The Underwire Podcast

Level Up Your Mental Health: Impactful Benefits of Gaming for Emotional Well-Being

• The Underwire Podcast

Share episode

On this episode, we’re diving into the exciting world of video games and their surprising benefits for mental health.

Joining us is our special guest, Jason Lucas. Jay has been an avid gamer for his entire life and has spent nearly a decade hosting the World of Warcraft-themed podcast, “The Starting Zone.” We’ve been good friends for about 20 years, and his deep knowledge and passion for gaming make him the perfect person to explore this topic with us.

The Starting Zone Podcast:

WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT:

  • How gaming fosters meaningful relationships, builds social connections, and creates a sense of community.
  • Our personal stories of what got us into video games and the core memories we've created with family and friends.
  • The stigma around gaming and how it offers more than just entertainment, including friendships, a sense of accomplishment, and a (much needed) break from real-life struggles.
  • The transferable skills gaming can develop, such as creativity, teamwork, and communication.
  • Finding a healthy balance between gaming and real-life responsibilities.
  • Tips on using gaming to boost your mental health and well-being.

We hope this episode sheds light on the many positive impacts gaming can have on mental health. Remember, it’s all about finding balance and using your passions to support your well-being. If you have any relatable personal stories or questions, we’d love to hear from you!

Tune in and join the conversation on the powerful benefits of gaming!

Video Games, Mental Health, Gaming Benefits, Social Connections, Community Building, Creativity, Teamwork, Communication, Stigma of Gaming, Balance, Well-Being, Personal Growth, Gaming Skills, Joy of Play

-------------------------------------------
*****DISCLAIMER: The Underwire Podcast provides content for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Jess G. and Ryan Rainbro are not medical professionals, and the opinions expressed on the podcast a

