DadMode: Parenting, Gaming, Streaming, Life
"DadMode" is a podcast where two gaming-loving dads discuss everything from live streaming to fatherhood in a humorous and relatable way. Join Josh aka Moorph and Bearded Nova as they share gaming adventures and parenting anecdotes, offering a unique blend of entertainment and insight for fellow gamers with kids.
DadMode: Parenting, Gaming, Streaming, Life
The Unscripted Adventures of a Parent Turned Streamer
Who knew that a child's defiant "no" could be so adorable? As I reminisce about my daughter's latest shenanigans, you'll find yourself chuckling along with our tales of parenting highs and lows, from the bliss of cuddle sessions to the whirlwind of chasing down an independent toddler. We also share a few laughs over the funny moments and unexpected misunderstandings that come with the territory, like the time a policy's lack of age restrictions led to quite the comedic mix-up. If you're navigating the waters of raising a little human or just love a good story about the lighter side of life, this is an episode you won't want to miss.
Then, strap in for a ride through the whimsical worlds of Willy Wonka and Bluey, as we compare the chocolatey wonder of a film event to the excitement of a children's attraction right in our own backyard. Plus, we're unpacking the essentials for a successful streaming comeback, from pinpointing the perfect streaming quality to choosing the optimal schedule that doesn't clash with the streaming universe's rush hour. Whether you're a content creator, a movie enthusiast, or just enjoy a good analytical deep dive, we've wrapped up a delightful package of insights and anecdotes for your listening pleasure.
Josh aka Bearded_Nova
I'm from Australia and am what you would call a father who games. I have 5 kids so not as much time to game as I used to. But I still game and stream when I can. So come join me on Twitch in chat as we chill out.
Business Inquiries: Bearded-n0va@aussiebb.com.au
Josh aka Moorph
I'm a US-based husband and father of two boys. I work full-time and have been a content creator since 2000. I'm a YouTube partner, Twitch and LiveSpace streamer who founded a content creation coaching company called Elev8d Media Group (elev8d.media). I'm a blogger, streamer, podcaster, and video-er(?).
Business Inquiries: josh@elev8d.media
Turning off normal human male mode. Switching to dad mode. Welcome in to dad mode With your hosts Bearded, Nova and Morph.
Speaker 2:I just want to start this episode by saying what happened last week. Oh, not last week. Three days ago, I come home to my daughter saying, no, I wasn't ready for that. It's just that you say, hey, do you want to do this? Are you funny? Do you want to go to bed? No, we're at eight months, it's too early for nose. She thinks she's a comic genius, like she's discovered the greatest thing on the world, because she actually laughs. Now, whenever she says no, she looks at people and just shakes her head and then stares like you're gonna laugh at me because I'm saying no, yeah, this is wasn't ready for that, this is your.
Speaker 2:This is your infant daughter right, yes, my infant daughter, this shit a lot. She's done a. She's done a lot in the last two weeks. I guess, like we've got crawling started now. Um, amazon, overnight playpen at my door, fantastic, so solutions. So didn't have that. I didn't have amazon with my first one, so me now to quickly order something when I get home and going, oh crap, she's mobile. Next thing you know we've got a's dad's nose. Yay, hello and hi.
Speaker 2:I want to say Is that all our words at the moment? Okay, getting there and just a lot has come from her. She's got this weird stupid. It's not stupid, it's adorable. Actually, instead of waving like a normal person or like that, like a child normally does, yeah to strangers, now she sits there and goes like this, like the um waving the little fingers in front of the face like, yeah, just the little fingers under the chin like hello.
Speaker 2:That's a hello to people when she's wanting to be nice to him. No one has taught her this. I haven't seen it on TV. I have no clue where this has come from. This is just a thing in our house.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I remember that. You know, my boys are 10 and 12 now and it's awesome when you with you with five kids. It's awesome when they first start to do those cute little things or they start to say the first few words or take their first steps and then, as you get older, you wish that that had stopped there and, in a way, like you, want to become healthy, successful human beings. But also all of the problems start when they can say words and move around on their own.
