 As you're seeing on screen, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, member of the British royal family, decided to speak out against Fortnite. In fact, the name of this article over at Nintendo Life is random. Prince Harry thinks Fortnite should be banned. It's so irresponsible. And his direct quotes, which he said to The Daily Express, it says, during The Daily Express reports that when he was at the YMCA in West London, Prince Harry urged parents to protect their children from irresponsible games using Fortnite as an example. He describes the game as an addiction, stating that parents don't know what to do about it and it affects on their children. It says, the game shouldn't be allowed. Where is the benefit of having it in your household? It's created to addict an addiction to keep you in front of a computer for as long as possible. It's so irresponsible. Parents have got their hands up. They don't know what to do about it. It's like waiting for the damage to be done. Now I obviously, as someone who is working in the video game industry, covers video games, plays video games, for a living, all this stuff, am going to be biased in this regard in response to this. I think this is a natural thing. But I also feel like my bias comes from a place of understanding of video games that someone who doesn't actively play them might not get. Yes, there are people addicted to video games. There are people that prioritize video games over other things in their life, be it homework, be it their families, be it their own kids. There are many stories out there about parents who have not taken care of their kids because they couldn't stop playing World of Warcraft, or they couldn't stop playing Fortnite, or they couldn't stop playing whatever game they happened to be playing. People who have lost their jobs because they took a day off for work, they didn't get that day off and they just didn't show up to work anyways. There are people that have serious addiction problems with video games. I am not trying to be dismissive of that reality, and there are obviously children in particular that have even worse problems with it at times because children tend to have addictive personalities. Typically as a kid, if you find something you enjoy, you just keep trying to do that thing you enjoy. But you'll never hear parents complain about a kid being addicted to basketball because if a kid skipped school to play hoops, well, he's just playing hoops. What's the harm in that? What if a kid skipped school to play video games? It's the end of the world. You see my drift. When you don't understand how a child's mind works, you start to think that the video games are the inherent issue. Reality is, especially when it comes to youth, and it comes to youth and addiction to things like video games, is that the responsibility for it actually falls on the parents. If your child has a problem with video games and you have not done anything to address that problem, then you are just perpetuating the issue. Video games are there to entertain. They are a source of entertainment. How many of you guys as adults don't stop watching TV? How many of you are constantly on your social media profiles on your phones? How many of you can't take your phone down for three seconds to hold a conversation with someone without that device in your hand? Right? Anyone can be addicted to anything. Human beings on the whole are an addictive race. We find things that we enjoy, we are creatures of habit, and we just kind of cling on to and hold on to that stuff. What is on the parents when it comes to youth to handle video game addiction? I'll give you an example from my own home. I have three children, right? I've never hid that fact that I am a father of three. My middle child, my oldest son, has a problem when it comes to video games. I'm not going to sit there and deny and act like he doesn't. His problem when he comes to video games is he prioritizes playing games on his tablet, playing my Nintendo Switch, playing the Super NES classic over basically any other activity. If I offered to go on a bike ride, he doesn't want to do it, he'd rather play video games. Which is fine in that of itself that he'd rather do one thing over the other, but he'd rather do it over finishing his schoolwork. He'd rather do it instead of going to school. If he was allowed to literally play video games all day long from the moment he wakes up until whenever he passes out, which will be whenever his tablet dies in his bed or something at midnight. He would play it literally from morning to night and not even eat food. And no, I've never let my son actually do that, but the point I'm making here is that it is on me as a parent to kind of put a stop to it. Does that mean he needs to not play video games at all? In some extreme cases where maybe a parent has allowed it to get that bad, maybe that is the case. Maybe you need to hard quit video games. But I don't think that that's the answer, and maybe it's because I've been involved in this video game space for 30 years. I look at it as, no, just like when I was a kid and I wanted to play video games all the time, my parents made me play it in moderation. What they made me do is say, look, you can play video games for a couple hours, but then you need to go outside for a little bit. You need to do your chores, you need to get your homework done. You can't play video games until your homework's done, right? Now what ended up happening is my grades actually got better because I knew that if I got better grades, I would be allowed to play more video games. So what I have done with my son, and this is just based on what my parents did with me, is I've used his ability and his desire to want to play video games as a reward for doing everything else in life that he should be doing. So when his chores are done, he can have an hour of playing video games. If he gets a really good grade that day in school or aced one of his tests, he can have some extra time playing video games. After, we might do other activities as well, right? So it's not like he comes home and he aces everything and just plays games. I'll say, no, no, no. They're still set time to play outside. We have a trampoline actually in our backyard. So play on the trampoline, go for a bike ride, go for a walk. Go do a zillion things. I make sure there's time where he plays with his brother and his sister. But reality is, he is rewarded. Video games are treated as a reward for him doing everything else in life he's supposed to do. And my hope in that is that he gets like me. Whereas, yeah, as I got older, I don't reward myself with video games anymore. But I don't look at video games as a necessity in my life. Even though I enjoy playing them, I'm passionate about them, and I'm so passionate about them, I kind of had this career that I'm building for myself around them. Here on YouTube, reality is, if someone took away all my video games tomorrow, took away my YouTube channel, I might feel a little upset for a day or two, especially with how much I've built up this YouTube channel. But then I would just move on and get a different job and do what I need to do. Because my life, the most important things at least in my life are not video games. They're my children. They're my fiance. They're this