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Dropping into Fortnite - Epic Games Epic Moneymaker.
179 Plays14 days ago
In this week's episode, Andrew and Brandon dive into Fortnite, the 'free' game earning billions of dollars in revenue, and hundreds of millions in fines for predatory design.
Andrew, a father of two and lifelong gamer, teams up with Brandon, a consumer psychologist and ex-pro video game coach, to cover video games, the way they are designed and how these design decisions impact the children that play them.
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Transcript
Introduction to Dopamine Slot Machine Podcast
00:00:08
Andrew Wilmot
Good morning, good day, good evening. Whenever you are, or welcome to the Dopamine Slot Machine, the podcast that discusses what you need to know about the video games that your children are playing, how are they designed to get your kids hooked, and how do they make money from your children, and what can you do to make sure that your child's relationship with the video games is a positive one.
00:00:25
Andrew Wilmot
My name is Andrew, I'm a dad of two, and a lifelong gamer.
Meet the Hosts: Andrew and Brandon
00:00:29
Bdizzle
And I'm Brandon, a consumer research psychologist and an ex-professional video game coach.
00:00:34
Andrew Wilmot
This week we're covering one we know you've been waiting for. We've been asked for it a number of times.
Fortnite's Predatory Design and Legal Issues
00:00:39
Andrew Wilmot
It's Fortnite. Fortnite, the mega hit that recently paid out $72 million, dollars I'd often agree to $245 million dollars in fines, just due to its predatory design.
00:00:50
Andrew Wilmot
So um' I'm looking forward to this. So let's let's just dive straight in, because we actually played Fortnite the other day together. we We had a couple of beers, we took some notes, and yeah, we we had a good time.
00:00:58
Bdizzle
That's a lot of fun.
00:01:02
Andrew Wilmot
So... What is Fortnite?
The Battle Royale Experience: Fortnite and The Hunger Games
00:01:05
Andrew Wilmot
Fortnite is game, it's a free game in inverted commas, because we know what free games just means that they make their money a different way, where up to 100 players can all drop in on the same map and basically are then just trying to kill each other.
00:01:20
Andrew Wilmot
And there's a big circle, and the circle gets smaller. And if you outside the circle, you eventually die. And so as the circle gets smaller, as there's fewer players, you are forced to then have that the showdown with other players.
00:01:34
Bdizzle
Correct. Imagine the Hunger Games, but it's a video game ah with a very cartoony art style. but That really is it in a nutshell.
00:01:42
Andrew Wilmot
Oh, yeah, exactly. And again, we had ah good time once we were able to look past some of the really insidious design elements. I mean, we we won our first few games and we're thinking, wow, you know what?
00:01:59
Andrew Wilmot
We've still got this. We're still pretty good at video games.
00:02:02
Bdizzle
We're going to go pro. Let's stop this podcast, quit our day jobs. We can have a career in this.
Illusions of Skill and Monetization Tactics
00:02:08
Andrew Wilmot
And then we realized that, and it doesn't tell you this, which I think is so sneaky. And it does everything to make it look like you're playing with real players, um even down to having non-bot-like movements. Because normally, if if you play video games for while, you can normally tell when something's a bot.
00:02:27
Andrew Wilmot
ah But the first few games, you are just paired exclusively with bots. So you get those early wins in. You get that first hit. it's like It's like a gambler who, first time they enter a casino, walks out having quadrupled their money.
00:02:43
Andrew Wilmot
That's how you make an addict.
00:02:43
Bdizzle
that you your Your first hit is free. It's almost as if they've got a group of people designing these video games to make you feel good straight out the gate or something.
00:02:55
Andrew Wilmot
And for those at home who maybe aren't so familiar with Fortnite, we really cannot emphasize just how big a game it is.
00:03:08
Andrew Wilmot
So I said at the start that they've agreed to pay a $245 million dollars fine. um They've got close to a billion players. right So that's less than a quarter of a dollar per player.
00:03:23
Andrew Wilmot
ah Right now, right at this very moment, two million players are playing it.
