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Of the thousands of hours I spent playing single player videogames in my youth, a surprisingly small amount was spent having fun or doing anything interesting o

by jo032 6y ago

Of the thousands of hours I spent playing single player videogames in my youth, a surprisingly small amount was spent having fun or doing anything interesting or challenging. It was mostly just tedious grinding on my overpowered Pokemon (and other rpg equivalents) against helpless enemies so that I could be even more overpowered against them. I luckily grew out of it, but being absorbed by the pursuit of easy, digital approximations of real accomplishments, to the point where it impedes more difficult pursuits of the real thing in the real world, is a serious issue for many millennial men I know.

earthscienceman 6y ago
I love this comment and I think it touches on something that is really controversial and difficult to discuss on internet forums. It has become clear to me that for young men of my generation that this type of video-gaming is very much the equivalent of 'doomscrolling' as mentioned in other comments, and is generally pretty harmful. I have so many friends that have improved their lives by following the much-mocked advise 'turn off the game and do something else'. Are games the culture-killing brain-rotting rotten life harbinger that our parents made them out to be? Of course not. Are they the epitome of entertainment and growth that places like reddit make them out to be? No, not really. Like always. The truth is in the nuance.
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  I wonder if my desire to grind and or min/max in video games during my teenage years was a proxy for honing skills. Perhaps it's a developmental stage where you actually enjoy the repetition because you're supposed to be developing a skills and trade-craft. But now that I'm older I have little to no interest in such pursuits.
  - bigfudge 6y ago
    Surely the point is that this developmental ability to persist is wasted on FPS? You could have learnt a musical instrument or developed some other accomplishment that lasts a lifetime. I.e. the real problem is the opportunity cost
    - dimitrios1 6y ago
      Speak for yourself pal, I can still 1deag with the best of them.
      - renjimen 6y ago
        Honestly, there is very little else as satisfying as a couple of Juan Deags in a crunch round of a CS match. I've spent time learning other, more respectable RL hobbies, but there's that deep sense of satisfaction they fail to capture.
        rowanG077 6y ago
        Only things comperable is an orgasm to be honest. But the satisfaction of Juan deags persist for longer.
    - toast0 6y ago
      I mean, clearly FPS is a waste. Civilization and SFII is where it's at. SMB is ok too. That said, learning a musical instrument does not last a lifetime if you don't keep playing it. The point of learning skills early in life is not necessarily that the skill is useful, it's that you've learned how to learn skills. Which hopefully will be used throughout your life.
      - Jeff_Brown 6y ago
        If what you learn are songs you'll forget them without practice. But if you learn music theory, composition, improvisation, you'll never forget. at least that's how I explain my own experience. I routinely go for years without playing most of the instruments I know. Give me a week and I'll be better at any one of them than I've ever been.
        dd36 6y ago
        Ok GPT-3.
    - 6y ago
  - wincy 6y ago
    Grinding skills in games turned into running through shot simulations to get the best DPS in world of Warcraft, which turned into me learning to write code. The same obsession is there, just instead of being “the best on the server” I get a paycheck.
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  For better or worse, gaming cultural references are very common and a way to relate to colleagues of the same age. Many would say this is bad and pushes women, older folks and people with very different backgrounds away and creates an exclusive nerdy geeky club. I'm not here to argue that. But it is a useful thing for making friends in practice. People also often get to know each other through gaming or it is their first interaction with technical things, setting up networking and firewalls for LAN parties, installing and creating mods etc.
  - bitwize 6y ago
    There's a much better way to relate to colleagues of your age, as well as people from a variety of age, ethnicity, and gender backgrounds: sports. Sports have the added benefit of getting you outside and moving when practiced. Women are also almost universally attracted to male athletes -- male gaming nerds, not so much.
    - watwut 6y ago
      > male gaming nerds, not so much Dating someone who plays games is not issue. Most young people of both genders play games. Athletes play games too, there never was any dichotomy between sport and playing video games. But, dating obsessed gamer is kind of like being alone, except you get yelled at more. If excessively competitive sport dude is asshole to his mates, you don't get to witness that every evening either.
      - _carbyau_ 6y ago
        Here in Australia it seems like a month can't go by without a high profile sports person being accused of abuse/drugs/alcohol or other. Maybe it is something about the ultra-competitive streak - being "driven" - that makes it not nice to be around? Personally, I gave up playing even the lowest grade of social hockey as people seemed to have forgotten the "game for fun" part and were "playing to win" - including hard shots at your legs, playing on no matter the breach of game rules unless the ref whistled etc.
- antisthenes 6y ago