Speaker 2:You know it's yeah, yeah that's why I had this barbecue the other day I went to and one of my friends, him and his wife, are having their second job and just announced it. She's just coming out of the first trimester or something and he's looking at um, my daughter, because I believe they went and got, didn't know that was the thing you can get a little test that early now to find out whether you're having a boy or girl before scans. So they paid for that. So they're having a daughter, which would be their first, and he was looking at her sitting on the rug outside in this yard, in the yard, and she goes.
Speaker 2:I like this stage in children. This is the stage where they just there's not too much, they're not running around anywhere, they're just deal. And I agree that's my favorite period. They don't when they can just sit. My wife reckons lay on their back and be happy, but I think sit because usually a little bit more happier at that point. But when they can sit and they don't talk to you and they're happy by themselves, it's like the best. Possibly two days to two months of your life as a parent, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's, it's uh, the period isn't long, right, because once they start learning things and realizing what they can do, you know they're sponges, they want to do more and more, and more and more, and that's it's great, to an extent, you know, until the first time one of them gives you the finger or whatever like that. You know they're sponges, they want to do more and more, and more and more, and that's it's great, to an extent, you know, until the first time one of them gives you the finger or whatever like that you know. And and then you're like all right, well, um, can I just give you back? And apparently that's you can't. No, there's, there's no. Like I realized, I left the hospital both times without a receipt, so there's no exchanges no returns, nothing I could do.
Speaker 2:I did see a video on tiktok day uh saying about putting kids back, and it was a dad. Uh, the mom was sitting at the bottom of like an inflatable slot, yeah, and the dad just said, hey, let's just send this child back, and tried aiming it up and sending it down the slots.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I uh because that didn't work, but we'll try again. I, I might have suggested that in my house, and it was a hard no, um, yeah, yeah, but I can't think of why. I can't think of why, I don't know. Like you, just suck it up, deal with it. You know, um, you know there was a I don't remember what, where it was in the us, but it was a number of years ago, um, where there was a policy in in some city where you could give you is that you, if you don't, if you need to give up your child, you can bring them to the fire station, you know, and and they'll take them. But what they didn't. Policy is give an age limit. So there were people like trying to drop off their 10 year olds. Yeah, like, ma'am, you can't, you can't do that, yeah, and they, they quickly, uh, fix that little loophole yeah, that's what the box on the side of the building or something like that, yeah yeah, I think it's just like you drive by.
Speaker 3:You open their door, you boot them out, say roll, tuck and roll.
Speaker 2:You know, but apparently you can't do that they make it a box now, so it's for infants, and you're just gonna see that one parent trying to contortion their child into the box yeah, yeah, just suck in, put your hands up.
Speaker 3:There we go. This is boy, we're here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, yeah, um I'll say yeah right, we don't have them no no, I'm pretty sure I've never. No, I've never seen them.
Speaker 2:No, I don't really know what people do, yeah, which they don't want the job. Most people just like at the hospital going. Oh well, I guess the health system is being different. There are people that go and have a child at the hospital because it's free here and they're not up for it. So it's kind of like hey, no, I don't want this child and then the hospital takes care of it. I guess would be the best way to put it. Oh, I guess you're not really having too many outliers.
Speaker 2:They put them in an orphanage or something, or yeah, I don't know, I've never really I've never really looked into that system, this I don't, I don't even know. They've got homes like group homes and then they've got the foster system, but I don't really think there's too many or I could be wrong. I'm probably, I'm probably gonna get some hate from this, saying that we don't.
Speaker 3:I know we probably do, but I've never in my 40 years seen an orphanage they exist all over this us, but I don't think I've actually seen one myself either. The orphanage from Willy Wonka is popping through my head right now, probably because I watched it with my kids a few months ago, but I don't think it's that pleasant either you brought up Willy Wonka.
Speaker 2:Did you see that Willy Wonka, uh event they had?
