17 ms·

Fortnite and the Good Life

109 points by bradstreet 8y ago

neap24 8y ago
This essay spends a bit of time trying to figure out whether we should discuss how "harmful" video games are vs. "how virtuous" they make us. The "opportunity cost" approach my parents had seems much more effective to me--"alright, you need to turn that off now. There are so many other interesting things you could be doing right now."
- drdrmrwh 8y ago
  +1 as with most things, the dose makes the poison.
- ALittleLight 8y ago
  I think people are heavily biased towards what looks interesting to an outside observer. A child sat at a desk all day starting at a glowing screen looks like some kind of soulless zombie. "Screens bad! Go outside and play!" The child might be doing something mindless, or might be involved in something fascinating - creating or participating in elaborate and vibrant virtual worlds. I think parents should seek a healthy balance for their children. But that means understanding what's happening and what it means and not trying to promote activities because of how they look on the outside. A child riding his bike around the neighborhood probably looks better to modern sensibilities than one staring at a screen, but I don't know why bike riding should be considered superior to building a world in Minecraft as an example.
  - jshowa3 8y ago
    The problem isn't so much the game itself, but the negative health effects from being sedentary and/or evading actual life responsibilities to play games (ie. choosing to not work and play games if playing games isn't providing income). Also, there's the question of whether playing games provides any long term, useful skills which I'd argue they really don't. But I guess it depends on whether your career path is in gaming or not.
  - gerbilly 8y ago
    > I don't know why bike riding should be considered superior to building a world in Minecraft as an example. Nothing against fortnite, but we are animals with bodies, not brains in a jar. This is why I'd say that riding a bike around¹ is more valuable than playing fortnite. 1: And bike riding can be a group thing as well. When I was a kid,we dirt jumped and mountain biked on the local trails a lot, which was immensely fun.
    - a1369209993 8y ago
      > we are animals with bodies, not brains in a jar. Speak (emphasize?) for yourself; I'm software that happens to be installed on a meat-puppet.
      - zemvpferreira 8y ago
        As much as we might like it to be different, the condition we keep our meat-puppets in and how vigorously we use them has great effects on the performance of our software.
    - ikeyany 8y ago
      > Nothing against fortnite, but we are animals with bodies, not brains in a jar. If you truly believe that, then quit your office job and take a more physical, human occupation.
      - gerbilly 8y ago
        I don't have a physical occupation now,but every other waking minute I do physical things as much as I can. I used to work farm labour when I was younger, never slept so well in my life.
  - asark 8y ago
    There aren't a lot of activities a person could, theoretically, engage in in public view without getting in some kind of trouble, that look as gross as staring at a screen alone. Any time I catch a glimpse of myself doing it, in a mirror in a video or whatever, I cringe. There's something really icky about it. The key seems to be catching a view of someone at a computer or in front of a TV or whatever but not also being able to see what's on the screen. It's chilling and creepy for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it is just the "zombie" factor, I dunno.
    - msla 8y ago
      > There aren't a lot of activities a person could, theoretically, engage in in public view without getting in some kind of trouble, that look as gross as staring at a screen alone. Staring at someone staring at a screen? Yelling at someone staring at a screen? Neither of those are technically alone, but that's the point: Bothering someone else is infinitely worse than... you know... not.
      - asark 8y ago
        What? I'm considering why we find "screen time" especially distasteful. It just looks bad, for some reason. Worse than someone lounging and reading, worse than a person running or playing a sport, and so on. It's an unsettling activity to watch, and catching a glimpse of oneself doing it is particularly creepy. I don't think I wrote anything about yelling at people. Did I? [EDIT] I think "using a computer" posture especially is the worst. Something about sitting upright at a desk or table using a computer is really weird. Like the person's body's subservient to the activity, while also being kind of absent from the whole thing. It's much worse than bending-neck-to-use-a-cellphone or slouching-on-couch-playing-console-games look.
        chillwaves 8y ago
        Macular degeration is associated with staring at computer screens excessively.
        8y ago
  - crooked-v 8y ago
    Well, there is the physical health aspect, though the gradually increasing popularity of VR may help somewhat with that. Beatsaber is a heck of an arm workout, and VR shooty games involve a lot of squats to stay behind imaginary cover.
  - chillwaves 8y ago
    Sitting and staring at a screen all day is unquestionable bad for your health, from damage to your sight, to damage to your body, to hormone interference. There is not much positive to say about sitting in front of a screen all day as a person, less so as a child.
  - viraptor 8y ago
    Yeah, I realised that a big problem is that for a person next to me, I look the same whether I play a game, read a book, learn something, chat with someone... I'm pretty sure what looks like a generic "spends time on the phone" is not a great idea for kids. When I have mine, I'm going to have to make an effort to go back to physical books at least and do things like learning something on a big visible screen, rather than privately on a mobile.
wdewind 8y ago