  > It has become clear to me that for young men of my generation that this type of video-gaming is very much the equivalent of 'doomscrolling' as mentioned in other comments, and is generally pretty harmful. Eh? I mean maybe for the vast majority too much of one thing is bad. For me, personally, almost all of my friendships came from bonding experience over playing video games together (or board games, or card games) and other semi-intellectual hobbies. Did any of those games or pursuits give me deep marketable skills? Not really. But the friendships gained were invaluable as far as diversity of thought, advice and help given in times of need. I don't regret any of that time spent. But those were games of a bygone era. Later games (like WoW/Fortine and whatever garbage kids play these days) probably would not have had the same effect. > The truth is in the nuance Yep. Gaming is a pretty neutral activity. When done right (challenging games played with the right people) can be extremely rewarding. When overdone, probably worse than watching tons of TV/politics.
- badRNG 6y ago
  > It has become clear to me that for young men of my generation that this type of video-gaming is very much the equivalent of 'doomscrolling' as mentioned in other comments, and is generally pretty harmful. I'm not sure I agree. I have always enjoyed games where there is payoff for grinding. Usually, I enjoy the grind element as well. It isn't too far off of the sensation I get when working on a personal project or learning new tech. I used to "doom scroll," but have eliminated my FB and Twitter and harshly curated my Reddit due to the significant stress it was placing on my life. I never really enjoyed seeing what was going on with Twitter, I guess I felt obligated to keep up with things that ultimately didn't matter.
dan00 6y ago
> I luckily grew out of it, but being absorbed by the pursuit of easy, digital approximations of real accomplishments ... The really harmful thing might be the artificial meaning this creates, which might be at the end more addictive than the fun. I never really was addicted to games. The funny thing is, I could only play games that were really fun for me, because of the game mechanics or if they had some interesting new aspects. But this kind of fascination never hold that long and after that the game play just got repetitive and tedious, at which point I just stopped playing. Therefore also most games that contain a lot of repetition feel just pointless to me.
- fossuser 6y ago
  Yeah - similar for me. I think there's something interesting here with how different people respond to 'fake achievement'. For me FPS games were fun because it was a little competition between players (also I was often interrupted growing up and short rounds are better for this). After trying WoW and having to walk 30min to pick up a feather and bring it back then do the same for an acorn I lost total interest in ever playing again. That might be all the time I had to play that day. I suspect some people get more of a positive feedback response from seeing numbers go up than others. I think MMOGs can also have a social component that keeps people coming back to do shared events which is probably stickier than the fake achievement bits. I'd be curious if people really vulnerable to fake achievement would also be successful if they could create a fast feedback environment for themselves with something other than the game as the goal (since they're clearly amenable to that kind of motivation). For me, the difficulty is on the other side. Even outside of games it can be hard to find something that feels like it matters and is important (even if you can make money and be otherwise better off in your life by doing it). Curiosity can also pull you in a thousand different directions. Figuring out what you want is hard, figuring out how to move in that direction is hard, then actually getting yourself to focus and do the work is hard. When the search space of what's possible is so big, it can be difficult to coordinate. I think games reduce that to something extremely narrow. For some that's effective, for me the illusion is obvious and unfulfilling. Today I tend to like one-off indie games driven by story (like Firewatch). I feel like I get more out of it.
  - 6y ago
qsort 6y ago
Counterpoint -- the min-maxing is often the interesting part, it's not the destination, it's the journey, or something like that. By trying to get very good at a game, you learn how to solve problems, and, more importantly, how to learn how to solve problems. It's also often the case that by taking a game seriously, you engage with the community, making friends or at least getting to know people out of your circle. I've put thousands of hours into several games, and I don't regret a second of that. I wouldn't say that behavior is unhealthy unless it brings you to downright ignore your job/school/responsibilities.
- cgriswald 6y ago
  > I wouldn't say that behavior is unhealthy unless it brings you to downright ignore your job/school/responsibilities. I have a much lower bar because I don't think all video game playing is equal. My first Pokémon game was one of the more recent ones for the switch. I didn't quite understand how the breeding worked and I was trying to breed a particular Pokémon with high stats. I spent many hours figuring out how it works and writing scripts to figure out what I should breed to get what I want, then more hours actually doing the breeding. I was fully engaged and I would consider this video game playing healthy. I've also spent many hours just vegging out. A little of that is fine; it's one way I do some thinking. But too much of it and the day is gone and when I stop I feel bad, like I've just come out of a stupor. This, to me, is not healthy, even if I otherwise took care of all my responsibilities.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  "I wouldn't say that behavior is unhealthy unless it brings you to downright ignore your job/school/responsibilities." What if you could have done something more productive or rewarding with your life instead, like developed new friendships or deepened existing ones, learned new skills, or read something that opened your eyes or changed your life? I've probably gamed as much as anyone here, and I deeply regret wasting so much time on it. Though it wasn't a complete waste of time, as it did help me to learn to manage complex systems (I like complex games) and to anticipate and prepare (I like RPG's and chess), and it also helped me to destress, there was also a compulsive quality to my gaming where the ultimate payoff wasn't all that great compared to the many thousands of hours I put in to it.
