[Xeronate]

The article mentions one of the main appeals of factorio is you get to think like a programmer without bosses/overhead from actual work but it’s always been hard to get into games for that reason because I could just work on a side project with the same result. I really don’t understand the appeal.

[OrigamiPastrami]

I remember when Guitar Hero came out I didn't understand why anybody would play that instead of just buying a guitar. The point is the videogame itself is designed to be fun and remove plenty of other elements from the real life equivalent that focuses more on enjoyment and less on grinding it out. If you're thinking about "what have I accomplished?" instead of "I'm having so much fun!" then it might not be for you.

The other aspect is there are plenty of people that like to think like programmers, but have no experience programming and the barrier to entry for a videogame is substantially lower than even figuring out a "hello world!" program for someone who wouldn't even know how to pick a programming language.

[cole-k]

Your comparison hits home for me. I have been playing guitar on-and-off for over a decade (OK, maybe more like trying to play guitar) and I still really enjoy Guitar Hero.

It's instant gratification: I don't have as much fun practicing at .75x speed with a metronome to learn the hard part of a piece. Instead a video game tells me how great I am at "guitar" by being able to push buttons and strum on the beat, not to mention that I hear the sounds of my favorite songs come out when I do it.

For a similar reason, I like Rocksmith (guitar hero but with a real guitar), but the gratification is not quite so instant. They gamify the practicing part but I still need to do it, otherwise the part I'm playing actually sounds bad. And sight-reading is so much harder when there are more than 5 buttons.

[scarecrowbob]

As someone that plays music professionally and who enjoyed Rock Band, I think that the issue is a lot of folks find satisfaction in matering skills and checking off boxes that other folks design for them.

Designing a satisfying skill progression takes a lot of work. I know what I will have to do if I, say, take up mandolin again seriously, and it's daunting- and worse, maybe it won't even lead to a satisfying or useful end... I will still do that at some point. I had the same feeling about cello or pedal steel guitar, and they all turned out okay.

At the same time I totally understand why following simple tutorials, running a preset course, climbing an established route, riding already-cleared bike trails, or playing a video game with few possible outcomes can be satisfying.

[blueblimp]

I agree: a well-designed educational course can feel like a video game in some ways, in that you're learning at a high, consistent rate.

[alexjplant]

I can't stand Guitar Hero because it's nothing like playing a real guitar and I'm therefore no good at it. At least the Rock Band drums vaguely approximate playing a cheap e-kit and the vocal part has proper pitch detection... unfortunately a real guitar is hard to replicate with cheap plastic hardware. There's also the fact that memorizing a real song is easier than memorizing colored buttons because you can build a mental model of the song around your knowledge of music theory.

On the topic of complex games a la Factorio: I've been playing a lot of Age of Empires II with my friends lately and have come to enjoy it. I previously shied away from RTSes because I was terrified of the meta but I've gotten decent enough to consistently beat the CPU on Moderate. I have no shot of ever commanding an army of trebuchets and knights in real life so doing it on my ThinkPad via Proton is the next best thing :-D

[pinkmuffinere]

Omg aoe2 is so addictive! Some things you might enjoy:

- YouTuber “spirit of the law”

- watching some build order guides. Fast feudal and fast castle build orders are super useful

- watching commentated games of the Viper

[alexjplant]

Ha, I was watching a SOTL video earlier today to learn how to better plan my military build. I was a Fast Castle -> Boom adherent until a week or two ago because I kept getting got by the CPU rushing me during Feudal without having my defenses built... these days I basically do Dark Age the same every time then adjust my strategy based on the map, enemy civs, etc.

[r3trohack3r]

Being someone who grew up on these games, I often think of the steep trade offs I made in childhood playing them.

If I’d spent all the time playing Guitar Hero playing an actual guitar instead, I’d be a real guitar hero.

I could also be a pro skater.

[zackbrown]

On the other hand, video games enable a wide breadth of intellectual experiences.

Being a simulated guitar hero and simulated pro skater is more enriching than the likely baseline of having zero experience with either.

And, video games can help in discovering real world passions — the number of guitarists who found their inspirational spark through Guitar Hero is likely significant. Same for Factorio or Minecraft -> programming.

[craz8]

If I could have got a steady hand with tweezers, I could easily have been a surgeon. Real patients probably don’t have noses that light up, which reduces distractions too!

[toast0]

My malpractice insurance payments would be through the roof. I'm pretty sure I managed to lose leg bones inside the patient.

[the_gipsy]

Maybe you would have tortured yourself and still wouldn't be any good.