This article addresses moral panic and so it may seem like it is not an extension of it, but I think it basically still is. People have tried for decades, through scientific research, to quantify harm caused by video games and have failed over and over again. Can people become "addicted" to them and use them as escape mechanisms? Sure, But that happens with all kinds of things, from chess to reading to running. It's rare to see a real impassioned defense of gaming outside of "it's not that bad" but I'd like to go out and say it had a hugely positive impact on my life and I think it's really doubtful I'd be where I am today without gaming. Beyond giving me the foundations of the technical skills I used to become an engineer, gaming gave me tons of social skills as well. As an adolescent I was able to play a ton of different roles in a group in a way that I wasn't able to in real life, even in sports and mock trial and things like that, where other elements of teamwork were present. This prepared me greatly for understanding deep collaboration with teammates at work today. Much more than group projects in school. Like orders of magnitude more so. It's also important to note that despite being the safest the country has ever been, adolescents are more restricted than ever before. It is extremely rare for them to have places where they can be free, with their friends, and also trying out new social roles. This is an extremely valuable process and it's really difficult to do these days. I don't think there is anything wrong with Fortnite, but I think if you're trying to figure out why people play it and you reduce that down to "bright flashing colors and escapism" you're missing a ton of the context. And this isn't to rag on sports and say gaming is better (or theater, or woodworking, if those are your things) it's just to say: it's 2019. This gaming thing has been going on for quite some time. It's a real thing with depth, mastery and real benefits that spread into the rest of your life just like playing sports, or chess or however else you think kids should be spending their time. Let's stop tiptoeing around gaming like it's just a vice and start emphasizing the positive things we get out of it.
- badpun 8y ago
  > This gaming thing has been going on for quite some time. It's a real thing with depth, mastery and real benefits that spread into the rest of your life just like playing sports, or chess or however else you think kids should be spending their time. Sure, that's true, but only for some kids - while for others, games, esp. non-skill ones (say, 100th hour of slashing monsters in Diablo) truly are a distraction and bring nothing in, while they fill the time in child's development that is normally devoted to activities which develop the child in some way. The same thing can be said about other activities, like TV, but I feel like video games may have even less to offer than those. I mean, if you watch sitcoms on TV, you're developing your sense of humor, observe people engaged in funny dialogue etc. I can't see a single valueable thing about that 100th hour of playing Diablo - it's a pure time waster. It's not great for an adult, but especially bad for a child/teenager, which should be growing instead of wasting time.
matt_lo 8y ago
I play Fortnite almost every day for varying reasons: - I have adult customers who like playing/talking with someone who makes what they buy. - I have former colleagues I talk to and catch up with. - I have gaming friends who want someone whose competitive to play with. - I use it to decompress for the day... or add a ton of stress, depending on whether I can "edit my builds" fast enough for the dub. tl;dr: From my perspective, Fortnite is a social network.
- VectorLock 8y ago
  I'm curious what kind of business do you do where Fortnite is a significant way to interact with your customers?
  - matt_lo 8y ago
    I wouldn't say it's significant. It's a handful of customers who play occasionally. No where near as much as I do. I run a support bot business.
cuteTrope 8y ago
Cute trope.
gfodor 8y ago
As we've worked on Hubs at Mozilla it's beginning to feel like we're one of what will become several key mechanisms for introducing avatar embodiment into our lives. There are a number of trends (VR, gaming, etc) pointing in this direction so it seems like wrangling with the moral questions around remote embodiment will become more and more prevalent.
- DiJu519 8y ago
  so cool :) !
- phinnaeus 8y ago
  Does anyone remember ViOS?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
skybrian 8y ago
There may be opportunity cost, but you can't beat something with nothing. Whatever activity you think is a "waste of time" needs to be compared with something specific that's allegedly better. What, specifically, should the kids playing too much Fortnite be doing more of? Encourage them to do that.
victorbstan 8y ago
Weird flex, but ok.
manfredo 8y ago
Really, games are like any other piece of media. Engage with them passively, and uncritically and one won't get much value out of it. Engage with them actively and they can have a positive impact. My parents didn't really care what media I consumed but cared more about how I consumed it. Plenty of games have the potential to explore and foster interesting experiences. I've learned a lot through games. In fact I'd say that two of the most important things I've learned I've learned through games: the importance of a strong work ethic, and discovering my passing for computer technology (which later led to a career in software development). Games can be mindless and intellectually numb. But the same could be said of any other piece of media. Granted I am of the opinion that battle Royale games provide less than strategy games, and most RPGs but I am not nearly experienced enough in the BR genre to have much conviction in this opinion.
- jdmichal 8y ago
  I think most games have orthogonal twitch and strategy components. All games of course have some strategy -- even decided games like Checkers have the optimal strategy, along side unoptimal ones. There are "action" games (high twitch) that have very high strategic content. The kicker is that sometimes twitch can serve as a ceiling for strategy. That is, below a certain twitch level, some strategies are not viable or available. Games with very low twitch minimize this, like turn-based RPGs and strategy games. But even StarCraft requires high twitch (aka unit micro) to execute some strategies!
  - manfredo 8y ago
