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How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

ft.com

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Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#91

Post by instalabs »

satvikpendem wrote: post #35

I know lots of people who play Factorio but for me, I guess it just feels too much like work? Whenever I play it, I get the distinct feeling that I could instead do the same thing but productively instead, such as by contributing to my OSS projects (sometimes, maybe even for profit instead). I never got into these types of programmatic games for precisely this reason but I'd like to understand other perspectives on t…

> Whenever I play it, I get the distinct feeling that I could instead do the same thing but productively instead

This is me, but extended to all games. I stopped playing games because I feel like I can always do something more productive with my time instead. If I really want to check out, I watch some TV instead. But games (especially modern ones) take too much work without any real reward.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#92

Post by yieldcrv »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #47
yieldcrv wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same about another pretty chill game, Dave the Diver. It has a great feedback loop, at the beginning Once I get successful in it, I'm like "but I should be making money in the real world, not this world" as I do have side projects. the game does turn into a slog, if you approach it that way

> Once I get successful in it, I'm like "but I should be making money in the real world, not this world" as I do have side projects. the game does turn into a slog, if you approach it that way Life is a slog if approached that way. Spending your time chasing more money instead of enjoying life is the quickest way to have a miserable existence.

I find the game motivational after a very profitable shift, in game.

But I wasn’t looking for devil’s advocate or solutions, us guys need to affirm each other’s experiences more often.

I also do enjoy very profitable sessions in life, the pursuit of money itself is fulfilling for me as it already is a massive multiplayer game pvp. Additionally, I would usually prefer to be doing entertainment options exclusive to the level of profits that have been manifested. But I love the existence that allows me to play video games with no consequence.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#93

Post by kentonv »

dang wrote: post #4
perihelions wrote: post #3

The primary source is https://www.ft.com/content/b9e419c6-acf1-420b-8ae6-908feb52c... ( "How ‘Factorio’ seduced Silicon Valley — and me" ) (Cool fourth-wall breaking moment seeing an HN'er featured in the FT!)

(We moved this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41954555 ) Three HNers (at least!) https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=xal https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kentonv

And the author of the article contacted me because of this old HN comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26593117

(Also, I am typing this while alt-tabbed out of Factorio...)

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#94

Post by luffy_t »

satvikpendem wrote: post #35

I know lots of people who play Factorio but for me, I guess it just feels too much like work? Whenever I play it, I get the distinct feeling that I could instead do the same thing but productively instead, such as by contributing to my OSS projects (sometimes, maybe even for profit instead). I never got into these types of programmatic games for precisely this reason but I'd like to understand other perspectives on t…

I feel exactly the same. I don't think the problems you solve in factorio are that complex, they are just tedious. It feels like calculations that a calculator can do. It is utterly boring to me personally, I can simply write a program or come up with a formula once I know what I need to make to calculate how much of everything I need. I also like to play simpler games which stimulates more of a lower part of my brain (motor control shit that feels good) no need to think too much in these game since I do a lot of that in my real life job. I have mostly been working on research problems where you can't generally write these rules for how to solve a particular subproblem and that feels like actual problem solving I just don't get when people say they love the problem solving aspect of the game. I mean if you think solving simple mathematical optimization problems that already have a solution "problem solving" then good for you. The average game time is too long and it is just not worth my time.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#96

Post by oersted »

dietr1ch wrote: post #29
oersted wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do get the appeal of games, it is one of my long-time passions, but indeed that's the issue with games like Factorio specifically, they feel too much like work, so might as well do work.

This, long ago a roomate got into Factorio and after figuring out the basics ended up admitting that it felt way too much like work. This has been my reason to stay out of Factorio even though plenty of people have recommended it to me. I did a short collaborative run of Mindustry and I feel I don't need to play Factorio, plus, Counter-Strike chugs all my playing time, to me it's a bit like cocaine made a game and ex…

> It's the trucking game for truckers

Exactly yes, I wouldn't say it's only for engineers, it is perfect for smart people who chose a different path in life and need to feed this part of their brain with a fun simplified simulation of what it's like to be an engineer.

Of course, engineers would love this game, but we already engage in this type of activity all day much more intensely precisely because we love it, we already know how to do more interesting and valuable things with the same effort.

Similarly, I really lost the appetite for hard decision-making strategy games when I founded my startup. I was already having to take plenty of hard decisions, thank you very much, the real thing is much more interesting and more than enough.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#98

Post by oersted »

yieldcrv wrote: post #39
IggleSniggle wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dave the Diver just turns into a slog is all. It's fantastic at the start when everything is novel, and all the systems hold promise. But the systems themselves turn out to not have good gameplay loops, so right around the underwater village it starts to kinda suck, which ironically is right around when all the systems are mature enough that to play well you have a giant list of "todo" items across a variety of syste…

just looked up Against the Storm, looks like the board game Agricola, where the goal is to build and farm and survive the winter. I always found Agricola ironic, in that is masquarades as a PvP game, where your survival outcome is then compared to the other players, but its very stressful as there are not enough resources on the board for your family. so thats what made it too much like real life for me, because you'…

I've played both, I absolutely love both, but they don't have that much to do with each other.

Against the Storm is all about setting up complex production chains, not necessarily linking them explicitly like in Factorio, but more about balancing resource availability and assigning workers. It's a lot like other resource-focused city builders like Anno, but it is very well designed to impose a constant pressure on the player, always on a rush to meet goals before the whole thing crumbles, constantly putting out fires in the system (sometimes literal fires).

The name is perfect, in that you build this complex machine, and it is constantly stress-tested by periodic hazards. It's an awesome rush to "hold-fast", scramble to desperately fix things, constantly on the edge, hoping that the storm will end soon because the whole thing is about to crumble, while rushing to fulfil the objectives so you can get out of there before it gets too bad.

Frospunk evokes this feeling really well too. I suppose Factorio is kinda similar with the alien attacks. Come to think of it, the pressure to feed the family and the final scramble for points in Agricola are not so dissimilar either.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#99

Post by p3rls »

satvikpendem wrote: post #35

I know lots of people who play Factorio but for me, I guess it just feels too much like work? Whenever I play it, I get the distinct feeling that I could instead do the same thing but productively instead, such as by contributing to my OSS projects (sometimes, maybe even for profit instead). I never got into these types of programmatic games for precisely this reason but I'd like to understand other perspectives on t…

I feel the same about when I play HoI4-- really winning a two-front war on ironman and building webapps have a lot of similarities.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#100

Post by dang »

kentonv wrote: post #93
dang wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(We moved this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41954555 ) Three HNers (at least!) https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=xal https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kentonv

And the author of the article contacted me because of this old HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26593117 (Also, I am typing this while alt-tabbed out of Factorio...)

Highlighted. Thanks!

https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights

(Unfortunately one would have to scroll back through 3 years' worth of other things to run across it, but it's on my list to fix that and it's squirreled away there for the future)

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