|
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| yosito wrote:
| This is how Factorio feels to me. I love the game. But I can only
| handle it during long periods away from work, otherwise it leads
| me toward feeling burnt out.
| ISL wrote:
| I disagree with a statement in the article: _" As a tech
| employee, if you can't bear overtime, you can pivot to other
| industries. But the social problem is not going to be solved
| because you quit."_
|
| Quitting is the most powerful signal a worker can send. It pushes
| up the price of that work and is the strongest-possible
| declaration that something is wrong.
|
| Source: Have quit from a field that I love deeply because the
| environment became intolerable. Furthermore, I've now signed on
| to a new line of work precisely because the environment is so
| supportive.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I would be curious which line of work you find has such a
| supportive environment, we hear so much about environments that
| are unsupportive.
| GoodJokes wrote:
| honkycat wrote:
| I feel like the workaholic culture defies everything we
| understand about modern productivity and I am surprised it is so
| celebrated in other cultures.
|
| I wonder if it is more about not raising quality of living TOO
| high, as opposed to actual competitive concerns.
|
| For me, I see my work and life as a balance of sharpening the axe
| and cutting through the tree. I practice mindfulness a lot and am
| constantly trying to optimize my mood and life to stay efficient
| and happy.
|
| I take care of myself in my down-time, and during work hours I
| execute ruthlessly. This has always worked well for me. I
| consistently receive excellence awards at work, get large
| promotions and raises, and have never been put on a PIP or fired.
| A CEO at a company I worked at once said of me "I wish we could
| clone honkycat 5 times to fill these positions." Not to brag.
| Just establishing that I perform well at work.
|
| Overall my motto is "4 good hours" of deep work a day will keep
| me in the green performance-wise.
|
| So what is the reasoning of this culture? Am I just mistaken?
| lstodd wrote:
| Idk how it's now, but ten years ago managing a part of a corp in
| Eve Online was a full-time job, not to mention alliances. Not
| very different from managing a real company.
| ironhaven wrote:
| A great game I played that has a "Shocking game mechanic that
| teaches you something", is called Rebel Inc.[0] The game is
| basically a sandbox inspired by the war in Afghanistan. One of
| the mechanics is in order to win battles on the map, you need
| airstrikes in order to gain ground. The downside to more
| airstrikes is that it leads to civilian casualties. You are
| basically given a choice between fewer airstrikes or more
| airstrikes and covering up any civilian casualties.
|
| [0] https://www.ndemiccreations.com/en/51-rebel-inc
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| I had to stop watching Silicon Valley for the same reason.
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| Same with Mr Robot.
|
| I don't need to watch a show about IT security and mental
| illness -- that's already my life.
|
| I also think that's why Mad Men and some of the Edwardian
| dramas are so popular: close enough to our time period that we
| can identify, but different enough that we don't feel that
| anxiety or uncomfortable connection.
|
| My dad, for example, wasn't interested in watching Mad Men --
| he's from big East Coast cities and grew up in that period,
| went to 'Nam, etc.
| imdsm wrote:
| I struggle to get into shows like this too. I want something
| totally different.
| [deleted]
| gigaflop wrote:
| 'Startup' on Netflix was worse for me, since it didn't bother
| to lean into the humor at all, and the whole premise became
| more and more unbelievable as it went on.
|
| Silicon Valley was at least fun to laugh at.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Ever watch "Betas" on Amazon Prime?
| p_l wrote:
| I still haven't broken farther than maybe 15 minutes with
| Silicon Valley, and I don't even get to work there...
| hinkley wrote:
| There was a puzzle game that came out when UML was still a thing
| people talked about doing and put on their resumes. The puzzle
| was a graph of nodes and edges and you won when none of the edges
| crossed.
|
| I had fun with it for about an hour and then got this terrible
| sense if deja vu. And then it hit my like a ton of bricks. This
| is flattening a UML diagram but turned into a game. I pushed back
| from my desk and went to get some air, and that was the last time
| I played that game. And (coincidentally?) close to the last time
| I volunteered to do make class diagrams.
| munificent wrote:
| I was a game developer when this came out and all of the
| artists made jokes about how this is just like unwrapping UV
| coordinates for texture mapping.
| markburns wrote:
| Was it this one?
| https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/unta...
|
| I went and found this game again relatively recently. It
| reminds me so much of decoupling and refactoring software or
| vice versa. I spent a few years occasionally trying to remember
| what distant memory of an experience decoupling reminded me of.
|
| I quite enjoy both. Whilst simultaneously kind of hating the
| process.
|
| Incredible sense of clarity once you've resolved everything
| that was stepping in the way of understanding. Moments of
| despair and frustration. Sense of progress combined with
| feeling this could be never ending. Iteratively trying to step
| towards something better. It all seeming worth it in the end.
| So many parallels.
| hinkley wrote:
| Most likely, yes. These games might be fun for students as a
| learning exercise. Not so much for me.
| nomercy400 wrote:
| I once made such a game, but that was more based from how
| interesting graph theory can be, and how you can visualize
| graphs and interact with them. The most difficult part was
| thinking how to create a solvable level, i.e. how to create a
| planar graph. Oh, and ofcourse actually completing the whole
| game, which I actually managed to do.
| nullc wrote:
| Just greedily generate a planar graph? lay out some points
| randomly, start adding edges at random and skip adding any
| new edge that crosses an existing edge? Then randomize the
| positions of the nodes to give you a game board?
|
| Or is there a simpler way?
| hinkley wrote:
| My first job, someone used the Rational Rose diagram tool
| to print out their diagram (on a huge wide format printer)
| and it was amazing...ly awful.
|
| There was a bar of lines three inches wide along the top of
| the chart. They connected a bunch of rectangles on the left
| side of the chart to rectangles on the right side of the
| chart. How on earth you were supposed to trace those lines
| I have absolutely no idea. But we got some good gallows
| humor out of it.
|
| I used to joke I'd hire some game engine designers to apply
| their path finding algorithms to solving this problem.
| curiousgal wrote:
| Couldn't find a translated version unfortunately.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| This was how I felt playing _Papers Please_.
|
| I absolutely respect and appreciate that the game wasn't trying
| to be "fun"; it was trying to communicate a message. And I firmly
| believe that not all games _should_ be fun.
|
| But at the same time... well, I have enough work to do in my
| life. There has to be a balance. Not every movie is "fun" but
| even art house films are generally "pleasant" to watch on some
| level.
| INTPenis wrote:
| I don't work as hard at work as I did in papers please.
| the_af wrote:
| Interesting. I didn't feel that way about _Papers Please_ ,
| because it has a story and it's more like a short puzzle.
|
| It's not endless. It's basically a sequence of puzzles (with a
| story and some choices thrown in), where each stage introduces
| a variation on the puzzle. There is a very limited number of
| stages, after which the game ends.
|
| Compare this to something like Factorio, which is essentially
| endless (and you're programming, so basically it's job #2).
