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How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

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Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#101

Post by balls187 »

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. Factorio was fun for a small bit but it really just felt like a job, same with Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, etc.

After beating prepatch PCR, I switched back to Call of Duty for a bit.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#102

Post by johannes1234321 »

satvikpendem wrote: post #72
averageRoyalty wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the FPS games you play also about impact? You seem to have set yourself a different bar for 'fun' for this title (or genre?) alone.

Of course not. I think you misunderstand, if a game is too similar to real life, I am unsure why I should play it, whereas if it is fairly different, such as an FPS, it becomes much more fun for me. My question is primarily on the former, of why people seem to play a game that basically is like work but has no benefit for them. If it's fun for them, then that's fine, but my question more, why is it fun for them in th…

It's fun to solve problems. How do I optimize this sub-factory? - That's the same fun as "how do I optimize this function" but instead of a green light from my test runner one gets a colorful display of a working factory with a visible result. The fact that I reduced memory usage of that function by 10% I don't see in that way. And probably both both are equal in benefit to humanity's progress (zero)

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#103

Post by CuriousCosmic »

satvikpendem wrote: post #85
gessha wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hacker culture is still there but hacker social media (unless carefully curated) is flooded with optimized content to the point where the cool stuff is hard to find and you only see the grifter techs.

Nah, they're still there, you merely have to know where to look. Most hackers I know eschew social media appearances.

Plenty of hackers with substantial social media presences but they live in pockets that don't cross over into mainline social media too much.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#104

Post by MichaelZuo »

satvikpendem wrote: post #85
gessha wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hacker culture is still there but hacker social media (unless carefully curated) is flooded with optimized content to the point where the cool stuff is hard to find and you only see the grifter techs.

Nah, they're still there, you merely have to know where to look. Most hackers I know eschew social media appearances.

Social media popularity is pretty much an anti-signal nowadays. The more popular the closer to the average.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#105

Post by egypturnash »

> Tobias Lütke, co-founder and CEO of the ecommerce platform Shopify, lets his staff expense their copies of Factorio. “It’s just bound to be good for Shopify if people play Factorio for a little while,” he told the Invest Like The Best podcast. “Because part of Shopify is building warehouses and fulfilling products for our customers. We are building global supply chains, and Factorio makes a game out of that kind of thinking.”

I wonder if they'll pay for their employees' copies of Wilmot's Warehouse, too.

http://wilmotswarehouse.com

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#106

Post by wickedsight »

satvikpendem wrote: post #85
gessha wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hacker culture is still there but hacker social media (unless carefully curated) is flooded with optimized content to the point where the cool stuff is hard to find and you only see the grifter techs.

Nah, they're still there, you merely have to know where to look. Most hackers I know eschew social media appearances.

You don't even have to look per se. The YouTube aglo provides me a lot of interesting content that isn't especially high quality or production value. I do take an effort to ignore click bait as much as possible and click "don't recommend channel" for things like MKBHD and LTT, because those crowd out original content if you let them.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#107

Post by imtringued »

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…

This makes no sense to me. Doing productive things means 40 to 100 hour commitments with the possibility of your work being worthless at the end, because you didn't have enough time for that 40th or 100th hour, because you need to do a lot of upfront work, because you need specific hardware, because someone else did it better, because the maintainer rejected your pull request, because what you want to do actually takes 1000 hours.

Now that is what I call tedious!

Meanwhile open ended pvp multiplayer games can drain hundreds of hours with no feeling of accomplishment. Those are the games that make me feel I should be doing something more productive.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#108

Post by TYMorningCoffee »

egypturnash wrote: post #105

> Tobias Lütke, co-founder and CEO of the ecommerce platform Shopify, lets his staff expense their copies of Factorio. “It’s just bound to be good for Shopify if people play Factorio for a little while,” he told the Invest Like The Best podcast. “Because part of Shopify is building warehouses and fulfilling products for our customers. We are building global supply chains, and Factorio makes a game out of that kind of…

If you've been consistently redeeming free games from Epic you might already have it. It was free on 2020-08-06[1].

[1] https://josephmate.github.io/EpicFreeGamesList/

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#109

Post by MichaelZuo »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #20
Xeronate wrote: post #7

The article mentions one of the main appeals of factorio is you get to think like a programmer without bosses/overhead from actual work but it’s always been hard to get into games for that reason because I could just work on a side project with the same result. I really don’t understand the appeal.

The problem with side projects is that they do not have a well defined goal. Or they do, in which case something like Factorio won't have any appeal because you can just work on something more meaningful instead. Factorio is for people who want to keep programming but are too frustrated or cynical about the real world to do it there. If the real world was better, they would do it there. If the real world could be fix…

There are plenty of technical problems that are in fact technical problems.

e.g: making bluetooth 10% more energy efficient in the next few revisions

In fact there are probably infinitely many.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#110

Post by Dr4kn »

luffy_t wrote: post #94
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 brai…

Ratios are one thing. To find a good tileable design, which is also UPS efficient, especially with beacons can get quite challenging
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