00:03:28
Bdizzle
i have a they have a net of just google this They have a net revenue of over billion
00:03:28
Andrew Wilmot
And
00:03:34
Bdizzle
per year shes just crazy
00:03:35
Andrew Wilmot
and this is a free game. A free game.
00:03:42
Andrew Wilmot
So where is it making us money?
00:03:45
Andrew Wilmot
Well, we've spoken about obfuscated currency. We've spoken about Robux. We've spoken about Minecoin. We've spoken about all the psychological dangers of having to purchase a separate currency to then purchase in-game items.
00:04:01
Andrew Wilmot
Well, Fortnite might be the single most successful virtual currency with the V-Bucks. And something i wanted to point
The Addictive Nature of Fortnite
00:04:08
Andrew Wilmot
out, Brandon, do you remember this, actually? When we first logged in, first time we logged in what choice were we presented
00:04:16
Bdizzle
a choice immediately to buy a battle pass, if I remember correctly. It's almost hard to keep track because you're just constantly bombarded with these basic opportunities to spend money for unique rewards, ah often with a time pressure associated with them. Yeah.
00:04:31
Bdizzle
Yeah. and
00:04:32
Bdizzle
but
00:04:32
Andrew Wilmot
ah Absolutely.
00:04:33
Andrew Wilmot
But it it it was it was worse than that.
00:04:33
Bdizzle
yeah those
00:04:35
Andrew Wilmot
it was It was a choice between buying this Battle Pass, and those who don't know, a Battle Pass, think of this as a collection of in-game items, ah normally around a certain theme, or a subscription to start subscribing for premium content.
00:04:50
Andrew Wilmot
And so... Well, I'll have to look around to see, i don't want to buy either of these. I just want to play some Fortnite with Brandon. And just that really streamlined UX to try and suck the money out of unwitting gamers. Hmm.
00:05:06
Bdizzle
Yeah, correct. it' so ri I think it's maybe the company that did it perfectly first, almost. i can't I think they really did push a lot of these aggressive tactics to the forefront. And and they're the they're the perfect game to do it.
00:05:21
Bdizzle
Everyone feels like a rock star when they play Fortnite because of just the way the gameplay loop works, right? its So if you you start one of these matches and you die very early on because you're not very good in the game,
00:05:33
Bdizzle
ah you're in another game within like a minute, right? and But the highs of winning, because you've but you've beaten 100 other players, are so high because you know you've beaten 100 other players. It's the opportunity of a jackpot.
00:05:47
Bdizzle
But the lows aren't particularly low because you can just re-enter that experience time and time again. And what the thing that I find most disturbing about this, and Andrew, I'd love to get your your thoughts on this, is that in most games like that, it's kind of, there's an element of negative cognition in there, right?
00:06:08
Bdizzle
You play like a competitive video game and you lose, you have an objective rank. you can kind of orientate yourself around how good you are and the amount of time that you're inputting into something. But the thing that's so strange about Fortnite is that there's still a large proportion of the player base that puts hundreds and hundreds, thousands of hours into this game.
00:06:28
Bdizzle
But there's no interest in a ranked ladder at all. It's one of the things that I was so surprised at is they do have ranked modes, but they take a tiny proportion of the player base to even engage them. And I think that's really reflective of I guess the gameplay, how compelling that gameplay loop is, is that it's it's a game people play just to feel almost hedonistically good rather than trying to chase any type of proficiency in any area. It's really strangely situated.
00:06:58
Andrew Wilmot
Yeah, and there's something like a fifth to a quarter, depending on the game mode, was ranked. So it really is a small minority. um funny you're talking about that sort shortcut to feeling good about yourself, the sort shortcut to feeling like a pro player, because so much of it seemed to be oriented around that. like um
Commercialization and Social Proof in Fortnite
00:07:19
Andrew Wilmot
What was it we saw?
00:07:20
Andrew Wilmot
Was it a promotional ah Nike shoes to spend as much as you'd spend real-world trainers to buy a pair of virtual trainers in-game? Things like that.
00:07:32
Bdizzle
It's so dystopian. like it's It's a level of commercialization where if you had presented it in 2010, it would have been part of a dystopian film. So you can get your Jordan Airs in Fortnite to match your ones in real life, right?
