How I Built This with Guy Raz - Riot Games: Bonus Episode

Episode Date: December 15, 2020

There were so many interesting moments in Guy's conversation with the co-founders of Riot Games that we decided to put them into this short bonus episode. In it, Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill talk about kids, screens, and the importance of boredom. They answer Guy's questions about why some gamers engage in toxic behavior, and how Riot Games is trying to address it. To hear the whole story of the founding of Riot Games, search your queue for the main episode, which dropped earlier this week. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com slash host. Hey, everyone, just wanted to let you know that I had such an amazing conversation a few weeks ago with the co-founders of Riot Games that we actually couldn't squeeze it all into the main interview. So today, we have a bonus for you. It's my short conversation with Mark Merrill and Brandon Beck about how video games and digital technology are transforming the way we live for good, for bad,

and in ways we don't quite understand. And they both have some really interesting insights about all of that. Now, of course, the main episode for Riot Games is also in your cue. But if you want to listen to this bonus episode first, go right ahead. And however you decide to do it, enjoy. Do you guys either of you have kids yet? Yeah, we both do. Okay.

Are they little, little kids? I've got six, four, and two, and Mark has seven and six. Seven and six, yeah. Are you guys, I mean, we are very restrictive with screens. It's very hard, and our kids fight us on this all the time. But you guys work in the screen world. Are you restrictive on screens? Big time.

Yeah. Yeah, we are very restrictive. Yeah, we have no screen time during the week without, like, very, very, special exceptions. And then during the weekends, you know, now that they're older, we do a little bit more. But, you know, it's like two hours a day max. They're not like, dad, you invented League of Legends. Like, you're, are you kidding me? I can't play a video game. No, they try that. You know, now that my son's seven and, you know, he actually really, really enjoys video games, too, it's fascinating. And he, you know, he does try to use that against me. Like, you're in front

of the computer all day. You know, excuse me working, you know, down on the office or whatnot. Why can't I? Yeah. And, you know, we essentially just explain why it's important. important to be bored. Boredom is critical for creativity and problem solving because when you're bored, you're that then you go, oh, I'm going to go pick up the stick and it's actually a sword. And whereas if you always default to the path of these resistance where I can just grab the iPhone and instantly go play ball stars for hours, you know, that can have negative cognitive development and social development on the kids implications. I agree a thousand percent. And by the way, this is why in my house we have no screen Saturdays.

We just, that's the day we chose. Friday night, all of our screens go into a locked cabinet, including mine and my wife's, and we don't even use our phones. So we are back in the 80s. We have physical maps that. Well, actually, our car has GPS, so we do use that. But we still do use maps sometimes. If we get to a restaurant, it's closed.

We didn't call ahead. We move on. Like, that's our Saturday. So we do that to force ourselves to be bored. But, you know, it's a problem. Like the world that you guys have helped to create, and I'm not trying to shame you. I'm just saying the world that you've been part of and helping to create is a world where there is no boredom. And that is a really big problem.

You know, I mean, do you ever think about that? We do. Yeah. Or go ahead, B. I was just going to say, I mean, obviously, think about it in the context of our own kids who, you know, who we want to engage in that same kind of. unstructured play that, you know, we had a lot of opportunity. And yeah, because I do think that, that without boredom with constant stimulation, like we just, as a society, we don't know what that does yet, you know, does it change the, like, have you contemplated as much? Have you been

in your head as much, you know, as you grow up and, you know, what do you, if not, what are you, what are you missing and what do you lose? I think we're at the very beginnings of understanding, what it means. Yeah. Well, and just to add to that, everybody's still figuring out what are the right ways to govern this new virtual landscape. And so, you know, how much should governments regulate and what types of content and what's appropriate?

How much self-policing or moderation or content should happen on various platforms? You know, how should we help try to nurture, you know, positive communities? And I think it's a really interesting challenge and really interesting problem. And we've spent a lot of time thinking about that, whether it's how we try to foster sportsmanship to parental controls to thinking about the types of content we create. I mean, there's just a lot of complexity. You know, I remember I went to a TED conference a couple years ago. And the founder of Twitch, one of the founders of Twitch spoke at the conference. And he said something that really bothered me in his TED talk.

You can find it online. He said that Twitch is, you know, is like the new campfire. It's actually bringing communities and people together. And I just thought if that is the, if that's the world we're going to live in, where everyone's connecting through using discord and and Twitch and, you know, that's not a world I'm looking forward to. Like that is not the campfire. Like humans need to be together. And that really worries me. Now, maybe I'm, I'm looking forward to. Like, that is not the campfire. Like, humans need to be together. and that really worries me. Now, maybe I'm a tinfoil lunatic here on this. Maybe everyone listening is like you are, like, you're just, I just can't believe that that's the new campfire. I just, I don't want to believe that. I don't know.

