[Silverback_VII]

1000+ hours...

It is probably very unpopular but maybe one has to start asking in what way humanity as a whole does benefit from the creation of such addictive games.

Theodor Kaczynski wrote in one of his books that computer games will increasingly distract younger generations(males are obviously more affected) from solving urgent issues resulting in an erosion of freedom. maybe he was right

[wadd1e]

I hope you understand that if people were not spending a 1000 hours(presumably over years) on "addictive" games, they would be spending those 1000 hours on something else that was available in their time.

Nobody can and does spend 12 hours a day solving "urgent issues", we all need ton do something to decompress and relax, and video games are a modern way of doing so.

[jackothy]

Video games are dopamine machines like few others. I fear they might cause us to waste more mental capacity than older pastimes.

I'm inclined to think of it as stealing too much of people's brain power for too little return, like TikTok etc.

Doesn't it sound almost undeniable that we would be healthier as a society if people were forced to do sports, read a book, create something, or talk to their friends in order to relax instead?

(I play lots of video games myself so I guess I'm just theorizing here)

[jacobolus]

Why do you think spending time solving hard logistical optimization puzzles is such a worse hobby than sports or reading books or painting or whatever? Even if it’s not your own cup of tea, why do you care if other people enjoy it?

It’s certainly no less valuable to society than e.g. playing chess or go or poker, and on average probably a better use of time than reading the newspaper or chitchatting on this website. Many of the skills learned are largely transferrable to solving other kinds of difficult technical problems.

You can make an argument that aerobic sports are valuable for general health, but beyond the exercise and some measure of social activity, the game part of the sport doesn’t have any a priori importance, and if people prefer to get their exercise some other way that doesn’t seem like an inherent problem.

“Forcing people” to “relax” with particular activities seems pretty authoritarian.

[jackothy]

I don't think I'm getting my point across.

First of all: It certainly is my own cup of tea; Like I said, I play lots of video games myself.

On a societal level I'd say there are basically two reasons why I think video games might be a worse pastime than the older ones. First it's that you are more likely to spend "too much" time on video games because they are more addictive, you don't really get tired and you can do them at basically any time. Second it's that I think video games is a lower value way to spend your time. Sure, you might improve a bit at problem solving, but I think the value per unit of time spent is still very low. I even think this might come at a cost because really figuring out/performing well in a game can be very mentally taxing at the expense of more productive use of that mental capacity.

These two points apply to the examples you mentioned as well: reading news and talking on social media. I'm not saying video games is the only bad hobby. Apropos Ted Kaczynski, it might be tempting to say that most "post industrial" hobbies are the bad ones.

Lastly, I'm not talking about "forcing people". Even if choosing video games as a hobby is a bad idea then people (including me) are free to make bad choices.

[jacobolus]

> I'm not talking about "forcing people"

>> we would be healthier as a society if people were forced ...

* * *

People have been complaining since forever that other people waste too much time on board games / novels / playing or watching sports / playing or listening to music / traveling / attending live theater shows / going to the pub / gardening / hiking / stamp collecting / politics / mathematics / philosophy / cooking / going to restaurants / whatever other activity you can name.

It’s fine to say that many people would do well to prefer activities that are interactive and creative vs. passive, physically active vs. sedentary, social vs. individual, skillful vs. mindless, etc. But Factorio per se seems like pretty high-hanging fruit, especially if people are playing it together. (Disclaimer: I don’t really play computer games.)

[jackothy]

Oh, my bad, I see how I miscommunicated the "forcing" thing. In my head I was imagining an alternate world where video games simply didn't exist, so there people would have no other option than to (be "forced" to) read a book etc.

And yes, I agree that Factorio might be one of the "smarter" games out there. But the point about addictiveness, and the point about being mentally draining rather than relaxing, still stands for Factorio.

Personal anecdote: I spend much of my time in high-ranked (think top 0.1% of players) video game matches, and I think it might be too mentally stimulating to the point where I don't have the energy or willpower to get other useful things done.

[spopejoy]

Another analysis is to go ahead and consider video gaming primarily as a compulsive & addictive pastime. If so, it is one of the least harmful ever.

If video games are scratching some dark and antisocial itch leading to hours spent with them, it's easy to think of far worse outlets -- drugs/alcohol, sex/porn addictions, gambling, food, etc -- that have been with us forever.