    Even ostensibly twitch based games have a lot of strategy. 2D fighters have tons of strategy, so do games like * Souls. Stealth games also require good strategy and spacial reasoning coupled with strong execution.
- joelmartinez6 8y ago
  I think this comment is right on the mark. The core question parents should be asking is, how is my child engaging with the game? If it's a few hours of spending time with friends, great. Even if it's many more hours and they are engaging in a competitive manner that can be a rewarding experience. However I suspect that the much more common modality is a mixture of active and passive consumption, which can quickly become passive due to some elements of the current gaming environment. My personal experience with ~3K hours of Dota throughout high school and early college was highly mixed, with periods of intense engagement and many many more of mindless playing or watching twitch (outside of the 3K in-game hours). I think that there are valid concerns to the high potential for passive time-sinking in these modern games which exist with an entire ecosystem of a competitive scene, streaming personalities, skins, friends, and more. There are healthy ways to engage with each of the elements of these ecosystems, but it is something that should be discussed and monitored.
jdreyfuss 8y ago
Interesting article. I like the re-framing of questioning gaming (and other uses of technology) from the basis of what it adds rather than what it subtracts. I believe there is value in gaming. There's value in storytelling, in mastering small skills, and in the positive feedback of progression. There's value in shared experiences and in the communities that spring up within and around games. My own struggle is with the diminishing returns. The "danger" of games to me, such as they are, is not in the value-per-unit-of-time ratio, but rather in the total amount of time that they can suck up. It's not hard at all to spend hundreds of hours in games. For me, if I take any given hour of gaming and compare it to an hour of something else I could have been doing, I'm quite happy to have spent it gaming. But when I take the sum of that time over a year, or a lifetime, and compare it to other pursuits, that's when I start to question it in my own life. tl;dr: the "danger" of gaming to me is not in the content of games, or in gaming not having anything to add to someone's life, but rather in the fact that, for many people, gaming seems uniquely able to suck up so much time -- much more so than what it ultimately adds.
dna113 8y ago
As someone who spent much their teens logged into World of Warcraft, I wish people would be a bit more open minded about this. Someone like Prince Harry saying that Fortnite is a waste of time, is seriously damaging to the image someone might have of themselves playing it. I doubt Prince Harry has got the first clue, and his opinion of it being a waste of time is totally subjective. It took me probably a decade until I realized that the large chunk of my teens I spent logged in to World of Warcraft were not a blemish on my life. The game had so much depth, it was incredibly challenging, and the social aspect was a huge part of it. My family and our societies negative view of the game encouraged a negative view of myself, seeing as I enjoyed it so much. Of course you should encourage variety, but let your kid play the fuckin game!
- jacobush 8y ago
  For how many hours a day?
  - dna113 8y ago
    I averaged probably 3 hours a day.
- alanfalcon 8y ago
  The same activity can be "numbing" (used to escape real problems and responsibilities) for one person, and energizing and truly comforting to someone else. World of Warcraft absolutely had (and has) people who fall on both sides of that divide, and I'm sure the same is true for Fortnite. It can also start as constructive/energizing and become numbing/escapism if you make someone feel ashamed of it, as you say.
- brightball 8y ago
  Having spent a ton of my teens playing online games, I agree with you to a point. It’s also a little dismissive to assume that this is just like every other game. There are so many psychological tricks going on to add a “feeder pellet” aspect to some games today that they are truly designed to be addictive. Games with in app purchases or ads, are usually built for it. Games that have timed reward systems to incentivize you to keep coming back at that same time every day are also part of it. You see these systems with most of the “free” games on touch screens and as a parent I can tell you that my children are significantly different playing them vs playing any other game with their friends (even online). It’s a noticeable enough and shocking enough behavioral change that you have to remove it. When not having access to a game for a certain period of time creates anger or tears, it’s no longer just a game.
pierotofy 8y ago
Maybe we should just tell kids to watch TV. Wait...
- chillwaves 8y ago
  How is TV a defense of videogames?
yters 8y ago
There seems to be at least some objective criteria for good and bad uses of time. In general, almost everyone has the same set of needs in order to flourish, and the same requirements to meet those needs. So, uses of time that better fit the general requirements for flourishing are objectively better. For example, everyone needs to be healthy, and subsisting on a diet consisting entirely of candy is unlikely to be healthy for the general population (although I did hear about a guy living only on Mars bars). With video games, while we minimize the importance of geography due to virtualization, geographically located communities seems to be the most beneficial for our social wellbeing. From a purely evolutionary viewpoint, we cannot reproduce virtually (yet!). Sinking all of one's time into online games and relationships will diminish our ability to develop geographical communities. On the other hand, it's wrong to write off video games altogether. As an artistic medium, they are pretty unique and their true potential has yet to be realized. I think the indie scene is great in this regard. And exposure to great art is essential for human flourishing.
- icebraining 8y ago
  > From a purely evolutionary viewpoint, we cannot reproduce virtually (yet!) Sperm donation and IVF is quite virtual already.
davidwitt415 8y ago