[wiseowise]

But we’re talking about professional programmers here, not amateurs role playing.

[SauntSolaire]

So? There are a lot of not fun aspects of programming; Factorio is what it's like if it was all just the fun parts.

[IggleSniggle]

The problem with side projects is that they do not have a well defined goal. Or they do, in which case something like Factorio won't have any appeal because you can just work on something more meaningful instead. Factorio is for people who want to keep programming but are too frustrated or cynical about the real world to do it there. If the real world was better, they would do it there. If the real world could be fixed with programming, they would do it there. Many have tried, only to discover that what they thought were technical problems are really people problems.

[ozim]

Games usually have kinks worked out - if you build project you might end up chasing one liner for a week.

From game I get instant gratification as if I play by the game guide/rules I can have something satisfying built in one evening.

[rustyboy]

i find tech hobbies fun because so may of the hard skills are transferable so i'm never starting from scratch, aka the hardest parts of a new hobby.

however, this is the trap i always fall into - i have these vague targets like "learn vue" and spend the whole weekend trying to figure out how to install node on a windows machine and run a basic test

[brokenmachine]

100% agree, but think how long it would take you to install node without all your previous experience!!

Personally I have a list of things to learn that could easily take several lifetimes.

[MichaelZuo]

There are plenty of technical problems that are in fact technical problems.

e.g: making bluetooth 10% more energy efficient in the next few revisions

In fact there are probably infinitely many.

[lelandbatey]

Making Bluetooth 10% more energy efficient in the next few revisions is a terrible example because you absolutely cannot just tackle that by yourself. Not because it's technically hard, but because it's actually a people problem in disguise!

If you just walk up to the mailing list with the complete designs, documents, experimental results, schematics, trade offs, feasibility studies, you know what you're going to get? People saying "whoa, hey, great work but let's talk about this. I see here you've made assumption X about implementation area Y and that actually conflicts with the direction that we had in mind for the upcoming release, so let's talk more. To start, we'd like to see if we can explore option Z, thoughts?"

That ain't fun. It's rewarding but it ain't fun. Not like sitting down and messing with Legos in your own house is fun, or building a silly factory in Factorio is fun.

[com2kid]

> Making Bluetooth 10% more energy efficient in the next few revisions is a terrible example because you absolutely cannot just tackle that by yourself. Not because it's technically hard, but because it's actually a people problem in disguise!

I know a person who 2x'ed BTLE transfer speeds by herself by coming up with a new protocol to talk to iPhones w/o the need for one of Apple's security chips.

Sufficient brainpower can do amazing things.

[MichaelZuo]

Well of course it would take a literal super genius to actually accomplish successfully this via individual submission.

Nobody is going to believe anyone short of that bar would have even fully understood the bluetooth specification. So even a regular genius, 99.9th percentile HN user, would have a starting credibility of roughly zero.

But there are likely infinitely many waiting for that 99.9999th percentile HN reader to come along.

[surajrmal]

No one is waiting for super geniuses. They are just trying to use groups of people to solve hard problems instead of relying on individuals. It's amazing what people can accomplish by working together.

[MichaelZuo]

This isn’t a feasible pathway outside of a lifetime commitment, because it takes several decades to build up enough credibility to reliably advance proposals in such committee work. (Or be very lucky )

[runeblaze]

Same here. Also Factorio AFAIK has no good copilot. Sadly the best LLMs are not fine-tuned on Factorio so my productivity takes a massive hit when moving from side projects to Factorio.

[wildpeaks]

Perhaps you should be concerned if your productivity is so low when you don't have an AI crutch doing the work for you.

[runeblaze]

Trust me when I play minecraft, the moment I realize I don't have inventory sorting installed I quit the game.

[thih9]

Are there any popular games with copilot like AI suggestions being part of the core gameplay?

[hot_gril]

Also, are there video games with ML-powered opponents or NPCs that'll act more like humans instead of the old-fashioned decision tree AIs? Seems about time. I know there are research projects that tried this for things like Starcraft 2.

Also saw Facebook's experimental Diplomacy AI. Wish that were usable the time we lost a player.

[fwip]

There are some LLM-powered services that claim to be copilot for games.

From what I can tell, it seems like generally they're doing RAG over the game's wiki, and then reading it to you in an attractive-lady voice.

[Retr0id]

I can't tell if you're being serious or not here lol

[m463]

where is our hacker news copilot when we need it?

[indigoabstract]

Lol. My parser failed at this step, so I had to look it up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence

[Dylan16807]

I'm looking over the sentences in the comment you replied to and I can't figure out where you would have gotten lost, can you quote the partial sentence that confused you?

