played that are not the old republic where I get that kind of feel. I definitely felt that way at times in my playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3. I definitely felt like I was capturing that in Dragon Age the Veil Guard. And then there's other games where there are important choices in the game, but you never feel like you're playing as you. And so an example of that would be The Witcher 3. I always knew I was playing as Geralt of Rivia. I never felt like I was playing as me. There's a disconnect there because he's such a recognizable, important video game character. And I just think that's an interesting thing to think about is just how well the original class stories and then some of the expansions after that in Star Wars The Old Republic really give you that feeling of being the Star Wars character of your dreams and making that happen. Yep. I definitely agree with that. Yeah. So I'm excited. Anything they can add to the game that brings you into that feeling, I think, is a really good move by them. And I'm a hundred percent sure everything I just said is completely safe because it's just the DNA of the game. But I think the DNA of the game will be really fun to dive back into in the near future. Like a new game plus, you can always play a new character that is a class that you've already mastered, and then just run through the story that way. It's not quite a new game plus because you would start over at zero, but there's things that you can do with the dark vs light armor set and things that really just make it so all that knowledge you have from running through it before, but it's remixed into something new. Like with the new system from a few years ago where you can create a Sith warrior, but play as a Sith Inquisitor through the warrior story. That's the combat styles has definitely been an entertaining ad to the game. Yeah, I need to just download that game on my new computer so I have it, and that way I can go back to using my Sith Warrior Sorcerer. My Sith Warsaw. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure other people have much more clever hybrid names for them than what I just did there. That's reeking of dad joke nonsense.

Favorite New Game Plus Experiences

SPEAKER_01 10:59

There's just what are some games for you, and I'll be thinking about this too while you answer, but what are some games where you have gone through the game again as a new game plus playthrough?

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Um I did that when I Platinum, listen, Steam Platinum, the Horizon Zero Dawn series.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

The original Horizon Zero Dawn I Platinum. Does it I've gotten it on all the difficulty modes, so new game plus multiple times over. So that was fun being able to play the story such that I can enjoy the rest of the game such that it's far more fun to play as the the the difficulty mode increases.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Okay. Yeah, New Game Plus is just in so many of the games that I enjoy playing that I don't necessarily think about it anymore. I just assume it's gonna be there, and I assume I'm going to get to benefit from it. So, for example, I mentioned Elden Ring already. A lot of Resident Evil games have that because you play through and you can unlock things in a menu that are just in your inventory and different the next time you load your game up. So the first time through, you do not have unlimited ammo on anything. But the second time you play the game, the fifth time you play the game, more and more of your guns have unlimited ammo, and you can go into the options menu and turn that on or off if you don't want that easier challenge. But it makes the game completely different and not as scary because you can shoot anything that runs up on you when you don't have to worry about your bullet volume. So that's one example.

Persona 3 Reload Carryover Surprise

SPEAKER_01 13:08

One thing that happened in persona today, and I did finally okay, everyone listening. This is its own topic inside a topic. I completed Persona 3 reload, which is insane because I avoided playing it for so long because of the visual of how they summon their personas in that game. But over the last several weeks, I have been really stressed out. I needed a game that was just for me on the couch and no pressure to make it a stream game. So I decide I'm finally gonna finish Persona 3 reload. This is the sixth time that I have attempted to start that game and finish that game. Going all the way back to Persona 3 Portable. All the different iterations. I've started Persona 3 six times, I've finished it once. Okay, and I did finish it with my stream community on Twitch earlier this week, and I played it this morning with them from the very beginning using New Game Plus. And in the first battle of the game, I was shocked that one of the things that carried over is my experience level for the main character only. So the rest of my party is starring at level one, but my protagonist is level 93 out of 100.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Oh my.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

Yeah. So there's an important benefit of that, and it's not just the power during battles, it's that you cannot fuse personas until your character is the level of that persona. And persona is like Pokemon, but for adults in a way, because you want to catch them all. You want to take two different personas, fuse them together, and that creates a new persona that you don't have. And you do these equations until you have made every possible outcome in your compendium, and you want that compendium to say that you have fused 100% of all the different personas in the game. There's hundreds of them, just like in Pokemon. And if I'm missing one in the compendium that's level 62 and I'm level 29, in the first time through the game, you can't fuse that. But because I'm one hour into the game and I'm already level 93, I can fuse that whenever I have enough money in the game to pay to fuse it. So it's like I took the 73 hours of the first playthrough, and even though I'm at the beginning of the game again, my progress in the things that I have left are at hour 74, not hour one. And that is so nice.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

It is interesting.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

And I'm playing on a higher difficulty because I'm accounting for the fact that I'm level 93. So I think the reason that's interesting is oh, were you gonna say something?

SPEAKER_00 16:23

It brings to mind that people oftentimes says if you go back and tell your 10-year-old, five-year-old, eight-year-old, 13-year-old self something, take that experience and knowledge back to you, would you have done something different? And that's again, it's just a conversation, it's made me think about that. Is that how we outside of a video game would rationalize a new game plus?