pmoriarty 6y ago
Grinding exemplifies delayed gratification. You know that if you grind enough you'll get to something more interesting/fun. People who are good at grinding would probably ace the so-called Marshmallow Test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...
- triska 6y ago
  Several years ago, there was a site called wowdetox.com, where addicts of World of Warcraft and also other gamers shared their stories. One of the posts there contained a striking observation: The most tragic aspect of the game is that it hits the hardest workers the hardest.
- jo032 6y ago
  I think people who have a healthy relationship with games agree with you, but for me, the obsessive grinding only made the games less challenging/fun, with no reward except larger numbers on the menus-- like if the reward for the Marshmallow test was just that you got to look at a bitmap of a pixelated marshmallow on tv. Videogames are not all bad, and of course there are many healthy and successful people who enjoy them and appreciate them as works of art. But for me personally, I regret that I spent so much time doing busywork for an unpaid job that I didn't even enjoy.
- paganel 6y ago
  The Marshmallow Test looks kind of classist, or even racist (not sure if "racist" is the right word for it, maybe "orientalist" would be better). Yes, if you live in Stanford or in a country that has an institution like Stanford then most probably "passing" the marshmallow test means waiting for a longer period in order to get twice the reward, but I dare say not a lot of countries/societies afforded that luxury until not that long ago (many of them still don't), in their case waiting for longer in order to get twice the reward might mean that you'll be dead by then, or evicted, or you had to escape the communists/the criminal right-wingers/the islamist beheaders/what have you.
habitue 6y ago
> I luckily grew out of it There's always a lot of hand-wringing about what kids and teenagers spend their time doing, and I wonder if it's not just a natural process of your brain figuring out a system, going "oh I see" and moving on to the next thing. Like, in other words, it might not be luck, it might just be the learning / exploration process working normally. That being said, there's definitely an aspect where video games are a super-stimulus. It's true that video game designers are creating explicit reward loops in a way that, let's say the writers of Gilligan's island were not (to compare hand-wringing about games to hand-wringing about television)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
offtop5 6y ago
Another way to look at it , I tend to be very good at math. As a kid I could easily do somewhat complex equations in my head, to the frustration of my teachers. Perhaps Pokemon was training for that.
enominezerum 6y ago
I got to this point with games a few years ago. My coworkers (all big gamers) were amazed that I would wait for games to be on steep sale or just play older titles. My first job out of high school was working in a game store where I fell into the rat race of having every shiny new thing I could afford and getting hyped up on the hyper competitive nature of everything. Really, it was Destiny 1 and Halo MCC that broke me hard of this habit. Between the games being broken or lacking, and me not enjoying the PvP aspect of Destiny 1, I just stepped away from it all. Now I am content to game for the sake of burning time. I don't like PUBG, but I have it to play with friends while we drink beers and shoot the bot infested unranked, the final moments are tense and fun and if we fail at least we had the fun of getting there. I got XBOX game pass and just pop in games to try them out now, no worries or hassle of returning since it is Netflix style gaming. Even on my phone I have loaded up old games where I turn on cheats for mad fun. I am currently playing Pokemon Sun and whenever the baddies start a match with "I am stealing your Pokemon" they face my 100% started with 100% critical chance and I just lob a Master Ball and steal their Pokemon. I enjoy walking through walls and just being ridiculous in it while still enjoying the story and atmosphere of the game. (all the fun, none of slowness inherent in those games). But I do agree. I don't know how many times I would work my 9-5, try and game some, get upset at the losses, and just wallow out the rest of the night, skipping other stuff I wanted/needed to do. The highs certainly weren't worth the lows. Part of why when folks say video games aren't addicting, I ask why CoD put in the prestige system. It keeps hitting you with that dopamine of 'yea, just unlocked something' which constantly throws you back into combat where something else gets unlocked.
- curryst 6y ago
  > Part of why when folks say video games aren't addicting, I ask why CoD put in the prestige system. It keeps hitting you with that dopamine of 'yea, just unlocked something' which constantly throws you back into combat where something else gets unlocked. It's also part of the competition. It's called "Prestige" because having a lot of those levels is meant to be prestigious. For me, it was closer to an MMR Ranking or KD Ratio. It's less about collecting the icons, and more about getting some form of external validation that you were a better player than other players. Of course, Prestige is a bad indicator that you are a better player than other players, but it allows people who aren't good but have a lot of time to compete on some level. If this were really about "yea, just unlocked something" I would expect better rewards. I haven't played the new CoDs a lot, but from what I remember, the rewards for prestiging were largely meh, and you get most of them from low levels of prestige. If you hit prestige 99, you've done a lot of prestiges without any unlocks (other than the bars next to your username, which no one ever looks at).
