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As someone that stopped playing games in university, I've found it weirdly hard to get back into games many years later. Factorio seems like the type of game I

by fouc 7y ago

As someone that stopped playing games in university, I've found it weirdly hard to get back into games many years later. Factorio seems like the type of game I would've liked as a teenager, but now it just feels like work to me. As do most interesting games. It seems like there's a learning curve to games that I don't want to spend the time dealing with anymore.

have_faith 7y ago
I still follow and keep upto date with most gaming releases but for some reason find the vast majority of them underwhelming these days. Lots of well made time sinks which when I was younger is probably all I wanted but now I'm always looking for something special and never finding it.
- Tobi-Wan_Kenobi 7y ago
  Oh, I felt that one in my mid-thirties soul. I used to waste/invest so much time into games, but now with a wife+kid+job I just don't want to spend my precious time on just any game. It has to be THE game. The perfect game. Alas, I haven't found it yet. (Factorio comes very close, but it is too time intensive. You can't just play Factorio for 30 minutes.)
  - have_faith 7y ago
    As far as games that I've enjoyed recently there is: Disco Elysium (enjoyed more than any AAA game I've played in a long time). No Mans Sky, despite it not living up to it's hype I do enjoy it a lot, easy to get lost in your own stories. I was enjoying Bloodbourne but I don't want to invest the amount of time needed to git gud. And that's about it... any recommendations on your end other than Factorio? it's been recommended to me by a couple of people but it looks a bit too grindy and addictive for my personality.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  NES and SNES emulator and ROMs. You can play them via Switch, or pirate them and give Nintendo money to salve your conscience. Especially if you have kids.
beart 7y ago
Even if you don't play, I highly recommend following the Factorio Friday blog posts. The development team is very transparent about what they are working on and will often dive into interesting problems and solutions, including failed attempts. They are both technical and approachable.
kennu 7y ago
You have to give the game some time. If it's good (like Factorio is) it might just pull you in. You also need to be in the right mood for that particular game. Sometimes you have to try a game many times until get pulled in.
- TylerE 7y ago
  I’ve tried several times but it just repels me. It has the worst tutorial I’ve ever seen and all the inventory management is just super awkward with weird UI. That’s coming from someone with hundreds of hours in OpenTTD and the like
  - chipperyman573 7y ago
    What's wrong about the tutorial? It walks you through the first 5% of the game. The remaining 95% unlock in a way that makes it obviously an improvement to something you have already. Personally I really liked it.
    - TylerE 7y ago
      It’s incredible opaque. The old tutorial was actually better. The new one they introduced is really bad. Not only does it not explain things, but some of the mechanics actually work differently in the tutorial. This is a pretty good breakdown https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=72407 https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=72407
      - jfim 7y ago
        They've actually decided to remove the tutorial introduced in 0.17 and go back to the 0.16 one. https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-342 https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-342
    - hobofan 7y ago
      To get beyond a certain point in this game you will need a exact understanding of certain mechanics and advanced patterns. I doubt most people would come up with advanced patterns (e.g. how to build a well working main bus, or a conveyor balancer that works well) by themselves and learn that from the wiki. If you purely stick to everything you learn ingame, you will probably hit a wall after 20 hours or so.
sdegutis 7y ago
That's because these kinds of games always were a form of work. When you have a higher purpose in life, these types of games drain you and leave you unfulfilled and unsatisfied and like we should have spent our time in a less tedious and wearisome recreation. I can no longer play Minecraft, and haven't even been able to get into Factorio.
- mcphage 7y ago
  > these types of games drain you and leave you unfulfilled and unsatisfied and like we should have spent our time in a less tedious and wearisome recreation. I, too, have given up eating, and sleeping, and joy.
  - chipperyman573 7y ago
    Eating, sleeping, and joy are not typically considered tedious or wearisome.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Eating and sleeping sure as hell are tedious and wearisome, since they're basic maintenance tasks that you have to do if you want to function, taking time and attention away from the things you're interested in doing. (Yes, I enjoy a tasty meal and a good night's sleep. But I'd much prefer to just live without having to sleep or eat at all. Or, eat a pill and recharge in a base station for 20 minutes.)
      - slfnflctd 7y ago
        Oh man, I've been saying this for years, count me in. Let's find a way to reduce or eliminate the need for personal hygiene while we're at it. Robot bodies! We could theoretically still have sex virtually, too.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        > Let's find a way to reduce or eliminate the need for personal hygiene while we're at it. Definitely. It's another maintenance time waster, another upkeep you have to pay. What's worse, only a fraction of it is needed for survival, the rest is just an elaborate social signalling game with almost unbounded costs in time and money. > We could theoretically still have sex virtually, too. Only if it offers improvement over status quo :).
