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Ask HN: What are some things you learnt from a game that changed your life?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some things you learnt from a game that changed your life?

#51

Post by bick_nyers »

chitowneats wrote: post #5

Competitive card games like MTG or Hearthstone teach you to "play to your outs". What this means is to identify the ways in which you can maximize your chances of winning when you are in a losing position. This was helpful for me overcoming a tendency in life to just quit when it looked like I was at a disadvantage.

Or trick your opponent into thinking you have the out when you don't, so they fear over committing their resources. In tournament settings, stress and emotions run high and it's important to be able to play confidently even when you are most likely to lose. Even in Hearthstone with how limited interactions there are, you can still find a way to communicate false information to your opponent. As world champion Firebat recently said in a video: "if you play enough you aquire the ability to know what your opponent has in their hand based on small hesitations...how long it takes their eyes to register things".

Edit: I guess since we are looking for parallels in life the takeaway is this, maintain confidence and self-awareness especially when losing, and always consider how you present information to others. You can reframe most things to appear better without being deceptive.

Re: Ask HN: What are some things you learnt from a game that changed your life?

#52

Post by mod »

dnh44 wrote: post #44
mod wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love these old jRPGs. I couldn't have told you the plot, but I remember the mechanics of this and FF2 very well. Modern rpgs are truly fantastic, but I don't enjoy them nearly as much.

Yeah I totally agree. The only one I’ve played recently that recreated the magic of childhood for me was Breath of the Wild.

I played a lot of that. Fantastic game. Huge amount of playtime.

I think if I was a kid still it would be the best game I had ever played.

Re: Ask HN: What are some things you learnt from a game that changed your life?

#53

Post by stevenicr »

Ultima IV - taught that to be truly great you needed to do more than just get strong, you needed to practice being humble, having empathy for the poor - all sorts of things of balance had to be achieved to win.

The Sims - playing after thumbing through the 'pattern language' book .. it's interesting to see things play out - and to watch others play - they learn that things they want are expensive and there's not enough money to do what you want and then you die.

Watch Dogs- being able to peer into the lives of every passerby - seeing just 4 lines from a DB - it's easy to pre-judge people - which people are worth stealing from, which people 'deserve' violent 'justice' - things like that - realizing that there are many that see all the people in a similar way - - it's play to kill sherelly since he's greedy, and knocking google employees unconscious is okay because they only have 1 black employee. The ends justify the means for all the sub-groups/tribes it seems..

Rainbow six siege - concealment is not cover; not for you, not for them. COD is not great this battlefield 4 was better, Six does it well.

The Three Dwarves - it's possible to make a good game for three people to pay at once with co-op needs.

Civ 6 / Empire Earth - no matter how great you are at X (science, military, whatever) - a few barbarians can ruin you, and some zealots could take you over before you can take them out - be humble and enjoy the build when you can't control the other tribes.

Driving different vehicles in the GTA and similar games is helpful to learn - pity that there is not a non-hooker version for 15 year olds to learn some things with.

Max Payne - you can make a dirty, cussing, killing game ,where the good guy does dope to keep going - and sell a lot of copies.. because a lot of people enjoy it.

Watching younger folks play assasins creed you can see how younger minds are being solidly influenced to fight for racial justice.. things like kill the owner / free the slaves and such.

There are many great lessons in many games - I'll be remembering random ones for days/weeks now.

Re: Ask HN: What are some things you learnt from a game that changed your life?

#54

Post by nefitty »

ne0flex wrote: post #45
nokya wrote: post #12

I played an online MMORPG called "Anarchy Online" (AO) while in my early twenties, probably for a little bit more than a year. At a dinner with friends, I started talking about the game and why I liked it. During that discussion, I came to the realization that even if I did absolutely nothing "productive" in the game, I always had access to food, clothes, health services and shelter. Things were organized in a way th…

Since I've started working I've been aggressively investing close to half my monthly paychecks into high-yield dividend stocks with the goal of attaining my own level of UBI. A few years ago, when I was unemployed for several months, I noticed that doing nothing all day gets boring real fast. I know that if I had my own UBI I'd definitely go pursue some sort of venture. However, I also noticed that my cousin, who has…

Within the context of the reality that eventually your cousin will have to work and sustain himself, isn’t it rational to capitalize on the immediate free time he has? He may never again get that same stretch of stress-less time to just dither.