00:07:46
Bdizzle
And the and myth like they did digital ones, seven or eight quid, but you're still talking about seven or eight quid for a piece of social proof or, hey, like ah I own this piece of digital footwear, right?
00:07:58
Bdizzle
and pet And the reason why they do it is they try it and it works. And what we know about neuroplasticity in regards to the you know habits that are formed early on life have like a long-term impact, right?
00:08:02
Andrew Wilmot
Hmm.
00:08:10
Bdizzle
And the thing I find so kind of jarring about that is what you're teaching a generation of people is that that's worthwhile doing. That's how important proof of social hierarchy is.
00:08:26
Andrew Wilmot
I just want to read out the synopsis of of something here saying, in in the 2040s, the world has been gripped by an energy crisis from the depletion of fossil fuels and the consequences of pollution and global warming, causing widespread social problems.
00:08:30
Bdizzle
Yeah, i go up.
00:08:41
Andrew Wilmot
To escape the decline the world is facing, people turn to a virtual universe accessible by players
00:08:48
Andrew Wilmot
which has evolved into becoming a virtual world used ubiquitously by humanity with this currency being one of the most stable in the real world." That's the synopsis for Ready Player One, um a book published in 2011.
00:09:03
Andrew Wilmot
for And it's it's scary just how close to what Fortnite is right now is that synopsis. ah the paying for virtual items.
00:09:15
Andrew Wilmot
ah you know it's a I remember as a kid sort of looking sideways at people who would be showing off brand new trainers, et cetera, thinking, oh, they're just trainers that you spent a lot of money on.
00:09:29
Andrew Wilmot
But how much worse is it as kids doing that with each other in a video game?
00:09:35
Bdizzle
Yeah, well, what worries me is it clearly works, right? The reason why Nike, these large companies are engaging with these kind of omni-channel marketing is because they know it's the way that you can attract a younger younger audience, you know?
00:09:51
Bdizzle
um what what what do we know from other industries? Start them young. you so ah do you Do you get what I mean?
00:09:58
Andrew Wilmot
Yeah.
00:09:58
Bdizzle
It's a very, very strange
Virtual Interactions vs. Real-World Values
00:10:01
Bdizzle
thing to think about. And from doing this podcast and playing the game with you, Andrew, it's one of the things that kind of haunted me afterwards, which is almost like this is this silent thing where we're basically exposing our kids to a level of commodification because if you watch a tv ad it's it's trying to sell you something sure but this is not trying to just sell you something it's trying to sell you something that you can show off and normalize to your friendship and peer group you know i've always wondered what motivates you to let's say buy balenciaga or these like over incredibly overpriced pieces of clothing and part me worries that
00:10:37
Bdizzle
the the If you grow up for 15 years being bombarded with this, you're probably more likely to think that's reasonable when you're not a multi-billionaire or whatever. you know it really is ah dystopian in a lot ways.
00:10:52
Andrew Wilmot
those There's a phrase you were using um over and over again whilst we were playing, referring to things as social proof. What's social proof then in this context?
00:11:03
Bdizzle
Well, social proof is like if a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound? It's the idea that you can kind of ascribe value or status around having certain, in this case, objects, right?
00:11:16
Bdizzle
um to And it makes you feel good because there's others to perceive it. um And that is a key characteristic of how a lot of these video games monetize their content.
00:11:25
Andrew Wilmot
Hmm.
00:11:25
Bdizzle
it's why It's leaderboards exist. What's the point of being very good at a video game if you can't show anyone? and So that's one element to it. But this is even more nefarious because it's not even proficiency in a skill. It's just, could i am I committed enough to spend eight pounds on a virtual pair of shoes?
00:11:45
Bdizzle
Which is wild. Or like, ah what's the other example? A Lamborghini. There's a sports car sponsorships in this game. ah So you can spend what it was a ridiculous amount, Andrew. Do you remember off the top of your head, it was something like 30, 40 quid.
00:11:58
Andrew Wilmot
Yeah.
00:11:59
Bdizzle
Just to have...
00:12:00
Andrew Wilmot
you could You could go out and buy an actual remote control car and for that.