[indigoabstract]

It starts out as a typical programmer rant these days about AI assistants and LLM fine tuning and then goes on to complain how sadly, they don't work for this game yet. So he's forced to play it manually. How old fashioned.

I find that pretty amusing.

[Dylan16807]

Oh well if you thought someone was going to say they dislike LLMs failures so they want fewer LLMs, and instead they say they dislike LLM failures so they want LLMs to be trained more, that's not a garden path. You don't have to back up and re-process the previous words. And in particular a garden path sentence does it grammatically. You suddenly realize you were getting parts of speech wrong.

[snvzz]

Note that the original sentence also gave me pause.

It's perhaps too long, overflows the parser stack.

[oersted]

I do get the appeal of games, it is one of my long-time passions, but indeed that's the issue with games like Factorio specifically, they feel too much like work, so might as well do work.

[dietr1ch]

This, long ago a roomate got into Factorio and after figuring out the basics ended up admitting that it felt way too much like work. This has been my reason to stay out of Factorio even though plenty of people have recommended it to me. I did a short collaborative run of Mindustry and I feel I don't need to play Factorio, plus, Counter-Strike chugs all my playing time, to me it's a bit like cocaine made a game and except for griding aim, it scratches all the right spots in my (smooth?) brain.

It's the trucking game for truckers in my mind, only a madman would play it after work.

[oersted]

> It's the trucking game for truckers

Exactly yes, I wouldn't say it's only for engineers, it is perfect for smart people who chose a different path in life and need to feed this part of their brain with a fun simplified simulation of what it's like to be an engineer.

Of course, engineers would love this game, but we already engage in this type of activity all day much more intensely precisely because we love it, we already know how to do more interesting and valuable things with the same effort.

Similarly, I really lost the appetite for hard decision-making strategy games when I founded my startup. I was already having to take plenty of hard decisions, thank you very much, the real thing is much more interesting and more than enough.

[peeksonite]

Re: "hard decision-making strategy games", are there any that you'd recommend in hindsight to future founders? To get a feel for the mental lived reality of decision-making in a startup?

[oersted]

I have a very clear answer to this: Suzerain

By far the best decision-making game I have played, incredible writing, world building and character development too.

It’s about being president but surprisingly similar to being a founder. No matter the scale, there is always a small inner circle and it’s just as much about the people as the technical aspects, which is also always similar: estimating outcomes based on evidence, logic, experience and advice.

[yieldcrv]

I feel the same about another pretty chill game, Dave the Diver. It has a great feedback loop, at the beginning

Once I get successful in it, I'm like "but I should be making money in the real world, not this world" as I do have side projects. the game does turn into a slog, if you approach it that way

[IggleSniggle]

Dave the Diver just turns into a slog is all. It's fantastic at the start when everything is novel, and all the systems hold promise. But the systems themselves turn out to not have good gameplay loops, so right around the underwater village it starts to kinda suck, which ironically is right around when all the systems are mature enough that to play well you have a giant list of "todo" items across a variety of systems, many of which you may find boring, but are obliged to interact with anyway, sort of like real life.

The advantage a game like factorio has over DtD is that you can kind of abandon huge sections and "start fresh" while still collecting rent from the work you did earlier to fund your new excursions. I guess DtD does this to a degree, but there's a lot less freedom of intellectual movement.

This is why I like Against the Storm. It is a novel (if familiar) challenge every time, and every time you "beat the odds" the game forces you to move on to the next harder challenge, "you beat this puzzle, you need a harder on."

[yieldcrv]

just looked up Against the Storm, looks like the board game Agricola, where the goal is to build and farm and survive the winter. I always found Agricola ironic, in that is masquarades as a PvP game, where your survival outcome is then compared to the other players, but its very stressful as there are not enough resources on the board for your family.

so thats what made it too much like real life for me, because you're like struggling but then pretending like you are flexing (look at the size of my house! my farm!), but really everyone barely made it at all

maybe Against the Storm as a single player journey makes more sense

[oersted]

I've played both, I absolutely love both, but they don't have that much to do with each other.

Against the Storm is all about setting up complex production chains, not necessarily linking them explicitly like in Factorio, but more about balancing resource availability and assigning workers. It's a lot like other resource-focused city builders like Anno, but it is very well designed to impose a constant pressure on the player, always on a rush to meet goals before the whole thing crumbles, constantly putting out fires in the system (sometimes literal fires).