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Yeah.

Using Game Progress As A Life Model

SPEAKER_01 16:51

If we want to turn new game plus into something that we see in our lives as part of the structure, part of the challenge, I don't think, obviously, to our knowledge, time travel is not possible yet. Ironically, Persona 3's entire struggle is created because humans got really close to creating a time machine before they ruined it. So, spoilers, but that's fun. You can't ever go back and redo childhood or adolescence again, but you can take those life lessons with you into college or the beginning of your career or the beginning of your longest-term relationship. And we're always gaining experiences. And when we move on to a different phase of life, those experiences are still inside us and have the potential for us to make things happen that would not have been possible in our lives at a previous phase. So I think it's just the concept of being a lifelong learner and being on a progression through this journey that you might complete one major goal, reach the summit of a major milestone in your life. And there will still be another mountain to climb, another summit to reach, and another milestone until you are done living or until you're done chasing things you've never done before.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

It's true. Because there's always the next adventure. And I'm viewing that from my point in life, is I am now closer to retirement than I am the beginning of my career. So I've actually had to change my thought process to okay, it's now to what's this next great adventure going to be when that time comes? What does it look like?

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Yeah, so in your career, you've probably had many phases, but you still have all the benefit of the experiences from the previous phase, and that realization has to be powerful, maybe even other feelings too, like hang on the day, like terrifying, unknown, undetermined.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

It's I just consider it part of the next great adventure. It's all a bunch of unknowns. But you can't let that dissuade you or discourage you. There's plenty of unknown things out there that it's all on how you take it.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Yeah, that's so true. I think video games are one safe space that people can have where progression is an obvious experience. The reinforcement mechanism of you did this well, you did not do this well. That happens in health bars, it happens in meters for your experience points, uh how you allocate points for your skill and abilities. You're constantly moving forward in all of these ways. And whenever you do the next challenge, you take those ability totals with you into that challenge. Even if you play the game again, if there's a new game plus, you're bringing in all that experience from the past playthrough, right? The version of you that's closer to retirement is the version of you that has all these tips and tricks from past jobs and past roles and past positions. And your career probably has several specific points that you could say this is the beginning of another new game plus. Yes, definitely. Yeah. I've shared a little bit on this show too about the progression in my employment history and career and responsibilities, and it's a background part of people getting to know me and listening to my idea of my idea about without video games, I don't think I'd be Dr. Kaufman. I don't think I would have felt the need to go earn a PhD, even though I would have thought at any point in my adult life, it would be really cool if I got to do the things I'm doing. But something about the games I was playing in the early 2000s convinced me up the difficulty, learn the skills, show people what you're capable of doing in this one specific space that matters a lot to you, whether it's multiplayer mode in Resident Evil 5, or whether it's high difficulties in Devil May Cry 4, or beating Bioshock on the hardest difficulty, or whatever it ended up being. I would play through these games on a lower difficulty, but I'd start pushing it up with the idea that my skills need to get better. And then I'd go to the very highest one, knowing I'm going to lose a lot, I'm going to get frustrated. If I play this game for 30 minutes, I might have to retry the same fight 14 times. But I'm getting better each time. And as long as I believe that, and that I'm taking all the little tools and tricks from the past playthroughs, I can do that with challenges in life too. And having this mindset doesn't mean you're guaranteed success at any goal you can think of. Because the reality is we won't succeed at every single thing that we think is important to us. But that isn't the point. I

Perfectionism And Old School Difficulty

SPEAKER_01 23:01

think I did an interview recently that hasn't gone published yet, but it was with a British publication called Nintendo Life. They were talking to me about perfectionism in games. And I talked about how games from before my childhood and during my childhood were clearly not worried about my feelings and what would happen if I play this game for hours and hours my entire childhood and never complete it successfully. And the game that I mentioned over and over in that interview was The Lion King. Alright, are you familiar with the Lion King game, Doritos?

SPEAKER_00 23:45

It's been a long time since I've seen that one, yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