00:12:03
Bdizzle
yeah You just to have the privilege of driving something with that sweet, sweet Lamborghini label on. It's wild. It's a strange world we live in.
00:12:13
Andrew Wilmot
So, and I promise this is related, but when was the last time you went to a gig?
Fortnite's Role in Digital Events
00:12:20
Bdizzle
A long time ago for me. A long time ago. When was the last time you went to a gig, Andrew?
00:12:27
Andrew Wilmot
That is quite hard to remember remember with the kids.
00:12:28
Bdizzle
I know you're into your music.
00:12:30
Andrew Wilmot
i'm I'm going to one in a couple of months that we're, We're taking our our daughter to our first gig for a sort of folk punk band. She's very excited. But um so there've been a number of gigs, concerts in Fortnite, which is kind of wild to think about.
00:12:49
Andrew Wilmot
So Travis Scott, right? He made $20 million dollars from an event, from from a virtual gig he did in Fortnite.
00:13:03
Andrew Wilmot
$20 million. dollars um Ariana Grande earned millions as well. And we talk about Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft as digital third spaces of varying quality.
00:13:20
Andrew Wilmot
But
00:13:23
Andrew Wilmot
this is taking the next step for me. This is going from, oh you are, this is SpacedEach. It's changing from it being the playground to it being that sort of life defining event that things like,
00:13:36
Bdizzle
Yeah, we're we're seeing this cyborg theory, like just come to fruition, right? And what I mean by cyborg theory is that it's a term coined by anthropologists, where our digital selves are almost extensions of ourselves and machinery will basically integrate so that um we're, but it's basically indistinguishable from real life. And I feel like that this is really representation ah representative of where the general space is going, which is, I think, inevitable to a certain degree. you know like we have like we We post a lot of our lives on social media, X, Y, and Z. It's like it this this tidal wave that we can't stop.
00:14:17
Bdizzle
What's strange about it in this case is that do we want our children, vulnerable people, to be just vulnerable? but um like absolutely immersed in aggressive monetization practices to the extent that Nike, these sport car providers are at that young age, trying to integrate it into status symbols inside the way that your child socializes.
00:14:43
Bdizzle
And that sentence is exactly how it is, I think it's irrefutable.
00:14:43
Andrew Wilmot
and
00:14:48
Bdizzle
And it's just a weird thought, I think, if if you get where I'm going from, Andrew. is it's When you take a step back and you don't normalize you just say how it is, it's almost a jarring proposition, that level of kind of penetrating commercialization.
00:15:04
Andrew Wilmot
It would be like if ah Coral or William Hill ah had soft play areas and actively marketed to try and get kids through the door.
00:15:14
Bdizzle
That's a great...
00:15:14
Andrew Wilmot
That's how crazy it is to me.
00:15:16
Bdizzle
yeah Yeah, so when you go into William Hill betting, you're like, oh, I love this place. I remember it when I was a kid. Yeah, I'll spend £70 on my cumulative bet. Literally, that's the exact same emotional attachment these companies are trying to build with children.
00:15:34
Bdizzle
The majority of the player base of Fortnite are kids. You know, it's wild they're getting away with it. Really. Really is. Yeah.
00:15:43
Andrew Wilmot
So there's 2023 survey which reckoned that 83% of children aged 12 to 15 played online games such as Fortnite or Minecraft. And that statistic on its own is little bit rubbish because, as we've established, there is a huge gulf between Fortnite and Minecraft.
00:16:04
Andrew Wilmot
But let's...
00:16:04
Bdizzle
It's ah Shakespeare and Playboy. It's my lumping them together. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:16:10
Andrew Wilmot
But you know let let's say let's let's say it's 50% of 12 to 15-year-olds have played Fortnite. And let's say that one in 10 of them is a serious multi-hour-a-day player.
00:16:23
Andrew Wilmot
That's probably a massive underestimate. Imagine a world where one in 10 teenagers were spending four-plus hours a day and exclusively socializing. in Betfred, in William Hill, in Coral, in betting shops.
00:16:40
Andrew Wilmot
That's what we're dealing with here.
