6 ms·

Maybe it's better that these time wasters die, speaking as someone who played them way too much.

malux85 3y ago
It’s not just about time. During the teenage years while the neocortex is growing, teenagers are practicing and honing fine motor control. Video games help develop that, as well as learning about social interactions, emergent system behaviour and strategic vs tactical thinking. I’m not saying they don’t have downsides, but there are some upsides too. Sure, if you’re an addictive personality using video game escapism to ignore your life problems, that’s a whole different thing (and even without video games this type of person would just find another form of escapism) So I don’t agree with your generalisation of games as “time wasters” - maybe for you they are, but not for everyone, I don’t play them anymore very much (just a bit of chess every now and then) but they provided me with a lot of understanding in my formative years
- JohnMakin 3y ago
  > as well as learning about social interactions A large percentage of social interaction in a game like world of warcraft is profoundly negative and maladaptive. I'm not sure I would want my child learning about that in a MMO.
  - malux85 3y ago
    Mine were overwhelmingly positive, and got me friends I still have 20 years later today, it depends on the MMO
  - Tyr42 3y ago
    I mean I'm happier to get scammed over selling cow hides in game than used cars in real life. We don't give kids as many opportunities to make mistakes in real life, I dunno.
- digging 3y ago
  I believe they are specifically calling MMORPGs time-wasters, which I second (as a video game enthusiast). They're not unique in being so but they are heavily designed to, basically, waste your time grinding. I also agree that even MMORPGs have their upsides. But as a genre they're pretty unhealthy.
  - rincebrain 3y ago
    I'm not sure I agree they're any more unhealthy than the non-MMORPG games full of microtransactions trying to get more money than the upfront cost in this day and age. We've reinvented how arcade games used to try and extract maximum quarters, but the iteration cycle is so much faster now that we can't really play whack-a-mole on all the pathological human manipulation strategies people deploy now, and with people not being able to physically walk away from their phones or other devices in many cases, it's Bad(tm).
    - digging 3y ago
      > I'm not sure I agree they're any more unhealthy than the non-MMORPG games full of microtransactions I didn't say they were
      - rincebrain 3y ago
        That's fair, I assumed calling out MMORPGs implied a stronger statement than you were making about them specifically.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      > I'm not sure I agree they're any more unhealthy than the non-MMORPG games full of microtransactions I used to think: “Anything that got rid of the ‘pointless grinding’ aspect of RPGs would be an improvement.” And then micro transactions and pay-to-win got invented. I didn’t think it was possible but game designers somehow actually managed to make RPGs even worse!
      - rincebrain 3y ago
LunaSea 3y ago
They are about as much a time waster than any other hobby really
- ytx 3y ago
  But in terms of other benefits of that time spent, (imo) they're probably somewhat better than micro-transaction-gambling-mobile games (or just plain gambling), but likely worse than a sports league or chess club. Not sure how it'd compare against similar amounts of youtube/netflix though.
  - LunaSea 3y ago
    > chess club How? A lot of games could be seen as a sort of 3D chess.
    - ytx 3y ago
      Specifically meant in-person chess clubs as opposed to only playing lichess from home for hours every day. I'd probably have a less negative view of "time wasting" if video games were played more in-person too. I have fond memories of LAN parties growing up, where socializing was as big a part as the actual gaming - it's not like we were sitting there harvesting wood for hours on end!
      - LunaSea 3y ago
        Socialising is still a very important part of games (eSports, dungeons and raids, Discord / TeamSpeak / Ventrilo, forums, guilds, etc), especially for MMOs. Much more than chess which is mostly a individually played game whereas an MMO is a cooperative game.
  - wtf_is_up 3y ago
    >The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life. - Paul Morphy One of my favorite chess quotes. As an avid chess player, I can't agree more.
  - 3y ago
LeifCarrotson 3y ago
What do you propose as an alternative? It feels fun to be rewarded for something you accomplish in-game. In many singleplayer games, you can slide difficulty up or down to change the effort:reward ratio. In an MMORPG, though, you have different groups of players with different amounts of time. You want to make it fun for both the kid on summer vacation who is happy to spend 80 hours a week on a game (not a choice I want for my kid, but I was a kid once too) and an adult who has a 60-hour work week and exchanges 2 hours of sleep after the kids go to bed to play. That means the person with more money than time will want to buy things from someone with more time than money. But this causes all kinds of distortion in the game balance and economy. I don't know that this is solvable, whether you're trying to balance against cheap labor or AI bots.
nozzlegear 3y ago
As someone who met his wife in an MMORPG (World of Warcraft) and still actively plays it each week with the same group of friends from 15 years ago, I'm not so quick to hope they die.
wongarsu 3y ago
They can be problematic, but for many they are just a convenient excuse to spend time with friends in a voice chat. It's not really more or less of a time waster than most other group activities. Now playing alone for the dopamine rush of successfully grinding repetitive tasks: yeah, that's a bit of a time waster. Maybe therapeutic for some, and definitely not the most harmful way to spend time and get validation, but also a bit pointless. But I would argue that if you play an MMORPG alone you're doing it wrong. If you don't have friends at least get engaged in a guild and spend countless hours improving real-life social and leadership skills.
- vasco 3y ago
  You seem to attribute more value to an activity just because it's done in a group but I'm not sure that holds.
  - geometriccan 3y ago
    Sometimes I can't tell if people on this site are joking or genuinely this out of touch. Go touch grass.
    - alfiedotwtf 3y ago
      I’m with Vasco on this one. What’s wrong with enjoying your own company
    - vasco 3y ago
      Instead of feeling superior in a drive-by snark, explain to me why gaming for 3 hours after work while voice chatting with 3 friends is not a waste of time but if you do it on your own it is?
      - dreamworld 3y ago
        I'll bite. First, each human is kind of a separate universe, another 80 billion neurons to converse with, each with our own histories and vastly different knowledge and experience. In a conversation, we learn a lot from each other, and better understand how we can be different in skills, and even in basic things like emotion, motivation, etc.., better understanding what it means to be a human, and better understanding what it means to be in general. Also, it's very important for us to maintain some kind of social contact (I think written counts as well), because our brains language ability will degrade and we will lose critical skills including reading social cues. Speaking of social cues, interacting with others specially in a complex environment where there can be severe competition as well as cooperation and difficult coordination, is something that also is worth practicing. I have nothing against solo games, but this kind of thing is not practiced in a solo game. Finally, I think other kinds of games (e.g. in competitive games) tend to have very simple interactions and objectives, compared to an MMO: there's a clear objective to win that's shared by everyone. Some MMOs have much more interesting interactions, where each person is interested in a different thing, and I think this contributes to a very rich atmosphere that isn't just 'Go win, try to win match, go out', i.e. more life-analogue (without other limitations of life, like you can't actually die, and being poor isn't as terrible as it often is IRL :( ).
squidsoup 3y ago
We’re an irrelevant blip in the natural history of our planet. Everything is a waste of time.
- suby 3y ago
  We are arguably in one of the most important blips in the history of mankind.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    We are also in among the most important events of Earths history, just releasing all that trapped CO2 back into the atmosphere reversed many millions of years of robbing the biosphere of CO2, it will affect earth for many millions of years to come with more plantlife and warmth, maybe dinosaurs will be back in 100 million years if we release enough CO2 since they do better in warmer richer environments.
    - thejohnconway 3y ago
      Birds are the only surviving branch of dinosaurs. They well in all climates, but specifically well in very cold ones.
serf 3y ago
The only tried and true metric that HN always falls down to question universally : "Why did you do that if it doesn't make money?"
- lee-rhapsody 3y ago
  this entire website is populated by wannabe SaaS founders
justanotherjoe 3y ago
It's just one way to get enjoyment out of life. It's worth remembering that the logical conclusion when all human works are automated, we'd be left with play. In that lense, wouldn't play be a good thing? Otherwise why are we fighting so hard for it.