yibg 6y ago
I can certainly relate to this, my poison of choice was diablo 2. At first playing and discovering all the various items and stats was fun. Killing monsters and advancing was fun. At some point it just became a habit, then towards the end it became a chore. Yet I still spent endless hours doing it. For me at least it could probably been classified as an addiction. There were some fond memories from it, and there were certainly many enjoyable moments. But it was certainly not done in moderation. I'm also glad I pulled out of it, and didn't get into a similar situation with a different game.
- gwd 6y ago
  Diablo 2 is exactly the kind of game I felt like a pointless time sink. Your character gains new skills, but you? Not so much. At least playing a competitive FPS (or something like Starcraft) you're gaining skills.
  - musicale 6y ago
    Usually I'm mostly done after beating a Diablo game a couple of times at various difficulty levels, but I still find them fun to play periodically. I think the fact that they become tedious after a while is not a bad thing since otherwise you'd never stop playing! They are also fun and easy games to pick up and play with friends or family (especially D3 in couch co-op mode.) Regarding game vs. IRL skills, I enjoy Guitar Hero quite a bit, but Rocksmith actually improves your ability to play a real guitar. Rock Band drums are pretty close to electronic drums though, and vocals are actual vocals. And as I've mentioned, Ring Fit Adventure (which I'm still playing) kind of levels you up. I found similar effects with Wii Fit, where years after stopping playing (and switching to non-balance based exercises) my sense of balance was surprisingly better than it had been before I started playing the game. I expect other physical games like Dance Dance Revolution are good for physical coordination, and I expect twitch games such as FPSs are good for eye-hand coordination and reaction time.
  - yibg 6y ago
    Looking back yes not much skills gained. At the time what kept me in there were a couple of things: 1) chasing the next thing. Next item, next perfect build, next stat. 2) the multi player aspect. Be it pvp or a coop game with some online “friends” Both of these are good ways to keep people engaged / addicted I guess.
bennysonething 6y ago
You definitely have a point. Though one thing I never understood was grindy type games. Growing up playing with my mates, Mario, Zelda , street fighter then Goldeneye, Tony hawk's. We just never came across them. Then final fantasy 7 came along, I remember my friend just left it back to the shop. Turn based combat and experience points made no sense to us at all. Few years later I tried playing Knights of the old Republic, it didn't feel like a game. It just felt really odd and awkward to me. Skip forward few years and this type game is huge. I don't get it and never will I guess! The bit I really don't get is you don't get better at the game by becoming more skillful but instead by spending time increasing xp on grindy tasks. One thing about games though, they can be sort of mindful: recently I went through a really hard month at work. I found playing old Ps1 racers helped me quickly unwind before bed. (Wipeout and gran turismo 1)
- baby 6y ago
  Every game can become grindy if you abuse them. I used to play counter strike and I would just grind grind grind. Playing deathmatch again and again, practicing your aim on specific maps (aim_usp, aim_aztec, etc.)
  - gwd 6y ago
    But this is a different definition of "grind". After spending an hour practicing your aim on a specific map, your aim will actually be better. That's not any different than spending an hour practicing shooting hoops from a specific angle / distance, or spending an hour practicing musical scales. I think when most people talk about "grind" in games, they mean activities that are genuinely only time-wasters. You don't gain any skill (other than patience) from killing your hundredth goblin or clicking "harvest" on your hundredth field.
    - baby 6y ago
      True, there's a skill grind, and a level/gear up grind
- muffinman26 6y ago
musicale 6y ago
> It was mostly just tedious grinding I haven't had a grindy experience in most single-player games, but MMOs have perfected the grind system to keep players in the game and spending money (particularly in a subscription MMO.) Oddly enough, I tend to enjoy the repetitive activities of MMOs such as gathering, crafting, and simple quests; they put you in a sort of relaxed flow state and you get to see the game turn from day to night as other players and monsters wander by. You also end up exploring more of the game world in detail and noticing interesting details that you might miss otherwise. Daily quests are repetitive but they have a bit of variety because you have a different set of players every time. I wonder whether MMO players might be good at real-life grinds that seem tedious but are actually worthwhile, such as exercise. As a data point, I'm still grinding away at Ring Fit Adventure, which is fun and seems to be beneficial to fitness in terms of increased strength, balance, and energy after several months. I haven't managed to enjoy grinding housecleaning yet but I might if I can figure out how to gamify it....
m463 6y ago
I remember playing games and basically doing: creep, shoot, save, creep, solve puzzle, save, creep, die, restore, ... And then there came along games that were more forgiving and you could just play and if you died, respawn. but then other games replaced things with: fight, get loot, sort and rearrange inventory, possible weapon swap, go back to town and sell inventory, etc.. I guess it's better that the current crop of phone games with grind (shortcut available for purchase!) , grind (you really should buy this convenient feature), grind, ... I did enjoy factorio. You have to periodically re-invent yourself. But then what do you do after launching a rocket?