I think it would have been Sega Genesis. It might have been on Super Nintendo also, but I'm for sure it was on Sega Genesis. And the level where you have to basically turn Simba into a lion pinball and get bounced around by the giraffes and the monkeys for the song I Just Can't Wait to Be King. I never beat that level a single time my entire childhood. And I don't think I'll ever complete that. I think I'm just gonna have to live the rest of my life realizing that from the age of eight until however long, like I just am not going to go back and try to right the wrongs of the emotional damage of that game. So every game that I complete, it's like I want to be really good at this, I want to do the higher difficulties, and I want to eventually master this game. But it's like, nope, nope, when you were a kid, there's one game you couldn't. And then I think about the Ninja Turtles on the NES and that game, I don't know if that could be completed either. But there's just games now are created with a story, and I think that there are difficulty levels, and the idea is everyone will get to enjoy this story from beginning to end at a level that fits what they're looking for. But back then, back then is please buy our game. We don't care if you finish it, because the goal is for you to sit in your living room and struggle and just have fun. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Bring with the good old days.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Yeah. But I think that these experiences are why I see the opportunity to feel like the new challenges I take on are a new game plus. That I make PowerPoint presentations all the time for work. I had to make two different ones completely up to the first draft version to pass along in the same day last Thursday. That's actually why we couldn't do the podcast, because I was just like, my brain was mush by the time I got to 9 p.m. And where did that skill come from? That is absolutely new game plus for grad school, my doctoral and my master's program, right? You're doing PowerPoints on a monthly basis so that you can present them to the class. Then the doc program, it's like a rotation. Every student has a different class to run two or three times every semester. You're making PowerPoints all the time for a grade. And now I take that skill and I just do it randomly because a company wants me to show up and talk to their clinical department or their customer service department and pass on active listening skills, right? That is new game plus for the game I completed the first time when I graduated from my doc program. So you can see this in relationships. You can see it in saving up for like a new car. You already know how to drive, but you're ending one phase of your life, taking all those driving experiences, and you're applying them to a new vehicle with new skills and new accessories. It might seem like a stretch, but New Game Plus is everywhere. It is. Oh, we can just call that a sequel. Okay, that's just a straight-up sequel then. I have

Writing Projects And Stream Rotation

SPEAKER_01 28:36

to finish writing my four chapters for Leyline Publishing. I know that Psychology of Villains got announced on Instagram, so you can go on Geek Therapeutics Instagram page and see the cover for that. It's part of a four-book set, just like my book was. And I wrote the Darth Vader chapter in that book. I'm really excited to see it in print and hold it in my hand. And to be honest, I remember that I made three graphics, informational graphics for that chapter. I only remember what one of them is. I have it in a folder in my cloud storage. I could just look at it right now. But I kind of told myself when I realized this in the car, because I was parked in a parking space when I saw this Instagram post. I realized I could look this up, but no, I'm gonna wait until I'm holding the book in my hand so that I can open it and be like, oh yeah, I did that. The one I'm most excited about, I do remember. I did a Myers Briggs breakdown of Darth Vader's four letters. And I'm just so proud of that. I think it's really interesting to think about the Anakin inside Darth Vader from a personality theory perspective. I hope people enjoy the chapter. It's and then I have two chapters coming up in Psychology of Heroes, which is the follow-up to that villain's book. And starting Rise of the Tomb Raider, just playing two hours of it, gave me so much extra stuff I want to talk about with Lara as a hero, a heroine. She is so much more confident and capable in Rise of the Tomb Raider than she is even by the end of Tomb Raider Survival Trilogy 1, right? She's been going around the globe doing the work. It's so funny. When I'm playing the game and I watch the VODs and the things that I say, it's I'm so jealous of her cardio. But like, I want to play more Rise of the Tomb Raider, also. But by the way, just so people know, I'm saying this very clearly. Final Fantasy 14 is going to continue being a game on my Twitch channel, and Persona 3 is not going to be an every single stream for four months kind of thing like Persona 5 was. I do still plan to rotate it. And also, we're doing community night on Sunday nights in Final Fantasy XIV. And there are people that still are doing a Realm Reborn content, that's the base game. There's still people that are doing Heaven's Word content, that's the first expansion. So all levels are welcome. We're allowed to group up as long as you've unlocked at least the first dungeon in the game, which is approximately level 16 in the story. And even if you haven't gotten that far, we can run around the map and do Fates Together, which are small little boss encounters that are just popping up on the map randomly at all times. And I've been playing Dancer in that game recently. So that's I decided that would be my next DPS class to push from level 90 to 100. And Paladin when I need to tank. So we have an MMO, we have an adventure platforming game, and we have a JRPG in the rotation. So it's a really fun time on the Twitch channel. And one of those is a new game plus. Also, there's so many cool brand updates that I could talk about right now, but I think this is a good place to stop. I'll talk about them next week or on the next Twitch stream.

New Websites Discord And Patreon

SPEAKER_01 32:57

There is a new website both for the gaming persona. You can go to www.gamingpersona.com. And all of our episodes are perfectly documented, chronicled on there with links to go to any of the listening apps that you want to go to. And DrGamology.com got a complete redo. There's some content that I have not recalibrated to come over yet. But the basic frame of the website is all there. I love the look of it, and I have complete control over the ability to customize it. Whereas before it was.com also feedback or things that you'd want to see are always welcome. Post them in the Discord. And Patreon is continuing to get new clinical materials, research behind the scenes materials. So if you want to support the brand and the mission, that's another way to do it. It's just a really cool time. New computer, new websites, new feel, but same message of pay attention to the things that light you up, make you great, keep leveling, keep gaining experience, and continue the journey.