baddox 7y ago
That’s exactly where I’m at. Played games nearly constantly until the instant I got a full time job and could actually afford a nice computer. Now I just watch other people play games online because I can’t bother to keep up on the computer hardware scene.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Basic dell computers with any video card play games fine. The hardware scene is a benchmarks "game" hobby on its own, separate from the video games.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    Yup; I've played factorio on a 2016 laptop and a 2011 desktop, the latter of which is also my "Steam machine". Bad enough hardware eventually limits what you can play, but the barrier to entry is low.
    - pmoriarty 7y ago
      I still play Factorio on a clunky, old, el-cheapo laptop I got in 2013, and it still plays fine in single player (except on really busy screens when zoomed way out, when it crawls). Playing multiplayer over a network can also get really painful, with massive slowdowns in busy areas and in combat, despite only being a few milliseconds away from the server. I really need to get a new machine.
rubenbe 7y ago
Interesting that you have the same feeling. I used to like RTS-style/city builder games and put endless hours in them (think simcity, rollercoaster tycoon, settlers, ... ). I barely play games anymore, but now I focus more on short (sidescroller) action games. Where each level lasts only a few minutes. (super meat boy, zombie night terror, hotline miami, ...) Maybe it's a case of instant gratification seeking. But it seems to work for me.
spyckie2 7y ago
I understand the need to treat life as a dichotomy between work and play, but I feel you might have lost some of the magic of your childhood. For me it's the opposite, I hated complex games as a child but really enjoy them today. For me, the best feeling is working hard for something and really getting into the details and enjoying all the complexity of the experience / challenge. I think that most human beings are wired to enjoy this kind of activity if they can get past the energy activation barrier. I've been in situations where I did not value the above. Looking back, I believe I was: - too mentally drained to enjoy anything - any free time goes to diving into Random Access Media (reddit, hnews, youtube, etc) - Never feeling full of energy or excitement and unable to find meaningful recharge I saw a psychiatrist and got diagnosed with depression (systematically defined as not wanting to do anything at least once a week). Since then I've taking an active approach to monitoring and improving my mental state. Specifically: 1. Identifying true energy restoring activities: 3 of them are - 1) engaging in conversations where there's a decent amount of laughter 2) Sleep / naps and 3) exercise 2. Identifying energy traps - things you do when you have no energy but don't restore energy. Several examples: 1) Netflix, 2) social media, 3) reddit, 4) youtube 3. Figuring out my mental health dietary needs (what is it that you're longing for that is unconsciously affecting your decision making) and making active plans to get them in a regular way. This could be social validation, laughter, new engaging experiences, feelings of accomplishment or accolade, etc. Instead of feeling like I don't want to do anything when I wake up, I more often find life as exciting and looking forward to the challenges and new experiences of each day. And yes, I enjoy Factorio a lot when I have the time to play (which is rare).
- burntoutfire 7y ago
  > 2. Identifying energy traps - things you do when you have no energy but don't restore energy. Several examples: 1) Netflix, 2) social media, 3) reddit, 4) youtube So, do you avoid them now? If so, what do you do when you're tired after work? It's hard to feel entire afternoons with exercise, sleep and conversations...
  - panta 7y ago
    Not the OP, but for me energy restoring activities are “active” ones, like hobbies where you create/build something. Working on a painting, photo, sculpting, writing, working on a side project, playing intelligent games with your dog, ... Passive activities, like consuming TV or Netflix or worse social networks, at least for me are draining my energy levels.
TheGallopedHigh 7y ago
I feel it the same way, and for myself I’ve put not enjoying gaming down to getting older. I don’t mind watch some streams here and there but the thought of getting a gaming machine and actually following through with gaming is no longer appealing. Although I do have peers that still game.
Melting_Harps 7y ago
> As someone that stopped playing games in university, I've found it weirdly hard to get back into games many years later. > Factorio seems like the type of game I would've liked as a teenager, but now it just feels like work to me. Same. I was an avid AoE, Survival Horror and Gran Turismo nerd (quitting right before the GT academy happened to my dismay) and I held quite a few records during the outbeak days. But it fell off my radar entirely after sophomore year in University. I got into Factorio for a week after Steam allowed Bitcoin purchases and I had a go as it looked interesting; I ended up playing like 6 hours a day only to come to the same conclusion you did: this is work, with clearly little to no ROI or ultimate gratification. So with that in mind, I went on youtube, saw the ending and got over it and stopped a time sink right away. Even when I thought I'd try to create a solar only Factorio factory, only to see one on Youtube and hearing the guy sunk 1000s of hours into it and scoffed at the idea. I uninstalled it entirely when I realized how the gaming Industry was migrating toward a free-ware micro tx based business model that relies on in game purchases for upgrades like Fortnite. These things are designed and optimized for targeting those with addictive behavioural patterns. I still want to build a driving simulator like this one day, but half the process and challenge will be the build itself: https://www.carscoops.com/2020/04/this-guy-turned-a-mini-cooper-s-into-a-racing-simulator-for-his-basement/ https://www.carscoops.com/2020/04/this-guy-turned-a-mini-coo... I actually located an ideal candidate on craigslist: a Focus hatchback with a blown drive train for $700 that I wanted to convert to Colin McRae's Martini Livery WRC car from the 90s.