Bye! Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Underwire Podcast, offering support where life needs a lift. I'm your host Jess, joined by my co-host Ryan, and on today's episode we will be exploring the benefits of playing video games for your mental health. We're very excited to be joined by someone I've been good friends with for about 20 years, Jay or Jason Lucas. And I've invited Jay here today to talk about this subject because not only has Jay been an avid gamer his entire life. pretty much since Intellivision and Atari years. He's also been a host on a World of Warcraft themed podcast called The Starting Zone for nearly a decade, so I know he has a lot to offer in regards to this topic at hand. For those of you who might not know World of Warcraft, otherwise known as WoW, is, in a very small nutshell and very high level, it's a- interactive multiplayer online game that has been around since about 2004, where players can create characters and adventure in a very massive, vast, immersive fantasy world filled with quests, battles, and exploration. And that just is the tip of the iceberg. So nonetheless, Here's what we're getting into on today's episode. We're going to discuss how gaming can foster meaningful relationships, build social connections, and create a sense of community as just a start at some of the benefits. We're gonna share what got us in the video games personally and how they've helped us create. memories with family and friends. We'll address the stigma around gaming and discuss how it's more than just a pastime, highlighting how gaming can help you create friendships, experience a sense of accomplishment, and provide a much needed break from real life struggles. We're also gonna dive into how gaming can help develop real life transferable skills, such as creativity, teamwork, and communication, and serves as a way to bring people together. We'll also discuss... finding a healthy balance between gaming and real life responsibilities, which we all know is very important. And last but not least, we're gonna offer some tips on how we personally use gaming to boost our own mental health and help us out with feeling a little bit better up in your brain. So let's jump right into it. Jay, thanks for being here today. Hi, happy to be here. Yes, thank you for having me. Yes, Jess and I have known each other for quite a long time. A long time. 20 some, about 20 years, I would say. We've been friends, so. Since 2004. And video games were really a thing that we bonded over, you know, when we first met. So I think that's very appropriate. I agree. Thank you for being here today. And just when you met this gentleman, did he introduce himself to you as Jay or Jason? It was ex-Wolfman X actually on the internet. Yeah, this is the days of meeting people on message boards. Oh yeah. I know Jason as Jay. So that's what I call him and whether he likes it or not. That is what my friends call me. So as you could tell by what Jess just said. That's how you know we're really boys. Yeah, like, oh geez. Yeah. And Jason, do you know why you were named Jason? Do you know why your parents chose that name for you? I don't. I think ironically, one thing my mom said was she liked the name Jason because she figured people would just call me that and wouldn't shorten it to Jay because it was already a pretty short name. Whoops. She was wrong. Joke's on you, mom. Yeah, it didn't really work out. Yeah. But you know something about it she liked I don't think it really held any other kind of significance Yeah, that is it is funny that we're talking about that because she did tell me that before she thought that people wouldn't shorten it It was already pretty short. I was like, okay. All right, and jason j. What is your Area of expertise. Why are we talking to you about video? Oh, man. Well, probably because I've been playing games and they've been a part of my life and the way I relate to other people and to the world for like 40 years since I could sit up in front of a TV basically as a toddler, somebody put a controller in my hand. And also, you know, I, I am a veteran video game podcaster. I do a regular weekly show about specifically about world of Warcraft with my good buddy Spencer Downey called the starting zone. We've produced who well over 500 episodes of the show in the last seven and a half years. Wow. Specifically is a very community focused and community centric game. And the way to get the most out of the game is by building or participating in a community. It's not a game that you can accomplish your goals or see really what the game has to offer by playing it as a solo player. And, you know, also doing the show and doing, doing sort of like a talk format show around the game. You kind of build this audience. This worldwide audience. It all has, everybody has a different experience. Everybody has something to share. Everybody wants to participate in the conversation. about the game and that's also another type of maybe I'm not playing the game with these people, but they're also in sort of that circle of the community, people that you're having conversations and discourse with people who want to share their experiences or amplify experiences we talked about on the show or something like that. So I think that is, it's a huge part of that space that I exist in specifically is that kind of communal experience, like the cooperative nature of it and having these legitimately like real relationships with people. that exists around a video game. Well, that's awesome. And I appreciate you talking with us today about that now. So you're saying that you play world of warcraft and you're a podcaster, but from what I understand, you're also a father. So you have had a romantic relationship with a woman before. So that's interesting that all those things are true at the same time. It's a, it's not easy. Well, I did it somehow. My wife was really instrumental in getting me involved in, in doing the podcast actually. I think she wanted me to stop talking to her about WoW. And I had mentioned that the show that we do had existed before we started working on it. One of the guys who was producing it needed some other people. The guy he was co-hosting with was leaving. He works in Hollywood, is a VFX guy. He actually got a gig working on the Warcraft movie that Legendary put out a few years ago. And so he had to leave the show. And so he had sort of an open call. And my wife really encouraged me to throw my hat in the ring and talk to the guy and suit was up. And I think he liked it, what I had to offer. And we had some good chemistry. So he had me on as a guest. few times and then he ended up having to leave the show entirely about a year and a half later because he got a job in the industry working at Riot Games doing video production for League of Legends and stuff so he just couldn't do the show anymore for a variety of reasons and Spencer and I really enjoyed the show and the community around it and it had a at that point had been around for seven eight years or whatever it had a legacy we didn't want it to just die so we picked it up and put our own spin on it made it our own thing but just want to keep it going and Honestly, I don't know if I would have taken that step to just like email a total stranger and sit in a Skype call with them if my wife wasn't like, you should totally do this. You should be really good at it. So she's been awesome about all this dumb stuff that I kind of do with my time. She's been very supportive and I don't think I would have ever done any of it if she didn't encourage me to. That's really awesome. I think that's really great that she supports that. I know that you've obviously been playing video games forever. But can you tell us what got you into playing video games? Was it a person specifically? Was there one specific moment that you can remember that you were like, Oh my God, I love this. You know, I, I don't know how to answer that because they've just always been part of my life, right? Like when I was a kid, like a newborn, an infant, a toddler, we are living in the world of Atari 2600, Colecovision and television, my dad, my uncle, my grandfather, they had. ColecoVisions and Intellivisions in the house. And I just grew up with it from day one, you know? So my earliest memories are like playing Donkey Kong Jr. on a ColecoVision or something. So there really isn't a moment where I can even remember being introduced to it because it's sort of, I was playing games before you sort of have that switch that flips and your memories really start being created. My, my kids are seven and they have this like memory gap, stuff that happened before they were about four years old. They don't remember at all. And it's really weird because it's not really that long ago to me. And I'm like, you guys remember we went to the thing and we did that other thing and they're like, what are you talking about? And so I was playing games like way before that. So there really wasn't some moment where I was like, yes, this is the thing I like. It was just always kind of a part of what I was interested in and what I was doing from the earliest days I can remember. I feel like I can relate to that because I can't remember one specific time. where I was like, Oh man, I really like this. It was just like you just said, you know, I was in diapers playing Nintendo with my older brothers and my dad and my mom too. She was a huge fan of Dr. Mario would just binge play that for hours at nighttime. And that's just what I remember growing up and just becoming so infatuated with playing Nintendo, Nintendo specifically, I can't say just all video games. I'm specifically Nintendo person, but. You know, there are a lot of really great core memories that come along with that. And I think that's really, uh, that's really awesome. So in regards to that, can you share a little bit about how gaming has become such a huge part of your life and how that developed over time to where you you're coming to now? Oh man. I mean, that's, that is a. four decade long journey in terms of their social perception, there's still stigma attached to it, right? And there's certainly negative stuff about gaming and the communities of form around games, for sure. Unfortunately, I wish that there wasn't and I try to avoid that kind of stuff or make better environments for people to play games in, but it was extremely stigmatized. When I was younger, it was for nerds, it was strictly for children, they were toys. There was no really redeeming value to it. It wasn't an art form or experiential even really. It was just this time wasting, bleep, bloop, kind of blinking lights and stuff like that, right? That was the perception of it, like socially. I was the kid in my elementary school that liked video games. You know what I mean? That's how old I am and that's how the whole idea of that was back in the mid, late eighties, early nineties. I guess by the time I got to middle school, I knew some other kids that were like pretty in the games and we would, I don't know. We talk about