Speaker 3:in the UK I think it was the non-official one that was just like a cut out of Timothee Chalamet. Some shit on the wall. Yeah, that's funny. That's funny, that's funny, you're free of that.
Speaker 2:we've got a bluey, um, a bluey thing happening here. Obviously, it's like living in the town that Bluey is created in and where Bluey lives. So they're doing a bluey world, which sounds cool. It's a couple of thousand square feet, no, be more.
Speaker 3:I just want to say for all the guys out there who are giggling inside because they're now thinking bluey, I am doing the same thing, Blue blue blue, the color blue, the dog.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, so we're at home with that, so they're doing this big hop up event. I thought it was a world they're calling it a world and I thought it was like an amusement park type of thing, like, oh, that makes sense, that you know you could build this and being as world popular as it is now, people, it's like a travel thing, another reason to come to my city, but it's only time limited. They're only going to run it for like a year and then shut it down. But it's not little. It's 4,000 square meters, which would be, I want to say, want to say 12 000 square feet. That's pretty big, like I'm probably more close to 9, 10, 10, 000 square feet, like it's a pig, it's.
Speaker 2:And that was the thing my friend said. I'm like I, I've had to, I've had to re-register for pre-sales when it comes on so I can buy tickets to go. Um, feel like a fuckwit saying that, but I've had to do that. And that was the first thing my friend said to me was oh, is this going to be like the willy wonka?
Speaker 3:the willy wonka, possibly, possibly, I'm going to show up to a guy dressed in a dog costume and a cardboard cutout and that's probably it yeah, yeah, um the you know, when I saw that that place actually had people come, I'm like maybe I should try to pull off some scams like that. It doesn't sound that difficult, it just appeals to me, to be a scumbag.
Speaker 2:You just got to find a group of stupid like an area of stupid people.
Speaker 3:There's plenty in the US too.
Speaker 2:Exactly, I'd see it all the time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, did you see the movie Willy Wonka?
Speaker 2:The new one? Yeah, is that like the backstory of him?
Speaker 3:Yeah, like before, yep All right, okay, yeah, I brought the kids to see that. I wanted to see it and I'm like you guys are going to go see it with me, and they, they ended up loving it, like of course. Now, though, they can't stop playing like the music from it all the time in the house, and that is it good music, or is it?
Speaker 2:no, it's music.
Speaker 3:It's funny silly music, you know, but it's. I've had enough. It's been six months or whatever, and it's just still For the first two months after the movie came out, that's all they played in the house all day long, like they get home from school they put the damn soundtrack on and now it's just occasional. But you know, I would catch myself at work humming the Oompa Loompa song and it's just like I wanted to be dead. It was terrible. Do they song? And it's just like I wanted people wanted to be dead. Like it was what. It was terrible. Did I like replaying? Like the same movies? Yeah, well, my older son does not. My younger son is like me, like. Not only does he like replaying movies over and over again, I have scenes that I like in certain movies, mainly action ones. You know. Yeah, I want to see this action sequence again and he's the same same way and it drives everybody else in the house nuts I haven't done that in ages.
Speaker 2:To me it used to be, you know, when we did 3d tvs, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think. Um, and then piracy got to like a really good level of quality where you'd like the codecs were really good and you can get some. Really, I got into a stage of blu-rays basically uh, early blu-ray, that 1080p, and it was transformers for me, one of the transformers movies yep, I think all of the first two, but they had some really good scenes in it and I just had like the perfect downloaded copy and it was a 3d version. I had a nice new high-end 3d tv and I had no problems every so often, just put it on these glasses, yep, put it on the movie, just to watch a couple of scenes, because it just looked so damn fucking good yeah, the transformer movies would.
Speaker 3:I can see how they would look good and I will say um, they're not good movies, but the special effects are amazing in them yeah, yeah, that was more it the effects, the particle effects, some of the 3d work in it.