- Baeocystin 7y ago
  >I uninstalled it entirely when I realized how the gaming Industry was migrating toward a free-ware micro tx based business model that relies on in game purchases for upgrades like Fortnite. but... Factorio is literally the antithesis of this.
- AQuantized 7y ago
  The idea of "seeing the ending" of Factorio undermining its appeal seems disconnected from my own experience. I'm not sure how giving up a game with no micro transactions helps that issue with the gaming industry either.
stared 7y ago
It is interesting to hear a similar feeling (I use to be heavily addicted prior to university). While I still do play games, I focus on short ones (story-driven like Life is Strange [1]) or ones that can be decomposed into intensive moments (e.g. StarCraft 2, Doom 2016/Eternal [2], Black Mesa, Ori and the Blind Forest/Will of the Wisps). I am not even tempted to play games that are work, or longer endeavor. To the point, that while I love the Witcher universe (read all books before it was cool; like, 20 years ago) I decided to rather watch all cutscenes than play. (I call it gaming porn.) With Factorio - I know that 15 years ago it would totally addict me (I was to SimCity, and Transport Tycoon Deluxe; I have a kink for building and maintaining systems). Now... emotional catharsis, or intense flow of shooter, is what I play for. Working for dozens or hundreds of hours - I prefer to spend the time creating something. It is not (only) "I am adult and blah, blah" - just I know I would feel nauseous guilt on one side, while some sense of accomplishment when creating something for others. [1] "Games in which you talk - and get immersed" https://medium.com/@pmigdal/games-in-which-you-walk-and-get-immersed-a80ad2bcfa7f https://medium.com/@pmigdal/games-in-which-you-walk-and-get-... [2] "Doom 2016 vs Doom Eternal: UI side-by-side" https://medium.com/@pmigdal/doom-2016-vs-doom-eternal-ui-side-by-side-8058e996baae https://medium.com/@pmigdal/doom-2016-vs-doom-eternal-ui-sid...
- wtallis 7y ago
  I've found that I am still willing to play RPGs that have some decent plot or game mechanics, but only if I'm able to skip past the grinding phases—either through cheats or by playing older games in an emulator with a literal fast forward button. When it comes to city builders and similar games (including Factorio), I'm too easily distracted by the metagame puzzle of wondering about optimal strategies. I can't play them for long before I end up closing the game itself and pulling up documentation about the game's rules and internals, and that usually breaks me out of a potentially addictive cycle.
jamil7 7y ago
I had the same experience, I picked it up a year or so ago and found it to be a great game and something I would have loved when I was younger but it didn't stick. I think these days working on a small project or hacking on something scratches the same itch for me, even if it's something I throw away.
EdwardDiego 7y ago
I spend a lot of time focusing on throughput of data pipelines, so Factorio feels a lot like work to me :D
roland35 7y ago
I have the exact same feeling with games as you now that I have a job and kids. I used to enjoy games like factorio (SimCity, Civilization, Roller Coaster Tycoon, etc) but they do feel like work now! What I enjoy now instead is actually watching gameplay on YouTube. It gives me a quick fix of the fun without a big investment in time. Also many of the videos can be funny!
- 3131s 7y ago
  This is what I do too, either watch videos of other people playing new games or play the old games that I already know and love (Diablo, Alpha Centauri, Starcraft, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Minesweeper, etc.).
  - samsolomon 7y ago
    I would highly recommend Rollercoaster Tycoon Classic. It contains RCT1 and RCT2 scenarios and expansions recreated with the RCT2 engine. It's on iOS, Android and Steam. The game is a joy. http://www.rollercoastertycoon.com/rollercoaster-tycoon-classic/ http://www.rollercoastertycoon.com/rollercoaster-tycoon-clas...
empath75 7y ago
A stopped playing factorio the second I thought “I really need to refactor this pipeline” because that is literally my day job.
thedanbob 7y ago
Same here. I was introduced to Factorio by a friend who setup a multiplayer server for us and a couple of others. The teamwork held my interest for a bit longer than other games, but even there I eventually just spent my time clearing out enemy nests rather than working on the factory. I’m a programmer, I already spend most of my day wiring things together endlessly.
samsolomon 7y ago
As someone who has recently got back into games, Factorio is a ton of work—and I love strategy games like Civilization. Playing Factorio is not unlike doing engineering work itself. Initially, I was hooked. After a while, the brainpower it takes to build and refactor large factories felt too demanding. It began to feel more like work, than enjoyment.
- thu2111 7y ago
