A link between video games and unemployment • Hacker News Board

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#51

Post by kbutler » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

s_kilk wrote: post #17

jorgemf wrote: post #4

Of course, because the lower salaries, the high prices of the houses and the global crisis during these years has nothing to do with the unemployment in the young population.

It's the logic of Late Capitalism: all problems and failings are those of the individual, never of the system.

There's a pendulum swing - focusing on the problems of the system, and focusing on the problems of the individual.

In truth, there are problems both in the system and with individuals, and failings in each reinforce the other, and effective aspects of each also reinforce each other.

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#52

Post by bjt » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 6:51 PM UTC

boubiyeah wrote: post #7

ouid wrote: post #5

>games will go on getting better I don't think there's any evidence for this, and the call to panic is based on it.

yeah that makes no sense. Games will go on getting visually better but Gameplay, fun, replayability has very little to do with it.

Not just visually. Increased computing power and richer game frameworks will make for more compelling AIs. There are advances in procedural content generation that are getting past the saminess of endless variations on "kill ten rats." Open modding platforms (e.g. Minecraft) create whole communities around them, and endless supplies of content. I think we're still in the infancy of that trend. The immersivity of VR will make gaming experiences qualitatively more compelling than the screens of the past. There's a lot more going on than just increased polygon counts.

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#53

Post by sametmax » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 6:52 PM UTC

J-dawg wrote: post #34

kemiller2002 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine felt the same way. He was undergoing a tragedy in his family, and he would play video games after returning from the hospital at night. It's funny, looking at him and talking to him, you'd never think he'd be a huge video game player, but it really was a source of stress relief. He could focus his unspent frustrations and hurt into competing online, and the way he explained it, I think it kept him sa…

I haven't been able to find it, but I remember a comment here on HN by a guy who basically said that gaming saved his life by helping him to zone out during a period of severe depression. I guess it's a form of mindfulness, in a way.

That's the exact opposite actually. Nit saying it's a bad thing though. But it's important to understand that screens are taking your attention away. You are not in the moment at all.

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#54

Post by icebraining » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 6:53 PM UTC

hanoz wrote: post #25

pzh wrote: post #10

If nothing else, at least those economists have found the solution to keep people occupied when AI renders half the world unemployed. Now the premise of the Matrix doesn't seem so far fetched after all.

Isn't the premise, unbearably absurd even by the standards of the rest of the movie, that humans are used as a power supply?

That's what the people in Zion believes, not necessarily what was really going on: https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-the-sentient-machines-in-the...

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#55

Post by slg » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 6:53 PM UTC

dimitar wrote: post #30

Video games are cheap compared to other entertainment. I can buy a good enough PC for $400 and I can clock almost an infinite amount of game-time on it with friends all over the world. Most other activities - playing pool, eating out, bars, most sports, vacationing - cost a lot more per hour of possible entertainment. So if you don't have the money and you have the time you should choose activities that provide the m…

Not only are they cheap, but the nominal price of video games hasn't budged much in something like 30 years. AAA titles have always hit the market in the $50-$60 dollar range since the days of the NES (and maybe earlier, but that is before my time). It isn't surprising that video game companies have introduced additional revenue streams with DLC or microtransactions in order to counter inflation in both real dollars and in production budgets.

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#56

Post by metaphorm » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 6:55 PM UTC

kpil wrote: post #29

pharrington wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-if the post-scarcity UBI future ever happens- I live in a country that throws away half of its prepared food. Like we're not even talking about some chopped up animal corpse that sits out for too long and has to be discarded before it goes rancid - in the US we strait-up assemble food in some factory, wrap it plastic, burn fuel shipping said wrapped and assembled food to a store halfway across the country, unwrap th…

It won't be a problem* unless we make more of us. Political and religious leaders that oppose education and planned parenthood are the long term problem. Ok, slaughtering is a problem, but I think it will sort itself out eventually.

don't you think it's a much bigger issue that we are normalized to a profoundly wasteful life style? this isn't really a population problem, it's an energy per capita problem.

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#57

Post by EthanHeilman » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 6:55 PM UTC

boubiyeah wrote: post #7

ouid wrote: post #5

>games will go on getting better I don't think there's any evidence for this, and the call to panic is based on it.

yeah that makes no sense. Games will go on getting visually better but Gameplay, fun, replayability has very little to do with it.

I have spent some time going back and replaying older games that I found amazing when I originally played them. Outside of simple reflex games like Tetris or Mario, game play has not aged well. Play a strategy or RPG video game from the mid 90s and see how fast it takes you to find some exploitable feature that makes the game trivial to beat.

Compare:

1. "Shogun: Total War" to "Warhammer: Total War" or

2. Civ2's city spamming to Civ5 really well designed gameplay.

3. 1993's Stronghold [0] is so easy for modern gamers to win it feels more like an interactive screensaver than a game and it was a great game when it was released.

The only real exception to this rule is RTS games like Starcraft or C&C, but only in multi-player.

tl;dr Gamers and game play are in a Red Queen's race with each other.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stronghold_(1993_video_game)

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#58

Post by metaphorm » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 6:56 PM UTC

jumpkickhit wrote: post #13

There's worse forms of escapism that are far less stimulating. Alcohol or drugs, for example. It's nice we live in an age where there's engaging entertainment like video games instead of just more passive entertainment like TV.

as others have pointed out to you: please don't lump all drugs under the same umbrella.

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#59

Post by pimlottc » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 6:57 PM UTC

desdiv wrote: post #36

hanoz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the premise, unbearably absurd even by the standards of the rest of the movie, that humans are used as a power supply?

NEO: The human body is the most inefficient source of energy you could possibly imagine. The efficiency of a power plant at converting thermal energy into electricity decreases as you run the turbines at lower temperatures. If you had any sort of food humans could eat, it would be more efficient to burn it in a furnace than feed it to humans. And now you're telling me that their food is the bodies of the dead, fed to…

Now that's a movie I'd like to see. I mean, if you're going to simulate a universe, what's stopping you from playing around with the parameters a bit? Or at the very least, cutting some corners to save processing time.

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#60

Post by metaphorm » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 7:00 PM UTC

hanoz wrote: post #25

pzh wrote: post #10

If nothing else, at least those economists have found the solution to keep people occupied when AI renders half the world unemployed. Now the premise of the Matrix doesn't seem so far fetched after all.

Isn't the premise, unbearably absurd even by the standards of the rest of the movie, that humans are used as a power supply?

my understanding is that the original draft of the script had humans being used as a massively parallel distributed processing network. their own brains were the wetware that run the matrix simulation program. that's more sensible and a much more profound statement as to the philosophical connections between the matrix and the social construction of consciousness, which was a major theme of the film.

but then some shit-for-brains hollywood producers read the script, decided it was too intellectual/nerdy and had it rewritten as "humans are batteries" which is gibberish to anyone with an education, but hollywood loves the lowest common denominator.