like whatever. game we rented from the video store over the weekend or share like video game mags or whatever. Right. If we got to do magazine, like, Oh, do you see this preview for this thing that's coming out or whatever? And so, you know, as I got older, I found some other kids I went to school with that I kind of bonded over games with, which was really cool. Because when I was in elementary school, grade school, it wasn't really liked out as much, but I kind of got out of games for a few years when I was getting into my teens and stuff. I got really into music. I wanted to play music and I wanted to hang out with girls and maybe do both of those things kind of simultaneously. maybe and video games were not really conducive to me meeting those goals for myself I guess so I was kind of out of it for a little while not very long but you know, maybe a couple of years where I just wasn't paying attention to the hobby at all. And then I ended up getting pretty severely back into it. I guess a couple of years later, I worked in video game specialty retail for way longer than I should have, and that was absurd. It was really, it was a terrible job, right? For terrible pay. And eventually the corporate interest became terrible amid an unbearable. I actually worked for electronics boutique pre-corporate buyout back when they were private owned, the dude who started it in the kiosk at the Westchester mall. He still owned the company when I worked there. It was a great place to work because everybody was really into the hobby, right? It was a very hobbyist kind of thing. And I was friends with all the people that I worked with at the store. We'd hang out after work and go to somebody's house and play games. Or we'd meet up on the weekends. We'd go see a movie or go play games or whatever. And the regulars, man, the regulars were so cool to hang out with. It'd be like, I was 18, 20 at the time. Some of these guys are a little older, mid thirties, maybe a little older than that even, but. You see the same dudes come in like every week, pick up the new releases and just chew the fat with the staff about whatever they were playing or what they were excited about or whatever. And then we'd like go hang out with these dudes after work or go, you know, set up some kind of thing. We go play soul caliber or whatever. I mean, that was actually a really fun time. It was a little, it was a little weird, but it kind of shows you like these are people I never would have spent any time with outside of that context, right? It's like dudes that are way older than me that are from a completely different universe, we have no other interests in common except this is a really great way to get to know some different people and just have those kind of experiences. You know, nobody would get too mad about, you know, we were playing competitive games, right? But it's not like we're, I don't know, coming to blows over what happened in a video game or something, you know? And so that was, you know, that's early, early twenties, I guess. And then I got into my mid twenties and this is sort of when online games started to get more. Well, I guess, I guess really what it comes down to is internet service got better for more people. So internet games were more viable because you could stay connected to them and play them. And so I started getting into online games a lot more and wow was a big one. Obviously when they came out in 04, I think from there, I sort of dabbled in it in the early days. It was a game that I wanted to like more than I actually did. There was stuff about the early versions of the game that didn't really grab me. But I love the idea of like living in this world and being a part of it. Right. So I would cut, I would circle back every few months and check it out for a while and then put it down and go do other stuff and in other games or in my life or whatever. And then eventually I got more into it. After a few years, I had some stuff I had to finish school. You know, I didn't, I didn't finish. undergrad degree until I was 25 because I hated school and I had other stuff I wanted to do with my life but I got to a point where I said to myself I need to do this just for me like I need to have done it just to just to know that I did it and that it's done even if it provides me no further benefit like I'm doing this and after that that's when it was like okay I've checked off this big thing that I know we need to do I'm in a more stable place in my work life. So that's sort of when I got more into playing game, like, wow, consistently, a real life friend of mine, somebody who I used to work with actually in video game retail, he was pretty serious about the game and he was always bugging me to play with him more and stuff. So I got in and started playing with him again and he had a bigger community of people he was playing with, including another guy that lived locally. And so that was cool, you know, because we'd hang out, we'd play and then we'd hang out and then play with people from all over the country. And that was sort of my first taste of like, okay. How do I exist in this space? Like what's the etiquette like, right? What are sort of the unspoken rules of not only the game, but this particular social group that I'm a part of and that, you know, that stuff can be really hard to navigate. And so I, I think I had some guys that really set good examples for me, even though one of the guys I'm older than, but he was just more experienced in the space. So that was really nice. And over time things changed in my life and I ended up, I moved and then I had this, I got this job that I really hated. And then I lost. And then I couldn't find a job for months. It was brutal. It was, it was like a very dark period of my life where I'm homesick. I'm unemployed. I have all this financial uncertainty. I feel like such a burden on my now wife. I'm not really contributing meaningfully to the household. I can't like I'm, I'm doing my due diligence to try to find something to go do. And because I had moved and stuff, even my unemployment filing was screwed up and it was just, it was a bad time. And having something like, wow, where I had. a degree of control, right? I could, I could control things. I had goals that I could meaningfully accomplish on a regular basis. And I had a social connection that I was missing out on. Cause I wasn't at home anymore. I think that stuff really was important to me that helped me have a place where I could forget about the stuff that was weighing on me for a few hours a day. I think it really did help me kind of get through that and have, you know, just have an outlet for it. I think these days, this is, I'm jumping way ahead here, but I eventually sort of centered myself a bit more and then I got really into. running my own group community inside of World of Warcraft and then doing community focused content, like the podcast and everything like that. And then we had the twins and now a big part of how I relate to games is through my kids eyes. I play games with my kids all the time. They love Nintendo games and I'm always introducing them to stuff or they're introducing media stuff or they're into stuff that I don't know what it is, but they really like it. Or we're playing games together. We're playing like co-op games together, which is awesome. Or. I'm recommending them things that they're trying out for the first time and to see them kind of get into the hobby and really enjoy it and enjoy themselves and work together on something in a cooperative game or like solve some kind of a problem. It's really fun. It's a lot different than when I was a kid. First of all, the technology is so much better and the resources are so much better. And it's just like, Hey, dad, can you look up how to do this? And it's like, we couldn't do that back in the day, man. I remember my friends called me up asking me to comb through a Nintendo power to like, Hey, how does this thing work? Yeah, you have to call the number and ask for help and get that fire. I'd never called it because I would get my ass beat. But. It was expensive. I think I think I did have to call it one time because I was just hard stuck. But yeah, you know, it's just it's a different time. So it is kind of funny because they just expect if they're stuck on something like, well, try it again. Well, try a different way to do it. I don't know. Like, I can't I don't feel like looking it up right now or whatever. But I think it kind of. It probably drives my wife nuts at this point, but with the three of us sitting around with our switches, doing whatever we're doing on a Saturday afternoon, but it's been really fun to introduce my kids to it and have them respond and get super into it. So yeah, I mean, I think for me, it's always been a thing that has brought my family together from when I was a kid to now that I have my own family or, you know, anything like that. And also to a place to build real meaningful social relationships, even if they're only tied to the game. But I've made some really good friends through world of warcraft and through podcasting and stuff and. all over the world, UK, Europe, Australia. One of the dudes that I've played with for, oh geez, 13, 14 years, I was in his wedding and he's somebody that I met inside the game. I think those are the kind of bonds that you make with people when you have this kind of shared interest and enthusiasm for this activity for so long. Yeah, absolutely. And that is great to hear that it was a part of your life for such a long time. Now, it is interesting that you say that, you know, you were a kid and then you stopped playing as you got older. And now you kind of play it through your kid's eyes. Do you think it's maybe because games are made for children? Some of them certainly are. I mean, there's obviously like a market squarely for kids. There's also a market that's squarely explicitly not for kids. And did those exist, you think, back when you were early into your game? Mainly, I guess I say this. So that Mario movie came out not long ago, right? Peaches, Peaches. Maybe you've heard it. And I remember leaving the theater and this guy said to his friend, he's like, yeah, but that movie was more important for me. You don't get it. Because this was my... childhood and I thought that was funny because Mario is part of everybody's childhood like that's why they made a movie about it and the theme park and stuff but I think that now there are more games obviously not I think it's an objective fact there's games made for adults that are quote unquote mature and by mature I mean that you get to murder people in them and there's prostitutes and stuff like that you know like mature stuff but I think that growing up you know it's such a fun bright vibrant thing that you were probably attracted to as a As a child, I know I was. I know you guys were kind of saying that you don't really remember when you first got into games, but I think the first time I remember being just captivated by a game was probably going to like an arcade. Actually, you