The name is perfect, in that you build this complex machine, and it is constantly stress-tested by periodic hazards. It's an awesome rush to "hold-fast", scramble to desperately fix things, constantly on the edge, hoping that the storm will end soon because the whole thing is about to crumble, while rushing to fulfil the objectives so you can get out of there before it gets too bad.

Frospunk evokes this feeling really well too. I suppose Factorio is kinda similar with the alien attacks. Come to think of it, the pressure to feed the family and the final scramble for points in Agricola are not so dissimilar either.

[bigstrat2003]

> Once I get successful in it, I'm like "but I should be making money in the real world, not this world" as I do have side projects. the game does turn into a slog, if you approach it that way

Life is a slog if approached that way. Spending your time chasing more money instead of enjoying life is the quickest way to have a miserable existence.

[yieldcrv]

I find the game motivational after a very profitable shift, in game.

But I wasn’t looking for devil’s advocate or solutions, us guys need to affirm each other’s experiences more often.

I also do enjoy very profitable sessions in life, the pursuit of money itself is fulfilling for me as it already is a massive multiplayer game pvp. Additionally, I would usually prefer to be doing entertainment options exclusive to the level of profits that have been manifested. But I love the existence that allows me to play video games with no consequence.

[adastra22]

Spending your (now short) life hungry and homeless on the streets is not enjoyable either.

[vinceguidry]

That's... a weird dichotomy to draw. Seems like you're determined to keep yourself miserable.

[adastra22]

I'm not miserable. I quite enjoy having money. It allows me to spend time with my family doing the things I enjoy.

[z3phyr]

Are you working at Black Mesa research? Or maybe space communist office? Do you work on interplanetary industrial stuff?

[adastra22]

Yes. Don’t you? Why not?

[aphantastic]

Mindusry scratches the same itch, but in perhaps a slightly more appealing way for me at least. Rather than the entire game being dedicated to creating one massive monolith dedicated to the one goal of rocket building or whatever, there are many different levels each where you’re just playing classic tower defense and using the layout of the map to your advantage to extract resources and kill bad guys. It’s casual and FOSS.

[ivanjermakov]

I think Factorio, Mindustry and Satisfactory is a "choose one" trio for any gamer to like. They share similar goals (factory building), but approaches are quite different.

[lostmsu]

Not sure what "choose one" means here. I liked Factorio and Satisfactory, but didn't like Mindustry.

[ivanjermakov]

I meant that out of this 3 games you'll find one you like when looking for factory building games.

[hnben]

the expansion adds some of these aspects.

> there are many different levels each

the expansion adds separate planets and multiple space-platforms. So it moves away from the monolith and towards multiple smaller factories. (In the end-game you probably and up with a massive monolith again, but until then you will have multiple medium-sized factories).

> ... classic tower defense and using the layout of the map to your advantage to extract resources and kill bad guys

Each new area add some unique defense-need, e.g. in space you have to shoot at incoming asteroids, and on the lava-planet, you have to build temporary mining-outposts, that get eaten by worms after a couple of minutes. (The other planes probably add something like that too, but I haven't played so far yet)

[fragmede]

hopefully not a spoiler given the name, but the space mod that was released on Monday opens new planets to explore, after you manage to build the rocket to space on the first level, so it's no longer an "entire game being dedicated to creating one massive monolith dedicated to the one goal of rocket building"

[MarkMarine]

The stakes (there are none except ones you set for yourself)

The timeline (quick returns, but a long scale of challenges you can build up to. Lots of side projects out there with 0 users.)

You can play with friends

You can also pay 1/4 attention until you need to design something complex in the game. I find it fun, I can turn my brain off for a bit but then re/engage for the fun complex stuff.

I stopped playing as much myself because I wanted to either work on professional development (side projects, learning more) or actually make things with my hands (woodworking, chair making, fixing an old truck) that were real breaks from software engineering, and easier to share with my kids.

[TechDebtDevin]

I feel guilty every time I turn on Factorio and basically no longer play it because I know I could have just as much enjoyment building something for the real world.

[dpkirchner]

I've yet to find something I can do in the real world that's as enjoyable, accessible, affordable, and easy to pick up and put down as Factorio, or similar games (that scratch a "builder" itch). What sort of things do you have in mind?

* edited for clarity, typos

[TechDebtDevin]

Well the reason I enjoy Factorio in the first place is because I love automating things, not necessarily the building part. There's an endless amount of things I can automate in my life or for others, and the effort I put into building those automatons, whether is personal or professional, continues to provide value after I'm finished. I have 1k hours in Factorio, while those hours did provide value to me, that value is pretty finite. That's my logic at least, I just feel guilty playing it looking at it through that lense. I got like 50 private repositories that aren't finished, or are interesting and fun that could provide just as much satisfaction and possibly continue to provide value in my life even after I'm finished with them. Right now I'm working on a little project to buzz myself into the front door of my building via an app on my phone that triggers the buzzer in my apartment that is a weird analog system that's 60 + years old (but funnily enough is called Auth Master). Not complicated or intense, but fun and interesting and will provide a standard of living improvement for me for years to come (assuming I don't move) after I finish!

