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The Factorio Mindset

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Re: The Factorio Mindset

#41

Post by Aeolun »

julianeon wrote: post #20

I often encounter this issue when it comes to programming-like games. I’m wondering if I should adjust my thinking here. 1) Hmm, this game is a lot like programming. A lot like it. 2) Maybe I should just program? That is real work & I can get done more work done, be more productive. 3) [stopped game, started programming]

I have this feeling often, but I still go back to games. To see any fruits of my efforts doing real programming would take days or weeks at this point, and I want to do something that more or less immediately rewards me for my efforts.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#42

Post by cwkoss »

skipants wrote: post #12
minihat wrote: post #8

My friend has 600+ hours played of Factorio. He just beat the game for the first time. I bought it, we played multiplayer. And I taught him the mantra "great is the enemy of good enough". Our run took 14 hours. I also know many people like this at work, and wish they could have the Factorio experience. If you refactor at the first sign of trouble, you remain blind to totally new to problems just around the corner.

That's been my takeaway from these games, too. It really helped with my perfectionism because it makes the negative effects of it tangible; you notice how much more time you lose by trying to be perfect rather than just getting your supply of materials up and running.

The factorio dev team are such fantastic software engineers, I wonder if this was an emergent feature of building what they want or if there was actually intentionality in making this a common takeaway from playing the game.

If you haven't, read their blog! It's a master class in release notes and development communication.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#43

Post by sam0x17 »

midjji wrote: post #7
juice_bus wrote: post #2

Shopify allowing Factorio to be expensed is really interesting. Someone higher up must really like it?

A tech company focused on logistics has at least one boss or founder who really likes factorio, the game for and by programmers who like logistics? Who could have guessed^^ It is cool if they let people expense it though, but motivating the 20$ per employee cost is pretty trivial. Compared to similar expenses like a yearly fruit basket, Id wager giving programmers/logistics workers a free factorio probably has a bett…

I agree that it's chump change. Many startups provide a $100/month budget for "whatever" self tech expenses that can be spent on things like games, etc. This isn't groundbreaking by any means. Still cool that they do it though.

Now comping employees for after-hours time spent playing factario -- now that would be groundbreaking haha

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#44

Post by kozziollek »

TameAntelope wrote: post #23
toomuchtodo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Factorio should be the interview test ;) Tech’s Ender’s Game. (factorio fan, but with little time to enjoy it)

If you could figure out how to hook up Factorio to AWS APIs and get kids to build/maintain your org's infrastructure...

There is psDoom [1] to manage *nix processes in Doom. There is Dockercraft [2] to manage docker containers in Minecraft. Managing AWS in Factorio seems like next logical step!

[1] http://psdoom.sourceforge.net [2] https://github.com/docker/dockercraft

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#45

Post by jugg1es »

One of my top gaming moments ever was launching the rocket in under 6 hours. I launched it at 5:59:40. Then I realized the "There is no spoon" achievement was for 7 hours (and it's now 8 hours after 1.0 launch).

Love this game.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#46

Post by saddestcatever »

leptoniscool wrote: post #19

Dyson Sphere Program is a similar type of game, with prettier graphics.

Shoutout to Satisfactory. I've seen many players that resonate with Dyson Sphere Program also enjoy Satisfactory. Not quite as in-depth as Factorio, but an amazingly, amazingly well designed game in both over experience and gameplay.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#47

Post by alpaca128 »

julianeon wrote: post #20

I often encounter this issue when it comes to programming-like games. I’m wondering if I should adjust my thinking here. 1) Hmm, this game is a lot like programming. A lot like it. 2) Maybe I should just program? That is real work & I can get done more work done, be more productive. 3) [stopped game, started programming]

That's also the reason I don't play games like these. Programming scratches the same itch for me and has fewer limitations.

Still I enjoy the absolutely insane creations of some people in those games. I'll never forget the Doom-style 3D engine[0] someone created inside Factorio, with (iirc) a clever configuration of trains as a huge graphical display.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bAuP0gO5pc

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#49

Post by wccrawford »

martincmartin wrote: post #22
julianeon wrote: post #20

I often encounter this issue when it comes to programming-like games. I’m wondering if I should adjust my thinking here. 1) Hmm, this game is a lot like programming. A lot like it. 2) Maybe I should just program? That is real work & I can get done more work done, be more productive. 3) [stopped game, started programming]

What other games are like programming?

Also "Satisfactory", Factory Town, Human Resource Machine, Kubifactorium, and at least one more that I can't remember the name of at the moment.

Some are more programming-like than others.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#50

Post by bee_rider »

martincmartin wrote: post #22
julianeon wrote: post #20

I often encounter this issue when it comes to programming-like games. I’m wondering if I should adjust my thinking here. 1) Hmm, this game is a lot like programming. A lot like it. 2) Maybe I should just program? That is real work & I can get done more work done, be more productive. 3) [stopped game, started programming]

What other games are like programming?

There are a couple games from Zachtronics that literally have a programming component to them (TIS-100 is almost all programming, but with a weird computer).

Mindustry has a little programming if I recall correctly -- mostly it is tower defense and resource gathering, though.

EDIT: As you can see, everybody was excited to bring up Zachtronics. Really neat developer.

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