  Definitely. The article is pretty subjective; I'd say there are lots of glaring flaws in Factorio. I played it for a while, stopped when I hit a major problem, but when I came back the game had changed quite a bit and I couldn't get back into it. Flaws of Factorio in no specific order: • The car has maddeningly terrible physics. The OP claims this yields "comic fun". It doesn't. It just means you're constantly crashing into trees and needing to repair the car. • At some point I hit a biter nest I couldn't beat, couldn't go around (some sort of story based misson). There was NO way past this obstacle. No way to make the game easier, no way to beat them, I was even reduced to looking for cheat codes or ways to hack the game files (there weren't any). So I just dropped the game. The sudden cliff-edge in difficulty made no sense and felt like they hadn't play-tested their own game properly. • The GUI is terrible. I have no idea why he thinks it's good. 1. Placing rails is an exercise in frustration because it's so easy to mis-align things and end up with two pieces of rail that don't quite line up, forcing you to then dig it all up and try again. 2. Placing signals and stations is an equally frustrating exercise in finicky nitpicking. There are lots of ways to set up a railway line such that it simply doesn't work, with no hints about why or what you did wrong. It feels like debugging an embedded system. 3. The article cites "TIL I learned a shortcut" being a meme - that's because the GUI doesn't help you learn any shortcuts. 4. The icons are very small yet high detail, making them difficult to distinguish sometimes. There's no way to zoom anything to make this better. The colour schemes are washed out. The art is just unattractive. • Randomly generated maps mean you may often end up with an unusual shortage of resources, or things in weird locations. • The core mechanic is extremely hard to actually improve at. Although I enjoyed making factories at first, I pretty quickly realised this was too much like programming to actually be enjoyable long term. Factories quickly end up drowning in 'tech debt' if you aren't experienced, so you're constantly tempted to restart levels and try again to make a more sustainable factory, but then you end up stuck again later when you obtain some new bit of tech and realise your factory is wrongly structured for the next part of the game again. The article hints at this last problem. He says "As tempting as it is, don't restart a new factory when you want to rebuild. Just learn how to use bots to deconstruct, and fix it. It'll be more fun that way." Er, great. And how do I learn how to use bots to do that? The game did eventually get a few half-hearted tutorials that I found actually more confusing than the game itself, but I don't recall any about bots. You quickly realise that most of the information you need to learn the game is on random user-written wikis. Factorio has managed to get some market success despite being pretty badly built in many ways. I'd definitely recommend checking it out for the novel conveyer-belt mechanic, but if you like building games Cities: Skylines will be much more satisfying and a far more professionally built product.
de_watcher 7y ago
Yea, after an hour Factorio feels like "can I just write a script instead?" It's fine to play for a bit with the new tech branches that come out occasionally in the updates.
- krallja 7y ago
  Factorio scripts are called blueprints.
  - monk_e_boy 7y ago
    why do they take up slots in your inventory? It's weird. And the blueprint book seems useless -- and I can't google because there are too many "spoilers" associated with blueprints .... I wish there was more help in game
    - detaro 7y ago
      You put blueprints into your blueprint book so you can switch between them without having tons of blueprint objects around.Also mass import/export. (If I remember right drag-drop into the opened book to add, shift-scroll to quick-switch between the blueprints in the book?)
    - pmoriarty 7y ago
      "why do they take up slots in your inventory?" The blueprints you make go in your inventory by default because that's the temporary storage area for them. (Incidentally, to get rid of a blueprint in your inventory, right click it and then click on the trashcan icon in the blueprint dialog which appears). If you want your blueprints to be more permanent and persist between games you can put them in to the "My Blueprints" section of the blueprints screen. There you can also organize your blueprints in to books of related blueprints. For more detailed tutorials on how to use blueprints, try searching on youtube for: factorio blueprints
- NikolaeVarius 7y ago
  Literally the entire point is to automate/write scripts.
DanTheManPR 7y ago
Similarly, I mostly stopped playing video games few a few years after getting out of the habit in university. When I tried playing a new game, it just didn't grab my attention and I didn't feel like continuing playing. In the last couple of years, I have had a few games finally make me feel the enjoyment that I remembered feeling when I was younger. And examining my own feelings when playing, what strikes me is that the first 5 to 10 hours of a game with some depth can be quite un-enjoyable, and they become dramatically more engaging once I've gotten over that hump. I think that was the case when I was younger as well, but when I had more free time on my hands it didn't feel like as much of a waste of time.
Joof 7y ago
I've had a hard time as well, but I think the reason is different. Software work feels very similar to the games I enjoy and I do that 6-10 hours a day. Games effectively trained me to be able to understand and build complex systems, which is great, but now they're just games. I prefer hobbies that get me away from a computer. It's a pretty limiting constraint -- computers are super useful.
cheese4242 7y ago
Exactly the same here. Gaming time slowly tapered off during university. Anytime I have picked up a game since then it has been short lived. I'm at the point now where I won't even bother trying a new game (or revisiting an old one). I know I'll get bored of it in 30 mins, so why bother? It feels like a lot of work picking up a new game. Combine that with the realization that it is just an engineered dopamine loop and that I could be doing something productive, videogames are essentially "dead" to me. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
ge96 7y ago
Isn't that funny, I can buy any game now but I usually lose interest after an hour or two playing it like Red Dead Redemption, played 2 hrs haven't touched since. I can get "quick hits" if it's a rapid PVP or something but getting into a story/following some long progression...

