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Achievement Porn

petermichaud.com

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Re: Achievement Porn

#101

Post by Confusion »

CoryOndrejka wrote: post #13

"Any achievement in a video game is a fake achievement" This is a great soundbite to build an essay around but ignores two decades of learning, cognitive, and psychological research. There are too many examples to try to pack into a comments, but among the most obvious: - 3D games are have been demonstrated to have positive effects on spatial perception and to allow rehearsal-based training for real-world activities…

But the short answer is that it is preposterous to dismiss technologically mediated achievement as somehow fake

As preposterous as it is to create this strawman of the article and rail against that? It's crystal clear that he's not talking about the incidental advances one may obtain from playing video games and that he's not talking about the special niche of 'video games' where the game is an educational instrument. That dismisses your examples and probably your 'on and on'.

Meta-comment: The parent is an example of a critical comment that is upvoted and subsequently hurts the community. It diminishes the chance that people will read and learn from the article. The remark about video games is a relatively minor part of the essay (mostly it was the sbject of the post that inspired this one) and the criticism of only that part probably gives a lot of people the wrong impression about the article. Comments touching only remotely on the article, however insightful, should not be voted to the top. (Please note that this meta-comment does not depend on me disagreeing with (part of) the comment)

Re: Achievement Porn

#102

Post by Enra2 »

derefr wrote: post #65
Eliezer wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on, I'm not sure that's fair. Yes, everyone knows that school is insane, marijuana is safer than alcohol, you shouldn't have different tax treatment for corporate and individual health insurance, et cetera et cetera EXCEPT WE DON'T ALL KNOW THAT AND THEY'RE STILL DOING IT.

Perhaps we can just make an Encyclopedia of Common-yet-Dangerous Misconceptions, word it and print it up to look, and have the status cues of, a religious text (but also with convincing info-graphics and cites), and distribute them like phonebooks door-to-door?

"Let's call the product Revipedia. The purpose of Revipedia is to be like Wikipedia, except that it serves as a reliable source on all topics, no matter how technical or controversial, and no matter how detached from reality the centrist mainstream may be."

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/01/reviped...

Re: Achievement Porn

#103

Post by billswift »

Psyonic wrote: post #43
electromagnetic wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this rational everything is a fake achievement, so just off yourself and save us this boring shit from being on the HN front page. The majority of our life is doing useless, thankless tasks. Simply by spending 15 minutes in the shower every day I will have wasted an entire year of my life in the shower. By sleeping in 1 hour on Sunday I wasted 1/2 a year of my life, equally anyone spending an hour in church also w…

Right. You could say that. That said, I'm sure that feels a little ridiculous to you. That money can be a treadmill, though, is as old as time. Haven't you seen A Christmas Carol? Scrooge and Marley made money like bandits.

You do know A Christmas Carol is fiction, right? That Scrooge and Marley don't really exist?

Re: Achievement Porn

#104

Post by elptacek »

nopassrecover wrote: post #90
elptacek wrote: post #66

Very interesting. These two articles explain a few things for me: 1. Why I can't ever seem to get into video games (or games in general). 2. Why the hobbies I do enjoy use skills that are difficult to acquire and take a lot of effort to master. 3. Why we have such a hard time motivating our son to practice viola and stick to martial arts. Most of the reward he's heard over the years has come in the form of, "Wow, you…

Games are typically spatial based (shooters mostly) or strategic based and for whatever reason (genetic or cultural) boys are more interested in these topics than girls. Girls have been shown to be more interested in reality based games (playing house etc.) which is why games like The Sims are such a hit. Constrastly boys look for an escape/imaginative games which sums up most games and is why your son plays more gam…

In general, I agree with you. As applied to our kids, specifically, it doesn't ring true. They are both excited by the same games: Spore, Club Penguin, Rock Band, Zelda, Pokemon. Some of which seem like 'playing house' (Club Penguin) and others 'escape/imaginative.' In their non-computer time, they play a game they've invented called "Creatures." I'm not sure what this game entails (it appears to have no real rules), but it seems partway between 'playing house' and 'escape/imaginative.'

Judging by the general level of tidiness around here, nobody's really that into 'playing house.' ;-)

Re: Achievement Porn

#105

Post by billswift »

metamemetics wrote: post #27

I strongly agree with the proposed existence of the Achievment treadmills. However, I think the difference between "fake" and "real" achievement treadmills are completely arbitrary, created by a societal average and either accepted or rejected by the individual. If society as a whole started valuing number of facebook friends over net income, then facebook would no longer be a a "fake" treadmill. I think it's still a…

It isn't really that they are arbitrary, rather there is a continuum - some "achievements" are clearly fake and others clearly real, but there is a grey area in between where it depends on the specific situation and goals of the person involved.