Video games are fine, but as I tell my sons, there's a huge difference between learning how to play guitar and learning how to play Guitar Hero. Virtual worlds are fine to engage with, but those accomplishments are virtual and ephemeral, while real world skills remain with you.
- jmckib 8y ago
  I'm sure you're well-intentioned and want what's best for your kids, but I'm going to push back a bit. My ability to play video games in general has improved over the years, and for me it's a source of pleasure. It's not ephemeral because many of the games I play now have the same mechanics as the ones I played when I was a kid. People like listening to guitar, but there are also a lot of people who love watching others play videogames on sites like Twitch. Of course both playing videogames and playing guitar professionally aren't a realistic goal for most people.
  - linkev117 8y ago
    I don't think the amount of utility for guitar is the same as for video games. I understand very few people get to be professional guitarists or gamers. However, after that there are rapidly decreasing returns for video games. Guitar can be a source of pleasure for people you meet. It's a far more interesting skill than playing video games decently well. Guitar challenges the brain more; its learning curve extends farther than any video game. Guitar opens up a world of creativity and improvisation, name me a video game that can provide something at that scale (I'm an avid gamer so I'm sure there are none). Plus, it can get you laid. I just don't buy that playing video games can provide much benefit. It seems like a meager reason to justify a questionable habit.
    - jmckib 8y ago
      Personally I would much rather watch someone play videogames than listen to someone play guitar, but that might be an unpopular opinion and I agree with you that actually writing music is more artistically creative than what you can do with the vast majority of videogames. We can probably agree the type of game matter. To me the skill that people display when expertly playing a real-time strategy game is really interesting and takes a certain kind of tactical/strategic genius to do well. It is basically speed chess with a lot more rules and space for creativity. You've definitely got a point that guitar probably is a better way to impress most of the ladies. I just want to make the additional point that video games are how a lot of us began our interest in computers that later turned into a fulfilling career. Many people first experienced a command line while installing DOS games. The modern equivalent is probably modding PC games, which can take a lot of technical literacy depending on the game.
mhh__ 8y ago
The point about Fortnite basically being a real place is very astute.
evrydayhustling 8y ago
Love this article but take issue with this statement: "The experience of place is an irreducibly embodied experience.". The author moderates it by pointing out that there is a physical experience of gaming, but I think this misses the point that we don't yet know the limits of virtual experiences. There is a similar attitude when folks insist that robotic embodiment is required for AI, or that AI structures must mimic the human brain to achieve "real" intelligence. I think these attitudes, by trying to draw a bright line, lead people to consistently underestimate how powerful new media can be.
Animats 8y ago
This is just some guy commenting on a New York Times article. The actual article is better.[1] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/opinion/sunday/fortnite-social-play-children.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/opinion/sunday/fortnite-s...
skilled 8y ago
In my experience, there are either two parts of the brain or two personalities within you that constantly feed on one another. For example, when you start playing World of Warcraft again, and a week later it feels like you are a crack addict who needs 10+ hours every day. But the game feels great. It feels great until you hit a wall either in-game or in real life. And the younger you are, the more difficult it is to hit either of those walls. Last year I hit a bit of a slump in my life and had a few 'dark' months, so I downloaded WoW right around the time of when the new expansion was coming out. Not only did I realize that Blizzard has surgically removed the "soul" of the game (for whatever reason), I also realized that my conscience can't really keep up with the game for that long.
dorkwood 8y ago
I went through something similar to the author once, where I looked back on all the time I spent playing games in my youth and thought “wow, what a waste!” What I came to realise, however, (after reading about Self Determination Theory) was that I likely spent so much of my time playing games because it was the only way for me to experience autonomy and competency as a young adult. I had no other way of meeting those needs. Games taught me that if I practice at something, I can get better. They gave me a world I could exercise control over when everything else in my life was determined by school and my parents. If you know someone who you think plays too many games, look to see if they have any other ways of meeting those basic human needs for autonomy, competence, and social interaction. If their lives are deficient in one or all of those areas, games can be a lifesaver.
- stiglitz 8y ago
  A lifesaver or a crutch.
  - dorkwood 8y ago
    Can't it be both?
    - linkev117 8y ago
      I would compare it to benzos. They can tide you over for a short while, but long term it leads to dependency. And there are much more productive alternatives out there (Like exercise, for both cases..).
narrator 8y ago
The worst part about playing video games is you get a brain full of lots of totally useless video game trivia. When I realized that programming was almost as fun as playing video games I just did that instead. Even the most aimless screwing around programming will have a better long term impact on one's life than videogaming IMHO.
teekert 8y ago
"I can't quite claim that playing hours of Mortal Kombat, most of those socializing with friends, was good." I played a lot of Street Figher on the SNES, always loved it, always played or some time with friend and then do something else. I don't think it was bad?

