Carter attended school at Kaikorai Valley High School. While at Kaikorai in 1978, he formed the rock group Bored Games with Wayne Elsey (bass) and Fraser Batts (guitar), Jonathan Moore and Jeff Harford on drums. The group debuted at Kaikorai's talent quest in 1979, then went on to play a gig supporting Toy Love. When Elsey tired of being in the band (he and Carter having had arguments onstage at times) and left to form The Stones, he was replaced by Terry Moore. In 1981 Bored Games broke up, before the 1982 release of their only EP, "Who Killed Colonel Mustard", on Flying Nun Records. Terry Moore would later join The Chills, which grew out of another Dunedin high school band, the Same. Musical historian John Dix calls Bored Games and the Same "the most important...teenage Dunedin bands" during the emergence of the Dunedin sound.