> My Factorio play time is up to 6,573.2 hours at this point. I habitually translate "X thousands of hours" into "full time employment years". You've been playing Factorio as the equivalent of a full time job, for 3 years and 3 months. [Edit: Many of those hours were probably background farming, so not a direct comparison.]
I read about a half hour every day. That means I probably clocked some 6 thousand hours in my lifetime. Imagine all the time I could’ve invested in playing the rat race more, in those wasted 3 years of books :(
I am absolutely not suggesting that "full-time employment years" are better allocated to work/job/employment.
Just modeling what we (US, 40hrs/wk and 50wks/yr) consider a "full-time" commitment to any task/activity.
Lots of comments on this thread in the vein of “I dislike this game because it’s not productive”. My honestly question is… why? Why is “being productive” this goal that has to consume your entire life?
Because it feels like you are building something but you are not. The problem solving in factorio is just tedious like doing manual calculations and you spend a lot of time doing this. It satisfies the problem solving itch for people who haven't faced any challenging problems in their work. Once you start solving these problems in real life factorio just seems pointless. Dont get me wrong i like paying pointless games that require very little to zero thinking (Muscle memory based) that I find satisfying. Factorio is just tedious.
Lots of comments on this thread in the vein of “I dislike this game because it’s not productive”. My honestly question is… why? Why is “being productive” this goal that has to consume your entire life?
Most people are brainwashed by the rat race. They don't realize that all the productivity is worthless.
Lots of comments on this thread in the vein of “I dislike this game because it’s not productive”. My honestly question is… why? Why is “being productive” this goal that has to consume your entire life?
Because this is HN and everyone wants to LARP as their projection of a typical HN denizen. Sometimes this place brings out the LinkedIn in people.
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 tak…
You have a very limited view on what being productive is. I have a home lab, I'd rather spend an hour or two improving it and learning things along the way rather than playing factorio.
Is there a better graphics version of factorio? And no I don't mean Satisfactory or Dyson Sphere Program though those are good games in their own rights, I mean something with the same level of depth and camera as factorio.
What kinda depth are you missing from DSP and Satisfactory? And what do you mean by "camera"? There's also Shapez 1 and 2, which is like the essence of Factorio abstracted into shapes and colors. Shapez 2 has more mining and trains and multiple levels.
Not OP, but my guess for what they meant by "camera" is the fact that Factorio is largely a 2D top-down view with relatively little impedance to jumping to another part of the factory to work on it (especially with the QoL stuff added in 2.0). In Satisfactory or DSP, fixing a remote part of the factory--even trying to diagnose problems remotely--is a chore, and there's precious little you can do to actually speed the travel process up.
I feel guilty every time I turn on Factorio and basically no longer play it because I know I could have just as much enjoyment building something for the real world.
I've yet to find something I can do in the real world that's as enjoyable, accessible, affordable, and easy to pick up and put down as Factorio, or similar games (that scratch a "builder" itch). What sort of things do you have in mind? * edited for clarity, typos
Well the reason I enjoy Factorio in the first place is because I love automating things, not necessarily the building part. There's an endless amount of things I can automate in my life or for others, and the effort I put into building those automatons, whether is personal or professional, continues to provide value after I'm finished. I have 1k hours in Factorio, while those hours did provide value to me, that value is pretty finite. That's my logic at least, I just feel guilty playing it looking at it through that lense. I got like 50 private repositories that aren't finished, or are interesting and fun that could provide just as much satisfaction and possibly continue to provide value in my life even after I'm finished with them. Right now I'm working on a little project to buzz myself into the front door of my building via an app on my phone that triggers the buzzer in my apartment that is a weird analog system that's 60 + years old (but funnily enough is called Auth Master). Not complicated or intense, but fun and interesting and will provide a standard of living improvement for me for years to come (assuming I don't move) after I finish!
I like that it’s similar to work and that is probably why it is my favorite game. Sometimes I don’t have the intensity needed to attack a hard problem at work so I chill out and work on my factory instead. Once I notice that I’m becoming too ambitious in the game I can tell that my intensity has returned and will switch back to work. If I don’t have the energy for factorio then clearly I won’t have the energy for wor…
Maybe it depends on the work, but for me, writing code, there's always loads of low intensity work to be done. Minor refactors, improving code clarity, writing docs, replying to technical emails etc. For me, the energy level at which I'd enjoy a game like Factorio (which I did briefly try) is exactly the energy level at which I'm most productive doing this kind of work.
Lots of comments on this thread in the vein of “I dislike this game because it’s not productive”. My honestly question is… why? Why is “being productive” this goal that has to consume your entire life?
Because we'll all be dead soon and I want to have achieved something great with the short time I was given on this planet.
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…
My day job is mostly CRUD or calling APIs. I trained my brain for many years to do more than that and Factorio satisfies that urge.
This. But for me it was moving into management instead of production. I don't really get to CAD/design in my day job, focusing on one of two projects with my mind for weeks on end. Instead I manage others and troubleshoot problems that arise that become impediments for my team. I also live in an apartment, so facotrio/building games are my outlet. Minimal impact on the environment, I get my design and building fix, and I can always stand up and walk away without much clean up.