Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Let Children Get Bored Again

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 179 posts

Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#161

Post by ThalesX »

solipsism wrote: post #110
ThalesX wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a college course in game design, one of the key components of said topic is ‘flow’. You want to keep the player in a state where it’s neither too hard nor too easy for them to continue playing. Make it too hard and the player loses interest. Make it too easy, the same behavior can be observed. If you want a game, you want to keep the player in a state of flow, if you can’t do that, the game would presumably no…

Any game design course worth its salt would cover Myst. Tell me, in what way does Myst force an agenda in a way that a book does not ?

The course did not cover Myst. Also, you make assumptions, such as the one that Myst was released when I took my game design class...

Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#162

Post by PascLeRasc »

Apocryphon wrote: post #135
agumonkey wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Books are so low on addiction and very high on interesting stimuli. for some reason, solid matter full of glyphs in our hands captivate the mind differently than other medium / formats. I tried a lot of things, every time I get a book I feel different and most importantly better. Coming from a not avid reader. #2cents

Do reading books on e-readers, tablets, and phones have the same effect? How about static websites with long-form text?

I'm not the parent, but I agree with him completely and for me books on a screen and web articles don't have the same effect, even if it's great writing. For me nothing can beat a paperback.

Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#163

Post by westmeal »

zimpenfish wrote: post #157
JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting, but I think games have taken a significant backstep over the past few years in terms of RPG's in many ways. The issue for me nowadays is that AAA studios seem to demand certain things. One of which, is fully voiced dialogue. This sounds good, people talking lines to me is great right? But the problem is, each of those lines costs time and money, and adds rigidity around what can be changed as you ne…

> fully voiced dialogue Yeah, I 99% hate this[1]. Doubly if it's from the person I'm supposed to be playing - let me have my own thoughts about what's going on! [1] There are some games which have excellent voiced dialogue as part of the world building, e.g. Albino Lullaby

You can make it work, but it's crammed into absolutely everything now just because you CAN.

Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#164

Post by dagw »

sarcasmOrTears wrote: post #114
csmeder wrote: post #41

There are two separate issues: A. 1,000 ft view: drugs are bad. Both chemical drugs and electronic entertainment that is engineered to be addictive. Light weight drugs in small doses are less bad: 90s vs now. B. 50,000 ft view: the real problem. When rats are put in normal laboratory settings they choose drugs over food and water if given the choice. Most of our research on addiction is based on this. In a study wher…

That forest kindergarden looks awesome. Too bad it's a liability hell in basically all western countries. Freedom-oriented laws would solve a lot of problems.

"liability hell" in the sense you mean is pretty much a US concept.

Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#165

Post by tmaly »

I have given my 5 year old enough guidance that she keeps busy when ever she is home.

Yes we still do activities, but she is never bored and she never asks for much screen time. We have tons of books, things to draw, puppets to make performances with.

I think exposing kids to lots of different activities and letting them have the free time, helps them to fill the the time.

Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#166

Post by leetcrew »

dkersten wrote: post #159
zimpenfish wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fully voiced dialogue Yeah, I 99% hate this[1]. Doubly if it's from the person I'm supposed to be playing - let me have my own thoughts about what's going on! [1] There are some games which have excellent voiced dialogue as part of the world building, e.g. Albino Lullaby

I love fully voiced dialogue in some games, if it’s done well it can really help with telling a story, but in more freeform roleplaying games it definitely detracts from the fantasy that’s playing out in my imagination as it means I can’t imprint my own feelings of what characters are feeling. MUDs were definitely the pinnacle of that for me, especially when you played with people who took their fictitious roles seri…

imo, the Witcher 3 is an example of very well done fully voiced dialogue. I almost never wanted to skip through it. I think it fits in this game because you are playing as an already fleshed out character, Geralt. like you said though, sometimes the player character is meant to be more of a blank slate that you fill in yourself. in KOTOR, the player character is essentially a blank slate, as you literally have no memory of who you are and an important part of the story is that you decide who you will be (villain or savior). in this game, the unvoiced player dialogue was the right design choice.

Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#167

Post by toasterlovin »

nitrogen wrote: post #51
clubm8 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I think the issue is, and I struggled for a long time to articulate this... escape. I have always struggled with a cluster of issues... too much tv, too much internet, for a period in college binge drinking, overeating... the big "aha!" was that I was engaging in these behaviors to escape reality. We live in a unique time where if you don't like the reality you're in, you can step into another. Society has…

Books were an escape vehicle before TV, movies, and games.

It is the dose, not the substance, that makes the poison.

Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#168

Post by agumonkey »

Apocryphon wrote: post #135
agumonkey wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Books are so low on addiction and very high on interesting stimuli. for some reason, solid matter full of glyphs in our hands captivate the mind differently than other medium / formats. I tried a lot of things, every time I get a book I feel different and most importantly better. Coming from a not avid reader. #2cents

Do reading books on e-readers, tablets, and phones have the same effect? How about static websites with long-form text?

That's what I cryptically meant by 'lots of things'. As an ex-abstractophile-nerd I used to think that information is information, whether it's on paper, lcd or e-ink.... I read GNU manuals in emacs or in terminal so I'm not craving for aesthetics or high res.

Turns out all mediums have subtle contexts that change the experience (at least personally [thus anecdotally]).

LCD: fatigue, luminosity, potential for distraction because you're using a machine, battery, other apps

Tablet: similar to above although maybe less so (bought a kindle 7, sadly the sub-HD resolution was another flaw)

e-ink: never tried, I wish I could but never did so far. I expect it to be a bit better than the rest

A book is dead. It requires nothing beside a bit of light. Maybe the physicality of pages make my brain focus differently, maybe touching, maybe the fact that it's dead and it won't move weirdly, change. The very high resolution helps.

All of this is super fluffy, but I value my opinion (I was surprised by it too) just enough to say it out loud. It doesn't imply you can't enjoy and learn efficiently with a digital machine but I'm sure it won't be the same as reading a book.

Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#169

Post by nybble41 »

HNLurker2 wrote: post #153
ohaideredevs wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you entirely - books are escapism. But there are levels of escapism - you would agree that a book is better than heroin, right? If so, you agree that there is a hierarchy. Reading teaches a lot of useful skills, such as, you know, reading. Then there is the fact that both video games and books can teach, but there are diminishing returns. When I first read Snow Crash and Neuromancer, they taught me a lot…

Rationally, fictional evidence is useless. Imaginatively, fiction and imagination are the only things that stimulate to push the boundaries in science and tech.

Fiction isn't evidence (except, perhaps, of basic plausibility, which is a pretty low standard). It does, however, contribute to hypothesis generation; the hypotheses thus inspired by fictional sources can then be tested out in the real world.

Re: Let Children Get Bored Again

#170

Post by AstralStorm »

csmeder wrote: post #41

There are two separate issues: A. 1,000 ft view: drugs are bad. Both chemical drugs and electronic entertainment that is engineered to be addictive. Light weight drugs in small doses are less bad: 90s vs now. B. 50,000 ft view: the real problem. When rats are put in normal laboratory settings they choose drugs over food and water if given the choice. Most of our research on addiction is based on this. In a study wher…

B: Please bring these studies. If you do misquote the so called "mouse paradise" experiment, please read the original in detail and also further work of the author.
Post reply on HN