It’s not just about time. During the teenage years while the neocortex is growing, teenagers are practicing and honing fine motor control. Video games help develop that, as well as learning about social interactions, emergent system behaviour and strategic vs tactical thinking. I’m not saying they don’t have downsides, but there are some upsides too. Sure, if you’re an addictive personality using video game escapism to ignore your life problems, that’s a whole different thing (and even without video games this type of person would just find another form of escapism) So I don’t agree with your generalisation of games as “time wasters” - maybe for you they are, but not for everyone, I don’t play them anymore very much (just a bit of chess every now and then) but they provided me with a lot of understanding in my formative years

JohnMakin 3y ago
> as well as learning about social interactions A large percentage of social interaction in a game like world of warcraft is profoundly negative and maladaptive. I'm not sure I would want my child learning about that in a MMO.
- malux85 3y ago
  Mine were overwhelmingly positive, and got me friends I still have 20 years later today, it depends on the MMO
- Tyr42 3y ago
  I mean I'm happier to get scammed over selling cow hides in game than used cars in real life. We don't give kids as many opportunities to make mistakes in real life, I dunno.
digging 3y ago
I believe they are specifically calling MMORPGs time-wasters, which I second (as a video game enthusiast). They're not unique in being so but they are heavily designed to, basically, waste your time grinding. I also agree that even MMORPGs have their upsides. But as a genre they're pretty unhealthy.
- rincebrain 3y ago
  I'm not sure I agree they're any more unhealthy than the non-MMORPG games full of microtransactions trying to get more money than the upfront cost in this day and age. We've reinvented how arcade games used to try and extract maximum quarters, but the iteration cycle is so much faster now that we can't really play whack-a-mole on all the pathological human manipulation strategies people deploy now, and with people not being able to physically walk away from their phones or other devices in many cases, it's Bad(tm).
  - digging 3y ago
    > I'm not sure I agree they're any more unhealthy than the non-MMORPG games full of microtransactions I didn't say they were
    - rincebrain 3y ago
      That's fair, I assumed calling out MMORPGs implied a stronger statement than you were making about them specifically.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    > I'm not sure I agree they're any more unhealthy than the non-MMORPG games full of microtransactions I used to think: “Anything that got rid of the ‘pointless grinding’ aspect of RPGs would be an improvement.” And then micro transactions and pay-to-win got invented. I didn’t think it was possible but game designers somehow actually managed to make RPGs even worse!
    - rincebrain 3y ago

