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How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

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Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#291

Post by thoroughburro »

earnesti wrote: post #289
dartos wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When making software that's supposed to be used, you can't mess around that much. At the end of the day, someone has to use it and if its weird it'll be bad. This makes me sad. You don’t need to make software for mass appeal. Git is weird and bizarre (especially when initially released), but it’s used and well loved.

I do not find git weird and bizarre at all. First time I hear such nonsense. Why do you feel that way?

It’s amazing you haven’t heard negative criticism of Git, before! It’s widespread.

https://kagi.com/search?q=criticism+of+git

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#292

Post by stacktraceyo »

mft_ wrote: post #268

I've started and re-started Factorio several times, and always enjoy it... up the point where an automated train network is necessary. Here, I always run into problems, and no amount of researching or fettling of the setup seems to guarantee that my trains work. Sometimes they do... often, I have to drive them manually. Anyway, if you like Factorio, you might also enjoy Mindustry: simmilar-ish, less constructional de…

Or Dyson sphere program

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#293

Post by Xeronate »

herval wrote: post #127

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?

Being productive doesn’t consume my entire life but if i’m going to do two things that feel the same I may as well do the one that has other substantial benefits to myself and others. I spend enough time developing that side of myself at work. My free time should go to making myself more well rounded.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#294

Post by radlad »

medstrom wrote: post #225
0points wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It fascinates me how someone like you manage to build all these tooling to run your house, but still struggle with > need to remember to load the grocery list before leaving the house that has the server in it ^ remote access and > better hope your phone doesn't decide for you that the page needs to be unloaded on the way ^ unreliable tech

What would you do?

Progressive app using local storage?

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#295

Post by echoangle »

thoroughburro wrote: post #291
earnesti wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not find git weird and bizarre at all. First time I hear such nonsense. Why do you feel that way?

It’s amazing you haven’t heard negative criticism of Git, before! It’s widespread. https://kagi.com/search?q=criticism+of+git

For all the peasants that don’t have a kagi subscription (like myself):

https://www.google.com/search?q=criticism+of+git

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#296

Post by ehnto »

pjerem wrote: post #233
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…

That’s why I prefer Satisfactory : it’s the same principle but it also allows you to build gigantic great and beautiful things. For me it’s the perfect mix between Factorio (for building factories) and Minecraft (for allowing you to create your environment) and, contrary to those two, it’s also aesthetically beautiful. In fact building production lines is not even what I prefer, what I prefer is organizing them in ch…

Concur on all points honestly. I will also add that Factorio's setting is pretty bleak, and the game is a bit too addictive to me. It's also harder to just botch things which, because I am trying to have fun and not work, is pretty laborious. In satisfactory if I messed up some spacing of belts or machines or whatever, I can just clip it, go up and over, just generally make a visual mess that works.

Not entirely sure why Factorio is more addictive. Shorter action loops, but often queing and waiting for things to happen might jiggle the brain in a more addictive way. It's not a positive feeling situation either, more like you get trapped having to do more stuff over and over again.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#297

Post by LaGrange »

Hugsun wrote: post #282
scott_w wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don’t need to make software for mass appeal. Some people, like myself, enjoy writing code but need a purpose to write code. If I don’t have a reason, or problem to solve, I can’t just sit down and start coding.

Consider yourself lucky. I enjoy programming in itself greatly, but I don't find myself motivated by producing anything useful.

I mean, what is “useful” in the sense of “paying the bills” is quite different from “useful” in the sense of social utility - and what you _perceive_ as social utility is a whole other thing on top of that, that’s only _hopefully_ somewhat aligned with the actual thing.

Working on something that feels like it’s only useful as a way to extract money is incredibly unrewarding in my experience, to the point of increasing my feeling of burnout.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#298

Post by nprateem »

herval wrote: post #127

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?

I think it's just getting older. Some play is rehearsal for real life. Now I can run a real company, make real money and become a real millionaire instead of a pretend one (or at least try to).

Plus I'm going to die unlike when I was an immortal teenager, so I want to retire ASAP.

If I'm going to game it'll be an FPS or similar when I'm too brain dead to play when-will-i-be-a-millionaire.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#299

Post by SauntSolaire »

wiseowise wrote: post #209
OrigamiPastrami wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when Guitar Hero came out I didn't understand why anybody would play that instead of just buying a guitar. The point is the videogame itself is designed to be fun and remove plenty of other elements from the real life equivalent that focuses more on enjoyment and less on grinding it out. If you're thinking about "what have I accomplished?" instead of "I'm having so much fun!" then it might not be for you.…

But we’re talking about professional programmers here, not amateurs role playing.

So? There are a lot of not fun aspects of programming; Factorio is what it's like if it was all just the fun parts.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#300

Post by aithrowawaycomm »

solardev wrote: post #30
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #8

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.

Speaking for myself, I love Factorio and can't stand Satisfactory. Even on peaceful mode Factorio has you solving real problems, whereas Satisfactory feels like playing Minecraft on creative mode.

Satisfactory's main issue is that it lets you build in three dimensions without doing any physics to check if that build is mechanically plausible. It's of course not reasonable to expect them to do that physics. But it means that sophisticated logistics/organization problems in Factorio almost always have the same solution in Satisfactory: build more, but upwards. There's no reason to think long-term in Satisfactory unless you have a specific aesthetic vision for a base. Of course, a giant factory-skyscraper with tons of conveyor belts sticking out looks really cool! And Satisfactory being easier makes it more of a chill sandbox game than a tense strategy game like Factorio, so I get why aesthetics-minded people like it. Different strokes.

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