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Same; once I got the message, I put the game down and haven't
| picked it back up again. It's genuinely stressful and
| demoralizing.
| latexr wrote:
| I don't know how far you got into it, but I will underscore it
| does have a story and an ending (multiple, even). You won't be
| in an infinite daily grind to finish, and your actions have
| consequences.
| asiachick wrote:
| Most movies are only a 1.5 to 2.5 hr investment. Games are
| often 5hrs to 100+hrs
| gotaquestion wrote:
| I kinda felt that way about Factorio, it reminded me too much of
| doing CPU metal-layer layout (running roads & rails) combined
| with microarchitecture design (optimizing pipelines).
|
| But in reality, I think "The Stanley Parable" hit a little too
| close to home for me.
| nahimn wrote:
| Is there an english version of the game?
| Koshkin wrote:
| Even modern FPS are like that. In the recent installments of Far
| Cry, for example, I have found myself spending not a small
| portion of time collecting stuff, tweaking the possessions,
| building/fixing things. While still enjoying these otherwise
| excellent and fun games, I find older games, like the original
| Doom, Unreal, or early installments of FarCry, more enjoyable and
| fun - exactly because they feel less like "work."
| mst wrote:
| I really wish there were more tactical games where the battles
| and armies were predetermined rather than configurable - I
| absolutely love tweaking army composition and handling resource
| builds and tech trees and etc. -sometimes- but some days I
| really just want to be airdropped into a (preferably turn
| based) fight and left to think my way through winning with the
| resources I've been given.
|
| (then if I really just want to shoot a virtual bad guy, I go
| back to replaying the old Wing Commander games since for
| whatever reason I can climb the learning curves of those more
| easily than FPSes)
| jmole wrote:
| Triangle Strategy is pretty good, if you can withstand a few
| hours of dialogue among the battles.
| pletsch wrote:
| I like the Civilization series, with a modern era start, for
| this.
|
| There's often a couple different ways to victory and there's
| already enough built out to put plans into action
| immediately.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Escape From Tarkov is the ultimate anxiety simulator.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Sounds like the Chinese version of Harvest Moon + Rollercoaster
| Tycoon + Paperboy :-D
| thisoneworks wrote:
| I'll throw light on another linked article from the same website
| https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006391/how-one-obscure-word-... .
| Reading it is just blowing my mind, as someone from SouthEast
| Asia (not China) the conversation on competition and societal
| pressure rings very true.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Therefore, the winners demand the losers to admit that they
| are a failure: Not only that they have less money and fewer
| material possessions; they must bow down morally and admit that
| they're useless and have failed. If you don't admit it and
| simply quietly walk away from the competition, you'll face a
| lot of criticism. It's not allowed.
|
| This passage was pretty hair-raising. I think the freedom to
| fail gracefully is something we take for granted in "the west".
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| There is plenty of this in The West, too. It's often just
| couched in different terms, or in different ways. The
| continued dog-pile on the poor or homeless comes to mind.
|
| To quote some dude from The West:
|
| "It is not enough merely to win; others must lose." -- Gore
| Vidal
| asiachick wrote:
| Not sure it's the same point but ultimately you're
| responsible for yourself. Even if you were born into bad
| circumstances or had bad luck. Forcing others to be
| responsible for you is morally and ethically wrong. That
| doesn't mean we shouldn't help the poor or homeless, often
| out of our own self interest, who wants to live in a world
| of poor and homeless people? But, as soon as you claim I'm
| obligated to help them you've made me a slave instead of a
| volunteer.
| mst wrote:
| Something of a tangent but I've found it really helpful in
| a bunch of situations to force myself to talk/think about
| "what's the success condition?" rather than "what's the win
| condition?" to make it harder to accidentally fall into the
| trap of assuming there needs to be a loser. Positive sum
| games are a wonderful thing if you can arrange them.
| thisoneworks wrote:
| It's funny how I highlighted it as well, along with the guy
| applying to mcdonald's story. The kind of social pressure and
| moral shaming it describes is absolutely real
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Previously:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26027673
| thisoneworks wrote:
| Thanks for that!
| lostgame wrote:
| Shemnue, anyone? I still have nightmares of the forklift
| simulator.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| That part was dreadful for me as a child. It stalled me for
| months in game. Or maybe it was not understanding that I needed
| money and shouldn't blow it on collectible figurines and arcade
| games... in game.
|
| As an adult I have revisited it and it was incredibly easy. A
| complete non issue by all means. An interesting game design
| challenge for sure.
| notjustanymike wrote:
| "The investors give you a sum of money. You spend it, expand, and
| then get more funding."
|
| Tom Nook would like a word.
| geocrasher wrote:
| There's an indie game called Deep Sixed that felt this way for
| me. The plot is that you're a prisoner and your cell is a
| spaceship that gets moved around for various reasons, and to stay
| alive you have to constantly fix your spaceship while also
| battling incoming baddies. It sounded like fun but when I played
| it I had a genuine stress response. It felt a _lot_ like fixing
| broken servers while being screamed at on Twitter. I haven 't
| been able to make myself play it since.
