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> I could certainly see problem solving skills developing from world building or highly complex games (Civ, PoE, etc.). In fact, most (but not all) highly succe

> I could certainly see problem solving skills developing from world building or highly complex games (Civ, PoE, etc.). In fact, most (but not all) highly successful games have depth, which requires time investment and problem solving. I’m a big grand strategy fan, mostly Paradox games rn, and I almost feel like these are worse for me because the depth keeps me engaged longer (and honesty waste a lot of time) compared even to something like a shitty copy/paste mobile game employing dark patterns because those get so boring so quick. Whereas if I start and eu4 or ck3 campaign and actually play it, it’s almost certain my brain will be shot to hell to for a few days.

nluken 4y ago
I love Paradox games, but I can't play them because as soon as I start up a campaign I know it will become a huge time sink for a few days. I think their games definitely require/develop problem solving skills, especially in areas where you need to make changes to create indirect effects. With that said, they may not be the best way of going about it.
boringg 4y ago
Ahh I agree with this. I think there is a benefit at the beginning in the learning process of the game but then it has seriously diminishing returns. I would put factorio in this category where once you get the model and have learned most of the curve you are then at diminishing returns or negative returns because of the painful way in that devs construct these games to keep you on for longer periods of times. I'm not sure the highest levels of complexity and long dedication to the game really do provide greater learning for people.
- boringg 4y ago
  I'll add to this I wish there was a game that didn't follow the traditionally.. now you've leveled up spend X time at this level/technology/etc before you go to the next one. Why not create a game that you can grow as fast as you can learn instead of putting in time barriers. Probably incentives for developers/game companies ruin that model but would be nice for a change.
jklinger410 4y ago
I've played thousands of hours in EU4 and am still very bad at it. Same with Cities Skylines. But I could go on and on about the very real ways I apply those losses to my work life. I do think they have a huge benefit.
Wowfunhappy 4y ago
I wouldn't underestimate how much time people can sink into dumb gotcha games. Maybe not you, but others. IMO, the biggest problem with modern video games is how many of them are designed to keep you playing virtually forever. I think a game like Zelda (maybe not BoTW, but definitely OoT) is great for children, because it teaches problem solving and rational thinking, and it has a natural time limit! You might play it incessantly for a few days, but eventually you'll reach the end and need to seek out a new experience.
- mc32 4y ago
  Some years ago it was farmville that wasted people's time.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- albrewer 4y ago
  > gotcha games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gacha_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gacha_game
- Jach 4y ago
  You're not wrong in terms of how much time people can spend on something that doesn't take much thought (it can be a comfort, even), but your diagnosis of the problem is way off. There's nothing about modern video games that can receive the blame for this, even if I hate what gacha and friends have done to the place on the design perspective. (Fortunately there's still plenty of market that's not design I dislike. Another commenter mentioned games as Vegas 2.0, but I don't think that commenter is a gamer either. Casinos are absolutely dominated by the shittiest of games, from a pure game design perspective, with seemingly no room for anything else. The overall gaming market though? It's quite healthy and varied. And even the cancer in mobile gaming is but a harmless mole compared to the tumor of casino electronic 'games'. And to be clear, people can spend/waste their time and money as they choose, that's never been my complaint against any of it, I'd sooner complain about people complaining about others wasting time on X.) I'm surprised, you seem to have spent enough time around kids (and were a kid once yourself), yet you think "replay value" (which is inflated for some games by not having a definitive end) is at all a modern thing, or even necessarily a bad thing. This extends beyond games. Do you realize how many hours of Frozen have been watched, over, and over, and over? Or how many hours listening to Baby Shark? Or whatever's going around now? Or whatever was going around when you were a kid? (Insert favorite classic Disney movie? Tetris? Cribbage? Chutes and Ladders? Minecraft?) Kids love repetition -- humans in general like repetition a lot. Heard of the Hero's Journey? Don't underestimate OoT either! If a kid liked OoT enough to reach the end, it's unlikely that they'll just move on immediately unless they're literally forced onto the next shrink-wrapped "brand new" experience by someone. (To be sure, if I'm ever a parent myself, I will consciously do a bit of that pushing to try avoiding letting them repeat the same thing like some popular movie too much, but I'd be a hypocrite and a fool to think I can or should prevent all of it. Besides, it's remarkable how many times you can watch/be all but forced to watch something even as a young teen (cough Napoleon Dynamite) and yet retain almost no memory of the thing's details as an adult.) OoT is a real-time interactive simulation, such things are naturally just fun to immerse in, even after you've beaten Ganon / "reached the end". But besides just continuing to 'hang out' aimlessly in the game, there's all the stuff they could aim at in order to "100%" the game, or just go back through optional/missed stuff in general/at leisure. (But everyone who plays OoT needs to get the Biggoron's Sword!) So the kid could do that, even talk to friends playing the same game (socializing skills even with a 1p game!) and trade notes or experiences, or compete on times for various races, or they could develop their own random aims, like a quest to smash every pot. Or start a new playthrough but with some difference. Or they might discover the speed running scene and get into that, or just generally see the crazy nonsense people have done to that poor game's code. Again, don't underestimate games like OoT, Super Mario 64, Dark Souls, Megaman X, or Chess, either; having an "end" doesn't protect them from being the object of people's time spending/wasting.
paulluuk 4y ago
I think that even if we found that children who play difficult games tend to be more intelligent, that still makes it hard to separate correlation from causation. Do children become smarter because they play difficult games? Or do smart children enjoy playing difficult games? Or both?
bee_rider 4y ago
Hades, played competently, is a nice little optimization problem with lots of arbitrary constraints thrown at you to keep it fresh. Well, it is mostly reflexes, but the optimization problem is also a significant part of it. Grand strategy and 4x games always feel like too much depth, to me. I know I could do better if I pause and manually place every worker/micro everything. But that's overwhelming. I could try to be clever and only optimize where necessary, but the game is paused, there's no tradeoff for analyzing everything other than my time. Just give me the meaningful choices, game!