by jo032 6y ago

earthscienceman 6y ago

I love this comment and I think it touches on something that is really controversial and difficult to discuss on internet forums. It has become clear to me that for young men of my generation that this type of video-gaming is very much the equivalent of 'doomscrolling' as mentioned in other comments, and is generally pretty harmful. I have so many friends that have improved their lives by following the much-mocked advise 'turn off the game and do something else'. Are games the culture-killing brain-rotting rotten life harbinger that our parents made them out to be? Of course not. Are they the epitome of entertainment and growth that places like reddit make them out to be? No, not really. Like always. The truth is in the nuance.

BitwiseFool 6y ago
I wonder if my desire to grind and or min/max in video games during my teenage years was a proxy for honing skills. Perhaps it's a developmental stage where you actually enjoy the repetition because you're supposed to be developing a skills and trade-craft. But now that I'm older I have little to no interest in such pursuits.
- bigfudge 6y ago
  Surely the point is that this developmental ability to persist is wasted on FPS? You could have learnt a musical instrument or developed some other accomplishment that lasts a lifetime. I.e. the real problem is the opportunity cost
  - dimitrios1 6y ago
    Speak for yourself pal, I can still 1deag with the best of them.
    - renjimen 6y ago
      Honestly, there is very little else as satisfying as a couple of Juan Deags in a crunch round of a CS match. I've spent time learning other, more respectable RL hobbies, but there's that deep sense of satisfaction they fail to capture.
      - rowanG077 6y ago
        Only things comperable is an orgasm to be honest. But the satisfaction of Juan deags persist for longer.
  - toast0 6y ago
    I mean, clearly FPS is a waste. Civilization and SFII is where it's at. SMB is ok too. That said, learning a musical instrument does not last a lifetime if you don't keep playing it. The point of learning skills early in life is not necessarily that the skill is useful, it's that you've learned how to learn skills. Which hopefully will be used throughout your life.
    - Jeff_Brown 6y ago
      If what you learn are songs you'll forget them without practice. But if you learn music theory, composition, improvisation, you'll never forget. at least that's how I explain my own experience. I routinely go for years without playing most of the instruments I know. Give me a week and I'll be better at any one of them than I've ever been.
      - dd36 6y ago
        Ok GPT-3.
  - 6y ago
- wincy 6y ago
  Grinding skills in games turned into running through shot simulations to get the best DPS in world of Warcraft, which turned into me learning to write code. The same obsession is there, just instead of being “the best on the server” I get a paycheck.
bonoboTP 6y ago
For better or worse, gaming cultural references are very common and a way to relate to colleagues of the same age. Many would say this is bad and pushes women, older folks and people with very different backgrounds away and creates an exclusive nerdy geeky club. I'm not here to argue that. But it is a useful thing for making friends in practice. People also often get to know each other through gaming or it is their first interaction with technical things, setting up networking and firewalls for LAN parties, installing and creating mods etc.
- bitwize 6y ago
  There's a much better way to relate to colleagues of your age, as well as people from a variety of age, ethnicity, and gender backgrounds: sports. Sports have the added benefit of getting you outside and moving when practiced. Women are also almost universally attracted to male athletes -- male gaming nerds, not so much.
  - watwut 6y ago
    > male gaming nerds, not so much Dating someone who plays games is not issue. Most young people of both genders play games. Athletes play games too, there never was any dichotomy between sport and playing video games. But, dating obsessed gamer is kind of like being alone, except you get yelled at more. If excessively competitive sport dude is asshole to his mates, you don't get to witness that every evening either.
    - _carbyau_ 6y ago
      Here in Australia it seems like a month can't go by without a high profile sports person being accused of abuse/drugs/alcohol or other. Maybe it is something about the ultra-competitive streak - being "driven" - that makes it not nice to be around? Personally, I gave up playing even the lowest grade of social hockey as people seemed to have forgotten the "game for fun" part and were "playing to win" - including hard shots at your legs, playing on no matter the breach of game rules unless the ref whistled etc.
antisthenes 6y ago
> It has become clear to me that for young men of my generation that this type of video-gaming is very much the equivalent of 'doomscrolling' as mentioned in other comments, and is generally pretty harmful. Eh? I mean maybe for the vast majority too much of one thing is bad. For me, personally, almost all of my friendships came from bonding experience over playing video games together (or board games, or card games) and other semi-intellectual hobbies. Did any of those games or pursuits give me deep marketable skills? Not really. But the friendships gained were invaluable as far as diversity of thought, advice and help given in times of need. I don't regret any of that time spent. But those were games of a bygone era. Later games (like WoW/Fortine and whatever garbage kids play these days) probably would not have had the same effect. > The truth is in the nuance Yep. Gaming is a pretty neutral activity. When done right (challenging games played with the right people) can be extremely rewarding. When overdone, probably worse than watching tons of TV/politics.
badRNG 6y ago
> It has become clear to me that for young men of my generation that this type of video-gaming is very much the equivalent of 'doomscrolling' as mentioned in other comments, and is generally pretty harmful. I'm not sure I agree. I have always enjoyed games where there is payoff for grinding. Usually, I enjoy the grind element as well. It isn't too far off of the sensation I get when working on a personal project or learning new tech. I used to "doom scroll," but have eliminated my FB and Twitter and harshly curated my Reddit due to the significant stress it was placing on my life. I never really enjoyed seeing what was going on with Twitter, I guess I felt obligated to keep up with things that ultimately didn't matter.