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/591000/Deep_Sixed/
| adamc wrote:
| We can learn a lot from digging into our stress responses.
| Changing it is much harder, but learning is a start.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > While you're busy putting out fires, please don't forget to
| buy new parts, to continue your assigned mission and if you
| could also take care of those aliens attacking the lower ring
| that would be lovely.
|
| Hmm, yeah. I wonder where I've heard that before.
| phaedrus wrote:
| In a life imitates art moment, I watched the story from the
| trailer for that game (the character ends up in the cell after
| being held criminally liable for a mistake at work due to
| complacency), and then saw this headline in another open
| browser tab:
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/03/25/1088902...
| stickfigure wrote:
| My wife (who is an experienced nurse) told me about that case
| this morning. She has mixed feelings, but is not terribly
| sympathetic. This person should not be working in the
| profession, that seems clear. In jail, I don't know. Is there
| such a thing as "criminally incompetent"?
| phaedrus wrote:
| Why is the nurse criminally negligent, but not the company
| or programmers which made the software that runs the
| automated medicine cabinet? Or the hospital administration
| who failed to recognize and do something to correct the
| systemic problem of why constant "overrides" are needed to
| complete normal tasks?
|
| Edit: maybe drug companies are even partly responsible for
| confusing names & the whole system of generic versus trade
| names (as it seems this incident wouldn't have happened if
| the generic name were the only name by which the substance
| was known).
|
| I'm not saying any of the above should be. I just think we
| should compare and contrast the medical profession with
| aviation. The reason the accident rate is so low in
| commercial aviation is a systems approach to safety. In the
| medical profession it's all about machismo and individual
| responsibility - which doesn't lead to continual
| improvement as an industry.
| smolder wrote:
| If you deceive people into giving you responsibilities
| you're incapable of dealing with, and it brings meaningful
| harm to others, it can be criminal. There are regulations
| for legal, medical, and financial services to criminalize
| that deceit and prevent that kind of situation.
| technofiend wrote:
| Lost Ark was recently released into the US market by Amazon /
| Smilegate and is getting some negative feedback due to the
| casino-like elements to the game. Some people just don't want a
| slot machine simulator, but if you're the publisher who wants
| to extract maximum revenue from players, then Skinner boxes are
| apparently the way to go. The player can buy their way past
| randomness by either purchasing material that increases their
| chances of winning, or gives them more chances to play. So
| despite complaints I doubt that mechanic will go anywhere.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| Satisfactory and Factorio do that for me. Really good games but
| i can barely bring myself to play them with how quickly they
| start making me feel like i'm working.
|
| Wish there was an.. easy mode, or something. Something that let
| me enjoy that feeling of my work - which i love - but with some
| simplifications to not exercise the same parts of my brain i'm
| trying to rest after a long days actual work hah.
|
| Who knows, maybe it would be boring :shrug:
| kroltan wrote:
| I tried both of these and had the same response.
|
| Something that did work as "fun" for me was Infinifactory,
| even though thematically the game is all about it being a
| job, it's puzzle nature is less daunting than being a sheer
| optimization problem.
|
| That, and the incredible "Create Mod" for Minecraft, which
| gives you all sorts of mechanical gizmos. I find it more
| interesting because building a machine that does something is
| the primary focus, instead of linking machines together
| optimally, and the fact that your automations help you
| achieve the other open-ended goals of Minecraft
| RangerScience wrote:
| For Factorio: 1. Turn off biters (or turn on "peaceful mode",
| which mostly lets you ignore them until you want to start
| dealing with them) 1a. Dragon's Teeth wall design 2. Grab one
| of the quick start mods so you start with a backpack of
| construction robots 3. City blocks
|
| After that it's down (and up) to you. I've been able to play
| Factorio like it's I'm gardening - where I'm just chilling,
| poking at the puzzles - and other times I haven't been, even
| when I've got the biter problem resolved, and I'm doing what
| you described.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Thanks for the tips.
|
| > I've been able to play Factorio like I'm gardening
|
| On gardening, same advice would apply: choosing low
| maintenance, well fitted with the climate or "tough"
| species is underrated.
|
| Going only for the visual aspect will easily make gardening
| a second job. Except it's an actual living thing, and it's
| more pressure than the bullshit deadline we have on our
| projects.
| bseidensticker wrote:
| I used to feel that way, but eventually figured out a set of
| design principles that took care of the parts of the game
| that were stressing me out. Turning off biters, building with
| a main bus, making a mall for yourself, and building with
| extra space so you can hack easily will go a long way to
| reducing the "ahh I'm gonna have to redesign this whole
| thing" stress.
| bitdestroyer wrote:
| I love both of those games but recently took on Dyson Sphere
| Program after it was gifted to me. I quickly put in twice as
| many hours as I had in Factorio. There is no combat, it's
| beautiful, and the blueprint system makes it less tedious.
| Most of the complaints I have about it are nit-picks and at
| $20 on Steam, it is absolutely worth the price of admission.
| mst wrote:
| patio11 has done more than one twitter thread about
| enjoying Dyson Sphere Program.
|
| (it's not sort of my thing but if it's your sort of thing I
| suspect his endorsement is more relevant)
| post-it wrote:
| Whenever I play Rimworld, I turn off invasions and make all
| of my colonists androids [0]. I just want to build things.
|
| [0] https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=13864
| 128...
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Depending on what you want to build, have you tried Space
| Engineers? (Very different from Rimworld, though.)
| post-it wrote:
| I have! I love it but it's very tedious. The controls are
| just much clunkier than Minecraft (for example). It's
| been a couple years since I played it though, maybe it
| has improved a lot.
| zelon88 wrote:
| Yes with Satisfactory especially. The hard part for me is
| keeping track of goals. I'll start playing with the mindset
| of "I'm going to finish this factory" and then I'll run out
| of resources. So on the trip to get more resources I find 5
| other things starting to go sideways so I have to start
| fixing that instead.
| tejohnso wrote:
| I tried Factorio a few months ago and after my initial shock
| with the quality of the game being so high, I found myself
| falling into optimization mode.
|
| And then it quickly turned into a second job. I had to
| decided whether I wanted to devote time to Factorio
| optimization problems, or ...anything else in life.
|
| I chose life :)
| r00fus wrote:
| Nice Trainspotting reference. Very apropos.
| cridenour wrote:
| At least with Satisfactory - there is absolute no rush. No
| time pressure for any part of the game that I'm aware of.