by fouc 7y ago

have_faith 7y ago

I still follow and keep upto date with most gaming releases but for some reason find the vast majority of them underwhelming these days. Lots of well made time sinks which when I was younger is probably all I wanted but now I'm always looking for something special and never finding it.

Tobi-Wan_Kenobi 7y ago
Oh, I felt that one in my mid-thirties soul. I used to waste/invest so much time into games, but now with a wife+kid+job I just don't want to spend my precious time on just any game. It has to be THE game. The perfect game. Alas, I haven't found it yet. (Factorio comes very close, but it is too time intensive. You can't just play Factorio for 30 minutes.)
- have_faith 7y ago
  As far as games that I've enjoyed recently there is: Disco Elysium (enjoyed more than any AAA game I've played in a long time). No Mans Sky, despite it not living up to it's hype I do enjoy it a lot, easy to get lost in your own stories. I was enjoying Bloodbourne but I don't want to invest the amount of time needed to git gud. And that's about it... any recommendations on your end other than Factorio? it's been recommended to me by a couple of people but it looks a bit too grindy and addictive for my personality.
lonelappde 7y ago
NES and SNES emulator and ROMs. You can play them via Switch, or pirate them and give Nintendo money to salve your conscience. Especially if you have kids.

beart 7y ago

Even if you don't play, I highly recommend following the Factorio Friday blog posts. The development team is very transparent about what they are working on and will often dive into interesting problems and solutions, including failed attempts. They are both technical and approachable.

kennu 7y ago

You have to give the game some time. If it's good (like Factorio is) it might just pull you in. You also need to be in the right mood for that particular game. Sometimes you have to try a game many times until get pulled in.

TylerE 7y ago
I’ve tried several times but it just repels me. It has the worst tutorial I’ve ever seen and all the inventory management is just super awkward with weird UI. That’s coming from someone with hundreds of hours in OpenTTD and the like
- chipperyman573 7y ago
  What's wrong about the tutorial? It walks you through the first 5% of the game. The remaining 95% unlock in a way that makes it obviously an improvement to something you have already. Personally I really liked it.
  - TylerE 7y ago
    It’s incredible opaque. The old tutorial was actually better. The new one they introduced is really bad. Not only does it not explain things, but some of the mechanics actually work differently in the tutorial. This is a pretty good breakdown https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=72407 https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=72407
    - jfim 7y ago
      They've actually decided to remove the tutorial introduced in 0.17 and go back to the 0.16 one. https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-342 https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-342
  - hobofan 7y ago
    To get beyond a certain point in this game you will need a exact understanding of certain mechanics and advanced patterns. I doubt most people would come up with advanced patterns (e.g. how to build a well working main bus, or a conveyor balancer that works well) by themselves and learn that from the wiki. If you purely stick to everything you learn ingame, you will probably hit a wall after 20 hours or so.

sdegutis 7y ago

That's because these kinds of games always were a form of work. When you have a higher purpose in life, these types of games drain you and leave you unfulfilled and unsatisfied and like we should have spent our time in a less tedious and wearisome recreation. I can no longer play Minecraft, and haven't even been able to get into Factorio.

mcphage 7y ago
> these types of games drain you and leave you unfulfilled and unsatisfied and like we should have spent our time in a less tedious and wearisome recreation. I, too, have given up eating, and sleeping, and joy.
- chipperyman573 7y ago
  Eating, sleeping, and joy are not typically considered tedious or wearisome.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Eating and sleeping sure as hell are tedious and wearisome, since they're basic maintenance tasks that you have to do if you want to function, taking time and attention away from the things you're interested in doing. (Yes, I enjoy a tasty meal and a good night's sleep. But I'd much prefer to just live without having to sleep or eat at all. Or, eat a pill and recharge in a base station for 20 minutes.)
    - slfnflctd 7y ago
      Oh man, I've been saying this for years, count me in. Let's find a way to reduce or eliminate the need for personal hygiene while we're at it. Robot bodies! We could theoretically still have sex virtually, too.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        > Let's find a way to reduce or eliminate the need for personal hygiene while we're at it. Definitely. It's another maintenance time waster, another upkeep you have to pay. What's worse, only a fraction of it is needed for survival, the rest is just an elaborate social signalling game with almost unbounded costs in time and money. > We could theoretically still have sex virtually, too. Only if it offers improvement over status quo :).

baddox 7y ago

That’s exactly where I’m at. Played games nearly constantly until the instant I got a full time job and could actually afford a nice computer. Now I just watch other people play games online because I can’t bother to keep up on the computer hardware scene.