Do you guys think that that's what, you know, sitting around and playing massive multiplayer online games should be the new campfire? So I think it's a new type of campfire, but I don't think it's, it replaces social interaction. in a physical space. But I think, you know, it also depends on who you are, right? And so as an example, if you have a, you know, physical disability, right, that could be pretty

debilitating, all of a sudden, right, if you can engage in some of these online worlds or virtual games or whatnot, you can now have a, you know, to a certain extent, many people have reported a better quality of life in terms of forging social relationships and, you know, deeply meaningful connections to people. To Brandon's point earlier, I personally have made friendships that are going to be lifelong from playing MMOs.

So, like, I went to a friend's wedding outside of London in the English countryside because I played EverQuest with him and brought my wife and we got to go hang out with his awesome English family. And that was really cool. And it's because we know each other so well because we spent a lot of time online.

And so a lot of what players love to do online, it's just another way of connecting. Like, if you graduate high school, and you go off to college, you can stay more connected to a lot of your friends by doing some activities online, and that's positive. And then you can come back, of course, and see each other in person. Or you can go to an e-sports event or, you know, another physical event also where you get together with other people who love the thing that you like also in terms of the productivity there, too. This is a, this could be a whole separate episode, but I will just say one thing,

which is with every technology, there are incredible benefits. YouTube, right, like has amazing videos, just unbelievable videos, and Facebook connects people who have lost touch and Twitter can be an incredible source of information. I'm in Northern California during wildfires. It's wonderful. But there's a flip side to it, which is there is, there's also a lot of really bad behavior. I guess you could say, well, there's a lot of bad behavior in the public square too, right? But when people can be anonymous behind a screen, they feel safer to be more cruel or more destructive in their behavior. And it's a thing that's really sad. It really bothers me. Well, we've thought about this a lot and studied it and built teams that have tried to

really cultivate a positive community. And it's a really complex problem. But I, you know, I think Brandon and I both agree with that dynamic you're describing where there is definitely a major downside to a lot of this technology and this connectivity. And I think it's incumbent upon all of us as business leaders, technology leaders, community leaders, our government, to help figure out how do we create a new structure around human interaction in virtual environments to make it better in a lot of ways

and to reduce and mitigate the harm. And I'll give you an example, but to a certain extent, like you mentioned on the rampfire on Twitch or whatnot or on Twitter, it's like having, if you go to a football game at the Coliseum, right, American football game, there could be 100,000 people screaming and watching an event or a match happening. But now 100% of the conversations or the words that somebody is saying in that stadium as a fan

is now permanently recorded. And not only that can be directly sent to that player that maybe you'd yell at and be like, oh, you get disappointed if somebody drops a pass. You know, like, oh, that guy sucks or something. Now the tweet, when somebody says that goes to that person and they're going to see it. Whereas in general, somebody may just say that in passing. in the stadium, be like, oh, you know, that player. But then if they go see that player at a bar, they'd be thrilled to be like, oh, my gosh,

what's up? And so a lot of times people, I think technology makes it feel worse than what they actually intend because in a moment of weakness or a moment of emotion, somebody has an outburst. And the other person that's receiving that doesn't actually know that that's the case. And we've studied this where, you know, we built this player behavior team. And about 40% of League of Legends players will never be mean to somebody else in a game. they're just always cool. And then about less than 1% of players, literally less than 1%,

will be total jerks that just try to go ruin the game a lot of the time for other people. And it's easy for us. So we go, let's just ban those people whenever we find them and try to build better detection mechanisms to help keep our community clean. But then the remainder, which is close to 60% of the population, that's everybody or that other group sometimes has a bad day and sometimes they can be rude to somebody. And what we found is when we're able to build automated feedback tools that jump up and tell them,

hey, like, you've been reported or this is negative your behavior just said 70% of our players that receive these warnings and this feedback continue to play the game and never get those warnings again. So we can find ways to help train people to be more aware of their behavior, right? In a similar way to if you think about Little League sports, you know, like people learn how to be, you know, humble and victory and gracious and defeat because they have to be. coaches and all that, like that infrastructure and societal infrastructure to help people learn how to behave in a civil manner, it doesn't exist yet, right? We're building this stuff incrementally. And so, but we need it in order to not have mental illness rates continue to climb and, you know,

all the negative things that you're seeing. That's Mark Merrill and Brandon Beck, the co-founders of Riot Games. To hear the whole story of how the company was founded, just look in your podcast queue. The full episode should be right there. And thank you. as always for listening.