|
| Now there's always something I want to be doing, but that's
| another problem.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| Sudoku is that for me. Feels exactly like work, but perfectly
| balanced where is hard enough to be interesting and easy
| enough to be fun.
| nickcw wrote:
| Sudoku is so one of those fiddly and error prone tasks much
| better performed by computer for me.
|
| I wrote a computer solver for Sudoku and that was enough
| for me, I feel no need to ever play again ;-)
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| That's really cool! And if you are trying just to beat
| the puzzle it would make sense to automate the task.
|
| I play ALOT of Sudoku and the game now for me is
| optimizing my own thoughts while I play. Moving from a
| random search and find function, to a structure queries
| that solve the puzzles quicker and quicker. Sort of like
| a rubix cube. I focus on beating my best time and making
| it easier and easier.
| qazwse_ wrote:
| I used to feel this way too, but I found sudoku varients
| a lot more enjoyable. If you look up the YouTube channel
| "Cracking the Cryptic" they have a lot of different ones.
| ff317 wrote:
| Yes - after I got bored of regular Sudoku, I found
| "Killer Sudoku" and I've been playing that variant
| regularly for a long time. The hard puzzles (blank with
| no "easy" parts) in the killer variant are quite
| challenging, and over a span of years I've continued to
| gain new insights into better techniques for finding the
| answers. The logical chains you have to build up just to
| eliminate one possible number somewhere really stretch
| the brain! More often they're merely tough and I can
| solve them in one sitting in under half an hour. It's a
| great mental warmup in the morning with coffee, to get
| the brain juices going!
| rurp wrote:
| You might enjoy KenKen puzzles as well. They are similar to
| Sodoku but involve more math. I find them to be very fun,
| although the harder ones can start to feel like work.
| the_af wrote:
| Factorio feels definitely like this to me.
|
| It's an _amazing_ game. It felt very stimulating the first
| few hours. Then it became work, and now I don 't think I will
| ever start it anymore.
| flir wrote:
| When I saw the title, I thought it was going to be about
| Factorio. Bottlenecks never go away, they only move. That's
| systems engineering.
| 0des wrote:
| Which servers are you responsible for? Just curious
| geocrasher wrote:
| I work in the web hosting industry. At one point in my career
| I was answering social media _and_ taking the technical lead
| in fixing minor server issues. There 's a reason I call
| Twitter "The Little Blue Bird of Hate."
| 0des wrote:
| That is a lot of pressure. Glad you made it out of that
| spot.
| geocrasher wrote:
| Agreed, and Thanks! :) Me too. To be fair even at that
| employer it was a temporary thing, mostly because of the
| amount of stress it caused.
| imdsm wrote:
| Look for the smoke. Those.
| 0des wrote:
| haha That was funny
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| My experience with an all-stress game is Papers, Please.
| Between the pressures of the government bureaucracy, the time
| stressor and the plight of the poor people you have to crush...
| it's exhausting.
| laristine wrote:
| Crushing poor people was the reason I quit that game and some
| similar other games.
| rob74 wrote:
| I felt this way about an indie game that was actually very well
| received
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_Metro_(video_game)), and it
| was fun for a while, but it quickly grew old: the graphics are
| rudimentary (not expecting AAA-level stuff of course, but
| still, simple monochrome vector graphics get boring pretty
| fast), the gameplay is wildly unrealistic (stations popping up
| out of nowhere that you have to connect to lines which you can
| instantly change, even erase and rebuild everything, ad
| infinitum, trains that can be instantly teleported to a
| completely different line when needed etc.), and every game
| inevitably gives you a sense of failure, because sooner or
| later your network is swamped with passengers and collapses. So
| not really realistic, but the need to constantly optimize the
| network while the game keeps throwing spanners in your works
| quickly felt like drudgery. For some time I kept coming back
| because of the daily challenges and other stuff designed to
| keep things interesting, but after about one month I decided
| enough is enough and uninstalled it.
| ninjaz wrote:
| I enjoyed the game for a short while too, I was taking it as
| having some resemblance of urban planning for the real
| cities, and getting to redesign some of the terribly
| inefficient system of cities that I've lived in and others
| that I greatly admire and try to emulate. Later I just found
| this is almost random and has not much to do with the actual
| traffic flow of those cities, it just became an optimization
| game with increasing difficulty level. That's when I started
| feeling the "work" element and never went back.
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| Holy shit this is exactly what I'm looking for! Thanks.
| digitallyfree wrote:
| MMORPGs can also give you this stress, especially ones where
| you are invested heavily into the experience. Spent some time
| on a MUD with actual roleplay and permadeath where people were
| crazy to the point where some would do all-nighters for
| intelligence stakeouts, battles, and other events. Many of the
| team leaders also set up a "hot pager" system so they could be
| quickly reached to assist while they were offline.
|
| In moments when my character was near death I was often
| panicking and really feeling the tunnel vision of combat
| stress. The stakes were high in that a character and assets you
| spent over a year developing could be wiped out in an instant
| if you lost your focus. Eventually I couldn't take it and
| stopped playing.
|
| On the other hand, there are games that are just straight up
| work - EVE is an example (haven't played it myself but do know
| people who do) and Rimworld if you play with an
| optimization/perfectionist mindset.
| andai wrote:
| >there are games that are just straight up work [...] if you
| play with an optimization/perfectionist mindset.
|
| Does this apply only to certain (kinds of) games? Does it
| come from the way the game is structured?
|
| Or does it have more to do with the community around it? For
| example RuneScape these days seems to be all about
| optimization, while back in the day it was more about
| exploration. (I guess for people who are still playing,
| there's nothing left to explore...)
| ev1 wrote:
| you optimise what you have left when you have nothing else
| to do.
|
| there is no exploring left in runescape, for the most part
| - virtually every corner and easter egg is effectively
| documented or reverse engineered in some way.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Any game where you try to improve past a certain plateau
| becomes more like work imo, it requires deliberate
| practice.
| digitallyfree wrote:
| I was speaking more about sandbox games in that regardless,
| like Rimworld and Factorio. The idea is that you focus too
| much on automation and efficiency rather than fun, and want
| to design your base in a "perfect" manner. Of course once
| you implement your design in production, you will see
| issues and want to optimize it more. And so on and on.