109 points by bradstreet 8y ago

This essay spends a bit of time trying to figure out whether we should discuss how "harmful" video games are vs. "how virtuous" they make us. The "opportunity cost" approach my parents had seems much more effective to me--"alright, you need to turn that off now. There are so many other interesting things you could be doing right now."

drdrmrwh 8y ago
+1 as with most things, the dose makes the poison.
ALittleLight 8y ago
I think people are heavily biased towards what looks interesting to an outside observer. A child sat at a desk all day starting at a glowing screen looks like some kind of soulless zombie. "Screens bad! Go outside and play!" The child might be doing something mindless, or might be involved in something fascinating - creating or participating in elaborate and vibrant virtual worlds. I think parents should seek a healthy balance for their children. But that means understanding what's happening and what it means and not trying to promote activities because of how they look on the outside. A child riding his bike around the neighborhood probably looks better to modern sensibilities than one staring at a screen, but I don't know why bike riding should be considered superior to building a world in Minecraft as an example.
- jshowa3 8y ago
  The problem isn't so much the game itself, but the negative health effects from being sedentary and/or evading actual life responsibilities to play games (ie. choosing to not work and play games if playing games isn't providing income). Also, there's the question of whether playing games provides any long term, useful skills which I'd argue they really don't. But I guess it depends on whether your career path is in gaming or not.
- gerbilly 8y ago
  > I don't know why bike riding should be considered superior to building a world in Minecraft as an example. Nothing against fortnite, but we are animals with bodies, not brains in a jar. This is why I'd say that riding a bike around¹ is more valuable than playing fortnite. 1: And bike riding can be a group thing as well. When I was a kid,we dirt jumped and mountain biked on the local trails a lot, which was immensely fun.
  - a1369209993 8y ago
    > we are animals with bodies, not brains in a jar. Speak (emphasize?) for yourself; I'm software that happens to be installed on a meat-puppet.
    - zemvpferreira 8y ago
      As much as we might like it to be different, the condition we keep our meat-puppets in and how vigorously we use them has great effects on the performance of our software.
  - ikeyany 8y ago
    > Nothing against fortnite, but we are animals with bodies, not brains in a jar. If you truly believe that, then quit your office job and take a more physical, human occupation.
    - gerbilly 8y ago
      I don't have a physical occupation now,but every other waking minute I do physical things as much as I can. I used to work farm labour when I was younger, never slept so well in my life.
- asark 8y ago
  There aren't a lot of activities a person could, theoretically, engage in in public view without getting in some kind of trouble, that look as gross as staring at a screen alone. Any time I catch a glimpse of myself doing it, in a mirror in a video or whatever, I cringe. There's something really icky about it. The key seems to be catching a view of someone at a computer or in front of a TV or whatever but not also being able to see what's on the screen. It's chilling and creepy for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it is just the "zombie" factor, I dunno.
  - msla 8y ago
    > There aren't a lot of activities a person could, theoretically, engage in in public view without getting in some kind of trouble, that look as gross as staring at a screen alone. Staring at someone staring at a screen? Yelling at someone staring at a screen? Neither of those are technically alone, but that's the point: Bothering someone else is infinitely worse than... you know... not.
    - asark 8y ago
      What? I'm considering why we find "screen time" especially distasteful. It just looks bad, for some reason. Worse than someone lounging and reading, worse than a person running or playing a sport, and so on. It's an unsettling activity to watch, and catching a glimpse of oneself doing it is particularly creepy. I don't think I wrote anything about yelling at people. Did I? [EDIT] I think "using a computer" posture especially is the worst. Something about sitting upright at a desk or table using a computer is really weird. Like the person's body's subservient to the activity, while also being kind of absent from the whole thing. It's much worse than bending-neck-to-use-a-cellphone or slouching-on-couch-playing-console-games look.
      - chillwaves 8y ago
        Macular degeration is associated with staring at computer screens excessively.
        8y ago
- crooked-v 8y ago
  Well, there is the physical health aspect, though the gradually increasing popularity of VR may help somewhat with that. Beatsaber is a heck of an arm workout, and VR shooty games involve a lot of squats to stay behind imaginary cover.
- chillwaves 8y ago
  Sitting and staring at a screen all day is unquestionable bad for your health, from damage to your sight, to damage to your body, to hormone interference. There is not much positive to say about sitting in front of a screen all day as a person, less so as a child.
- viraptor 8y ago
  Yeah, I realised that a big problem is that for a person next to me, I look the same whether I play a game, read a book, learn something, chat with someone... I'm pretty sure what looks like a generic "spends time on the phone" is not a great idea for kids. When I have mine, I'm going to have to make an effort to go back to physical books at least and do things like learning something on a big visible screen, rather than privately on a mobile.

