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Having a game I'm into makes every day enjoyable

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Re: Having a game I'm into makes every day enjoyable

#81

Post by kilolima »

vibrolax wrote: post #63

I've wanted to play games since Atari Pong came out. But I've never owned a console, and haven't owned a computer with a discrete GPU since 2005. Twenty years ago, I satisfied my urge to game by playing Unreal Tournament, Quake, etc. demos. More recently, I'd spend an hour a week watching other people play games on YouTube, to see if I was missing anything. This year, the snake has entered my garden in the form of an…

Good for you! Sounds like an ideal retirement. :)

Dont forget VR might make it one day, and in the meantime you can always get a slight productivity satisfaction by making mods for your favorite games.

Re: Having a game I'm into makes every day enjoyable

#82

Post by wredue »

criddell wrote: post #62
qsort wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advent of Code is great but it requires you to: - (a) be available at precisely midnight EST every day for an entire month. That would be 6am for me, not really feasible on working days for a full month. - (b) be extremely good at a weird flavor of programming competition -- more often than not you don't win at AoC by writing better solutions, you just have to crank out a solution that you don't too long to type. I l…

It doesn’t require either of those things. I’ve been doing it this year and I’m on day 17 I think. I probably won’t finish it until the end of January. I looked at the leaderboard one day there were a lot of people who finished the problem set in 3-4 minutes. I spent more time than that reading the problem description. It’s still a lot of fun. Some days I’ll solve the problem more than once just to try different idea…

Yeah. I started like 13 days late and am just on day 5 part 2 (building it out a few times cause I’ve never worked on interval algos, so trying a few different things out).

You don’t need to compete or even do them on the day they release. It’s been fun solving them regardless.

Re: Having a game I'm into makes every day enjoyable

#83

Post by jareklupinski »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #74
haswell wrote: post #19

I highly recommend reading the book “Flow” if you’re looking for that thing that makes every day enjoyable. In addition to exploring why people love games and other high skill activities, it discusses the idea that we can learn how to turn every day tasks into activities that evoke the same reward centers. It doesn’t just dive into “people like games”, or “people like achieving hard things”, but it delves into why, a…

This reminds me of that Zen proverb “Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water”. The simple and even tedious things in life are worth embracing and engaging in whole heartedly and with all of your attention.

i go through the diamond sutra regularly, but still can't stop building sawmills and waterworks

currently thinking about how to build a system that plays klondike solitaire for me based on my previous games, so it only presents me with deals that i "woulnd't be able to beat" (based on previous games)

Re: Having a game I'm into makes every day enjoyable

#84

Post by Liquix »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #74
haswell wrote: post #19

I highly recommend reading the book “Flow” if you’re looking for that thing that makes every day enjoyable. In addition to exploring why people love games and other high skill activities, it discusses the idea that we can learn how to turn every day tasks into activities that evoke the same reward centers. It doesn’t just dive into “people like games”, or “people like achieving hard things”, but it delves into why, a…

This reminds me of that Zen proverb “Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water”. The simple and even tedious things in life are worth embracing and engaging in whole heartedly and with all of your attention.

"If you see yourself as God and then you come back from this state and somebody says, "Hey, Sam, empty the garbage!" it catches you back into the model of "I'm Sam who empties the garbage." You can't maintain these new kinds of structures. It takes a while to realize that God can empty garbage."

- Ram Dass

Re: Having a game I'm into makes every day enjoyable

#86

Post by zemvpferreira »

pruetj wrote: post #36
zemvpferreira wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find a lot of comfort in the idea of unintended consequences. I spent the majority of my youth playing games: CounterStrike, Magic: The Gathering, D&D. I paid a lot more attention to useless hobbies than to school. In hindsight, I attribute my strongest mental skills to all that gaming. Abstract reasoning, strategic/tactical thinking, english fluency...things that separated me completely from my peers once I began…

Totally agree, some of my best friends today were found through Halo/dota/RuneScape/Dark Age of Camelot/etc. These are not regrets I have - just more of a point forward perspective in what I do with my time now. I have a family of my own now so that has played no small part in shifting my perspective.

Understood. I think that as we get older we move to a different point of the explore-exploit continuum naturally. Nothing wrong with that either.

I moved from gaming to tennis and the gym myself.

Re: Having a game I'm into makes every day enjoyable

#87

Post by mcmoor »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #11

This is me with Dota 2 currently. I play against bots every few days, and don’t obsess over studying the nuances, which I know are myriad. Feels like there are 2-3 separate games being played simultaneously within the single game that interact in different ways. Accepting that I’m a filthy casual has been lots of fun. I should probably use that time to practice guitar, but I like the change of pace.

For that game specifically recently i feel more fun in Turbo Mode instead of normal. Even if you lose you only "waste" half of the time and you can win twice as much in the same amount of time. I know a friend who prefer Valorant over Overwatch solely because games there lasts half as much time too.
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