|
| However as another commenter said, any game can become work
| if you want to achieve perfection. For example if you play
| an FPS game you can always shoot faster and more accurately
| - if you practice more and more. This can lead to a point
| where you don't find the game fun anymore.
| smitty1110 wrote:
| > On the other hand, there are games that are just straight
| up work
|
| I'm getting Victoria 2 flashbacks just reading this
| sentence...
| oblio wrote:
| I played Dota for more than 10 years.
|
| Besides the fact that I now have RSI (maybe not just due to
| Dota, possibly due to time spent in front of screen,
| overall), I realized after a while that I was a sort of
| people manager for 12-18 year olds and maybe I could just do
| the same thing at $DAYJOB and end up getting paid better :-)
| nicoburns wrote:
| One of the bizarre parts of these games is that you can
| effectively become a people manager _as a 12-18 year old_.
| duskwuff wrote:
| And if you're good enough, you can even get paid for it.
|
| (Not well, mind you...)
| rozab wrote:
| The legendary GDC talk, _The Prototype that was Banned from
| Halfbrick_ , describes the unpleasant adversarial effects of
| some multiplayer games like this, and how they can escalate
| to be really unpleasant experiences for all involved.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9WMNuyjm4w
| adenozine wrote:
| The other article on the front page about video games being
| boring and predictable should try this game. I think that works
| like these are the real future of gaming. People can vote with
| their wallets at the end of the day. Eventually, people will wise
| up and start paying for better games that they actually enjoy and
| stop gambling. Or they won't, and they continue to hurt
| themselves financially and mentally. Either way, there will still
| be people making art-games like this, for people who think
| differently.
|
| I really like the idea of social culture being "frozen" and
| injected into game experiences. I'd love to play a game about how
| the Cuban Missile Crisis felt, about how the Great Depression
| felt, about how the New Deal felt. Reading just doesn't put the
| mind in that same mode as trying to make moves that benefit my
| main character and seeing how the events that unfold bear witness
| to whether or not my decisions were good.
|
| I'm sure there will be some good games soon about how insane it
| is that there's anti-vaxxers, or election deniers.
| bobthechef wrote:
| This is rather worrying. A game isn't an argument. It's not
| even evidence! Movies suffer the same problem in that we can
| couple causes with effects in ways that bear no relationship to
| reality. Just look at how Hollywood has contributed to
| deforming how people understand relationships. That's just one
| domain. It doesn't even need to be intentional, as Chomsky has
| argued, so no conspiracy is required as long as interests
| converge. Rather, the corporate-media-education complex is a
| self-reinforcing system where most of its actors do not even
| realize they are reinforcing the presuppositions of the system
| by excluding and punishing that which would threaten the
| existence of the system, regardless of whether the
| presuppositions are themselves good or correct. Most people
| even believe they're doing good (not that malicious actors
| don't exist, but most people don't give any of these
| presuppositions any consideration).
|
| Arguments may be bloodless, but they have substance. Theater,
| interactive or not, is capable of deceiving. Your emotional
| response is not fact. What you would be presented with in a
| game about some historical event is a recasting of historical
| events in terms of our modern sensibilities. Movies do this all
| the time, this subtle anachronistic and theatrical re-
| presentation of history. This can be an impediment to
| understanding, not an aid.
|
| Besides, while recreation has its place, we waste too much time
| on entertainment. Movies, games, and so on. These are like the
| cave in Plato's allegory. Instead of leaving the cave, we have
| doubled down.
|
| Enter THE METAVERSE.
| jpindar wrote:
| This War of Mine is said to be realistic as to what living in a
| war zone feels like.
| kansface wrote:
| I was playing it with my wife for some reason. At one point,
| it sent her out of the room, crying, so we stopped. I'm not
| sure if that's a recommendation or not.
| salicideblock wrote:
| I've never been in a war zone. I could not play more than 10
| minutes of that game, as I was becoming so stressed.
|
| Having a quit button is the best part of these video game
| experiences.
| banannaise wrote:
| I happened to start playing that game a week before Russia
| invaded Ukraine. It made everything much weirder.
| input_sh wrote:
| I was drawn to it because it's based on surviving the siege
| of city I've been living in for the good part of the last
| decade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sarajevo) and
| playing it is just a painful experience that matches what
| I've been told and read from those that lived through it.
|
| It's been a while since I've last played it, but from what I
| remember I always ended up in an absolutely inescapable
| situation regardless of what I tried. If you want to actually
| feel something while playing a game, 10/10, would recommend.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| Strongly agree.
|
| A big part of me wanted to find out if the game was ever
| winnable or even if it ended at all. Then I realized that
| was kind of the point - the hope that it will end some day
| and so I avoided finding out if it did or not.
|
| I, too, set out with noble aims but eventually was faced
| with the prospect of stealing from the nice old couple down
| the street or starving to death. At that point, I stopped
| playing. I didn't want to know which one I'd choose.
| lstodd wrote:
| Hm. I managed to "win" it several times, that is to
| survive to the end without stealing or such stuff. It is
| hard, but possible.
| verisimi wrote:
| > I'm sure there will be some good games soon about how insane
| it is that there's anti-vaxxers, or election deniers.
|
| Or a game where people think they can make a difference by
| voting harder!
| adenozine wrote:
| I'm not anti-voting, but I guess I'm resigned to the "voting
| futility" idea that I think you're talking about.
|
| That being said, I am a faithful supporter of DSAUSA and have
| invested (rather than voted for) significant means towards
| the cause of a more socialistic reality in America. Faced
| with the size and influence of corporations in the world, I
| suppose it's the logical end of things that the world revolve
| around money and the means of "making" more money.
|
| I still vote too, but I guess I roll my eyes a little bit
| each time.
| djbusby wrote:
| Voting does make a difference.
|
| Also, you can contribute to any candidates campaign - so you
| can money-vote in many places (USA)
| brimble wrote:
| It's fairly likely that, by the time I die, none of the
| voting I've done will have changed the outcome of a single
| election or ballot question. On the off chance it does,
| it'll almost certainly be at the county level or lower.