Speaker 2:I'm like this audio right, a good tv and the audio you like. I think all dads do that at one stage. They go through a period of a tv and they really like their tv and they just start putting stuff that would look good on their tv, just to sit there and look at and go that's a good looking tv like. I still yeah, I still do that yeah you'll load up. Yeah, I don't mind a couple of the kids pix. I load them up. I'm like look at the color.
Speaker 3:Look at the color. Yeah, yeah, you know what I don't like. I don't like watching stuff in 4K. It's too crisp. You know what I mean? They shoot a lot of films in 24 FPS. I don't like watching 60. Unless it's like sports, I don't like watching 60. And unless it's like sports, I don't like watching.
Speaker 2:yeah, because like it just looks wrong, you know what I mean, because that's the lord of the rings in 60, remember, yeah, the, the uh, um, the, the second series, um, the two towers, no, no, second series, the second lot of movies, oh, the hobbit, the hobbit, the hobbit series was done in 60 and that was really weird. I'll admit, 60 fps as a, as a, as a video, as a movie, is just doesn't feel right. As a game, it's not enough, right? Um, then you would hate I was just saying you said 4K. You would hate my Shield then, because I have the Shield theory, okay, instead of an Apple theory.
Speaker 2:And the one thing I love about it is it can use NVIDIA's AI to upscale everything, so it can upscale a 480p video or 720p to 4k. It will add more detail to it, yeah, and you can watch older shows that ain't obviously they're not filmed in hd because they're a period before hd, but it looks crisp, it looks good, it actually looks really great. And I, you can even turn on the slider. Yeah, slide it left and right, so I do that when people come over. My hell, look at this. Can your tv do this? Um, it's, I love that feature.
Speaker 3:I actually do like the 4k for that detail yeah, we uh our tv broke a year or so ago. We got a new one and it did the same thing that the auto upscaling. I had to shut it off because, like I mean, it worked, it looked. It looked cool that they could make it happen. I just it just doesn't look like I want it to look, in fact, like no, we were talking about streaming before and, like I always streamed at 1080p 60, I'm like maybe I should stream at 1080p or 720, 24, like you know what I mean. Like I I uh because if I don't like the way it looks, it's different.
Speaker 2:It's different. I don't mind youtube, youtube and that I find different. I think it's cinematic and you know you hear that word a lot. 24 is cinematic, um, or even 48. I guess 48 it's all right, it's tolerable, but um, youtube I find kind of acceptable. Yeah, I guess it depends on your content. If you're gaming, the game is running at 60, 100 and 20, 144, 165, whatever hurts, you know frames you're refreshing at. If you're a tiny, you know cube, square up here in the corner down whatever, while you're streaming that 30, 60, you're not really going to notice it. Either way, if you were purely just chatting and it was full screen, maybe 60 would look a little bit weird I guess, yeah, I mean when I was streaming more I I'm on a little bit of a.
Speaker 3:What do we call a hiatus now, sabbatical, whatever? Um, I always did 1080p 60, always um're just chatting, you know.
Speaker 2:So I'm wondering if that just looked weird no, I never had a problem, just stream up that one, I think.
Speaker 3:I think if it was a youtube video then that would look different I started to downscale some of my because I used you know you know I used to pump out a lot of youtube videos too, and they always did 60 fps. Um, I did start downscaling some of them till 24 towards the end and I thought they still looked decent. But like I was so used to the 60, I'm like, oh, something wrong with it. But in general I just for some things I don't like it I don't know what are you?
Speaker 3:listening like what do you guys think about?
Speaker 1:what.
Speaker 3:FPS do you like for your movies and TV?
Speaker 2:let us know in, like the comments of where you're hearing this yes, it's a conversation I've never had with anyone, I guess, is I like to think that if you're running like twitch, if you have the ability to downscale, um to to have downscaling involved, and that it works well, I think it's it's worth running what you can, the best you can to, to your twitch and then letting your audience decide what quality they have yeah, however, if you have not got the the affiliate mark yet and you don't have your own um ability to do that, because I think 4 000 series and video cards can now do that without being an affiliate on twitch.