[wadd1e]

>Doesn't it sound almost undeniable that we would be healthier as a society if people were forced to do sports, read a book, create something, or talk to their friends in order to relax instead?

I disagree. Firstly, video games are a very broad term so I'm not claiming that there are not video games that are made solely for the purpose of making money from people addicted to the dopamine rush. Bad actors are unfortunately present in all sorts of industries, but anecdotally, they are outliers.

For me, the video games that I play or played have brought me closer to my friends and left me with memories that I can look back on and smile at the thought of.

Infact, Minecraft Redstone[0] was a massive catalyst in developing my interest into putting small parts together into a working system, which eventually led me to learn programming.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you are suggesting that video games and similar dopamine machines are replacing more traditional past times such as sports/reading etc. Are you suggesting that before the prevalence of video games, people only ever engaged in things like sports/reading books?

TV is a thing, and before TV, people who didn't want to engage with sports or reading spent time with their friends in ways which weren't exactly productive. There are undeniable changes to society since the introduction of the WWW/electronics in general, but I don't think they've made society unhealthier in general; they've merely changed it in ways that we are still getting used to.

One last thing to note is that video games are a great way for me to also talk to my friends and have a purpose for hanging out(albiet online). Lots of them live way to far for us to feasibly meet in person on a regular basis, and playing a multiplayer game together is a great way to engage with each other and also have some fun on the side.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that video games aren't necessarily unhealthier substitutes for past times we engaged in before they became prevalent.

[0]: https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Redstone_circuits

[nthj]

I have at least a thousand hours into Factorio.

Factorio has provided a sandbox for me to visualize and acquire skills on managing bottlenecks in data flows; skills that I have and am applying as the point software engineer to resolve critical bottlenecks in multiple e-commerce systems. I won't speculate as to the commercial value of resolving those data bottlenecks here, but whatever dollar number you're imagining is, I suspect, probably missing multiple zeroes.

[danudey]

Worth mentioning: 1000 hours over the last six years that Factorio has been released comes out to about 27 minutes per day, on average.

1000 hours since release in 2020 comes out to about 1 hour and 22 minutes per day on average.

Regardless of whatever "benefits" Factorio might have to society as a whole, one and a half hours a day of recreation sounds completely reasonable to me.

[wheats]

I've played about 100 hours of Factorio and have often wondered if it's approaches can be generalized beyond the game. Does anyone beside the poster above believe they are?

[BlueTemplar]

Like these ?

Understanding Kafka with Factorio (2019) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20362179

Factorio and Software Engineering (2020) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24181783

Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone (2021) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26591966

[bhouston]

Does he have children? Time for computer games dwindles if you have kids, except for the computer games you can play with your kids. :)

I think games are fine as long as you are living an otherwise full life. Games are only problematic if they are an opiate that prevent you from achieving goals outside of virtual entertainment. Games should not be a present day "soma" to paraphrase some words from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

Also 1000 hours for a game can be similar to how many hours of TV many watch in a year, at least games involve more active engagement and problem solving.

[bnralt]

Sure, but perhaps it is worthwhile to ask when these games have become "soma," or at least become that for certain individuals. The above poster was reacting to someone saying they put 1000+ hours into a single game. Maybe we'll reach the conclusion that it's time well spent, but I don't think it's wrong to at least ask the question of what this impact is on society. People don't seem to have the same antagonism to the question when it gets asked about, say, social media addiction.

For what it's worth, I do think we should ask the same questions about TV, or browsing HN. There are a lot of things that it's easy to mindlessly do for hours that, if given some reflection, we might find we'd rather not spend so much time on.

[Pulcinella]

You don’t realize how much text even simple video games have until you try to play them with your kids before they have learned to read!

That said, I have been impressed by mine’s abilities to memorize what each menu option does in menus that can go 4-5 levels deep.

[jacobolus]

Side note: If you want to teach your kid (age 3+) to read, with the assumed prerequisite that you read lots of books aloud together and the kid wants to learn, let me recommend Bloomfield’s book Let's Read from the 1960s, about which you can see tokenadult’s recommendation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4665466

The book is organized so that in the first ~100 lessons only one new spelling–sound association is introduced per lesson and all words use strictly regular spellings. Lessons have (initially somewhat stilted and then gradually more natural) sentences constructed from previously seen words, so that there is a natural spaced repetition built in. This is much more efficient than most reading curricula, because despite many exceptions English is at its core a phonetic system.