lonelappde 7y ago
Basic dell computers with any video card play games fine. The hardware scene is a benchmarks "game" hobby on its own, separate from the video games.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  Yup; I've played factorio on a 2016 laptop and a 2011 desktop, the latter of which is also my "Steam machine". Bad enough hardware eventually limits what you can play, but the barrier to entry is low.
  - pmoriarty 7y ago
    I still play Factorio on a clunky, old, el-cheapo laptop I got in 2013, and it still plays fine in single player (except on really busy screens when zoomed way out, when it crawls). Playing multiplayer over a network can also get really painful, with massive slowdowns in busy areas and in combat, despite only being a few milliseconds away from the server. I really need to get a new machine.

rubenbe 7y ago

Interesting that you have the same feeling. I used to like RTS-style/city builder games and put endless hours in them (think simcity, rollercoaster tycoon, settlers, ... ). I barely play games anymore, but now I focus more on short (sidescroller) action games. Where each level lasts only a few minutes. (super meat boy, zombie night terror, hotline miami, ...) Maybe it's a case of instant gratification seeking. But it seems to work for me.

spyckie2 7y ago

I understand the need to treat life as a dichotomy between work and play, but I feel you might have lost some of the magic of your childhood. For me it's the opposite, I hated complex games as a child but really enjoy them today. For me, the best feeling is working hard for something and really getting into the details and enjoying all the complexity of the experience / challenge. I think that most human beings are wired to enjoy this kind of activity if they can get past the energy activation barrier. I've been in situations where I did not value the above. Looking back, I believe I was: - too mentally drained to enjoy anything - any free time goes to diving into Random Access Media (reddit, hnews, youtube, etc) - Never feeling full of energy or excitement and unable to find meaningful recharge I saw a psychiatrist and got diagnosed with depression (systematically defined as not wanting to do anything at least once a week). Since then I've taking an active approach to monitoring and improving my mental state. Specifically: 1. Identifying true energy restoring activities: 3 of them are - 1) engaging in conversations where there's a decent amount of laughter 2) Sleep / naps and 3) exercise 2. Identifying energy traps - things you do when you have no energy but don't restore energy. Several examples: 1) Netflix, 2) social media, 3) reddit, 4) youtube 3. Figuring out my mental health dietary needs (what is it that you're longing for that is unconsciously affecting your decision making) and making active plans to get them in a regular way. This could be social validation, laughter, new engaging experiences, feelings of accomplishment or accolade, etc. Instead of feeling like I don't want to do anything when I wake up, I more often find life as exciting and looking forward to the challenges and new experiences of each day. And yes, I enjoy Factorio a lot when I have the time to play (which is rare).

burntoutfire 7y ago
> 2. Identifying energy traps - things you do when you have no energy but don't restore energy. Several examples: 1) Netflix, 2) social media, 3) reddit, 4) youtube So, do you avoid them now? If so, what do you do when you're tired after work? It's hard to feel entire afternoons with exercise, sleep and conversations...
- panta 7y ago
  Not the OP, but for me energy restoring activities are “active” ones, like hobbies where you create/build something. Working on a painting, photo, sculpting, writing, working on a side project, playing intelligent games with your dog, ... Passive activities, like consuming TV or Netflix or worse social networks, at least for me are draining my energy levels.

TheGallopedHigh 7y ago

I feel it the same way, and for myself I’ve put not enjoying gaming down to getting older. I don’t mind watch some streams here and there but the thought of getting a gaming machine and actually following through with gaming is no longer appealing. Although I do have peers that still game.

Melting_Harps 7y ago

> As someone that stopped playing games in university, I've found it weirdly hard to get back into games many years later. > Factorio seems like the type of game I would've liked as a teenager, but now it just feels like work to me. Same. I was an avid AoE, Survival Horror and Gran Turismo nerd (quitting right before the GT academy happened to my dismay) and I held quite a few records during the outbeak days. But it fell off my radar entirely after sophomore year in University. I got into Factorio for a week after Steam allowed Bitcoin purchases and I had a go as it looked interesting; I ended up playing like 6 hours a day only to come to the same conclusion you did: this is work, with clearly little to no ROI or ultimate gratification. So with that in mind, I went on youtube, saw the ending and got over it and stopped a time sink right away. Even when I thought I'd try to create a solar only Factorio factory, only to see one on Youtube and hearing the guy sunk 1000s of hours into it and scoffed at the idea. I uninstalled it entirely when I realized how the gaming Industry was migrating toward a free-ware micro tx based business model that relies on in game purchases for upgrades like Fortnite. These things are designed and optimized for targeting those with addictive behavioural patterns. I still want to build a driving simulator like this one day, but half the process and challenge will be the build itself: https://www.carscoops.com/2020/04/this-guy-turned-a-mini-cooper-s-into-a-racing-simulator-for-his-basement/ https://www.carscoops.com/2020/04/this-guy-turned-a-mini-coo... I actually located an ideal candidate on craigslist: a Focus hatchback with a blown drive train for $700 that I wanted to convert to Colin McRae's Martini Livery WRC car from the 90s.