wdewind 8y ago

This article addresses moral panic and so it may seem like it is not an extension of it, but I think it basically still is. People have tried for decades, through scientific research, to quantify harm caused by video games and have failed over and over again. Can people become "addicted" to them and use them as escape mechanisms? Sure, But that happens with all kinds of things, from chess to reading to running. It's rare to see a real impassioned defense of gaming outside of "it's not that bad" but I'd like to go out and say it had a hugely positive impact on my life and I think it's really doubtful I'd be where I am today without gaming. Beyond giving me the foundations of the technical skills I used to become an engineer, gaming gave me tons of social skills as well. As an adolescent I was able to play a ton of different roles in a group in a way that I wasn't able to in real life, even in sports and mock trial and things like that, where other elements of teamwork were present. This prepared me greatly for understanding deep collaboration with teammates at work today. Much more than group projects in school. Like orders of magnitude more so. It's also important to note that despite being the safest the country has ever been, adolescents are more restricted than ever before. It is extremely rare for them to have places where they can be free, with their friends, and also trying out new social roles. This is an extremely valuable process and it's really difficult to do these days. I don't think there is anything wrong with Fortnite, but I think if you're trying to figure out why people play it and you reduce that down to "bright flashing colors and escapism" you're missing a ton of the context. And this isn't to rag on sports and say gaming is better (or theater, or woodworking, if those are your things) it's just to say: it's 2019. This gaming thing has been going on for quite some time. It's a real thing with depth, mastery and real benefits that spread into the rest of your life just like playing sports, or chess or however else you think kids should be spending their time. Let's stop tiptoeing around gaming like it's just a vice and start emphasizing the positive things we get out of it.

badpun 8y ago
> This gaming thing has been going on for quite some time. It's a real thing with depth, mastery and real benefits that spread into the rest of your life just like playing sports, or chess or however else you think kids should be spending their time. Sure, that's true, but only for some kids - while for others, games, esp. non-skill ones (say, 100th hour of slashing monsters in Diablo) truly are a distraction and bring nothing in, while they fill the time in child's development that is normally devoted to activities which develop the child in some way. The same thing can be said about other activities, like TV, but I feel like video games may have even less to offer than those. I mean, if you watch sitcoms on TV, you're developing your sense of humor, observe people engaged in funny dialogue etc. I can't see a single valueable thing about that 100th hour of playing Diablo - it's a pure time waster. It's not great for an adult, but especially bad for a child/teenager, which should be growing instead of wasting time.

matt_lo 8y ago

I play Fortnite almost every day for varying reasons: - I have adult customers who like playing/talking with someone who makes what they buy. - I have former colleagues I talk to and catch up with. - I have gaming friends who want someone whose competitive to play with. - I use it to decompress for the day... or add a ton of stress, depending on whether I can "edit my builds" fast enough for the dub. tl;dr: From my perspective, Fortnite is a social network.

VectorLock 8y ago
I'm curious what kind of business do you do where Fortnite is a significant way to interact with your customers?
- matt_lo 8y ago
  I wouldn't say it's significant. It's a handful of customers who play occasionally. No where near as much as I do. I run a support bot business.

cuteTrope 8y ago

Cute trope.

gfodor 8y ago

As we've worked on Hubs at Mozilla it's beginning to feel like we're one of what will become several key mechanisms for introducing avatar embodiment into our lives. There are a number of trends (VR, gaming, etc) pointing in this direction so it seems like wrangling with the moral questions around remote embodiment will become more and more prevalent.

DiJu519 8y ago
so cool :) !
phinnaeus 8y ago
Does anyone remember ViOS?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

skybrian 8y ago

There may be opportunity cost, but you can't beat something with nothing. Whatever activity you think is a "waste of time" needs to be compared with something specific that's allegedly better. What, specifically, should the kids playing too much Fortnite be doing more of? Encourage them to do that.

victorbstan 8y ago

Weird flex, but ok.

manfredo 8y ago

Really, games are like any other piece of media. Engage with them passively, and uncritically and one won't get much value out of it. Engage with them actively and they can have a positive impact. My parents didn't really care what media I consumed but cared more about how I consumed it. Plenty of games have the potential to explore and foster interesting experiences. I've learned a lot through games. In fact I'd say that two of the most important things I've learned I've learned through games: the importance of a strong work ethic, and discovering my passing for computer technology (which later led to a career in software development). Games can be mindless and intellectually numb. But the same could be said of any other piece of media. Granted I am of the opinion that battle Royale games provide less than strategy games, and most RPGs but I am not nearly experienced enough in the BR genre to have much conviction in this opinion.