00:16:41
Bdizzle
Yeah, or like, well, I feel like it's an interesting analogy, because sure, like you can say that that they're more malicious innately because they're gambling companies, but in the same, same stretch, they're just big corporations that are designed to extract the maximum amount of money out of a large population of people. And You know, and that's clearly not good.
00:17:01
Bdizzle
It's clearly not good. um And in terms of imagine a world, I think we're already here, Andrew. um
00:17:07
Andrew Wilmot
Yeah.
00:17:07
Bdizzle
I'm, you know, I've done mental health research in the past. And one of the big mysteries to us is why it's an uncontrollable problem. And it seems to be getting worse. And when we when you think about the percentage of young people that have spent thousands and thousands of hours in this no risk, no like emotionally safe with big highs kind of environment for the majority of their teenage years or even younger, I just don't see that problem getting any better.
00:17:37
Bdizzle
And in that innate chaos, The true winners out of all of this will be Nike because they would have trained a generation to just, my God, I need those those Jordans because otherwise I'm a loser, right?
00:17:52
Bdizzle
It's it's a really, really strange thing that it's... it's Yeah, really is.
00:17:56
Andrew Wilmot
it's It's a marketer's dream, right? Like it's it's it's one thing getting all that data, you know, a marketer getting data for from focus groups, from how long people are watching their ads. It's a whole other thing to get how every single response ah with full context within a digital space.
00:18:14
Andrew Wilmot
um And there's there's one more thing I wanted to touch on as we're rapidly barreling, we could talk about this for hours, but barreling towards the end. And that is the user generated content because I didn't realize that this is something that Fortnite is really pushing at the moment.
User-Generated Content Concerns in Fortnite
00:18:31
Bdizzle
I was completely unaware as well, Andrew. um Yeah, it's interesting.
00:18:36
Andrew Wilmot
So like, and It's probably actually explicitly trying to compete with Roblox here, with Roblox, to the point where a lot of the games that we went and played, we've played similar games in Roblox when we were researching for that episode.
00:18:53
Andrew Wilmot
And again, all the implications that we talked about there with the very low quality environments, one it all applies over here as well. ah you You think you're letting your kid play a okay, let's say you're completely um completely ignorant about addictive game design and completely ignorant about predatory microtransactions.
00:19:17
Andrew Wilmot
um You look at Fortnite as a parent and it looks like a cartoony shoot him up. Who cares? so What harm can it do? And then they go into the user-generated content, which is completely unregulated, unmoderated.
00:19:30
Andrew Wilmot
No sort of quality control, no quality gateways. um within Within minutes, we were playing yet another Squid Game knockoff.
00:19:37
Bdizzle
Yeah, correct. And even if there's not like explicit violence or gore, what it does is it introduces these types of media forms to a very young audience. So then as ah as a user, what are you left with? Or as a parent, what are you left with? And that's a child that has this fascination with Squid Games and would want to watch it because they've already spent hundreds of hours in quotation marks in that universe.
00:20:02
Bdizzle
And it just, it's just, I guess, another layer to the, these are very, very unregulated environments to ah to ah to a large degree.
00:20:11
Andrew Wilmot
I remember when Squid Game first became really popular, the the first season, and we got a letter from our eldest school basically saying, please, for the love of God, don't let your kids watch Squid Game. It's absolutely not appropriate.
00:20:25
Andrew Wilmot
And I remember reading it thinking, what sort of parent is letting their primary school children watch that? Jesus. ah But thinking about a bit more now, I wonder if culturally it actually came through these games instead rather than parents thinking it was a great idea, you know, sort of coming through the back door.
00:20:45
Bdizzle
Well, yeah, I completely agree with you because you can you can have Netflix kids, you can have YouTube kids. The moment you enter these unregulated environments, they will get exposed to these types of ideas.
00:20:55
Bdizzle
And then that will create pressure, normalization of how can i watch this? you know um and then like
00:21:02
Andrew Wilmot
so
00:21:02
Bdizzle
they just kind of puts that like supercharger on, I guess, the socio-contagion element to these types of TV shows. so
00:21:10
Andrew Wilmot
So let's let's give Fortnite There's this new thing we discussed, doing doing a sort of addictive distinal. How
Rating Fortnite's Addictiveness
00:21:18
Andrew Wilmot
many slot machines out of five do we give Fortnite?