Baeocystin 7y ago
>I uninstalled it entirely when I realized how the gaming Industry was migrating toward a free-ware micro tx based business model that relies on in game purchases for upgrades like Fortnite. but... Factorio is literally the antithesis of this.
AQuantized 7y ago
The idea of "seeing the ending" of Factorio undermining its appeal seems disconnected from my own experience. I'm not sure how giving up a game with no micro transactions helps that issue with the gaming industry either.

stared 7y ago

It is interesting to hear a similar feeling (I use to be heavily addicted prior to university). While I still do play games, I focus on short ones (story-driven like Life is Strange [1]) or ones that can be decomposed into intensive moments (e.g. StarCraft 2, Doom 2016/Eternal [2], Black Mesa, Ori and the Blind Forest/Will of the Wisps). I am not even tempted to play games that are work, or longer endeavor. To the point, that while I love the Witcher universe (read all books before it was cool; like, 20 years ago) I decided to rather watch all cutscenes than play. (I call it gaming porn.) With Factorio - I know that 15 years ago it would totally addict me (I was to SimCity, and Transport Tycoon Deluxe; I have a kink for building and maintaining systems). Now... emotional catharsis, or intense flow of shooter, is what I play for. Working for dozens or hundreds of hours - I prefer to spend the time creating something. It is not (only) "I am adult and blah, blah" - just I know I would feel nauseous guilt on one side, while some sense of accomplishment when creating something for others. [1] "Games in which you talk - and get immersed" https://medium.com/@pmigdal/games-in-which-you-walk-and-get-immersed-a80ad2bcfa7f https://medium.com/@pmigdal/games-in-which-you-walk-and-get-... [2] "Doom 2016 vs Doom Eternal: UI side-by-side" https://medium.com/@pmigdal/doom-2016-vs-doom-eternal-ui-side-by-side-8058e996baae https://medium.com/@pmigdal/doom-2016-vs-doom-eternal-ui-sid...

wtallis 7y ago
I've found that I am still willing to play RPGs that have some decent plot or game mechanics, but only if I'm able to skip past the grinding phases—either through cheats or by playing older games in an emulator with a literal fast forward button. When it comes to city builders and similar games (including Factorio), I'm too easily distracted by the metagame puzzle of wondering about optimal strategies. I can't play them for long before I end up closing the game itself and pulling up documentation about the game's rules and internals, and that usually breaks me out of a potentially addictive cycle.

jamil7 7y ago

I had the same experience, I picked it up a year or so ago and found it to be a great game and something I would have loved when I was younger but it didn't stick. I think these days working on a small project or hacking on something scratches the same itch for me, even if it's something I throw away.

EdwardDiego 7y ago

I spend a lot of time focusing on throughput of data pipelines, so Factorio feels a lot like work to me :D

roland35 7y ago

I have the exact same feeling with games as you now that I have a job and kids. I used to enjoy games like factorio (SimCity, Civilization, Roller Coaster Tycoon, etc) but they do feel like work now! What I enjoy now instead is actually watching gameplay on YouTube. It gives me a quick fix of the fun without a big investment in time. Also many of the videos can be funny!

3131s 7y ago
This is what I do too, either watch videos of other people playing new games or play the old games that I already know and love (Diablo, Alpha Centauri, Starcraft, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Minesweeper, etc.).
- samsolomon 7y ago
  I would highly recommend Rollercoaster Tycoon Classic. It contains RCT1 and RCT2 scenarios and expansions recreated with the RCT2 engine. It's on iOS, Android and Steam. The game is a joy. http://www.rollercoastertycoon.com/rollercoaster-tycoon-classic/ http://www.rollercoastertycoon.com/rollercoaster-tycoon-clas...

empath75 7y ago

A stopped playing factorio the second I thought “I really need to refactor this pipeline” because that is literally my day job.

thedanbob 7y ago

Same here. I was introduced to Factorio by a friend who setup a multiplayer server for us and a couple of others. The teamwork held my interest for a bit longer than other games, but even there I eventually just spent my time clearing out enemy nests rather than working on the factory. I’m a programmer, I already spend most of my day wiring things together endlessly.

samsolomon 7y ago

As someone who has recently got back into games, Factorio is a ton of work—and I love strategy games like Civilization. Playing Factorio is not unlike doing engineering work itself. Initially, I was hooked. After a while, the brainpower it takes to build and refactor large factories felt too demanding. It began to feel more like work, than enjoyment.