| indigochill wrote:
| > Voting does make a difference.
|
| In a parliamentary system, votes have a substantial impact.
| You can vote for a minority party that's actually aligned
| with your views and get represented if they get enough
| votes to get a seat in Parliament. It's not "throwing your
| vote away" like it is in the US.
|
| In a two-party first-past-the-post system, the impact of
| each vote is substantially reduced by comparison since not
| only are there only two competitive parties to vote for,
| but the winner takes everything. A vote for the "wrong"
| party means that vote leads to no representation.
|
| > Also, you can contribute to any candidates campaign - so
| you can money-vote in many places (USA)
|
| This is part of the problem in the US, because it gives the
| wealthiest interests the means to back their preferred
| representatives at amounts minority representatives can
| never hope to reach.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I'm completely convinced that the voting in Redecor - Home
| Design Game[1] is completely random. What they've done is
| Skinner boxed their competitions in a way that more or less
| evenly distributes random rewards to maximize engagement
| rather than reward players based on merit. It has the veneer
| of a voting-based competition, but none of the real guts of
| one.
|
| 1. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fi.reworks.r
| ed...
| ______-_-______ wrote:
| Papers Please is in that genre. It's one of my favorite games
| nicolas_t wrote:
| Papers please is really a great game. With the rise of indie
| games, there's quite a few games that tackle difficult
| problems
|
| - Papo y yo - alcoholism and child abuse
|
| - Little Kite - also alcoholism and abuse
|
| - Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons - mourning and loss
|
| - Orwell - Privacy (although I would not recommend it as much
| as the first two)
|
| - Valiant Hearts: The Great War - emotional toll of World War
| 1
|
| - This war of mine - living in a war zone
|
| - To the moon - not going to spoil it
|
| - Rakuen
|
| By the way, Little Kite is free right now
| https://freebies.indiegala.com/little-kite
| js8 wrote:
| There is also "That Dragon, Cancer" but I haven't played it
| because emotional exhaustion is the last thing I want from
| a game.
| indigochill wrote:
| I think Cart Life was the first game that hit me this way
| (shortly before Papers, Please). It really made me
| empathize with the desperate situations the characters were
| in, and in a way that felt more fully realized than in
| Papers, Please, though that's also a great game.
| rgoulter wrote:
| I can recommend "Spiritfarer" under "emotionally
| impactful", too.
| bussierem wrote:
| 'Gris' is also another game about mourning and loss, and is
| an absolute audiovisual experience on its own.
| runeblaze wrote:
| Not to diminish your point, but I do think that the idea of
| Shechu has been so imbued in contemporary Chinese popular
| culture that for many Chinese this is not that serious or artsy
| a game (think any Netflix popular show that touches some
| serious social issues -- it can be well-made but usually not
| that artsy). It will be harder for a general audience to
| explore a past social culture (e.g. cold war, great depression)
| than to explore a present, popular culture.
|
| Also not disagreeing with you -- it will be awesome to play
| some serious game about the new deal/anti-vaxxers. In general,
| seeing discussions on game design across HN, I think we (HN as
| a whole) can be more exploratory in our games, going beyond
| "being serious, well researched, and non-predatory". The sense
| of ambiguous loss brought by To the Moon is one direction in
| this. Some other random examples pioneered by films that I
| think we should explore include more subtle ambiguity in
| narratives (e.g. Burning (2018)) or delicacy in depicting the
| adolescent female experience (e.g. Marie Antoinette (2006)).
| miketery wrote:
| > I'm sure there will be some good games soon about how insane
| it is that there's anti-vaxxers, or election deniers.
|
| I think using the word insane isn't warranted. Check out
| Jonathan Haidt's book, The Rightous Mind. There are good
| reasons to be skeptical, it's also evolutionary necessary. The
| majority can be wrong.
|
| To be specific it was misinformation to say it was a lab leak,
| now it's generally accepted. As far as vaxx goes I took it, but
| the politics mixing with science has deteriorated a lot of
| trust. Also this is new technology, it's not zero risk.
|
| Election wise, we have examples in history to show it happens.
| Why not here? What about democrats pushing out Bernie? Again I
| agree mostly all good. But it's not insane to think something
| is not kosher.
|
| Rather it's insane to be so certain of these things.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| > What about democrats pushing out Bernie?
|
| I'm not sure what you mean, but Bernie didn't win the
| primary. That decides the horse that the DNC backs (except in
| incumbent years).
|
| > To be specific it was misinformation to say it was a lab
| leak, now it's generally accepted.
|
| It's not generally accepted except in counter-culture
| circles. There isn't any more evidence for a lab leak
| hypothesis today than there was two years ago. The actual
| cause is not known, so claiming a specific theory with
| certainty would indeed be misinformation.
| oversocialized wrote:
| bckr wrote:
| It isn't insane that some people won't take the vaccine.
|
| It isn't insane that some people are against vaccine
| mandates.
|
| It _is insane_ that some people believe what they do about
| the vaccine: That it 's a ploy to decimate the population,
| that it contains baby parts and poison, or microchips, that
| it is a test run for the mark of the beast.
|
| That is absolutely batshit insane.
| Izkata wrote:
| One of the key features of the mark of the beast is the
| inability to buy or sell goods without taking it. By way of
| vaccine passports, that _already happened_ , so yeah that
| fear does have a foundation.
| kurisufag wrote:
| The 'mark of the beast' is, if I'm not incorrect, a
| fictional idea that is (perhaps intentionally) incredibly
| easy to generalize with. Identification with fictional
| texts is best left to High School English class instead
| of the real-world decision making process.
| openfuture wrote:
| People sometimes use weird domain specific languages, the
| principle of charity goes a long way in being able to
| understand peoples' concerns despite the weird way they
| communicate them. I hate how easily we dismiss people
| with nonstandard language usage. Grow up.
| kurisufag wrote:
| I agree with what he's probably attempting to say --
| widespread requirement of vaccine passports is absurd,
| and functionally locks people out of society. Regardless,
| his comment didn't just use it as an example. Without
| further interpretation, the entire body of his point was
| that what is happening now is similar to a fictional
| thing that happened in a fictional story. Whether or not
| you agree with the point, it's so absurdly general that
| it has about the same meaning as, say, comparing Biden to
| Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| There is difference between religion and pop culture. One
| person's fiction is another people's truth. This isn't
| reddit.