know, I like a Chuck E. Cheese or something and playing the Simpsons or X-Men or whatever. And then, you know, later on in life was like, oh, you can like bring this home if you mow enough lawns. So I think that that's a really important part to bring up a couple of questions that I would like to ask you to go into a little bit deeper. Well, one, I want to clarify for anybody listening electronics boutique. was a video game store. There used to be electronics boutique and Babbage's. And now there's this GameStop. And you know, you probably know better than me, Jay, if those are the merger of the two or what, but GameStop, electronic boutique, that's kind of what he was referring to there as a video game store, much like a GameStop would be now, but imagine less Funko pops on the shelves. Yeah, imagine like a GameStop, but it was actually cool and had like video games that you wanted to buy in it. And the people that worked there were, you know, fun to shop with. That's kind of what... Well, I guess everything was more like that back then, right? But yeah, electronics boutique was like one of several chains and it was Babbage's and software etc. had the same parent company. And then they, that parent company absorbed Funko Land. Funko Land was very secondhand focused. They were really the first ones that did like the trade in your games for store credit thing. And like most of their inventory was used games. All the other retailers went, Oh, right. This is what this is how we make the money. Their parent company bought funco land. And then they rolled that entire brand in the game stop. And then eventually electronics boutique sold out to corporate ownership. They rebranded as EB games and then the game stop amalgamation conglomeration. blob monster absorbed EB games, unfortunately. And then I also worked for GameStop for quite a few years. So yeah, I have some scars from my time in specialty video game retail, but it used to be really fun. If you can imagine that like 25 years ago, it was a cool thing to go do, to go to the video game store, man. It was fun. Now it's not. I love the idea of the video game store selling out. I know, right? But the thing that I really want- But it was a different vibe, you know? It was a different vibe before- No, no, I get it. I just think it's- From the corporate ownership, yeah. I know. Well, they were a business and now they're a bigger business. But the thing that you touched on that I really would love for you to expand on is you mentioned when you got first into World of Warcraft that there were, of course, the rules of the game itself, learning how to play, but you mentioned that there's like social rules of this game. And of course the, the social aspect from what you're telling me is a big part of it. I don't know a lot about Warcraft. I saw the movie from a few years ago. And also I have a friend that met a woman that he flew to. Seattle, Washington and saw the presidents of the United States of America band who did the peaches saw peaches Oh, it's all full circle and they did not make it but she was in the Weezer fan club I do remember that but I'm losing the thread here What are the social rules that you're referring to or the social and when you say rules? I mean, are you saying just more like well, tell me what you're saying. What does that mean? Well, I really I mean it really depends. I think there's different layers to it, right because there's the explicit game, right? Here's what the game presents to you Here is how your character plays in this environment. Here's what your options are as a player, right? That is sort of the very top layer and. depending on the group that you're playing with and socializing with, you're expected to know a fair bit of that. Right. Or, or maybe not. Maybe it's a more casual group and everybody's just kind of running around having fun. Maybe the group has some kind of shared objectives where people are expected to have some level of competency so that they can contribute to that. And so then you have this layer that's more player created, but it's very broad. Right. It's like across the spectrum of players, things like abbreviations and this initializations for acronyms for like different concepts in the game, locations or abilities, game modes, stuff like that. Maybe it's knowing where to find resources for the game, like add-ons or information, you know, builds for your character or other things like that. Those are things that broadly it's not part of the game explicitly, but broadly across social groups, people are expected to know that pretty much. And then you have a big part of WoW structure is a guild, which is basically a bunch of players who agree to play together. You have like a private chat channel for your guild. You have like shared storage space in the bank where you can keep stuff to distribute to guild members or whatever. And you also have sort of more ad hoc groups, maybe groups that just like get together to run dungeons or something, but they don't have a formal guild structure. These types of like player social clusters really all have their own personality and sort of vibe. rules, expectations, objectives, et cetera. And it could be a tricky thing to navigate. I've been, I've been leading a group for man about 12 years now. And I participated in the group for quite a while before that. And it's tricky when a new person comes in and they, they're new. So they don't know our. general vibe and climate. And sometimes they overstep boundaries, you know, and it's, it's kind of, it's a challenge to kind of gently check that and say, Hey, you're welcome here, but this isn't cool. That's hard feedback to give somebody, right? If they're too chatty or they're making kind of off-color jokes or things that we don't really necessarily encourage, right? It sounds like a new hire starting a job and you're literally training the person like, this is our culture here. That's, that's not what you do. And you give them a little slap on the wrist and then make them into to be. It is not dissimilar from that. Obviously we're here to have fun. It's not like an employment type situation, but we're here to work. Well, I mean, for one thing, like we're playing a video game on the internet. Okay. So you're not going to believe this, but a lot of people that you may encounter are like casually racist or misogynist, right? And like they may not even really know it because they're just, this is a society that we live in. They're a product of their environment. Now my dad wasn't your guild. I came mine. I mean, this is you can imagine the types of people that you might run into playing games like this, right? So you're saying you don't get to interview them first before they join your guild? No, you do. I mean, like I used to have a much more in-depth interview process for people that wanted to join the guild. I was very picky. It really is like work. And that's fun. Tell me about the fun stuff. Yeah, let's hear about that. The fun stuff is you kill internet dragons and you get magical weapons and armor off of their corpses. That's the fun part. But yeah, I mean the way I was always looking at it when I was running the group that way was somebody is requesting to spend six, eight plus hours with our group a week indefinitely. I want to make sure that they're a culture fit. I want to make sure that I'm going to ask them some basic questions. I want to get a sense of who they are. And if they can't take a few minutes to post some good answers and put a little bit of thought into it, then I don't think I need their services. Right. And if I speak to them for a few minutes and I don't like what I'm hearing or the energy that I'm getting back from them, then they're probably not a fit. to play with our group. Over the summer, we had to make some changes because the game is aging. And the realities of the situation are that it's hard to fill groups. The health of our group was not what it had been when we were our own guild. I had some really good contacts with people that I know from doing the podcast who had a much bigger guild on a more populated server. And they invited us to be, to move our whole team over and just be a part of their group. And they had pretty much an open door policy. It's like, come on in, look around. And if... It's like, it's like a, like a party, right? If you commit a grievous enough party foul, then you get kicked out, but you can come hang out. So it's a bit of a different situation now, but the overarching like guild leadership is cool with, Hey, this person's gonna fit for us. We can't take them. There's no pressure around having to bring people in, but I am, I and my leadership group are no longer doing like, okay, submit your application and we'll interview you and reviewing apps and speaking to people. I think it is important. I mean, that's, I think an important part of building any community is setting expectations, right? Like what are the faux pas maybe, or what are the pitfalls here? Like, what are we trying to avoid and what is acceptable or unacceptable? What is important to this community? And how do you benefit from it? Like, these are all things that we would try to put forth as part of the application interview process. Like, Hey, you know, we're, we're a long standing group. We have a very kind of chill atmosphere. We play very consistently tolerate any kind of racism, sexism, homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, you name it. Follow the golden rule and you'll have a good time around here. And it's really important to kind of set those expectations in any kind of situation where you're trying to build a community kind of like inorganically. Right? Like, it's not like you play world of Warcraft. log in and it's all people who like live in your neighborhood. And that's why you're all playing together, right? It's people from all over the region that you live in that are on these servers. So I think setting those guidelines and expectations is really important. I do want to say that I think that that's an important aspect to focus on the fact that you're referring to these things as part of building the community versus the actual gameplay, because you can play any game, right? Any game is. is accessible to you. You can go to Mario Kart and you don't need to fill out an application or whatever, but you're talking about building a community, one that's been thriving throughout your life for a very long time. So I do want to separate those two things because I want to make sure that not only for anybody listening, but for myself, but for establishing that you're not saying that these are all important things to play a video game. It's to build this community that happens to be founded in the world of Warcraft. our specific approach because again, like you're sort of volunteering to spend time with this person virtually on a very consistent basis. So I think that is really important. I mean, in terms of the game itself, the game has maybe not had its has not really kept up with moderation tools, you