> with all 5,907 hours (approximately 246 days) going to waste
Well, I sympathise with the player's predicament, but I have to snarkily point out the irony here.
Red Dead Redemption 2 fan with 6k hours on Stadia begs for character transfer
261–270 of 317 posts
Re: Red Dead Redemption 2 fan with 6k hours on Stadia begs for character transfer
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you say the same about a 6k hour investment coding a game? This "if it isn't productive it isn't worthwhile" attitude is toxic.
Why is it toxic? Throwing all your time into frivolous activity like video games is what I would say is toxic. This individual has been averaging 40 hours a week on this game since it was released. In fact, building a valuable set of useful skills seems like the precise opposite of toxicity. Rather, it improves and adds value to your life.
If you value health and fitness, and then spend 4-6 hours/day exercising, despite the possibility of still gaining the primary benefits of exercise without spending so much time, how is this any different?
Aside from the health benefits, fitness enthusiasts do it for the community, the feeling of accomplishment, the personal satisfaction, and in some cases, literal addiction.
Those four hours/day on a bicycle don't seem inherently more valuable than three hours on a game and one hour on a bicycle. But someone spending four hours on the bicycle will be held above the person spending three hours on a game. Why?
The two activities can be strikingly similar in some ways (aside from the fitness outcome).
- Spending time riding/playing with other cyclists/gamers (community)
- Spending time riding alone (solitude)
- A sense of personal satisfaction at certain achievements (e.g. riding a century, or unlocking a rare achievement)
But aside from the personal fitness gained, spending an three extra hours on a bike doesn't seem intrinsically any more valuable than spending those same three hours on RDR2, if they're bringing the individual a sense of satisfaction.
I do think that this is all about balance, and as others have pointed out, addictions come in many shapes and sizes. I know people who are absolutely fitness addicts.
> building a valuable set of useful skills seems like the precise opposite of toxicity
Values are personal, and usefulness is contextual. I know plenty of people who have successful careers, make good money, and then sink inordinate amounts of time into their hobbies, some of which might not look valuable depending on your perspective. For such individuals, it's unclear why they must necessarily spend time learning more skills, and why that is valuable when the bases are already covered.
Exercising seems like the opposite of toxicity, but anything can become toxic if taken to an extreme.
Re: Red Dead Redemption 2 fan with 6k hours on Stadia begs for character transfer
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has some merit. When Call of Duty 4 came out on XBox 360, I was completely addicted to it. At some point I noticed I had been playing the game for 2 months . I spent 2 full months out of a single year playing a game. It was fun! Yeah, it was a lot of fun. But there are real things I could have accomplished by balancing that time with other things. I have good memories of COD4, but I still can't play piano. And 144…
Spending 2 months learning piano would have left you as a novice piano player nobody would want to listen to in performance except for your mom. I'd argue that your CoD skills would have made you worth watching after that much time.
Strongly disagree. If it takes 10K hours to become an expert that person has probably spent more than 2k hours across the different COD’s. Apply the 80%/20% rule and you’re going to be at a pretty solid level of playing after investing that much time. I’d say enough to get a gig playing in a local band and more than enough to impress your mom.
Re: Red Dead Redemption 2 fan with 6k hours on Stadia begs for character transfer
#264I hadn't even considered this as a consequence of Stadia shutting down. I naively thought, "Well, everyone is getting refunded for everything they spent, so it's fine." Clearly I was wrong. Of course there are folks that have actual game saves that they're heavily invested in on the platform that aren't easily portable. I feel sorry for this person and hope that Google and its partners like Rockstar work together to…
It's not just the save file in games like this, it's also all of the virtual currencies users paid real world money for. If someone has played 6k hours on RDR2 they likely bought a LOT of in-game currency and other in-game items. A huge potential for monetary and time loss.
Re: Red Dead Redemption 2 fan with 6k hours on Stadia begs for character transfer
#265Although the angle of: Losing his characters is the best thing that's happening for him due to wasting a very significant part of his life in video games has some merit (but could be worded differently), this is yet another example on why you shouldn't depend on these platforms for anything of value, specially Google. The immense pressure to transform/re-frame everything as a service, aka: "You'll own nothing and be…
> Although the angle of: Losing his characters is the best thing that's happening for him due to wasting a very significant part of his life in video games has some merit It has no merit. Do you look at your hobbies as wasting your life? I certainty don't. My alone time playing video games is just as important to me as when I'm going hiking or camping with friends.