roof over my head, the cars that we drive. Like, all these things that matter and are way more important to my life than sitting right here on YouTube talking about video games. Well, more important than Fortnite. And you guys know I've played a ton of Fortnite, especially on live stream with you guys. And I don't think there's anything wrong with playing a ton of video games. But moderation is key, especially at a young age. I think it's more important than ever when kids are young that you introduce them to many facets of life. You know, my kids, I've introduced them to several different sports. I'm working on getting them introduced into music and band and choir and all these other activities. Because reality is, when they find the one activity they like, they shut everything else out. So finding out other things they enjoy doing helps add variety to their life and ultimately leads to probably a more fulfilling life. In my opinion, I was a four sport athlete that also played video games and was in choir and band. I did everything. I loved everything. And I felt like I've had a more fulfilling life because of how much I enjoy things that aren't just video games. Now, this isn't to de-emphasize the importance of video games, but this is to de-emphasize the point he's making that Fortnite is a problem. Fortnite isn't the problem. How parents handle their children are the problem because a lot of parents don't understand the medium of video games. They don't understand the good things that can come out of playing video games. The depression that can help be conquered or at least quelled by video games. The happiness that can be found in escaping the world or if the parent ever stopped asking themselves, why is my kid playing so many video games? Why? If it's just because he enjoys it, that's a valid offer, but that also means you're not introducing enough other things in their life that they might enjoy as well. And maybe you don't know what else they might enjoy because they haven't experienced those things. And it's hard. I admit, if I let my son go and just play video games all the time, I admit that when he's older, especially in his teenage years, I'm gonna have a hard time with him, right? I would have a hard time detaching him from his video games because he would be so addicted to them. But that's my fault for not paying enough attention to him when he was younger, taking the easy route, letting him play video games all day and leaving me the heck alone. To me, that's a failure on the parenting side. And I know every situation is different. Every individual is different. Every child is different. I know this just from working in childcare myself and having children myself and being around a lot of different adults myself. Everyone is different. So every situation is different. I can't put presumptions on them. But for Prince Harry to come out and talk about how the game shouldn't be allowed, where's the benefit of having it in your house? So I can tell you the benefit of Fortnite and pretty much any video game being in your house right now, it's a source of entertainment. I can look at Prince Harry and be like, why do you need to go to a basketball game? What benefit does attending that NBA game or attending that soccer game or attending whatever game you happen to be attending, what benefit does attending that sporting event have to your life? Well, the benefit of entertaining you. That's what video games do. So I think that all of this just comes when you grow up in a culture that's not like in video game. Like you didn't really grow up with video games. I think you have a hard time understanding the video game medium. And video games have been fighting for decades really to get mainstream acceptance. And while there are really crappy stories out there about parents and about kids and about what I think is a fundamental lack of discipline, what I also think is missed sometimes are the amazing stories out there. The amount of money that we as gamers raise for charity is not talked about enough by mainstream media. The amount of happiness that a game like Fortnite might be bringing to an individual is not talked about enough by mainstream media. So it leads to people like Prince Harry and others getting this tainted viewpoint of video games. And honestly, I wish I could sit them down and show them all of the evidence and articles that exist out there, all the scientific research that proves that video games aren't inherently the problem, but rather it's the parents' lack of understanding of video games and the ability to properly raise their children that seems to be the bigger issue at play. At least in my humble opinion, of course, none of this research is 100% definitive. Because as I said, every parent, every kid, completely different situation. That being said, I'm actually curious what you guys have to say about this. I've seen a lot of angry reactions about this. Some of this looping in things about how they don't like that the royal family is even a thing and they leech off the taxpayers. Whatever, that's a totally separate political issue. I'm just talking about how this leader in the world, the leader at least in the UK, is kind of basically coming out and condemning Fortnite, which in turn sort of condemns all of video games. Because Fortnite's not really any different in comparison to any other game. Sure, you could play it perpetually, but you can do that with pretty much any game if you want. I mean, this isn't the first perpetual never-ending game to exist. So he's just targeting it because it's the hot button popular game of the past year. And if it was something else like Apex Legends or if it was, you know, if people were playing Breath of the Wild nonstop or we're talking World of Warcraft again, it's whatever's popular at the time. That's what he's going to put the blame on. So I don't know. I obviously massively disagree. I know I have bias, but I have so much experience in this field, both as a parent who has kids who play video games and as a gamer myself to understand that, you know what, a lot of it's on me. If my son has problems later in life, it's because I failed him. But you know what? You know what's happening? As I expand this horizon, he's starting to enjoy his life more. He's not acting out as much. He is happier. Yes, he still gets to play video games and enjoy them, but now when I say, okay, but it's time to be done, he doesn't argue anymore when he used to when he first started playing games. Why is that? Because I feel like as a parent, I am raising him right to understand that video games are just a form of entertainment and not what you should necessarily base your life around. Ironically, it's hard for me to have that conversation when and when my job is based around video games, but I try to make him understand there's the job, there's the entertainment, and then there's the rest of your life. Anyways, you guys don't know what to think about this down in the comments below. Be sure to enter our Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Intendance Switch giveaway through the gleam.io link. Drop a like on this video and hey, maybe just for the hell of it, we'll end up playing Fortnite later today on Switch just despite them. All right, I'll catch you in the next video.