Episode Details

Malcolm & Simone Collins discuss the viral controversy around the game Pragmata — a title that explicitly celebrates fatherhood and pronatalism. Is “dad corn” (games that stimulate parental instincts) as sinful as traditional porn? How should we think about masturbating evolutionary pathways for bonding with children?

In this unfiltered Based Camp episode, they break down:• Why Pragmata triggers leftists• The difference between healthy vs toxic ways to engage with parental instincts• Why gamers actually have more kids than non-gamers (with data)• Hassan’s “gamers are unfuckable losers” take demolished• Deontology vs consequentialism in faith, gaming, and family formation• Historic Christian attitudes toward sex, beauty, and pronatalism

A must-watch for anyone interested in pronatalism, video game culture, evolutionary psychology, and building high-fertility families in the modern world.

Video Game Developer Dads

Here’s the spreadsheet referenced in the episode.

It includes:

* 30 notable male video game developers

* Key games/works

* Father status: Father, Childless, or Unknown

* Children count where available

* Evidence summaries

* Source URLs in both the main sheet and a dedicated Sources sheet

* A Summary sheet with formulas and a pie chart

Summary results:

* Fathers: 20 of 30, 66.7%

* Explicitly childless: 2 of 30, 6.7%

* Unknown/publicly undocumented: 8 of 30, 26.7%

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Corn, what it does is all humans, because of evolutionary reasons, have a collection of pathways that cause pleasure when you do things tied to the birthing and rearing of the next generation.

if you’re here saying pragmata is not core, right? Functionally, how is it different? If I’m in my room and I’m playing pragmata, which I’m playing the game, I am fathering a fake child while I have real children downstairs. Mm-hmm. How is that not as ghoulish as masturbating to a fake woman when I have a real wife in the other room?

I, I- Hmm.

Simone Collins: That’s a really good point.

Speaker: And if you’re like, well, it’s not as bad when I engage with it because I don’t have real children yet, and it’s like, well, that’s about the same as saying it’s not as bad when I engage with it because I don’t have a real wife yet.

Anything that distracts from your tasks of [00:01:00] getting one of those things is equivalent in its sinfulness.

Speaker 8: And if you think I mean Stoji and hair splitting here, one, remember, I can’t make the same take on this that every other conservative commentator has had. I’ve got to have something new and fresh, so keep that in mind. But two, , right now, everyone’s so excited because this is the first time they have seen a game that is meant to masturbate the instinct to be a parent and father a child.

And so they are excited about it because some of them didn’t realize they had this emotion.

Speaker 10: And in getting people to realize that yes, playing with children is actually fun and something they want to do and having children of their own is something they want to do is a fundamentally good thing that this game was released. But the warning against the masturbation of this pathway and how toxic it can be is going to be made evidence in the years to come as people can with AI simulate children.

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be talking with you again after a few days break. Of course, our audience would know that. But we were in [00:02:00] DC talking with political plays and now we are back and there is an episode that everyone’s been asking us to do, and we are not gonna have the