Speaker 2:I think so. But if you don't have that, multi-sampling for your audience, 720, 30, even 45 is a-okay. Yeah, because you cover most of your bases. Sam, you're not going to have people complain that you're not doing high AR if that's the only one you can do, and if you went any lower, then you would get you know. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a happy medium yeah, it is.
Speaker 3:Um, now that's something that you, you know you were telling me earlier you started to think about again, as you're you're contemplating, kind of getting back on, uh, on the platform, right yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, I am very contemplate, not not where. I guess, with you doing your hiatus, you're doing that one day a week. That's probably what I'm looking at doing. It's just doing the one stream a week again. Um, I haven't, I haven't worked out when. Right, yeah, that's what we're trying to wrap in my head, like when do I do this? We have to choose one one night where you know what night's the best night to do this, where, where is this going to be the most consistent? Where do I feel? Because you know a tuesday night's different to a friday night, friday night's different to a sunday night, like that. Every night has different peaks, highs and lows. So you're kind of trying to work out where the audience is going to be, I guess, and at the same time, you want to pick it at a time where, sadly, you don't want too much competition. I've talked about how nice it'd be to stream at peak hours, but there's like finding that right hour in the peak hour. You know what I mean. But yeah, yeah, you won't really want to go at that six o'clock at night where there's probably twitches at its highest, for the amount of stream is on and also the amount of viewers. Would it be better to come in that hour or so beforehand, where there's lots of viewers but the streamers haven't all started yet, or, vice versa, get at the tail end, yeah, which means I'll be back to analytics. I can't wait to be looking at that again all the time. I mean we do that here still, yeah, but then besides twitch, it wouldn't be just twitch, it means I have to do tiktok. Yeah, again, tiktok will be back. So tiktok's where I actually spend more time looking at analytics.
Speaker 2:Like I had a down pat to where my viewers were, where they were awake, what times were people most active. So I was really, um, really routine on when my posts were going live. Like I knew I had a small window early in the morning and it was early. It was or not early between 6 and 7 am. Yeah, was a window for where a video could be posted, because anytime after that 7 am I started getting tapered like it could be a great video. And 7 am and you get to that 9 10 lunchtime and that video wasn't going to perform and it wasn't going to get a pickup again back until like 8 o'clock at night. So there's like this big window there for the day where I was like it's not worth my time posting videos, right, yeah, so I look forward to tackling all this again. I want to bring it up probably again next time we talk about time after that where I'm at with this, because it's like relearning, it's like starting fresh.
Speaker 3:But instead I know what I'm doing. You see, there wasn't a lot of confidence behind that. You know what you're doing. You've been doing this for a long time.
Speaker 2:I've been doing this before. I know this isn't my first radio. I know how to get into this stuff, yeah, but I'm excited for the social interaction. I have no clue what I'm doing yet what I have streamed game talk reviews. Who that's up in the air?
Speaker 3:you know, what's interesting is, um, like you know, you're talking about the different time zones and what you, what you, what you want to hit, and like what works, what does. I was looking at the stats for our, our podcast and, um, we're, uh, we've been downloaded in in, uh, five different continents, which is pretty cool, but 90 percent it's america, 85% are from North America. Yeah, so, like you know, that tells me okay, that's where we want to market, or is it important to market other areas? I don't know, but you know it's funny.
Speaker 3:So, you know, I'm down to like one day a week streaming, and I was actually thinking the other day because, you know, I'm finally getting the call of duty for the first time ever, right, um, addicted like crack, yeah it, my god it is. But, uh, I I'm wondering, I'm thinking, wouldn't it be funny if, if I came back to do, say, two days a week, but it came back as a call of duty streamer that doesn't post on socials, like the opposite of the person I said, that Would have a success at this going forward, just to see If I could make something happen? I think that would be fucking hilarious To see what would happen. I'll only post headshot clips On TikTok and YouTube shorts yes, and I'll only stream Call of Duty With me just a little corner, maybe, looking at chat every now and then just to see what happens.