| kurisufag wrote:
| I live my life by the way of Master Splinter, as we all
| should. Every day I hone my Ninjitsu so that whenever
| evil approaches, whether it be in the form of Shredder or
| Krang or an argumentative poster on Hacker News, I will
| be prepared.
|
| The only difference is the level at which people attempt
| to integrate the philosophy into their life -- I'm sure
| there is someone out there who has been impacted more by
| Terry Pratchett novels than the religion they were
| brought up as, and using either of those in the way the
| instigating poster did would be silly.
| bckr wrote:
| > that already happened
|
| If you have evidence of people being unable to buy or
| sell goods without a vaccine passport, please share.
|
| Oh, and do recall that the context from Revelation is
| that a person was _completely excluded_ from the economy,
| not that they lost some privileges, so _please_ don 't
| waste time with false equivalences.
|
| Although, honestly, it's probably a waste of time anyway:
| I just don't live in the same fantasy dimension as these
| people and their arguments hold no water to me.
| miketery wrote:
| I 100% agree. The issue at hand is that those insane people
| are a small fringe, there are many people who hold slight
| skepticism, and they are quickly labelled insane and
| grouped with the fringe. That's not a good thing for a
| healthy society.
| passivate wrote:
| I don't disagree with your general view, but all aspects of
| human biology have a certain level of uncertainty associated
| with them. Nobody expects guarantees with medications,
| surgical procedures, treatments for illnesses etc. Being
| skeptical is valuable against dogmatism, but we're not
| asserting things with absolute certainty here. We do have to
| recognize the difference and respect the outcome of the
| scientific process - which is what produced these vaccines.
| If you say the majority of scientists can be wrong, you have
| to be more specific. Do you mean colloquially wrong as in
| making an error in day to day work, or do you mean being
| collectively wrong about immunology since 1798 and we should
| reject things that we built on those discoveries?
|
| If there is any risk here, I'd say the risk here is our own
| inability in not being able to describe human biology in
| detail. The vague statement "the human body can heal itself"
| sounds warm and fuzzy, and most people agree with it, but
| when transformed into "injecting these set of molecules into
| your blood will trigger complex interactions with independent
| internal biological processes and cause the body to produce
| clones of proteins with increasing avidity towards the
| original molecules which also trigger further complex
| biological processes [...]" - can get you into trouble
| sometimes if you treat it as absolute truth.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > There are good reasons to be skeptical, it's also
| evolutionary necessary. The majority can be wrong.
|
| However most people that engage in this behavior do it for
| the reasons that have nothing to do with skepticism or
| critical thinking.
|
| They do it for exactly opposite reason. People who are prone
| to it are generally less intelligent, less able to think
| critically, easier to mislead, they follow along easier, they
| more strongly bind with their in-group regardless of the
| crazy practices it performs.
|
| This kind of behavior probably exists for evolutionary
| reasons, but it's not to help the species discover best
| truth.
|
| It's more of a plan B for low fitness individuals, who are
| too flawed to compete with general population. They tend to
| look for or form smaller sub-populations of similarly flawed
| individuals in hopes that while in general population they
| are firmly below average desirability, in those smaller
| populations they might be above average and have a chance of
| passing their genes they wouldn't have otherwise.
| kurisufag wrote:
| I'm not exactly well-read on this, but /shouldn't/ there be
| some emergent structure that maintains a (perceived) low-
| fitness position? The actual fitness of a trait can only be
| seen in the long-term, and in the event the general
| population was long-term-incorrect in their evolution it is
| helpful to have a decent number of the alternative on hand.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Battling strawmen is a circuitous exercise.
|
| Skepticism is not insanity. Questioning vaccine safety is not
| insanity.
|
| Many of the anti vax claims were utter insanity (microchips
| in the injection)
|
| As were the election claims
| throwaway684936 wrote:
| > To be specific it was misinformation to say it was a lab
| leak, now it's generally accepted.
|
| Which is a case of some people _happening_ to _guess_ , one
| time, that an ultimately highly unlikely thing (based on
| available information) happened.
|
| To peddle such an unlikely, unconfirmed claim as fact _before
| there 's actual evidence_ still isn't/wasn't reasonable. They
| didn't know it was a lab leak. They wildly guessed. Yet they
| never treated it as speculation, they prematurely treated it
| as fact.
|
| Current evidence likewise strongly supports the idea that the
| 2020 election is legitimate.
| gadders wrote:
| You think the lab leak is the _least_ likely theory of
| COVID origin?
| felixgallo wrote:
| nonsense, it's not now 'generally accepted' that it was a lab
| leak. It's possible. We don't know.
|
| However, and this is critical, it was absolutely 100%
| misinformation when first claimed. Trump was desperate to
| deflect blame and not let COVID derail his reelection
| chances, so he immediately blamed China, well before we had
| any actual information, analysis, or intelligence to suggest
| that. Talk about your 'politics mixing with science'
| deteriorating trust.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Isn't there no conclusive evidence for lab leak?
|
| I'm not an anti-leaker, of course. I just believe it takes
| more than mere suspicion to buy into an idea. Otherwise you
| end up gobbling up whatever propaganda drifts near you, true
| or not.
| octopoc wrote:
| There's circumstantial evidence.
|
| 1. The Wuhan lab was French built and supposed to jointly
| operated between France and China, but the French sounded
| the alarm about the terrible security practices of their
| Chinese counterparts.
|
| 2. Ecohealth, an organization with ties to the Wuhan lab,
| did a grant proposal to DARPA asking for money to do gain-
| of-function research on COVID. To be clear, gain of
| function research usually is something along the lines of:
| let's make this pathogen able to infect humans so we can
| study how it might infect humans if it ever evolved the
| ability to infect them.
|
| 3. It's dangerous research and should only be undertaken
| carefully, rather than in the haphazard way in which the
| French claimed the Chinese were engaging in research.