I think, on a playing field where people knew they could just literally sit in a chair all day for the rest of their lives, other motivations would eventually reveal themselves besides sloth. People would shift focus to power, charity, status, popularity, etc. As it stands, those games seem to be what make a society more complex, but they are usually reserved for people who have already figured out the money game first...

Re: Ask HN: What are some things you learnt from a game that changed your life?

#55

Post by DeliriumTrigger »

nokya wrote: post #12

I played an online MMORPG called "Anarchy Online" (AO) while in my early twenties, probably for a little bit more than a year. At a dinner with friends, I started talking about the game and why I liked it. During that discussion, I came to the realization that even if I did absolutely nothing "productive" in the game, I always had access to food, clothes, health services and shelter. Things were organized in a way th…

What I took from AO is no matter how far you run or hide if you startle a mob they will always get you.

Re: Ask HN: What are some things you learnt from a game that changed your life?

#58

Post by dmingod666 »

nefitty wrote: post #54
ne0flex wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since I've started working I've been aggressively investing close to half my monthly paychecks into high-yield dividend stocks with the goal of attaining my own level of UBI. A few years ago, when I was unemployed for several months, I noticed that doing nothing all day gets boring real fast. I know that if I had my own UBI I'd definitely go pursue some sort of venture. However, I also noticed that my cousin, who has…

Within the context of the reality that eventually your cousin will have to work and sustain himself, isn’t it rational to capitalize on the immediate free time he has? He may never again get that same stretch of stress-less time to just dither. I think, on a playing field where people knew they could just literally sit in a chair all day for the rest of their lives, other motivations would eventually reveal themselve…

I always feel this deep repulsion towards society. At first there was a time when people were free, they could grow what they wanted and live how they wanted nobody gave a damn because you cannot tell me what to do with my life.

Then, as a society, you herd the population into cities where they can't grow their food, put the poor into forced service of the rich or they can't feed themselves or live. The poor lower class beings have the moral burden of working else they are some sort of lowly scumbag. The rich, they don't have this constraint - they are morally obligated to just live their lives.

The thinking that, "but hey! that guy is just going to sit in his chair and not do anything" - Well, that's exactly what people that have lots of money do right now. They just live their lives, they sit in their nice chairs for as long as they want - nobody blinks an eyelid. The moment you think a poor person is not working you start to think he is scum.

Look, its a game that makes things better for everyone and it has its upsides, agreed. The thing is - society does not need to be like it is right now. Between money and institutions people are literally put in a cage with no real escape hatch. The inability to escape all this "money-govt-society" is the problem.

Say a tiger wanted to claim an area and feed itself and be self sufficient he could do it. Now, we like to think we're better than animals. Are we really? all of us? Say you as a person with zero money decided to just build your house using things you find around that area that you don't own and try to live off the land. You cant do that, someones going to come knocking saying you're on someone elses property. That tiger out there is more free than the person. Problem is, there is no escape hatch where you say, screw civilization I want to be free - I don't want what it has to offer, I live on this land here. Only if you have sufficient amount of money are you actually free to live as you want. Otherwise you better stay in your economic-class and feed the monster of society..

Re: Ask HN: What are some things you learnt from a game that changed your life?

#59

Post by Ratiofarmings »

cm2012 wrote: post #50

In Starcraft it's the importance of humility and learning from others. You have to learn the best build orders and practice them to a T if you want to do well. Millions of people around the world have honed these to a t. It's only when you truly understand existing strategies and the meta that you can branch out successfully with your own strategies.

Honestly starcraft has taught me the opposite of that. It taught me that paying attention and making things up on the spot works well into 5k MMR (upper 90th percentile of performance).

It taught me that most people overthink. Then go and try to do fancy things without doing basic things correctly first.

I believe a fair amount of that translates into real life. People think too much about non important things and neglect the actually important stuff in the process.

Re: Ask HN: What are some things you learnt from a game that changed your life?

#60

Post by thewileyone »

I've been playing games for a long time. Started with the adventure games like Zork, King's Quest, Masquerade, etc.

What I learned most from some of these games is lateral thinking, especially with Monkey Island and DOTT. Some things will fit in a context, maybe not now but some point in time.

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