[gwervc]

For me it's me PhD thesis. It's a drug, and there's always something to do either on the code or writing or reading. I'm even a bit disappointed by Space Age.

[TechDebtDevin]

Good luck :)

[chpatrick]

Because you don't always have a fun side project and Factorio is designed to keep providing them for hours and hours.

[mrkramer]

>Factorio is designed to keep providing them for hours and hours

It's called replayability, the crucial selling point of every successful game.

[chpatrick]

Yes, and?

[mrkramer]

I filled you in with a right word.

[chpatrick]

Thanks.

[abecedarius]

There's an in-between experience with the likes of the Natural Number Game or Project Euler -- it feels like there should be so much more of that kind of thing to substitute for so much of legacy education. Most "learning games" afaik are too "schooley".

I haven't played Factorio so far; for those who haven't programmed, do you think you're learning something new and somewhat transferable?

[seanthemon]

Zacktronics games might fit this bill

[ozim]

I play Cities Skylines for that reason I have to debug the traffic but mostly have fun building the city the way I want. Like once I feel like building a lot of tram lines, other time building train lines.

I also build side projects - but from the game I get instant gratification as I can build decent city with goal I have in one evening whereas side project to have anything I can say is pleasing takes much more time than one evening.

Games don't have annoying blockers like trying to use some new library, cities I build also did not work first times I was playing because I was noob - but even libraries frameworks I use on daily basis always have some kinks I have to figure out so it takes multiple evening anyway.

[m463]

I think it's more a rite of passage.¹

You don't have to make it your job.

In a similar way I think more people should change a flat tire or change the oil in their car. I think it will make them more aware, but they don't have to become a mechanic.

[1] A rite of passage is a ceremony or ritual of the passage which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another. It involves a significant change of status in society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rite_of_passage

[grensley]

Sometimes you just want to expend energy in a direction that doesn't have consequences. I hold the opposite opinion from you in that people ought to be able to turn off the "any non-productive minute of my life is wasted" mindset.

You're on big space rock, dude.

[fizlebit]

Games are much easier than real work and provide more consistent dopamine hits with their graphics, sound effects and feeling of progression. Factorio while fun is a long way from real work.

[throwaway4220]

That’s funny! I play because I don’t code in my job so this scratches my itch with instant feedback. Now if only I was good at coding…i probably should do a side project

[bigstrat2003]

Factorio is more fun than any side project. While it hits a similar area of the brain as programming does (the problem solving zone), it's definitely not the same.

[johnisgood]

That is debatable. I get more satisfaction from working on a side project that I know matters in the real life, outside of the gaming scene, and it is fun working on it myself, and the same thing applies here: no bosses, deadlines, etc.

[toomuchtodo]

Factorio is test driven development that tickles my ADHD brain, without all of the overhead of having to find a problem to want to write code for.

“Observe pattern, build pattern while learning and optimizing pattern fit, delight.”

[MichaelDickens]

You could just as easily say, why work on a side project when you could play Factorio instead with the same result?

What makes a side project better than Factorio?

[johnisgood]

I feel I contribute to society more by working on a side project of mine than if I play video games.

[throwaway84678]

Most "side projects" have no users, other than maybe their creator, and therefore provide zero value to society. Furthermore, there's no intrinsic value in "contributing to society" — a term that is completely arbitrary, anyway. If the idea that you can improve society with your projects provides you joy, more power to you, but that's all it should boil down to: doing what you enjoy the most.

[johnisgood]

I do not know about "most", maybe.

I agree that "contributing to society" has no intrinsic value. It is my own.

I feel like I waste my time when I play video games, but this is recent. I used to play a lot till age 24 or something. This feeling stops me from playing, but even if I do end up playing, I feel guilty afterwards that my time went to something that ultimately "does not matter". That said, playing something for fun is entertainment, it should matter, but I still get those feelings nevertheless. I hope this makes sense. I am not trying to argue that "fun" does not matter, I suppose I am just not so fun anymore. :P

It depends though, if I play a video game with my girlfriend it is alright.

[dunefox]

I don't either. I tried getting into it (and recently Satisfactory) and I find it boring.