know, they've done a better job lately. It's a bit easier to report people and see actions taken for bad behavior. There's like a player contract that they want you to agree to now when you make an account that sort of lays out like, Hey, be nice to people, like respect each other, have fun out there, which it took like 18 years for that to show up. But you wouldn't need that though. Well, you would think so. You would think. Yeah. And the game came out and it's just a much different time. 2004 was a long time ago and these spaces are a lot different than they were in, in a lot of ways for the better, thankfully, but dissecting a game like wow, in terms of community and social interaction is kind of. fascinating because there are so many different approaches to it. I mean, there are people who just play the game solo and they don't really have any connections with people. They do match made activities or whatever in the game and they do whatever they want to do with that. But then eventually you run out of that stuff and you kind of can't get to the next tier of complexity without actually forming some kind of connections with other players. So that's sort of the challenge, I guess, is that if you want to play the game at reasonably high levels, you have to forge these social ponds with people. You can't really do it in a vacuum because you'll run out of stuff to do or you'll kind of run out of options. If you have coin, you can pay people to bring you to whatever type of thing you want to do and they'll take you through it. And you can of course buy in-game coin with US dollars if you want to do that. But I don't think it's a very fulfilling experience for a lot of people. People are looking to play the game and experience it on their own terms, not to pay internet strangers to kill dragons for them. So for me, I literally know nothing about World of Warcraft. So if you were looking for people to recruit for your World of Warcraft guild, if you're really passionate about it and you really like it, you want new people to come and play, what would you say are the benefits of playing? Why do you play the games? Why do you like it so much? How has it benefited your life? For me personally, not as a broad blanket. Yeah, for you. For you personally, like if your kids were interested in playing World of Warcraft, you're like, oh, I think this is a really awesome game and here's why I like it. And here's why it brings me joy. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the number one thing is the world is very immersive. That was always the thing that drew me into it the most. I was fascinated by the idea of World of Warcraft, like living in this world, right. And especially in the early days of the game, the world was really the main character exploring the world and finding these things that were dangerous or figuring out how to get through it. finding cool secrets or rewards or figuring out how to do a quest. This was all a huge part of the game. And I think a lot of players early on, we fell in love with the world itself. It was just such a cool space to explore. In the modern game, it's much more about sort of this high difficulty, high complexity, end game boss fights and stuff and overcoming them in a team environment. For me, it's very rewarding to lead a team through a new raid instance when it comes out and learning all the new fights and doing it at a reasonably high difficulty and figuring out the strategies and... The complexity of the game has ramped up incredibly over the years. And so being able to navigate that and bring a group through and then getting other people in that maybe they're not like your most skilled people, but getting them a chance to get some cool stuff, see the fights, get some cool rewards for it. That's always been fun. And I think our vibe is sort of like, I always compare it to like a bowling league or something, you know, it's like, Oh, it's Tuesday night. We don't go down to bowling alley. We're going to log on to wow. We're going to fight the raid bosses. Hang out with your friends. Yeah. That's awesome. I think that I'm just trying to think about in relation to me and how video games have positively impacted my life and my mental health. Like you were saying, the immersive experience and wow, that's how I feel about playing Zelda, Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, like both Breath of the Wild more so because that was the first one and the second one obviously is just the same map. But the exploration of that and the immersive aspects of that just really took me out. of my own reality and for that little bit of time just gave me some relief of the real world and sometimes that's really nice just being able to temporarily just kind of leave the real world and go into this world of Hyrule and explore and find a whole bunch of cool shit, like you were saying too, you know, you get little trophies and rewards and whatever else and find treasures and are immersed in the story. It's also same thing as you're able to talk about it with friends and have this community of people that you can share your cool wins about the game and like the story and dude, I remember when breath of the wild first came out or The anticipation for both of those games for me and all of my friends that were interested in the game also It was just like this cool little club of people just expressing their excitement and just it feels so good to be so happy or so excited about something. And I feel like that's something as an adult, people don't really get to experience that excitement of, oh my God, I can't wait, you know? And that sucks. That really sucks as an adult, not having something to look forward to like that in that same sort of Christmas Eve-y type of way. And I think that video games are really awesome at giving that some sort of way of experiencing that just alone. But also, I really like too how you were talking about the community and how that's such a big role that plays with your wow playing because that's huge. Making friends. You said you were in somebody's wedding. That's so fucking cool. Being friends with somebody that you met, playing World of Warcraft online for 12 years. That's really awesome. That is not to be taken lightly. makes such a huge impact in your life, being able to have that community to talk to about stuff just like in real life, it's not any different. And I think that that's a really awesome outlet for that. Yeah. I mean, I think what you said about experiencing joy like that, and that's something that in adult life can certainly be fleeting, you know, there is still stigma attached to gaming, of course, not like it was when, when we were kids, like I was talking about earlier, but there, but there is, it certainly does still exist. It is, it is kind of looked down upon as this like. waste of time or whatever, which maybe it is, but it's really fun. So I don't know. I feel like finding that joy in your, in your life is really important. Cause what's the point of it all if, if you can't, right? If there isn't anything that makes you feel like that, then what is it worth? Whatever else that you're doing that you're prioritizing? And I don't think so. I mean, obviously we all have responsibilities and stuff we don't really want to be doing. And that's part of being an adult and a member of society, of course, but Beyond that, like if you're not finding that joy, then you're doing something wrong probably. Cause I'm sure there's something out there for you, whatever it is. And even worse is probably looking at something that other people are receiving joy from and going, well, you shouldn't be doing that. That's the worst. When people poo your excitement, man, nobody, you can't spot a more miserable person by that alone. You know, when somebody's like. Oh my God, I'm so excited. And then whoever it is just like, oh, well, that's not that big of a deal. It makes you feel, tries to make you feel bad for liking something. I don't care how nerdy it is or whatever the fuck you are excited about. It doesn't matter. It could literally be, I'm excited for the grass to grow. And if somebody is like, you know, eww, why, why? Then it's like, I don't, get away from me. I don't like your vibe. Get away. We don't want you here. Leave. Yeah, that's why when I'm on Skid Row and I see those crackheads get that next hit, I'm cheering them on. I'm like, that's right. Whatever it takes for you to have some joy. But as far as community goes, you know, we're kind of talking about a virtual community a lot, although I know it's seeped into your real life some, Jay, but not a lot because you even mentioned at one point that you had a friend you had to clarify that it was in real life. But in real life, we had these community games. You know, the biggest example. that every generation has had has got to be Mario Kart. Everybody's been over at somebody's house or at a barcade or something playing Mario Kart. Easy barrier to entry where you can immediately figure out how to play it in 10 seconds and everyone's having fun. No one's mad about playing Mario Kart other than when they lose a little bit, but they're still having a good time. And you know, years ago, Guitar Hero was a big one too, where everybody kind of hung out in their rock bands. You know, I'm not sure how related they were, but same idea. And I think that's an important thing too, that that's just a good way for you to interact with people in real life. And it's a fun way to kind of do something together. And that builds a community on its own, maybe not a community in the same way that World of Warcraft is, and I'm not arguing that, but certainly builds almost like a team builder, almost like when you go out on a retreat or something, we're like, oh, we're going to do the ropes course together. Instead, we're doing the Mushroom Kingdom course together. So I think that that's an important thing too. And that's something I have fond memories of. enjoy even currently when I'm in like another city or something on tour and we stop into like a bar arcade or something that's always a highlight just everybody kind of having fun together playing games and I think that that's such an important thing that I'm glad has pervaded over several generations it may not be the same way I'm not going over to people's houses to plug in Super Smash Brothers as much as maybe I was back then but there's still accesses to that and I think that You know, nostalgia is a big part of that. You're talking about that Christmas day feeling, and it's easy to, and valid to be like, oh, you know, things aren't the way that they were, but you're able to remember how those things are. And the retro NES came out not long ago, right? The retro SNES. And especially for someone like you, Jay, that has kids, you know, being able to pass that down generationally has got to be incredible. And also a great excuse for you to pretend that you're getting stuff for your kids. So I appreciate that for you. But I think that's a really important thing to bring up, just how much fun people