00:21:22
Andrew Wilmot
Is high good? If we give it five out of five slot machines, I feel like that's a bit bit of a mixed message.
00:21:30
Bdizzle
ah Well, five out of five slot machines, if they're slot machines, no one wants... We might enjoy you might enjoy putting a bet on the footy, but you wouldn't advise your kid to sit a pub and give them 150 quid to go on a slot machine.
00:21:43
Andrew Wilmot
ah just Just how addictive, how bad is Fortnite? Let's get a rating out of five. <unk> I'll go with you first, Brandon. Let's hear your take.
00:21:52
Bdizzle
I don't think... I don't think you could have designed something that could have a larger segment base. It's a five out of five for me. Everything from the gameplay loop to and the user experience, the whole thing is very, very clearly designed to make, regardless of who you are,
00:22:11
Bdizzle
feel good in a short iterative randomised cycle. it's is um It's like someone took a loot box, left it alone and let it evolve for 500,000 years. it's just It just turned into Fortnite.
00:22:27
Bdizzle
And that's the best way I can describe this. Wow.
00:22:29
Andrew Wilmot
you know You know what's wild? Talking about it makes me want to go play it. I haven't felt like that about something since I had kids.
00:22:40
Bdizzle
wow
00:22:41
Andrew Wilmot
you know that's That's kind of crazy. And that was just from one proper session and various exposures over the years.
00:22:51
Bdizzle
like you're the target market andrew you've got limited time you've la only got 40 minutes you want to feel really really good in 40 minutes
00:22:53
Andrew Wilmot
Yeah.
00:22:58
Andrew Wilmot
Yeah, because I'm not going to get good in 40 minutes. so I'm not going to earn it.
00:23:01
Bdizzle
no you're just going to feel good and that that feeling good over 40 minutes oh like i'll i'll take an hour and neglect some responsibilities but that's just genuinely what what it's designed to do like i genuinely
00:23:15
Andrew Wilmot
I'm going to give it i'm gonna give it four slot machines out of five.
00:23:18
Bdizzle
What would five look like to you, Andrew?
00:23:19
Andrew Wilmot
Well...
00:23:21
Bdizzle
We'd have to put up a legitimate casino and be like, okay.
00:23:21
Andrew Wilmot
well
00:23:25
Andrew Wilmot
Well, that's what I was thinking. like I was was going to say five. I'm like, is it worse than Roblox? And I don't think it is. i think it's bad. I think it's it's very bad in a different way.
00:23:37
Andrew Wilmot
I think it's much more tightly controlled in in the worst ways.
00:23:41
Bdizzle
It's much more intense. Yeah, I do understand that. But I think that there I agree with you, Andrew, but on one caveat, which is that Roblox targets a younger age demographic.
00:23:53
Bdizzle
So I feel like Fortnite does a better job of wrapping up a slot machine or a casino game inside a different set of clothes, but Roblox is uniquely evil.
00:24:05
Bdizzle
Take that that mechanism and be like, now how do we target kids under 10? Yeah. Yeah, that's literally the the design decision making there. So like no, I can understand that. I'm going to leave my five.
00:24:18
Bdizzle
You know, I'm a psychologist. ah they They do a great job of having that tight control.
00:24:20
Andrew Wilmot
but
00:24:23
Bdizzle
I say great and ah ah prince to ah in inverted commas or whatever. and But yeah, I do agree with you, Andrew.
00:24:31
Andrew Wilmot
You know, I'll bump mine up to 4.5 only because i think there's room for it to get even worse. And I think it probably will.
00:24:38
Bdizzle
It probably will. Give it five years. You'll have virtual property or something. I don't know. It can't get any weirder. that's it Well, it can. ah just I'm just not looking forward to watching it, basically.
00:24:50
Andrew Wilmot
i If it keeps us ah doing episodes for years to come, I say, I mean, I don't say bring it on. I think we need to we need to crack down it.
00:24:57
Bdizzle
ye
00:24:57
Andrew Wilmot
We need to put a stop to it. But at least we can get some laughs out of it in the meantime.