jdmichal 8y ago
I think most games have orthogonal twitch and strategy components. All games of course have some strategy -- even decided games like Checkers have the optimal strategy, along side unoptimal ones. There are "action" games (high twitch) that have very high strategic content. The kicker is that sometimes twitch can serve as a ceiling for strategy. That is, below a certain twitch level, some strategies are not viable or available. Games with very low twitch minimize this, like turn-based RPGs and strategy games. But even StarCraft requires high twitch (aka unit micro) to execute some strategies!
- manfredo 8y ago
  Even ostensibly twitch based games have a lot of strategy. 2D fighters have tons of strategy, so do games like * Souls. Stealth games also require good strategy and spacial reasoning coupled with strong execution.
joelmartinez6 8y ago
I think this comment is right on the mark. The core question parents should be asking is, how is my child engaging with the game? If it's a few hours of spending time with friends, great. Even if it's many more hours and they are engaging in a competitive manner that can be a rewarding experience. However I suspect that the much more common modality is a mixture of active and passive consumption, which can quickly become passive due to some elements of the current gaming environment. My personal experience with ~3K hours of Dota throughout high school and early college was highly mixed, with periods of intense engagement and many many more of mindless playing or watching twitch (outside of the 3K in-game hours). I think that there are valid concerns to the high potential for passive time-sinking in these modern games which exist with an entire ecosystem of a competitive scene, streaming personalities, skins, friends, and more. There are healthy ways to engage with each of the elements of these ecosystems, but it is something that should be discussed and monitored.

jdreyfuss 8y ago

Interesting article. I like the re-framing of questioning gaming (and other uses of technology) from the basis of what it adds rather than what it subtracts. I believe there is value in gaming. There's value in storytelling, in mastering small skills, and in the positive feedback of progression. There's value in shared experiences and in the communities that spring up within and around games. My own struggle is with the diminishing returns. The "danger" of games to me, such as they are, is not in the value-per-unit-of-time ratio, but rather in the total amount of time that they can suck up. It's not hard at all to spend hundreds of hours in games. For me, if I take any given hour of gaming and compare it to an hour of something else I could have been doing, I'm quite happy to have spent it gaming. But when I take the sum of that time over a year, or a lifetime, and compare it to other pursuits, that's when I start to question it in my own life. tl;dr: the "danger" of gaming to me is not in the content of games, or in gaming not having anything to add to someone's life, but rather in the fact that, for many people, gaming seems uniquely able to suck up so much time -- much more so than what it ultimately adds.

dna113 8y ago

As someone who spent much their teens logged into World of Warcraft, I wish people would be a bit more open minded about this. Someone like Prince Harry saying that Fortnite is a waste of time, is seriously damaging to the image someone might have of themselves playing it. I doubt Prince Harry has got the first clue, and his opinion of it being a waste of time is totally subjective. It took me probably a decade until I realized that the large chunk of my teens I spent logged in to World of Warcraft were not a blemish on my life. The game had so much depth, it was incredibly challenging, and the social aspect was a huge part of it. My family and our societies negative view of the game encouraged a negative view of myself, seeing as I enjoyed it so much. Of course you should encourage variety, but let your kid play the fuckin game!

jacobush 8y ago
For how many hours a day?
- dna113 8y ago
  I averaged probably 3 hours a day.
alanfalcon 8y ago
The same activity can be "numbing" (used to escape real problems and responsibilities) for one person, and energizing and truly comforting to someone else. World of Warcraft absolutely had (and has) people who fall on both sides of that divide, and I'm sure the same is true for Fortnite. It can also start as constructive/energizing and become numbing/escapism if you make someone feel ashamed of it, as you say.
brightball 8y ago
Having spent a ton of my teens playing online games, I agree with you to a point. It’s also a little dismissive to assume that this is just like every other game. There are so many psychological tricks going on to add a “feeder pellet” aspect to some games today that they are truly designed to be addictive. Games with in app purchases or ads, are usually built for it. Games that have timed reward systems to incentivize you to keep coming back at that same time every day are also part of it. You see these systems with most of the “free” games on touch screens and as a parent I can tell you that my children are significantly different playing them vs playing any other game with their friends (even online). It’s a noticeable enough and shocking enough behavioral change that you have to remove it. When not having access to a game for a certain period of time creates anger or tears, it’s no longer just a game.

pierotofy 8y ago

Maybe we should just tell kids to watch TV. Wait...

chillwaves 8y ago
How is TV a defense of videogames?

yters 8y ago

There seems to be at least some objective criteria for good and bad uses of time. In general, almost everyone has the same set of needs in order to flourish, and the same requirements to meet those needs. So, uses of time that better fit the general requirements for flourishing are objectively better. For example, everyone needs to be healthy, and subsisting on a diet consisting entirely of candy is unlikely to be healthy for the general population (although I did hear about a guy living only on Mars bars). With video games, while we minimize the importance of geography due to virtualization, geographically located communities seems to be the most beneficial for our social wellbeing. From a purely evolutionary viewpoint, we cannot reproduce virtually (yet!). Sinking all of one's time into online games and relationships will diminish our ability to develop geographical communities. On the other hand, it's wrong to write off video games altogether. As an artistic medium, they are pretty unique and their true potential has yet to be realized. I think the indie scene is great in this regard. And exposure to great art is essential for human flourishing.