can have. playing games together. I mean, it's literally called playing, right? Like it's supposed to be a positive thing. Well, I'm glad that you said that too, because also with Nintendo specifically, I still play in-person Nintendo games all the time. Even one-player games, my favorite way of playing the new Zelda games is with another person, even though that it's single player. I find it way more enjoyable to experience even that single player game with somebody else sitting on my couch with me. because you can experience it at the same time, even though one person is technically playing with the controller physically, you're still experiencing the game with somebody else and watching it happen. And with all the puzzles and things, you're able to then interact with your friend or whoever's sitting next to you and be like, oh yeah, maybe you could try this, maybe you could try that, and problem solve together as a team. And I think that is so awesome, but all Nintendo games are made for collaborative people playing together. And that has just brought me and my friends together so much in the past couple of years, even during the pandemic, but not just Mario Kart, but like Mario Party, Mario Golf, WarioWare, and it's just all of these really fun things that anybody can pick up and just. play, you know, my, my dad, my brother, my dad got a switch finally. And just like, you know, we sports, it's just easy to pick up and play and play a game of bowling and play a game of tennis. And it doesn't have to take you 3000 hours to just play a game with your friends or family. And that's a, that's really cool. Yeah. That's one thing with my kids, especially there are games that are maybe not age inappropriate for them in terms of content or theming, but in terms of complexity, it's maybe just more than what they really are in for. Right. And I think the recent Zelda games are great example of that. Don't mess around with them, but it's very hard for a seven year old kid to approach a game like tears of the kingdom and like meaningfully progress through it. Like my son, especially just sit with me and check out what I'm doing. for like, I mean, I'll play for an afternoon. It'll just sit there the whole time and ask questions and be really invested in what's happening and excited to see what's happening. Or then it sort of turns into this thing of, I don't want to play it if the kids aren't around because they're going to miss what happens next. You know, it's sort of, even if it's- It's like watching Netflix with somebody. Kind of. You can't keep watching the show. Oh, they're not there. Oh shit. Right. Like it's not like a linear narrative necessarily, but there's elements of it that I don't know. There's definitely like in the last couple years, there's definitely been games that I've tried to avoid. playing after bedtime or something, you know, because I, I know that the kids are invested in it, but they're not going to be able to play it themselves right now. It was actually really fun. And sometimes they'll catch stuff that like, I'm not catching. It's like dad, go over here. Try that. They did you do that? I'm like, yeah, I did that. I go, Oh, well, Oh, it's different this time. I didn't do it. Yeah. Like, it's like when somebody tells you to plug something, did you plug it in? Yes. No. Right. Yeah. It's just dangling. It's kind of a bummer that stuff like. Guitar Hero, Rock Band, those types of games with those kind of goofy peripherals, but they were really fun party games. And I mean, Donkey Konga, Donkey Konga. I mean, yeah, just nice to hang out and play all those games. All the Donkey Konga. Yeah. Like just hours on the fighting games and on, uh, on those kind of music rhythm games with the instrument peripherals. It's a shame that, you know, I don't think the market turned on it so much as they just milked it dry way too fast. And it became sort of this, oh, we're going to put one out every year. Oh, we're going to put one out every six months. Oh, just keep buying more discs and peripherals forever. And eventually you just. burn the market out doing that. I think people love that kind of thing. And again, it's a great sort of collaborative thing. It's a really fun thing to do in a room full of people and pass the guitar controller around or whatever. I hope that stuff comes back someday because it's that's a great way to play like a single player game or really a two-player game And like a way bigger setting and have everybody it's almost like a karaoke night or something You know, it's there was something really cool about that Now you mentioned to even when you're talking about the guild and stuff like hey, you know If you're gonna be part of this community, we're playing for eight hours a week And I'm sure there's plenty of people that play more than that. What is your strategy for being able to maintain a healthy balance? Because I know that, I mean, World of Warcraft specifically, because of how addictive it is, there's been cases, of course, where people just kind of get a little too immersed in the world, right? It becomes their whole world and their whole life. And it becomes too much escapism, so much that they're not contributing to their responsibilities and things like that. So what, what is a strategy that you have for people to avoid doing that? And that, you know, that can apply for other things. There's, but in this case, we're talking about video games. So how How can we as adult humans with mental health improvements make sure that we're balancing those? Oh man, it's tough. I mean, I think. He starts off with it's tough. It's a tough balance, right? Because like you have all this shit in your life that you need to do that you don't want to do, right? You're working a job or whatever, doing the dishes and the laundry or whatever it is, right? Like you have to do all of this stuff. Otherwise, you know, you're not going to have a roof over your head. You're not going to have food to eat. You're not going to have livable conditions in your home. As you get older, you have other responsibilities and other people need more stuff from you. And like, you just want to hang out and have fun and do the stuff that you like to do. You know, I think setting boundaries for yourself is really important and going like, okay, like I need to, I need to accomplish X, Y, and Z today. Like these things need to happen. You know, no matter what, these are my real life priorities. No matter what else I have going on. I think another thing is like having setting goals, I guess I would say, both in, in sort of in real life and in the game. I think goal setting in a game, in a game like wow is really important. And it's something actually we talk about on the show a lot because there's a lot of different ways to approach it. Right. It's a very broad game. There's a lot of different gameplay styles and you know, we hear from listeners who are maybe newer to the game or they've been away from the game for a long time and they come back and they don't know what to do. And so we sort of have this advice for like, well, what do you want to do in this timeframe? Right. Wow. Sort of lives by this cycle of patches and a new patch comes out every like six months or so. And so you have this like window of like a six month period where this is when this content kind of lives and breathes. And so what do you want to do inside of that span? And so that can help kind of block out your schedule a little bit. Like, okay, this week I'm going to do these things and I'm going to do this for two hours or whatever. And also like setting those types of goals and boundaries in your own life of like, okay, play in general. I think also it helps not to like totally separate your games from your real life because you're a real person who's playing those games. So these are, this is all part of like your checklist or like the pie chart, right? These are all parts of your life. In my case, when stuff is new, when there's new stuff to do, I will like let myself kind of indulge a little bit more and play more than I normally would. And usually what ends up happening is my sleep suffers as a result. I do it after everything else is done, right? It's like. I'm not going to sacrifice. I don't know, making the kids lunches for school. I'm going to sacrifice a couple hours of sleep, which is not the greatest thing in the world to do, but if it's fun, if I'm enjoying myself, if it's what I want to do, then I do it. It doesn't become all the time. It might be for a few nights, maybe a couple of weeks of two, three nights of late nights or whatever. I don't know. I mean, I don't think there's, there's like a blanket answer that really works for everybody, but I think just being realistic with yourself. What is important and what do I care about in terms of my real life stuff and my goals with whatever game or hobby I'm pursuing and everybody has to find that balance. It is tough with games because Man, I think I say about WoW all the time is for a lot of people, it's like the worst X they've ever had. There are a lot of people who circle around a game like WoW, still play it kind of, but begrudgingly, or they don't play it anymore, but they exist online to follow everything that happens with it and everything that everybody's saying about it and just criticize it incessantly. And these are not good uses of your time and energy. You should not be pursuing these things. that make you angry like actively. And this is a problem throughout the gaming space entirely. We're seeing a lot of that right now, unfortunately. Right now there's sort of this targeted harassment campaign against this consultancy firm around DEI and games. And it's really gross because there's a lot of terrible gamers out there. There's this level of engagement that leads to just real toxicity and really ugly stuff. There's sort of this line where you should disengage from something if that joy we're talking about earlier, if that turns on you. And like this thing that used to give me joy doesn't probably don't keep digging, looking for it to come back. Right. There's a time to disengage from and say, I got what I needed out of this. And I'm moving on with my life. I think that's very healthy to do too. And you're not obligated to do any of this stuff. A big. part of the gaming landscape these days is these service games like World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft was one of the earlier examples, but these games have sort of never end and you're buying into it on a consistent basis, whether it's a monthly subscription or you're buying a DLC or whatever on, on a regular basis, you have that whole sunk cost fallacy where it's like, well, I've already spent this much time and money on this, so I have to keep doing it to do the next part or whatever. You don't have any obligation to any of this stuff either. So if it isn't pushing the buttons for you, you can just stop. I think that's all important things to keep in mind when you're considering balance and sort of how you're spending your mental