00:25:01
Bdizzle
yeah Yeah, we're looking at Fortnite. This is going to be great some great content for the podcast. These guys are just going to print stuff for the next 10 years. It's so bad. oh
00:25:10
Andrew Wilmot
ah So i've I've got a question actually from Angela, who completely different topic. She's asking, is a dumb phone with a camera advisable or not? Are there security or privacy concerns which we may regret introducing?
The Impact of Technology on Children
00:25:25
Andrew Wilmot
My 11 year old is starting secondary school in September and I asked him what features he'd be interested in. And he said a camera and music. He knows that internet access, WhatsApp and addictive games aren't an option, but I'm considering photos and music.
00:25:38
Andrew Wilmot
Any advice you can give me? um i think I probably got my first phone with a camera and with music at 11 going into secondary school. And obviously the landscape has changed a lot since, but it's hard to think of anything and initially that stands out to me. Like you can take photos, sure.
00:25:57
Andrew Wilmot
But for me, the big risk with that has always been not so much the ability to take a photo as like a digital camera, but the sending them about or and having them in group chats. Yeah.
00:26:08
Bdizzle
Yeah, I agree. And I think the moment you actually ask these these types of questions, you're probably on the right line. That's what my gut tells me, right? and And remember, like, photography, um music.
00:26:21
Bdizzle
So if you spend a lot of time learning a musical instrument as a young kid, but that's predictive of your salary, I think. So like a large proportion of... ah CEOs can play a musical instrument.
00:26:32
Bdizzle
you know These are really, really good traits to like kind of foster and engage young into your life. um So I think these elements are are really, really positive. it's when you in in introduce it to the what this kind of chaotic online world in an um unregulated way, ah mistakes can happen.
00:26:50
Bdizzle
and But I think the moment that you're kind of enabling engagement into these like really beautiful areas while making sure ah things are cornered off until... an individual's old enough to let's say navigate them effectively i think that's a ah great mix uh
00:27:04
Andrew Wilmot
I did see some discussion, which was talking about the rise of front-facing cameras as potentially being a source of some of the insecurity and body issues that have become more prevalent over the past decade or so.
00:27:17
Andrew Wilmot
And my my initial knee-jerk reaction is it couldn't be that simple. um But the sort of cameras that we talk about, the old-style camera phones always had it on the back. You took a photo of something rather than of yourself.
00:27:30
Andrew Wilmot
wonder what you think about that.
00:27:32
Bdizzle
Oh, Andrew, you can't drop something like that at the end of a podcast. My God. um it's It's a real, real interesting one. So the the reason why front-facing cameras is obviously the selfie, the filters, unrealistic beauty standards, and unfortunately with the way the world is going, is you you cannot not collide with that.
00:27:53
Bdizzle
we're We're in this kind of vertical level of appreciation where it doesn't matter how rich you are, how beautiful you are, whatever, there's there's there's better people than you out there, right? um So part me is almost like, well, going to happen.
00:28:08
Bdizzle
It's more about kind of equipping people to navigate that really effectively and i think that's that starts young in regards to ah spend more time in the real world look at real people realize what they look like you know and at the moment you ask a question like this angela i think you're just on the right path keep on being cautious um and and paying attention and listening and that that's genuinely my my key take and because that's a great foundation to navigate the kind of unfair chaos of what social media and these types of environments bring into all of our lives um and that's quite a ah dark thing to say but i i hope you get yeah i hope you see where i'm coming from andrew
00:28:51
Andrew Wilmot
I do.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:28:52
Andrew Wilmot
i do. um But that's all we've got time for today. So don't forget that if you've got any questions for us, or if you or your children have been impacted by the issues we've discussed today, that you can get in touch with us on the website, the DopamineSlotMachine.co.uk, or you can find us on the Dopamine Slot Machine Discussion Corner Facebook group.
00:29:11
Andrew Wilmot
All links can be found in our artist profile, and we would love to hear from you. Thank you so much for joining us. I would love to have you here with us again in next week's episode where we're going to be deep diving into what gaming could look like in five years if the current trends continue.
00:29:25
Andrew Wilmot
This has been the Dopamine Slot Machine. Thank you. And see you soon.