Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

There are too many video games

bottomfeeder.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 173 posts

Re: There are too many video games

#91

Post by dvt »

WaxProlix wrote: post #63
dvt wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work exclusively in tech circles around L.A. and even being remotely sympathetic to Republican views is anathema. San Francisco is ideologically way more entrenched even though, ironically, their city is a mess, much like Seattle.

Again, that doesn't mirror my experience around any of those areas at all. I lived in LA and the bay area for almost a decade. Plenty of people wanted different tax structures, reduced regulatory burden on businesses (especially small businesses), reevaluation of existing expenditures over increased taxation, etc. Are there specific Republican views that you think are anathema?

> Are there specific Republican views that you think are anathema?

Try wearing a MAGA hat in Santa Monica. The arguments here that it's just as cool to be a Democrat as it is to be a Republican is so divorced from reality, I feel like I'm being gaslit. Even on dating apps folks use "moderate" as a euphemism for "conservative" -- I've literally had this conversation on dates before.

Re: There are too many video games

#92

Post by tormeh »

verve_rat wrote: post #64
throwaway13337 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s about cultural values. We don’t respect grunt work. We only respect art. Our society’s values do not align with our society’s needs. I’d like to see more praise and recognition of plumbers, builders, and, well, people that keep the wheels of society moving. Instead, everyone must go to college and be some artist or otherwise high society. Trade schools are looked down on. And it’s hurting us. As a game developer…

Fuck praise and recognition, you want more of this type of thing to be done? Pay them. Pay them more.

AFAIK, plumbers are typically paid more than game devs.

Re: There are too many video games

#93

Post by [deleted] »

dvt wrote: post #15

> This is a whole another blog post, so I'll paint with broad strokes for now. My city, Seattle, is crumbling. We don't have the energy to maintain the roads, and our bridges are literally falling apart. We can't even maintain what our grandparents built, let alone make any grand new projects. What in the world does this have to do with people creating art? Maybe the crumbling infrastructure is emblematic of poor lea…

[deleted]

Re: There are too many video games

#94

Post by sk0g »

Time spent hard skills that can transfer to software engineering, movies/TV shows, scientific simulations, robotics, etc. is not wasted.

If you've wasted your time on projects and now feel burnt out, that's fine. Doesn't mean the world is ending around us.

I hope the games the author built were more coherent than this article...

Re: There are too many video games

#95

Post by Shadonototra »

jbluepolarbear wrote: post #58
friedturkey wrote: post #29

Odd to focus on games when Seattle is propped up by a tech industry with people being overpaid by hundreds of thousands to make useless apps and websites. Indie game devs are usually making things at home during their downtime. As far as I know, there’s no volunteer hobbyist bridge repair club, so they’re not really taking away from anything. Meanwhile you have companies that have an easily replaceable service like S…

If the company hires you for a job and they’re happy with your work, you’re not overpaid. Companies are desperate for engineers that the price has inflated, the value of engineers has gone up because no one wants to make useless apps or websites without being paid.

or:

they got so much in VC funding that they don't know what to do with the money anymore

money incorrectly spread

teachers starving, making an indecent low amount of money; as a result

Re: There are too many video games

#96

Post by Feneric »

I think his point is that our society is putting too much value in entertainment sorts of goods like art, sports, literature, etc. and not enough in things like infrastructure maintenance, science, teaching, etc. He's not saying we don't need any entertainment, just that we don't need anywhere near as much.

Recall the Golgafrinchans. His argument is that our society is pushing more people out of the "thinkers" and "doers" category into the "useless" category, and that if they had our population breakdown they'd need to shove a lot of entertainment producers on Ark B.

There's some truth to it but also some falsehood. I think the reality is a bit nuanced.

Re: There are too many video games

#97

Post by shahbaby »

Haven't read the full article but the title resonates with me.

Are you going to spend 100 hours reading a single book? Watching a single movie? Listening to a single song?

Of course not. But you can easily spend that much time on one good video game.

And there are A LOT of excellent games out there. More than what any one person will be able to experience in their life time.

So there certainly seems to be a kind of saturation in the gaming market.

Re: There are too many video games

#98

Post by [deleted] »

erulabs wrote: post #76
a_t48 wrote: post #54

Let's say for the sake of argument that there is too much art out there, that we need less people writing novels and more people fixing potholes and whatnot - fine. How does the author propose deciding _who_ gets to make art? Even if you have an oracle who can assign some sort of quality number to an art project before it's made...how are people supposed to get better at it? It's going to take thousands of cruddy Uni…

> How does the author propose deciding _who_ gets to make art? I feel like the author makes it fairly clear: those with enough privilege. If the cost of living goes to zero, we'll have near-infinite art. If the cost of living goes to maximum we all starve to death. At very least, I was very much in love with a free-living artist who inspired me greatly in my 20s. I moved to San Francisco to hangout with her and her a…

[deleted]

Re: There are too many video games

#99

Post by krapp »

HeckFeck wrote: post #83
ModernMech wrote: post #9

This post gets weirder and weirder as it goes on. It seems to end up at a place suggesting that society is going to crumble around us as everyone spends their time making and playing indie video games. I think that’s a little sensational, to say the least. Here is the central thesis. There’s a lot to get through before you get to this. Writing a game nobody plays discharges your energy and creates the feeling of achi…

This could be a premise for a computer game. Society collapses because too many people spent time making and playing indie games. But society will only be saved if you can unite the gamers, pool together your combined knowledge from playing too much games, and put it to use in productive tasks in the real world. All those hours levelling up in game skills, finally proven IRL. And thus, the economy was saved.

All we have to do is restructure our entire civilization to work under Minecraft rules. Everything, literally everything must be made out of modular, arbitrarily attachable cubes.

Re: There are too many video games

#100

Post by legostormtroopr »

skeaker wrote: post #74
dvt wrote: post #15

> This is a whole another blog post, so I'll paint with broad strokes for now. My city, Seattle, is crumbling. We don't have the energy to maintain the roads, and our bridges are literally falling apart. We can't even maintain what our grandparents built, let alone make any grand new projects. What in the world does this have to do with people creating art? Maybe the crumbling infrastructure is emblematic of poor lea…

I think the author has his whole idea backwards here. We should be looking to lift everyone out of having to work in sweatshops so that everyone can follow their passion, be it making games or other art. The author instead believes we should tear down everyone who has achieved their passion and drag them back to the sweatshops. Both scenarios might be "equal" in terms of how much labor gets done, but one is clearly w…

> We should be looking to lift everyone out of having to work in sweatshops so that everyone can follow their passion

Except this is a fantasy - no ones passion is being a garbage worker, road worker, or plumber. They are hard dirty jobs. Hell, I'd even argue no one really wants to be a doctor or a nurse - because they are equally hard, dirty jobs - often dealing with death. Without the promise of payment, none of those jobs would be done.

The reality is we need to better compensate "hard jobs", so that people strive to do them.

Post reply on HN