Speaker 2:Just no context either, just random headshots. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I know it will, most likely will happen, but I think it'd be funny to just prove it out.
Speaker 2:You know, um, we've talked about streaming for a couple different times, but yeah, that's not how you do it if I had to come back and I'm saying I'm a cold duty streamer, then something's seriously wrong in my life.
Speaker 3:That's all I'll say. I would have said that about myself until I started playing it. Um, yeah, I had a friend that that decided that's like an excuse, get me into it. And now I'm playing more than them and I've like actually outranked them and now they're mad. But oh really, you've gotten better. I have. I have like my, my kd is consistently over one now, which some people might listen if you don't have no context and whatever, but if you do have context, understand.
Speaker 3:I've only been playing for about five or six weeks, right and you're horrible at fps games and I'm horrible at fps games, but now my my, my ratio is positive is usually over one, not much over one. You know, like I'll have a game where I'm like five kills below one and then the next game I'll be 15 kills over one. You know what I mean. So it's fun, it uh but it's so much fun it's so much fun. I actually now I want to talk about. This is called me, but I won't because that's not interesting to most of the people listening to this.
Speaker 3:So but you haven't done warzone I haven't played one game of warzone yet and I don't. I'm like a little nervous about it for some reason. I don't know why. It's multiplayer, you die, you don't respond as quickly, but you know it's. I haven't played it, you haven't.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 3:I'm not a fan of.
Speaker 2:Call of Duty. I'm a quiet, vocal person about my opinions on the series. But Warzone I haven't played. Yeah, I played dmz for a little bit. Being a extraction shooter tarkov player, I went, okay, I'll give dmz a go. Um, not gonna lie, enjoyed my time with that a little bit there until it. You know, I had some great multiplayer with some other streamers.
Speaker 2:Um, really showcased that I'd probably be decent at call of duty if I played it. To be honest, it's like, okay, I could, I could be quite good at this game. Um, I'm interested in warzone but I don't I still haven't wrapped my head around it properly to play it, because I'm like it's not, it's battle royale, but it's not battle royale. I have no clue what's going on. Like it's not just I get shot and I die. I can come back and I gotta go to some place and fight to get back and yeah, it's like realistic fortnight um, with a few tweaks to it.
Speaker 3:And for anyone that is just yelling at me right now no, I don't play Fortnite a lot. I have played it, but my son plays it religiously. I watch him all of the time and I watch people play Warzone. The similarities are there, so stop complaining.
Speaker 2:It's just been games like Battle Royales. Pubg is about to come out with a new update where they're updating the graphics completely and it looks fantastic. I forget.
Speaker 3:PUBG exists.
Speaker 2:It's free.
Speaker 3:I know.
Speaker 2:It's free now. I only played it once it was free and I didn't mind it. But they're doing a complete overhaul, so it's like bringing it to Unreal Engine 5, I believe so it'll have the bringing it to unreal engine 5, I believe so have the really nice graphics and lighting and it actually looks pretty, looks good. Yeah, you can, you can terraform, you can dig into the ground. Well, we can come back, like with this new update of pub g. I'm going to be checking it out, so within a couple weeks, when we check back in again, it's probably going to be out. I'm going to give us an update there because I think like we could probably end this on a high note of. Battle royals are back. You're now core duty player. I'm coming back into content creation, wild world, one of the thing. Hopefully it'll just chill itself out for the next one a little bit, but I want to end it here so I can come back and update us on what PUBG's doing in the future.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I can't wait to use her treatment again and I can come on and I can play Warzone with you on stream.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Dad Mode. Our passion is navigating this wild journey of parenthood and modern life, from balancing family time to managing your career and still squeezing in some gaming and content creation. And no matter what the women say, they will never be able to pry the controller out of our cold dead hands. Anyway, we hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, find us on Twitter, tiktok and YouTube at DadModePodcast and we can be found on every podcast site at DadModePodcast. Y'all be cool. See you next time.