dan00 6y ago

> I luckily grew out of it, but being absorbed by the pursuit of easy, digital approximations of real accomplishments ... The really harmful thing might be the artificial meaning this creates, which might be at the end more addictive than the fun. I never really was addicted to games. The funny thing is, I could only play games that were really fun for me, because of the game mechanics or if they had some interesting new aspects. But this kind of fascination never hold that long and after that the game play just got repetitive and tedious, at which point I just stopped playing. Therefore also most games that contain a lot of repetition feel just pointless to me.

fossuser 6y ago
Yeah - similar for me. I think there's something interesting here with how different people respond to 'fake achievement'. For me FPS games were fun because it was a little competition between players (also I was often interrupted growing up and short rounds are better for this). After trying WoW and having to walk 30min to pick up a feather and bring it back then do the same for an acorn I lost total interest in ever playing again. That might be all the time I had to play that day. I suspect some people get more of a positive feedback response from seeing numbers go up than others. I think MMOGs can also have a social component that keeps people coming back to do shared events which is probably stickier than the fake achievement bits. I'd be curious if people really vulnerable to fake achievement would also be successful if they could create a fast feedback environment for themselves with something other than the game as the goal (since they're clearly amenable to that kind of motivation). For me, the difficulty is on the other side. Even outside of games it can be hard to find something that feels like it matters and is important (even if you can make money and be otherwise better off in your life by doing it). Curiosity can also pull you in a thousand different directions. Figuring out what you want is hard, figuring out how to move in that direction is hard, then actually getting yourself to focus and do the work is hard. When the search space of what's possible is so big, it can be difficult to coordinate. I think games reduce that to something extremely narrow. For some that's effective, for me the illusion is obvious and unfulfilling. Today I tend to like one-off indie games driven by story (like Firewatch). I feel like I get more out of it.
- 6y ago

qsort 6y ago

Counterpoint -- the min-maxing is often the interesting part, it's not the destination, it's the journey, or something like that. By trying to get very good at a game, you learn how to solve problems, and, more importantly, how to learn how to solve problems. It's also often the case that by taking a game seriously, you engage with the community, making friends or at least getting to know people out of your circle. I've put thousands of hours into several games, and I don't regret a second of that. I wouldn't say that behavior is unhealthy unless it brings you to downright ignore your job/school/responsibilities.

cgriswald 6y ago
> I wouldn't say that behavior is unhealthy unless it brings you to downright ignore your job/school/responsibilities. I have a much lower bar because I don't think all video game playing is equal. My first Pokémon game was one of the more recent ones for the switch. I didn't quite understand how the breeding worked and I was trying to breed a particular Pokémon with high stats. I spent many hours figuring out how it works and writing scripts to figure out what I should breed to get what I want, then more hours actually doing the breeding. I was fully engaged and I would consider this video game playing healthy. I've also spent many hours just vegging out. A little of that is fine; it's one way I do some thinking. But too much of it and the day is gone and when I stop I feel bad, like I've just come out of a stupor. This, to me, is not healthy, even if I otherwise took care of all my responsibilities.
pmoriarty 6y ago
"I wouldn't say that behavior is unhealthy unless it brings you to downright ignore your job/school/responsibilities." What if you could have done something more productive or rewarding with your life instead, like developed new friendships or deepened existing ones, learned new skills, or read something that opened your eyes or changed your life? I've probably gamed as much as anyone here, and I deeply regret wasting so much time on it. Though it wasn't a complete waste of time, as it did help me to learn to manage complex systems (I like complex games) and to anticipate and prepare (I like RPG's and chess), and it also helped me to destress, there was also a compulsive quality to my gaming where the ultimate payoff wasn't all that great compared to the many thousands of hours I put in to it.

