Level Up Together

For years, I used video games to disappear.

Not the fun kind of disappearing. The kind where you come up for air and realize your kid grew two inches and started using sarcasm on purpose, and you missed both.

I'm Ellis Morford, and this isn't a strategy guide. I built one instead: a book about pulling your kid off their game just long enough to sit down and play it with them.

Your kid is playing without you right now. Somewhere in the house, a controller is waiting for a second player. LEVEL UP TOGETHER is 33 short chapters, none longer than a coffee break, on how to pick that controller up and use it as a door instead of a wall. Fortnite, Minecraft, Animal Crossing, Rocket League, whatever they're into, there's a way in, and I'll show you where I found mine.

This book comes out of a season where I was locked out more than I was let in: a divorce, an injury that took away most of what I used to be good at, and a stretch of standing outside a door I used to walk through without knocking. What got me back inside more than anything else was a game controller and the willingness to lose on purpose in front of my kid.

No walkthroughs. No brain rot lecture. No 12-step program for screen time. Just real research (there's a plain English source note in the back, because I'm a dad, not a scientist), real mistakes, and the same advice I'd give a buddy on the porch: connection comes first, limits come second, and thirty minutes of actually showing up beats three hours of being in the room without being there.

You don't have to be good. You just have to show up.

Dad, if this book reaches you first, hand it to their mom when you're done. This works for both of you.

Broken But Built is the brand and the belief behind this book: that the broken parts of us are still buildable. Over 12,000 people have already pulled up a chair on YouTube. Come level up with us.