energy. Yeah. I think that's really important that what you said about finding a balance and what you said about how, if it doesn't spark joy any longer to just, you know, stop what's, what's the point to keep chasing something that makes you feel frustrated or something like that. Or even, you know, if you get to a point where you're just feeling burnt out, even maybe just take a break and then come back to it at a time when you're feeling a little less frustrated. Um, I think those are really good. points. And also while we're talking about the relationship between real life and gaming life, I wonder if you can tell us what are some transferable skills that you have learned? Because we even talked like earlier about you're running this guild, you know, it's like a corporate environment. You're just conducting interviews, all people and stuff. So what are some of the cool transferable skills that you have learned from video games that you have applied to your real life? And I actually, it's funny because I just happened to stumble across some Reddit thread where somebody was talking about how they learned to, and I have it here quoted, they learned to optimize their time because they learned it from wow. As a kid, because how stressful managing a raid was. And I thought that was so cool. So I wanted to ask about your experiences with that. Well, I mean, it's, I don't know. I don't know how many actual real life skills I even have. So just one. They're pretty deficient, but, um, no, I mean, I think with something like, wow, specifically, and especially playing like the cooperative, like end game part of it, communication skills are huge. You have to be able to, especially if you're going to be in like a leadership position, first of all, you have to understand to some degree what the objective is and how you're going to reach it, and you have to understand. multiple different perspectives because different people have different jobs in the group. So you have to have some idea of what somebody is going to be doing or what their experience or perspective is going to be during a particular phase of an encounter or whatever. You have to be able to communicate this clearly and succinctly and make people understand it and buy into whatever you're proposing is going to be your strategy for approaching an encounter. And you have to do it in a way that's going to stick. I try to repeat myself a lot. I'll use maybe like corny phrases or whatever. But I'll say them repetitively and people will know like, okay, that means like, we're going to do this part of the dance or whatever. Developing that kind of communication. That's that's like a pretty useful skill across any kind of boundary. Not obviously like it's good and wow, but it's also good to be able to communicate clearly and succinctly in many social and cooperative situations. Right? All of them. I would say all of life communication is the number one most important. It's to have most people don't have it. They really don't. They don't, they don't know how to communicate. I would say that's a really great transferable skill. Yeah, I think so. And obviously like not everybody who is playing a game like wow, is going to be developing that because some people are just, they have a role and they fulfill the role and they're following the instructions of leadership. Another thing I would say would be again, doing like the end game boss encounters, knowing how to utilize. your resources, right? You have different players that all have different personalities. And as players, they have different strengths and weaknesses. And depending on what characters they're playing, they also have different roles to fulfill. And so being able to kind of set up your team for success and put the right people in the right places. Like, okay, this person, maybe they don't do like the most damage imaginable, but they're very good at handling these oddball mechanics. So they can run away and go click this thing that gives them a special ability and then use it for something like, okay, they're going to be in charge of that or this person may not be the highest throughput healer. They don't heal as much as other people, but they're very perceptive. So they can call out when this thing happens or where it is in the field. how to react to it and kind of delegating stuff and having people have a different job or role in different encounters. I think stuff like that, recognizing people's strengths and sort of trying to diminish their weaknesses, like to set them up in a position where they're not going to be, the team's not going to fail because of one individual person's weakness, right? You know, somebody's not good at something, so you're not going to make them do this particular job that they're unlikely to succeed at. If you're a good leader, because you know, sometimes, sometimes it ain't, it ain't like that. And sometimes you don't have options, you know, you got what you got. And you got to try to pick up the litter. Yeah. But you get what you get and you don't be upset. That's what I, that's what we used to tell the toddlers I used to teach. So it sounds like you just got really good. Not just got, I mean, it's a huge thing, but in addition to communication skills, really, um, good at delegating or no, or being able to identify people's strengths, which I think is also an incredible skill as well. Just knowing that about your just. being able to identify attributes about people and your friends and things like that, which will help not that you're going to be doing a heist or whatever with your friends, but just knowing like, Hey, Jess is good at this. I'm going to hit her up. You can put that on your resume. I'm good at all of these things. Well, Jay kind of wrapping up with the video game talk. What is a recommendation you would have in using video games to someone that is struggling with their mental health? What is a way? It doesn't have to be World of Warcraft. you know, certainly that's what you're intimately familiar with, but what is a way that you could recommend to somebody to be able to apply gaming to improve their mental health? Oh, man, that's, that's a tough one. I mean, I think the biggest thing is the cool thing about games in 2024 is how accessible they are. There's so many different ways you can play games or access them. So many different devices and you know, the barrier to entry gets lower all the time. And you have way more options for how you can play them. So there's a ton of variety out there and you could probably find something that you will like and that will give you those good brain chemicals. And, uh, like I said, I mean, it was kind of a lifeline for me in a pretty rough patch. It was a place where I could find sort of stability and control over my daily routine, I feel like. And I think that was good for me. And maybe somebody else might be in a similar situation. You might just be looking for that spark, man. You know, you want to have fun with something you need, you need to break up your routine or just. maybe stretch your brain in kind of a different direction. And there's all kinds of puzzle games and narrative games. And there's any kind of different experience you could possibly think of is pretty well represented in the market these days. So if somebody was like, Oh, I want to get into the hobby or whatever, or I want to have something that can tickle some part of my brain, you have access to so much variety now, so you can try all different kinds of stuff, but you could probably find an experience that's going to click with you for whatever you're looking for. Well, that's great advice. And I appreciate you, uh, giving that to us. And now. That concludes the work. And you know what comes after the work? The fun stuff. All right, well, Jay, one thing about every episode of this podcast, we always ask people to name one person that you are grateful for or appreciative and why. Oh man, it's gotta be my grandfather, my dad's dad. He passed just about two years ago. And we were as close, man, as any kid could be with his grandfather. He was a great man. He was my hero. We loved each other so much, you know, he was a Navy vet, World War II, Norman D. He dropped out of high school and joined the Navy at 17. He was a first generation American. His parents were both off the boat. His mom was from Italy and his dad was actually in the French Navy. And he, and he went AWOL in New York Harbor, just peaced out off the ship and never came back and they said, oh yeah, and yeah, you know, he was, he was just, he was a real salt of the earth type guy. He was so generous with all the grandkids. You know, he loved us all so much. He taught me a lot about what it means to be a man really, you know, to set an example to what we're kind of talking about earlier with like doing the stuff that you know, you got to do, it needs to be done. Like you're the person to do it. And we, you know, we just had a great time together. We had a lot of shared interests. We used to play Dr. Mario together all the time. Um, yeah. And we, you know, we'd watch football. I mean, even, even when I was grown, you know, all the dudes would be hanging out and get together at somebody's house and watching games on Sunday or whatever. I go over with the old man. And we just sit around and watch the games all day. He was a trip. He was so fun to hang out with. He was funny and he's just a really great, a great guy. I'm lucky, you know, I'm lucky that, uh, he was my grandfather, you know, and then we got to spend so much time together in my youth. I made it a priority to as much as I could to see him because you get old and your priorities change and your life changes and everything starts going really fast. I always made time for him when I could. He was my hero for sure. I love that. I love that so much. Well, rest in peace to your grandpa. And then that was really heartwarming. Now we're going to go right into the fun questions. What have you currently been listening to? What can you recommend to us? What have you what's been on your Spotify lately? All kinds of weird stuff. Just name a couple. These weird moods. Okay. The number one thing I'm going to put over is the new Judas priest because it rules and those, you know, I mean like Glenn's 74 and he has Parkinson's and he can't really like tour and stuff, but he's still a legend and he's super underrated and Rob's like 72 and he still got it. The new priest is like as good as anything they've ever done probably. And they've been a band since 1969. I don't even know how that happened. So that just came out, what a couple of weeks ago. And that's been in heavy rotation for me. And 69. Yeah. Nice. All right. Moving on along here. Who is your go-to Mario Kart character? Donkey Kong, I would say. Yeah. Donkey Kong is like is like number one for me. One A would be probably Tanooki Mario. OK. What I like to do is build like the heaviest, like fastest top speed cart that I can. That's why I like Donkey. I just go for like the top speed and hope I can drift enough to stay at