pmoriarty 6y ago

Grinding exemplifies delayed gratification. You know that if you grind enough you'll get to something more interesting/fun. People who are good at grinding would probably ace the so-called Marshmallow Test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...

triska 6y ago
Several years ago, there was a site called wowdetox.com, where addicts of World of Warcraft and also other gamers shared their stories. One of the posts there contained a striking observation: The most tragic aspect of the game is that it hits the hardest workers the hardest.
jo032 6y ago
I think people who have a healthy relationship with games agree with you, but for me, the obsessive grinding only made the games less challenging/fun, with no reward except larger numbers on the menus-- like if the reward for the Marshmallow test was just that you got to look at a bitmap of a pixelated marshmallow on tv. Videogames are not all bad, and of course there are many healthy and successful people who enjoy them and appreciate them as works of art. But for me personally, I regret that I spent so much time doing busywork for an unpaid job that I didn't even enjoy.
paganel 6y ago
The Marshmallow Test looks kind of classist, or even racist (not sure if "racist" is the right word for it, maybe "orientalist" would be better). Yes, if you live in Stanford or in a country that has an institution like Stanford then most probably "passing" the marshmallow test means waiting for a longer period in order to get twice the reward, but I dare say not a lot of countries/societies afforded that luxury until not that long ago (many of them still don't), in their case waiting for longer in order to get twice the reward might mean that you'll be dead by then, or evicted, or you had to escape the communists/the criminal right-wingers/the islamist beheaders/what have you.

habitue 6y ago

> I luckily grew out of it There's always a lot of hand-wringing about what kids and teenagers spend their time doing, and I wonder if it's not just a natural process of your brain figuring out a system, going "oh I see" and moving on to the next thing. Like, in other words, it might not be luck, it might just be the learning / exploration process working normally. That being said, there's definitely an aspect where video games are a super-stimulus. It's true that video game designers are creating explicit reward loops in a way that, let's say the writers of Gilligan's island were not (to compare hand-wringing about games to hand-wringing about television)

deleted 6y ago

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offtop5 6y ago

Another way to look at it , I tend to be very good at math. As a kid I could easily do somewhat complex equations in my head, to the frustration of my teachers. Perhaps Pokemon was training for that.

enominezerum 6y ago

I got to this point with games a few years ago. My coworkers (all big gamers) were amazed that I would wait for games to be on steep sale or just play older titles. My first job out of high school was working in a game store where I fell into the rat race of having every shiny new thing I could afford and getting hyped up on the hyper competitive nature of everything. Really, it was Destiny 1 and Halo MCC that broke me hard of this habit. Between the games being broken or lacking, and me not enjoying the PvP aspect of Destiny 1, I just stepped away from it all. Now I am content to game for the sake of burning time. I don't like PUBG, but I have it to play with friends while we drink beers and shoot the bot infested unranked, the final moments are tense and fun and if we fail at least we had the fun of getting there. I got XBOX game pass and just pop in games to try them out now, no worries or hassle of returning since it is Netflix style gaming. Even on my phone I have loaded up old games where I turn on cheats for mad fun. I am currently playing Pokemon Sun and whenever the baddies start a match with "I am stealing your Pokemon" they face my 100% started with 100% critical chance and I just lob a Master Ball and steal their Pokemon. I enjoy walking through walls and just being ridiculous in it while still enjoying the story and atmosphere of the game. (all the fun, none of slowness inherent in those games). But I do agree. I don't know how many times I would work my 9-5, try and game some, get upset at the losses, and just wallow out the rest of the night, skipping other stuff I wanted/needed to do. The highs certainly weren't worth the lows. Part of why when folks say video games aren't addicting, I ask why CoD put in the prestige system. It keeps hitting you with that dopamine of 'yea, just unlocked something' which constantly throws you back into combat where something else gets unlocked.

curryst 6y ago
> Part of why when folks say video games aren't addicting, I ask why CoD put in the prestige system. It keeps hitting you with that dopamine of 'yea, just unlocked something' which constantly throws you back into combat where something else gets unlocked. It's also part of the competition. It's called "Prestige" because having a lot of those levels is meant to be prestigious. For me, it was closer to an MMR Ranking or KD Ratio. It's less about collecting the icons, and more about getting some form of external validation that you were a better player than other players. Of course, Prestige is a bad indicator that you are a better player than other players, but it allows people who aren't good but have a lot of time to compete on some level. If this were really about "yea, just unlocked something" I would expect better rewards. I haven't played the new CoDs a lot, but from what I remember, the rewards for prestiging were largely meh, and you get most of them from low levels of prestige. If you hit prestige 99, you've done a lot of prestiges without any unlocks (other than the bars next to your username, which no one ever looks at).