|
| 4. People close to the situation categorically denied that
| a lab leak was even possible, calling it a "conspiracy
| theory" although they knew that the lab had been doing
| similar research on similar diseases, and had declared an
| interest in doing so with COVID.
|
| It's like if there was an organization that declared they
| wanted to make unicorns real, and they had made other fairy
| tale animals real in the past, and then unicorns appear in
| the wild in the same city where this organization is based,
| and they're like, "It is a conspiracy theory to think we
| had anything to do with this."
| rmah wrote:
| The problem is that there are hundreds, perhaps
| thousands, of these sort of bio labs around the world.
|
| So, I would agree that suspicion is warranted. Perhaps
| enough for an investigation. But, IMO, that's about it.
| gadders wrote:
| >> The problem is that there are hundreds, perhaps
| thousands, of these sort of bio labs around the world.
|
| And they have leaked before.
| https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-
| perspective/2007/08/report-l...
| octopoc wrote:
| Unfortunately there cannot be an investigation. Too much
| time will pass before the Chinese let anyone investigate,
| if they ever do.
|
| But there are many areas in life where you can't gather
| enough information to make a statistically perfect
| decision. That doesn't mean that we do nothing though.
|
| I think my country should drastically reduce trade with
| China and tell them it's because they operate biolabs
| haphazardly and don't allow investigations into pandemic
| origins. I wish all countries would do this. Then the
| next pandemic might not happen, because nations would be
| afraid of the consequences.
| raptor99 wrote:
| Let's also not forget that head of Ecohealth Alliance,
| Peter Daszak, published (or got published) a letter in
| the Lancet at the very beginning of this (~Jan-Feb 2020)
| essentially calling the lab leak theory a conspiracy
| theory.
|
| Let's also not forget that it turns out the Ecohealth
| Alliance was essentially able to write the rules that
| were used to police their own research referenced above.
|
| Also recall that recently a 19 nucleotide sequence (1 out
| of ~3 trillion liklihood of occurring naturally) out of
| SARS-COV-2 has been discovered as patented by Moderna
| back somewhere between 2013 to 2017.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > a 19 nucleotide sequence (1 out of ~3 trillion
| liklihood of occurring naturally)
|
| Unless it's functional, which (1) changes the odds; and
| (2) is a prerequisite for patenting.
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| In case anyone else wants to read about that last
| comment, since it piqued my interest
|
| https://api.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/mar/24/blog-
| posti...
| Izkata wrote:
| It's more accurate to say it's accepted as a possibility.
| Back in 2020 it was commonly dismissed as pure conspiracy
| theory and just not even considered as an option.
| watwut wrote:
| Afaik, we are currently back to "probably not lab leak,
| that is improbably". Unless you live in specific bubble
| that needs it to be lab leak for political reasons.
| stavros wrote:
| > The other article on the front page about video games being
| boring and predictable should try this game.
|
| How though? It's in Mandarin.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| There are many games like this already. Not including ones
| already mentioned, here are a few more off the top of my
| head...
|
| 1979 Revolution: Black Friday[0], Iranian revolution
|
| 21 Days[1], Syrian refugee crisis
|
| A Golden Wake[2], Florida property boom
|
| Bury Me, My Love[3], Syrian refugee crisis
|
| Through the Darkest of Times [4], German resistance under the
| Nazis
|
| Way of Defector[5], North Korean defection
|
| There are a bunch more historical narrative games you can find,
| if you're into that sort of thing. I don't really have time for
| these conversations about how modern games are boring and
| predictable, that just shows the person hasn't bothered looking
| outside of the AAA bubble. There has never been a better time
| for computer games than right now.
|
| [0]
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/388320/1979_Revolution_Bl...
|
| [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/607660/21_Days/
|
| [2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/307570/A_Golden_Wake/
|
| [3] https://store.steampowered.com/app/808090/Bury_Me_My_Love/
|
| [4]
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1003090/Through_the_Darke...
|
| [5] https://store.steampowered.com/app/658660/Way_of_Defector/
| matt_s wrote:
| I saw a headline somewhere that Tesla was going to build
| robots. I just started playing "Detroit: Become Human", setting
| in 2038, Russia is attacking neighbor countries, US
| unemployment is at 35% because robots/androids are employed in
| many jobs and are cheap. You play various androids and your
| choices impact game outcomes (there's a flowchart of
| decisions).
|
| I like games with moral/ethical questions and player choices,
| it really presents the questions in a way where you are making
| decisions that have impact - at least as how the game developer
| gives you options. This is very different than reading about it
| in a book. Don't get me wrong though, I also like silly
| action/adventure/puzzle/whatever games too. There is a place
| for all kinds of artwork.
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| Eve Online in a nutshell.
|
| Loved that game, but it was more work than my actual job.
| ddoubleU wrote:
| My mind immediately went to EVE when I read the headline.
|
| I love it, I really do but it makes you ask yourself weird
| existential questions about games and jobs.
|
| The other thing that made me quit after few years was that the
| company behind it (CCP Games), with it's current management,
| really seems to be incompetent.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| There really needs to be a comparative study between China's
| internet industry and the U.S.'s. It often seems like horror
| stories of 996 are like Silicon Valley unpaid overtime burnout
| culture, ramped up to a new degree.
|
| > "No matter how good you are at the game, the game has only one
| ending, which is the company being acquired," Ding said, adding
| she was sad when she played it for the first time, believing
| being acquired means failure. "Later, I searched for a job for a
| period of time, encountered various setbacks, and gradually
| realized that the process of trying hard is more precious. When I
| went back and played it again, I accepted the ending, and felt
| that it was really in line with the current internet age."
|
| The same market dynamics on both sides of the Pacific.
| smilekzs wrote:
| unpaid yet _enforced by company leadership_ overtime burnout
| culture
| alisonatwork wrote:
| Another interesting game that depicts work life from Chinese
| point of view is Another Adventure[0]. Rather than going the
| Papers Please route of forcing the player to do the boring job ad
| nauseum, it is more structured like a series of brief narratives
| along the lines of The Beginner's Guide. It's short, but really
| made an impact on me, as someone who also worked/is working in
| the tech industry.
|
| [0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/604450/Another_Adventure/
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