nluken 4y ago

I love Paradox games, but I can't play them because as soon as I start up a campaign I know it will become a huge time sink for a few days. I think their games definitely require/develop problem solving skills, especially in areas where you need to make changes to create indirect effects. With that said, they may not be the best way of going about it.

boringg 4y ago

Ahh I agree with this. I think there is a benefit at the beginning in the learning process of the game but then it has seriously diminishing returns. I would put factorio in this category where once you get the model and have learned most of the curve you are then at diminishing returns or negative returns because of the painful way in that devs construct these games to keep you on for longer periods of times. I'm not sure the highest levels of complexity and long dedication to the game really do provide greater learning for people.

boringg 4y ago
I'll add to this I wish there was a game that didn't follow the traditionally.. now you've leveled up spend X time at this level/technology/etc before you go to the next one. Why not create a game that you can grow as fast as you can learn instead of putting in time barriers. Probably incentives for developers/game companies ruin that model but would be nice for a change.

jklinger410 4y ago

I've played thousands of hours in EU4 and am still very bad at it. Same with Cities Skylines. But I could go on and on about the very real ways I apply those losses to my work life. I do think they have a huge benefit.

Wowfunhappy 4y ago

I wouldn't underestimate how much time people can sink into dumb gotcha games. Maybe not you, but others. IMO, the biggest problem with modern video games is how many of them are designed to keep you playing virtually forever. I think a game like Zelda (maybe not BoTW, but definitely OoT) is great for children, because it teaches problem solving and rational thinking, and it has a natural time limit! You might play it incessantly for a few days, but eventually you'll reach the end and need to seek out a new experience.

mc32 4y ago
Some years ago it was farmville that wasted people's time.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
albrewer 4y ago
> gotcha games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gacha_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gacha_game
Jach 4y ago
You're not wrong in terms of how much time people can spend on something that doesn't take much thought (it can be a comfort, even), but your diagnosis of the problem is way off. There's nothing about modern video games that can receive the blame for this, even if I hate what gacha and friends have done to the place on the design perspective. (Fortunately there's still plenty of market that's not design I dislike. Another commenter mentioned games as Vegas 2.0, but I don't think that commenter is a gamer either. Casinos are absolutely dominated by the shittiest of games, from a pure game design perspective, with seemingly no room for anything else. The overall gaming market though? It's quite healthy and varied. And even the cancer in mobile gaming is but a harmless mole compared to the tumor of casino electronic 'games'. And to be clear, people can spend/waste their time and money as they choose, that's never been my complaint against any of it, I'd sooner complain about people complaining about others wasting time on X.) I'm surprised, you seem to have spent enough time around kids (and were a kid once yourself), yet you think "replay value" (which is inflated for some games by not having a definitive end) is at all a modern thing, or even necessarily a bad thing. This extends beyond games. Do you realize how many hours of Frozen have been watched, over, and over, and over? Or how many hours listening to Baby Shark? Or whatever's going around now? Or whatever was going around when you were a kid? (Insert favorite classic Disney movie? Tetris? Cribbage? Chutes and Ladders? Minecraft?) Kids love repetition -- humans in general like repetition a lot. Heard of the Hero's Journey? Don't underestimate OoT either! If a kid liked OoT enough to reach the end, it's unlikely that they'll just move on immediately unless they're literally forced onto the next shrink-wrapped "brand new" experience by someone. (To be sure, if I'm ever a parent myself, I will consciously do a bit of that pushing to try avoiding letting them repeat the same thing like some popular movie too much, but I'd be a hypocrite and a fool to think I can or should prevent all of it. Besides, it's remarkable how many times you can watch/be all but forced to watch something even as a young teen (cough Napoleon Dynamite) and yet retain almost no memory of the thing's details as an adult.) OoT is a real-time interactive simulation, such things are naturally just fun to immerse in, even after you've beaten Ganon / "reached the end". But besides just continuing to 'hang out' aimlessly in the game, there's all the stuff they could aim at in order to "100%" the game, or just go back through optional/missed stuff in general/at leisure. (But everyone who plays OoT needs to get the Biggoron's Sword!) So the kid could do that, even talk to friends playing the same game (socializing skills even with a 1p game!) and trade notes or experiences, or compete on times for various races, or they could develop their own random aims, like a quest to smash every pot. Or start a new playthrough but with some difference. Or they might discover the speed running scene and get into that, or just generally see the crazy nonsense people have done to that poor game's code. Again, don't underestimate games like OoT, Super Mario 64, Dark Souls, Megaman X, or Chess, either; having an "end" doesn't protect them from being the object of people's time spending/wasting.

paulluuk 4y ago

I think that even if we found that children who play difficult games tend to be more intelligent, that still makes it hard to separate correlation from causation. Do children become smarter because they play difficult games? Or do smart children enjoy playing difficult games? Or both?

bee_rider 4y ago

Hades, played competently, is a nice little optimization problem with lots of arbitrary constraints thrown at you to keep it fresh. Well, it is mostly reflexes, but the optimization problem is also a significant part of it. Grand strategy and 4x games always feel like too much depth, to me. I know I could do better if I pause and manually place every worker/micro everything. But that's overwhelming. I could try to be clever and only optimize where necessary, but the game is paused, there's no tradeoff for analyzing everything other than my time. Just give me the meaningful choices, game!