yibg 6y ago

I can certainly relate to this, my poison of choice was diablo 2. At first playing and discovering all the various items and stats was fun. Killing monsters and advancing was fun. At some point it just became a habit, then towards the end it became a chore. Yet I still spent endless hours doing it. For me at least it could probably been classified as an addiction. There were some fond memories from it, and there were certainly many enjoyable moments. But it was certainly not done in moderation. I'm also glad I pulled out of it, and didn't get into a similar situation with a different game.

gwd 6y ago
Diablo 2 is exactly the kind of game I felt like a pointless time sink. Your character gains new skills, but you? Not so much. At least playing a competitive FPS (or something like Starcraft) you're gaining skills.
- musicale 6y ago
  Usually I'm mostly done after beating a Diablo game a couple of times at various difficulty levels, but I still find them fun to play periodically. I think the fact that they become tedious after a while is not a bad thing since otherwise you'd never stop playing! They are also fun and easy games to pick up and play with friends or family (especially D3 in couch co-op mode.) Regarding game vs. IRL skills, I enjoy Guitar Hero quite a bit, but Rocksmith actually improves your ability to play a real guitar. Rock Band drums are pretty close to electronic drums though, and vocals are actual vocals. And as I've mentioned, Ring Fit Adventure (which I'm still playing) kind of levels you up. I found similar effects with Wii Fit, where years after stopping playing (and switching to non-balance based exercises) my sense of balance was surprisingly better than it had been before I started playing the game. I expect other physical games like Dance Dance Revolution are good for physical coordination, and I expect twitch games such as FPSs are good for eye-hand coordination and reaction time.
- yibg 6y ago
  Looking back yes not much skills gained. At the time what kept me in there were a couple of things: 1) chasing the next thing. Next item, next perfect build, next stat. 2) the multi player aspect. Be it pvp or a coop game with some online “friends” Both of these are good ways to keep people engaged / addicted I guess.

bennysonething 6y ago

You definitely have a point. Though one thing I never understood was grindy type games. Growing up playing with my mates, Mario, Zelda , street fighter then Goldeneye, Tony hawk's. We just never came across them. Then final fantasy 7 came along, I remember my friend just left it back to the shop. Turn based combat and experience points made no sense to us at all. Few years later I tried playing Knights of the old Republic, it didn't feel like a game. It just felt really odd and awkward to me. Skip forward few years and this type game is huge. I don't get it and never will I guess! The bit I really don't get is you don't get better at the game by becoming more skillful but instead by spending time increasing xp on grindy tasks. One thing about games though, they can be sort of mindful: recently I went through a really hard month at work. I found playing old Ps1 racers helped me quickly unwind before bed. (Wipeout and gran turismo 1)

baby 6y ago
Every game can become grindy if you abuse them. I used to play counter strike and I would just grind grind grind. Playing deathmatch again and again, practicing your aim on specific maps (aim_usp, aim_aztec, etc.)
- gwd 6y ago
  But this is a different definition of "grind". After spending an hour practicing your aim on a specific map, your aim will actually be better. That's not any different than spending an hour practicing shooting hoops from a specific angle / distance, or spending an hour practicing musical scales. I think when most people talk about "grind" in games, they mean activities that are genuinely only time-wasters. You don't gain any skill (other than patience) from killing your hundredth goblin or clicking "harvest" on your hundredth field.
  - baby 6y ago
    True, there's a skill grind, and a level/gear up grind
muffinman26 6y ago

musicale 6y ago

> It was mostly just tedious grinding I haven't had a grindy experience in most single-player games, but MMOs have perfected the grind system to keep players in the game and spending money (particularly in a subscription MMO.) Oddly enough, I tend to enjoy the repetitive activities of MMOs such as gathering, crafting, and simple quests; they put you in a sort of relaxed flow state and you get to see the game turn from day to night as other players and monsters wander by. You also end up exploring more of the game world in detail and noticing interesting details that you might miss otherwise. Daily quests are repetitive but they have a bit of variety because you have a different set of players every time. I wonder whether MMO players might be good at real-life grinds that seem tedious but are actually worthwhile, such as exercise. As a data point, I'm still grinding away at Ring Fit Adventure, which is fun and seems to be beneficial to fitness in terms of increased strength, balance, and energy after several months. I haven't managed to enjoy grinding housecleaning yet but I might if I can figure out how to gamify it....

m463 6y ago

I remember playing games and basically doing: creep, shoot, save, creep, solve puzzle, save, creep, die, restore, ... And then there came along games that were more forgiving and you could just play and if you died, respawn. but then other games replaced things with: fight, get loot, sort and rearrange inventory, possible weapon swap, go back to town and sell inventory, etc.. I guess it's better that the current crop of phone games with grind (shortcut available for purchase!) , grind (you really should buy this convenient feature), grind, ... I did enjoy factorio. You have to periodically re-invent yourself. But then what do you do after launching a rocket?