6000 hours sounds like way more than a hobby. I play videogames too, but that is downright obsession
Re: Red Dead Redemption 2 fan with 6k hours on Stadia begs for character transfer
#266I hadn't even considered this as a consequence of Stadia shutting down. I naively thought, "Well, everyone is getting refunded for everything they spent, so it's fine." Clearly I was wrong. Of course there are folks that have actual game saves that they're heavily invested in on the platform that aren't easily portable. I feel sorry for this person and hope that Google and its partners like Rockstar work together to…
Everyone is NOT getting a refund, only purchases through the Google store are being refunded, if bought hardware from Best Buy etc. you are not.
Re: Red Dead Redemption 2 fan with 6k hours on Stadia begs for character transfer
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
> At what point does a hobby turn into an addition? When you are doing something society thinks is uncool. If someone spent that amount of time training to say run a marathon, nobody would blink an eye. Probably they would get praise for being dedicated.
This is the right answer. Reminds me of the poor vs rich double standard meme. Poor guy getting drunk == "a bum"; rich guy getting drunk == "just having fun". Poor guy gets money from the govt. == "a leech"; rich guy gets money from the govt. == "a stimulus for the economy".
> Poor guy gets money from the govt. == "a leech"; rich guy gets money from the govt. == "a stimulus for the economy".
Huh? That's the exact opposite of everything I've seen. Rich people are called leeches just for being rich, let alone receiving money from the government.
Re: Red Dead Redemption 2 fan with 6k hours on Stadia begs for character transfer
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your deathbed mindset is a pretty short time to have to endure to optimize your entire life around. Especially compared to the hundred or so years you have to live through.
The length of time enduring these thoughts/feelings is not the point. The point is that of the ways one chooses to spend those hundred or so years, people often find later in life that they wish they'd spent the time differently. They realize that they could have achieved much greater life satisfaction if they had. I don't believe in a literal hell, but someone once posited (sorry, cannot recall who at the moment) th…
Yeah, I get the point, but I stand behind what I said. I probably just worded it the way I did because it's click-baity. :-)
Thinking about your deathbed is really just another way of living in the future instead of the present. On your deathbed you have a completely different set of priorities and abilities, and there's no risk to the fantasy. Because you don't have to actually live it.
I definitely don't disagree within where you ended up. "The point is to optimize your life so that you are satisfied with life - something that is not limited to your dying hours." But I think this idea of reflecting back on an idealized life can be too heavily biased to be useful for some people (me maybe?) I think there's this notion of a sort of toxic ambition, which would be similar to the buddhist notion of living in the future. Seeing a lot of really high functioning artists, I think most reach the point where they realize it's not about the accomplishments, it's about taking enjoyment from the day to day practice of their craft.
But I played video games for most of my youth, and certainly I reflect back and think, maybe if I'd focused harder on school, and gone to a better university, I'd be in a better place now. Probably. But that's not who I was. Shit it's still not who I am. I reflect back fondly, but I just don't enjoy them anymore.
And that's sort of the point. Maybe you will look back and regret your life, but that feeling of regret is such a small part of it.
Re: Red Dead Redemption 2 fan with 6k hours on Stadia begs for character transfer
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yikes. If Google required custom builds of games, it seems like they ignored a lot of what's happening in the rest of the industry. Proton is free, open-source, and strives for compatibility with Windows games. Could have used that. They still get vendor lock-in either way (because you have to stream from _somewhere_) so making it worse in this fashion doesn't achieve any particular goal that I can see.
Stadia was released in 2019, while Proton came out in Alpha in mid-2018. It's highly unlikely it was available to Google when they started developing Stadia. Furthermore, controlling the full platform has enormous advantages in terms of scalability, low-latency streaming and control.
and enormous disadvantages. Like costing hundreds of millions of dollars to build, and on top of that, spending hundreds of millions in payouts to studios to port their games.
The hubris to go ahead with something like this....
Re: Red Dead Redemption 2 fan with 6k hours on Stadia begs for character transfer
#270Although the angle of: Losing his characters is the best thing that's happening for him due to wasting a very significant part of his life in video games has some merit (but could be worded differently), this is yet another example on why you shouldn't depend on these platforms for anything of value, specially Google. The immense pressure to transform/re-frame everything as a service, aka: "You'll own nothing and be…
> Losing his characters is the best thing that's happening for him due to wasting a very significant part of his life in video games has some merit (but could be worded differently) This community has a real tendency towards self-righteousness that is beginning to get on my nerves. You don't know anything about this person. Even if it's a truly unhealthy habit they have, that's none of our business.
Your comment is breaking the guidelines.
> Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.