thu2111 7y ago
Definitely. The article is pretty subjective; I'd say there are lots of glaring flaws in Factorio. I played it for a while, stopped when I hit a major problem, but when I came back the game had changed quite a bit and I couldn't get back into it. Flaws of Factorio in no specific order: • The car has maddeningly terrible physics. The OP claims this yields "comic fun". It doesn't. It just means you're constantly crashing into trees and needing to repair the car. • At some point I hit a biter nest I couldn't beat, couldn't go around (some sort of story based misson). There was NO way past this obstacle. No way to make the game easier, no way to beat them, I was even reduced to looking for cheat codes or ways to hack the game files (there weren't any). So I just dropped the game. The sudden cliff-edge in difficulty made no sense and felt like they hadn't play-tested their own game properly. • The GUI is terrible. I have no idea why he thinks it's good. 1. Placing rails is an exercise in frustration because it's so easy to mis-align things and end up with two pieces of rail that don't quite line up, forcing you to then dig it all up and try again. 2. Placing signals and stations is an equally frustrating exercise in finicky nitpicking. There are lots of ways to set up a railway line such that it simply doesn't work, with no hints about why or what you did wrong. It feels like debugging an embedded system. 3. The article cites "TIL I learned a shortcut" being a meme - that's because the GUI doesn't help you learn any shortcuts. 4. The icons are very small yet high detail, making them difficult to distinguish sometimes. There's no way to zoom anything to make this better. The colour schemes are washed out. The art is just unattractive. • Randomly generated maps mean you may often end up with an unusual shortage of resources, or things in weird locations. • The core mechanic is extremely hard to actually improve at. Although I enjoyed making factories at first, I pretty quickly realised this was too much like programming to actually be enjoyable long term. Factories quickly end up drowning in 'tech debt' if you aren't experienced, so you're constantly tempted to restart levels and try again to make a more sustainable factory, but then you end up stuck again later when you obtain some new bit of tech and realise your factory is wrongly structured for the next part of the game again. The article hints at this last problem. He says "As tempting as it is, don't restart a new factory when you want to rebuild. Just learn how to use bots to deconstruct, and fix it. It'll be more fun that way." Er, great. And how do I learn how to use bots to do that? The game did eventually get a few half-hearted tutorials that I found actually more confusing than the game itself, but I don't recall any about bots. You quickly realise that most of the information you need to learn the game is on random user-written wikis. Factorio has managed to get some market success despite being pretty badly built in many ways. I'd definitely recommend checking it out for the novel conveyer-belt mechanic, but if you like building games Cities: Skylines will be much more satisfying and a far more professionally built product.

de_watcher 7y ago

Yea, after an hour Factorio feels like "can I just write a script instead?" It's fine to play for a bit with the new tech branches that come out occasionally in the updates.

krallja 7y ago
Factorio scripts are called blueprints.
- monk_e_boy 7y ago
  why do they take up slots in your inventory? It's weird. And the blueprint book seems useless -- and I can't google because there are too many "spoilers" associated with blueprints .... I wish there was more help in game
  - detaro 7y ago
    You put blueprints into your blueprint book so you can switch between them without having tons of blueprint objects around.Also mass import/export. (If I remember right drag-drop into the opened book to add, shift-scroll to quick-switch between the blueprints in the book?)
  - pmoriarty 7y ago
    "why do they take up slots in your inventory?" The blueprints you make go in your inventory by default because that's the temporary storage area for them. (Incidentally, to get rid of a blueprint in your inventory, right click it and then click on the trashcan icon in the blueprint dialog which appears). If you want your blueprints to be more permanent and persist between games you can put them in to the "My Blueprints" section of the blueprints screen. There you can also organize your blueprints in to books of related blueprints. For more detailed tutorials on how to use blueprints, try searching on youtube for: factorio blueprints
NikolaeVarius 7y ago
Literally the entire point is to automate/write scripts.

DanTheManPR 7y ago

Similarly, I mostly stopped playing video games few a few years after getting out of the habit in university. When I tried playing a new game, it just didn't grab my attention and I didn't feel like continuing playing. In the last couple of years, I have had a few games finally make me feel the enjoyment that I remembered feeling when I was younger. And examining my own feelings when playing, what strikes me is that the first 5 to 10 hours of a game with some depth can be quite un-enjoyable, and they become dramatically more engaging once I've gotten over that hump. I think that was the case when I was younger as well, but when I had more free time on my hands it didn't feel like as much of a waste of time.

Joof 7y ago

I've had a hard time as well, but I think the reason is different. Software work feels very similar to the games I enjoy and I do that 6-10 hours a day. Games effectively trained me to be able to understand and build complex systems, which is great, but now they're just games. I prefer hobbies that get me away from a computer. It's a pretty limiting constraint -- computers are super useful.

cheese4242 7y ago

Exactly the same here. Gaming time slowly tapered off during university. Anytime I have picked up a game since then it has been short lived. I'm at the point now where I won't even bother trying a new game (or revisiting an old one). I know I'll get bored of it in 30 mins, so why bother? It feels like a lot of work picking up a new game. Combine that with the realization that it is just an engineered dopamine loop and that I could be doing something productive, videogames are essentially "dead" to me. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

ge96 7y ago

Isn't that funny, I can buy any game now but I usually lose interest after an hour or two playing it like Red Dead Redemption, played 2 hrs haven't touched since. I can get "quick hits" if it's a rapid PVP or something but getting into a story/following some long progression...