It takes about 10–20 minutes per "lesson", you can do maybe 2–14 lessons per week (we aim for about 1/day), and there are ~250 lessons, so overall it ends up taking about 6–18 months from start to finish, maybe 50–100 hours in total. Afterwards, your kid will be ready to read pretty well anything they can understand, and after a further year or two of practice (reading whatever kind of material they want) will be a strong and fluent reader.

Only real prerequisites are that the kid is interested and can sit still for 10+ minutes at a time, can recognize the letters of the alphabet, and can more-or-less make all of the sounds of spoken English.

[egypturnash]

If you would like to feel this on a more visceral level, I have been playing "Tunic" recently and it is a really interesting simulation of "you are a child who can barely read one word in twenty in the manual but you sure are having a lot of fun bumbling around in Zelda".

[pluijzer]

Those 1000+ hours are dwarfed by the hours my grandmother spend on her jigsaw puzzles. Also I think most people play games as a form of relaxation, time which someone would not spend on solving urgent issues.

[mandmandam]

At least games are interactive. I've never played, but Factorio looks quite healthy for the mind.

If you want to rail at wasted time, there are much better targets out there. Try corporate tax accountants, or insurance salesmen, or fossil fuel PR goons; people actively destroying value.

We have PFAs in the rain; plastic on Mt. Everest and the Mariana Trench. We have a warming planet alongside proxy oil wars. You want to solve those problems by looking at addictive computer games? Really? Not even reality TV, or corporate media monopolies - games? ..... I think your high horse is pretty sickly looking tbh.

[Silverback_VII]

The problem is that there is some kind evolutionary pressure to create increasingly more addictive game as every new game is in competition with every other game.

I'm not saying that games cannot be beneficial especially for learning english but if you speak with a boy you will understand how these games have taken his brain hostage as many of thoughts will be about the computer game he plays.

[sabellito]

> The problem is that there is some kind evolutionary pressure to create increasingly more addictive game as every new game is in competition with every other game.

This is a sweeping statement that doesn't apply to many games, Factorio included.

A game like Factorio being addictive gives little back to the developers, as there are no microtransactions; after the game is bought, the transaction is over. If one would like to be cynical about it, games like this only have to trick people into buying a copy (and playing just for long enough for a refund to not be possible).

In the case of games with microtransactions, GTA V being the most profitable example in history, then yes, addictiveness does bring more cash to the company who owns the game.

Now, this opinion you held was incomplete and thus, wrong. What else are you wrong about in your mental model about videogames?

[danudey]

I'm not sure where in this discussion Skyrim fits in, where some people have purchased the same game half a dozen times or more. Macrotransactions?

[danudey]

I think video games are very comparable to chess. I mean, chess:

1. Is dull

2. Promotes laziness

3. Is sedentary

4. Stunts societal progress and growth

5. Limits the mind

6. Promotes violence

The list goes on!

Yet can you believe that people can spend hours of their time on a game of chess? And parents allow their children to play it, which is most definitely irresponsible parenting. I would certainly never allow MY child to play chess when it's clear that it leads to such negative outcomes - nay, downfalls!

Source: https://gizmodo.com/chess-was-once-deemed-a-menace-to-societ...

[michaelmcdonald]

Games are a hobby. Hobby's utilize time. No different than reading a book, building a chair, gardening, etc...

[pyinstallwoes]

Everything in life is literally a game. Game design exists at every level of life and the most amazing ones are the games that bring people together and develop “real world skills.”

[tikhonj]

How is that any different from sports and non-video-game hobbies that people spend 1000+ hours on?

[fayten]

People do not need to be productive 100% of the time. Let people have fun without shaming them. Just think of how far science and technology has come in the last decade.

[BlueTemplar]

Heh, I wonder what Kaczynski would think of the game's message about the consequences of exponential industrial development, and resulting pollution (and specifically the dangers coming from cutting trees or polluting them so much that they die, at higher difficulty...)

[rbetts]

Theodor Kaczynski the Unabomber? That would be an odd place to find life advice, if so.

[danudey]

Hey, I'm sure there were very fine people on both sides.

[BlueTemplar]

How about an «upgrade» ?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22766691

[counttheforks]

They said, before going back to watching their TV.

[chrischen]

Why does anyone choose to work and live if not for recreation?

[shepherdjerred]

How much free time do you have? What do you do with yours?