Re: Achievement Porn

#106

Post by billswift »

I think the author is talking about the feeling of achievement. And that the only reason people care about (have the goal of) video games is that feeling. Basically, he seems to be arguing against wireheading, while those here arguing that all achievement is fake or that all achievement is real are effectively claiming wireheading, living in a permanent VR simulation, or similar is just as good as the real world.

Re: Achievement Porn

#107

Post by cousin_it »

chrischen wrote: post #88

> Any achievement in a video game is a “fake achievement.” (Disclaimer: I'm assuming he's talking about any achievement in a game, whether it was placed there by the creators or naturally occurring). Life is a game. What's the difference between rules in a game of monopoly and laws governing corporate actions? Controlling a predator drone in real life vs in Call of Duty? A game is usually something with predefined ru…

> What's the difference between rules in a game of monopoly and laws governing corporate actions? Controlling a predator drone in real life vs in Call of Duty?

Easy. The difference is morality. In real life the consequences of your actions can hurt other people. The "life is a game" position is amoral, as numerous writers have noted and as your Predator drone example eloquently shows.

Re: Achievement Porn

#108

Post by TheTarquin »

It seems to me that this essay is based on a strained analogy and a whole bunch of convenient equivocation. His whole "achievement" link to video games seems to be a largely rhetorical one. What if those were called (as they are on some systems) trophies? Starts to make the rest of his essay sound a bit strange.

Furthermore, to compare arbitrary accomplishments in games and saying that the only thing which distinguishes them from achievements in life is that the video game ones are too easy or in some way "false" is to ignore that they're fundamentally different kinds of undertakings.

To play a video game is to, as Merlin Mann says, "move your hands a little and make small decisions". The activity is essentially medatative or recreational in nature and the results further that goal. The point of these "achievements" is to relax and have fun. The point of the "achievements" in real life is to better ourselves or our circumstances.

Furthermore, the in-game "achievements" are rigorously structured, those out-of-game are radically open-ended.

Both the structure and purpose of the two kinds of achievements are completely different. To conflate them and then deride video-game achievements for being inferior misses the point. It's like people who say that Guitar Hero doesn't make you a good guitarist.

Well, duh. But no one's making the argument that it will. We don't play Guitar Hero to get good at guitar. We don't play video games to accomplish anything.

Re: Achievement Porn

#109

Post by TheTarquin »

gridspy wrote: post #69
CoryOndrejka wrote: post #13

"Any achievement in a video game is a fake achievement" This is a great soundbite to build an essay around but ignores two decades of learning, cognitive, and psychological research. There are too many examples to try to pack into a comments, but among the most obvious: - 3D games are have been demonstrated to have positive effects on spatial perception and to allow rehearsal-based training for real-world activities…

How about : Any achievement the game rewards you for is a fake achievement. Whenever I go up a level in WoW, or gain a kill in Quake, or beat a boss and pick up his loot I have a fake achievement. Sure, there are some real achievements in there, but they are not provided by the game world - they are almost a side effect. Most likely they are not the reason that people are playing these games, but they are a useful ex…

Consider how much real achievement we would see if all the motivated hackers put down WoW and started up their development environment of choice.

But there's a lot of truth to the fact that human beings need recreation. We need down-time when we're not building, making, doing, etc. There's a lot of engineers who, if they put down WoW and fired up Eclipse would just stare at the screen for hours wondering what to build next. Or they'd disappear into an equally "unproductive" passed time like email, solitaire, or social news forums like this one.

Re: Achievement Porn

#110

Post by chrischen »

cousin_it wrote: post #107
chrischen wrote: post #88

> Any achievement in a video game is a “fake achievement.” (Disclaimer: I'm assuming he's talking about any achievement in a game, whether it was placed there by the creators or naturally occurring). Life is a game. What's the difference between rules in a game of monopoly and laws governing corporate actions? Controlling a predator drone in real life vs in Call of Duty? A game is usually something with predefined ru…

> What's the difference between rules in a game of monopoly and laws governing corporate actions? Controlling a predator drone in real life vs in Call of Duty? Easy. The difference is morality. In real life the consequences of your actions can hurt other people. The "life is a game" position is amoral, as numerous writers have noted and as your Predator drone example eloquently shows.

No, I meant the difference in skill. Your skills in any of those activities are at least somewhat interchangeable with real life.

Monopoly is only amoral because in the subset of the universe we've isolated, we've taken out some of the details that would normally result in morality. You also don't have to worry about eating in monopoly, or in Call of Duty. That's why it's a subset.

Rules in monopoly and rules governing corporate actions are analogous, not ==. That's what I meant by asking what's the difference.

When you play monopoly it's like isolating variables so you can hone specific skills. Obviously playing monopoly does not equal an MBA, but that's because monopoly is a scaled down version of life only dealing with buying and owning property (and without concern for individual human lives), and it certainly can hone some business skills. But this is, to some degree at least, how all games are. Some games will be more of a waste of time, others less, some none.

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