it. And Tanooki Mario is just super cool looking. So, you know, he's up there. Yeah, he's the same weight class, I think, as Rosalina, who is my top pick. She's good too. She's one of my favorite, more recent additions to the Mario universe. Rosalina's awesome. She is my favorite princess. Hold on, no, stop. What's Rosalina from? Super Mario Galaxy. Galaxy is where she's introduced, yeah. What happened to your girl Toadstool? She's just, Mario moved on? Each? What do you mean? What happened to her? I mean, like, why is there a new girl in the picture? Well, she's like Mario's girl, though. Yeah, she's just a princess who's in the game in outer space. What's she doing? She's the mother of the Lumas, the little stars, you know, in the in the Mario movie, you saw the Mario movie, right? Who's the father of the Lumas? I don't know. Well, how do we know it's not where to get Mari Povich on the? Yeah. Who's the father? I don't know who the father is. Do they got little mustaches? No, how tall is the milkman? At least at least five four. Yeah, at least at least five four. All right, go to the next question Yes, all right. So Jason learning about Rosalina this or that the first one I have in here is peach or Rosalina Coincidentally, I gotta go Rosalina good me too. All right kiss Mary kill Rosalina peach Daisy oh Definitely don't kiss Berto You might get swallowed up or something. Wouldn't be the first time, you know what I'm saying? Might choke on an egg. Been there. All right, go ahead, just what's next. Okay, next, next. Majora's Mask or Ocarina of Time? Uh, Link's Awakening DX? No, that wasn't the option. I kind of famously don't like either of those games. Wait, Link's Awakening had a Degeneration X version? Yeah, Shawn Michaels showed up and Superkick Ganon. Yo, that would be so sick. It was, it was. Yeah, they drove it. Link drives a tank to WCW headquarters and then... Well, Link, doesn't he use like a zip line at some point, like that WrestleMania entrance? Yeah, basically a hook shot is basically Sean Michael's zip line. Yeah. Yo, coincidentally, that's my next question. Would you rather have a bow or a hook shot? A hook shot. A hook shot is way cooler. Well, I mean, if you want to arrow people in the face, you know? Yeah, but everybody's got that. Oh, true. I mean, how many games have bow and arrow? And then how many games have a hook shot? Yeah, but I'm talking about you in real life right now. Well, hookshot would be way more useful to, you know, get something, you know, out of the fridge or whatever. Like, you know, like I'm not sure how much utility I really get out of a bow and arrow on my on a daily basis. A hook shot though. Okay. Well, would you rather have a sword or a battle ax? Probably a battle ax, I guess. I think they look cooler. Okay. That's fair. You want one blade or two blades on it though? I mean, am I fighting with it or am I hanging it on my wall? I guess. I don't know. You're fighting with it. All right, probably just one then, because I would think you don't want something that's too heavy, otherwise you wouldn't be able to swing it and then what good is it? Okay, but for decor you want two? For two, yeah, if I'm pulling in my foyer, then yeah, probably, yeah, I can be two, why not? Just for aesthetics. If you had to only play Mario games or Zelda games for the rest of your life, you could only pick one. Does that include like any Mario title or like Any. Just mainline, yeah Mario. I mean, I like Zelda and all, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to bury Zelda here, but like that is so all encompassing. That's every type of game ever made. If all you're playing is Mario games. You're right. That, I mean, that's, that's a really good way of looking at it. Would you rather be a wizard or a vampire? A vampire, I guess. I don't really want to be either one of those things. Um, but I'd like to be like a lost boys style vampire. I don't want to be one of those things, but if I had to be one, it would be one that doesn't have to go out in the sunlight and can play World of Warcraft all the time. Forever. I will never die and therefore I will always get to play the new expansion and I will look like Alex Winter in Lost Boys. I'll get a crop top fishnet shirt or something. I love that. So sick. I have a crop top fishnet shirt in this house. Wow. It's so fashionable of you. I actually have so many because I just did laundry the other day and I washed all my crop top fishnet shirts, which I have a surprisingly high amount of. Wow. I went through a little phase. OK, cool. Well, everyone in WWE wears a crop top now, Jay and Jimmy Uso, they always got they're always cropping. It's coming back. It's all the way back now. All right, Jay, final question, and this is an important one. You didn't know why you were named Jason. Embarrassing. But. You have children of your own and I'm guessing they have names. Now I'm guessing I'm going to have thoughts about them. So please tell me the name of your kids and why. And if they are some, they're, you know, uh, a fairy from a Lord of the Rings or something, you're going to have to tell me, cause I'm not going to know right off the bat, so just let me know what their names are and tell me why. And I'm not going to say anything. I'm just going to listen. Thank you. Okay. Twin A's name is Dez. Before that's not true. Twin a is Samuel and twin B is Emily. So that is that is the twins Well so far I'm not upset but tell me why they're named those things. Those are great names. First of all, I Yeah, thank you. I think we first of all we had an awful time naming these creatures upon their birth We were expecting them. We knew they were coming They don't give you a whole lot of time in the hospital to name them The nurses like want to get the paperwork done and go on to whatever else they have going on and like what are these kids? Names and we're like we need a minute If only you would have known, you know, for several months that they were in route. We didn't have any real consensus as to what we were going to name them. So we kind of had a short list and we were on the clock, but we wanted to stuff that was like traditional, but didn't sound super old timey. Those were the big inspirations for me. Which just like, these are kind of classy timeless kind of names, Sam and Emily, they could be from, I think those are just the kind of names that you would expect to. always run into people with names like that. Right. I don't know. I don't want to give them anything like weird that would, I don't know, super stand out or something. That was not, I was not going to inflict that upon them, you know, but there was a Sam or an Emily you were thinking of when you said those names to that hospital worker. So what, which friend of Frodo were you deciding the name Sam after? And then which girl at the gym that I have a crush on, did you name Emily after? I don't think Emily's name really is related to any person that I know. And maybe that's Why? Right? Because like sometimes you have like bad associations with names because you know somebody that has it and you don't like them or whatever. Samuel's name was partially inspired by one of my favorite artists, actually who is professionally known as Samwise DDA. He actually was an art director at Blizzard entertainment for many years. He also has done a lot of art for album covers, did a bunch of stuff for Hammerfall. and a Mona Marth and other bands that I like. And also I got to know Sammy a little bit over the years from doing the podcast. We had him on the show a couple of times and I had a little bit of a personal relationship with him. The dude's art like leaped off the video store shelf to me when I was like 11 years old. He was one of the first artists that I really responded to the style of, and that I identified, oh, that's this guy. Right. And then, Hey, he also did like this album cover for hammer fall. Oh, who is this guy? And then getting to like meet him and have like some kind of a. Relationship with him was really cool. And I just thought Sammy was like a cool This is a fun thing to call somebody like hey Sammy. How you doing? It was definitely like partially inspired by that if I would say I named or we named Samuel after Sam DDA But it was certainly like a nice association. Did you read the book? Do you read books? Have you ever read a book before I have? I'm not counting Nintendo Power magazine. I'm saying, oh, then no, no. Yeah. There's a book that recently strategy guys that Nintendo Power used to send out. Do they count? Because that's not an issue of Nintendo. That's not a periodical. There was a there's a book that recently came out called Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow about a trio duo group of video game designers fictional. But the main character's name is Sam Mazer. I think I think I've heard of this book. The title sounds familiar, but I've not read it. It's because it's part of a soliloquy from Macbeth that I can recite the entire thing. That's all the time we have. Tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day from the last syllable of recorded time and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle. I can keep going, but I'm not going to. No, that's beautiful. It's a cool brag, not gonna lie. No, I was impressed. I don't know what I'm more impressed of, that you can quote the entire tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow Macbeth soliloquy or that Jay's kids aren't named after his favorite Pokemon, but both are very impressive to me. His one kid's name is Bulbasaur, actually. They would be stoked, actually, if they found that, because they're such Pokemon nerds. Like obviously, they had no choice. All right, folks, that just about wraps up another episode of The Underwire. A huge thank you to Jay again for joining us today and sharing his insights and experiences with how his mental health and life in general has benefited from gaming. We hope our conversation provided some clarity on the many advantages of what playing video games can do for us beyond solely just for entertainment purposes, from building connections, developing important skills, and forming core memories with loved ones, to offering a much needed break from life's challenges and bringing us joy. Remember, just like anything else, it's all about finding balance and using your passions to your advantage to support your well-being. If you've enjoyed this episode, we'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to really help us to reach more listeners. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can also follow us and send us a DM on Instagram at The Underwire Pod. We'd love to hear your thoughts and any personal experiences you have with gaming. And as always, if you have any questions or topics that you would like for us to cover, please feel free to reach out. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen today and we look forward to catching you on the next episode. See ya!

People on this episode

Contributor

Jess G.

Host
Contributor

Ryan Rainbro

Co-host