icebraining 8y ago
> From a purely evolutionary viewpoint, we cannot reproduce virtually (yet!) Sperm donation and IVF is quite virtual already.

davidwitt415 8y ago

Video games are fine, but as I tell my sons, there's a huge difference between learning how to play guitar and learning how to play Guitar Hero. Virtual worlds are fine to engage with, but those accomplishments are virtual and ephemeral, while real world skills remain with you.

jmckib 8y ago
I'm sure you're well-intentioned and want what's best for your kids, but I'm going to push back a bit. My ability to play video games in general has improved over the years, and for me it's a source of pleasure. It's not ephemeral because many of the games I play now have the same mechanics as the ones I played when I was a kid. People like listening to guitar, but there are also a lot of people who love watching others play videogames on sites like Twitch. Of course both playing videogames and playing guitar professionally aren't a realistic goal for most people.
- linkev117 8y ago
  I don't think the amount of utility for guitar is the same as for video games. I understand very few people get to be professional guitarists or gamers. However, after that there are rapidly decreasing returns for video games. Guitar can be a source of pleasure for people you meet. It's a far more interesting skill than playing video games decently well. Guitar challenges the brain more; its learning curve extends farther than any video game. Guitar opens up a world of creativity and improvisation, name me a video game that can provide something at that scale (I'm an avid gamer so I'm sure there are none). Plus, it can get you laid. I just don't buy that playing video games can provide much benefit. It seems like a meager reason to justify a questionable habit.
  - jmckib 8y ago
    Personally I would much rather watch someone play videogames than listen to someone play guitar, but that might be an unpopular opinion and I agree with you that actually writing music is more artistically creative than what you can do with the vast majority of videogames. We can probably agree the type of game matter. To me the skill that people display when expertly playing a real-time strategy game is really interesting and takes a certain kind of tactical/strategic genius to do well. It is basically speed chess with a lot more rules and space for creativity. You've definitely got a point that guitar probably is a better way to impress most of the ladies. I just want to make the additional point that video games are how a lot of us began our interest in computers that later turned into a fulfilling career. Many people first experienced a command line while installing DOS games. The modern equivalent is probably modding PC games, which can take a lot of technical literacy depending on the game.

mhh__ 8y ago

The point about Fortnite basically being a real place is very astute.

evrydayhustling 8y ago

Love this article but take issue with this statement: "The experience of place is an irreducibly embodied experience.". The author moderates it by pointing out that there is a physical experience of gaming, but I think this misses the point that we don't yet know the limits of virtual experiences. There is a similar attitude when folks insist that robotic embodiment is required for AI, or that AI structures must mimic the human brain to achieve "real" intelligence. I think these attitudes, by trying to draw a bright line, lead people to consistently underestimate how powerful new media can be.

Animats 8y ago

This is just some guy commenting on a New York Times article. The actual article is better.[1] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/opinion/sunday/fortnite-social-play-children.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/opinion/sunday/fortnite-s...

skilled 8y ago

In my experience, there are either two parts of the brain or two personalities within you that constantly feed on one another. For example, when you start playing World of Warcraft again, and a week later it feels like you are a crack addict who needs 10+ hours every day. But the game feels great. It feels great until you hit a wall either in-game or in real life. And the younger you are, the more difficult it is to hit either of those walls. Last year I hit a bit of a slump in my life and had a few 'dark' months, so I downloaded WoW right around the time of when the new expansion was coming out. Not only did I realize that Blizzard has surgically removed the "soul" of the game (for whatever reason), I also realized that my conscience can't really keep up with the game for that long.

dorkwood 8y ago

I went through something similar to the author once, where I looked back on all the time I spent playing games in my youth and thought “wow, what a waste!” What I came to realise, however, (after reading about Self Determination Theory) was that I likely spent so much of my time playing games because it was the only way for me to experience autonomy and competency as a young adult. I had no other way of meeting those needs. Games taught me that if I practice at something, I can get better. They gave me a world I could exercise control over when everything else in my life was determined by school and my parents. If you know someone who you think plays too many games, look to see if they have any other ways of meeting those basic human needs for autonomy, competence, and social interaction. If their lives are deficient in one or all of those areas, games can be a lifesaver.

stiglitz 8y ago
A lifesaver or a crutch.
- dorkwood 8y ago
  Can't it be both?
  - linkev117 8y ago
    I would compare it to benzos. They can tide you over for a short while, but long term it leads to dependency. And there are much more productive alternatives out there (Like exercise, for both cases..).

narrator 8y ago

The worst part about playing video games is you get a brain full of lots of totally useless video game trivia. When I realized that programming was almost as fun as playing video games I just did that instead. Even the most aimless screwing around programming will have a better long term impact on one's life than videogaming IMHO.

teekert 8y ago

"I can't quite claim that playing hours of Mortal Kombat, most of those socializing with friends, was good." I played a lot of Street Figher on the SNES, always loved it, always played or some time with friend and then do something else. I don't think it was bad?