LunaSea 3y ago

They are about as much a time waster than any other hobby really

ytx 3y ago
But in terms of other benefits of that time spent, (imo) they're probably somewhat better than micro-transaction-gambling-mobile games (or just plain gambling), but likely worse than a sports league or chess club. Not sure how it'd compare against similar amounts of youtube/netflix though.
- LunaSea 3y ago
  > chess club How? A lot of games could be seen as a sort of 3D chess.
  - ytx 3y ago
    Specifically meant in-person chess clubs as opposed to only playing lichess from home for hours every day. I'd probably have a less negative view of "time wasting" if video games were played more in-person too. I have fond memories of LAN parties growing up, where socializing was as big a part as the actual gaming - it's not like we were sitting there harvesting wood for hours on end!
    - LunaSea 3y ago
      Socialising is still a very important part of games (eSports, dungeons and raids, Discord / TeamSpeak / Ventrilo, forums, guilds, etc), especially for MMOs. Much more than chess which is mostly a individually played game whereas an MMO is a cooperative game.
- wtf_is_up 3y ago
  >The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life. - Paul Morphy One of my favorite chess quotes. As an avid chess player, I can't agree more.
- 3y ago

LeifCarrotson 3y ago

What do you propose as an alternative? It feels fun to be rewarded for something you accomplish in-game. In many singleplayer games, you can slide difficulty up or down to change the effort:reward ratio. In an MMORPG, though, you have different groups of players with different amounts of time. You want to make it fun for both the kid on summer vacation who is happy to spend 80 hours a week on a game (not a choice I want for my kid, but I was a kid once too) and an adult who has a 60-hour work week and exchanges 2 hours of sleep after the kids go to bed to play. That means the person with more money than time will want to buy things from someone with more time than money. But this causes all kinds of distortion in the game balance and economy. I don't know that this is solvable, whether you're trying to balance against cheap labor or AI bots.

nozzlegear 3y ago

As someone who met his wife in an MMORPG (World of Warcraft) and still actively plays it each week with the same group of friends from 15 years ago, I'm not so quick to hope they die.

wongarsu 3y ago

They can be problematic, but for many they are just a convenient excuse to spend time with friends in a voice chat. It's not really more or less of a time waster than most other group activities. Now playing alone for the dopamine rush of successfully grinding repetitive tasks: yeah, that's a bit of a time waster. Maybe therapeutic for some, and definitely not the most harmful way to spend time and get validation, but also a bit pointless. But I would argue that if you play an MMORPG alone you're doing it wrong. If you don't have friends at least get engaged in a guild and spend countless hours improving real-life social and leadership skills.

vasco 3y ago
You seem to attribute more value to an activity just because it's done in a group but I'm not sure that holds.
- geometriccan 3y ago
  Sometimes I can't tell if people on this site are joking or genuinely this out of touch. Go touch grass.
  - alfiedotwtf 3y ago
    I’m with Vasco on this one. What’s wrong with enjoying your own company
  - vasco 3y ago
    Instead of feeling superior in a drive-by snark, explain to me why gaming for 3 hours after work while voice chatting with 3 friends is not a waste of time but if you do it on your own it is?
    - dreamworld 3y ago
      I'll bite. First, each human is kind of a separate universe, another 80 billion neurons to converse with, each with our own histories and vastly different knowledge and experience. In a conversation, we learn a lot from each other, and better understand how we can be different in skills, and even in basic things like emotion, motivation, etc.., better understanding what it means to be a human, and better understanding what it means to be in general. Also, it's very important for us to maintain some kind of social contact (I think written counts as well), because our brains language ability will degrade and we will lose critical skills including reading social cues. Speaking of social cues, interacting with others specially in a complex environment where there can be severe competition as well as cooperation and difficult coordination, is something that also is worth practicing. I have nothing against solo games, but this kind of thing is not practiced in a solo game. Finally, I think other kinds of games (e.g. in competitive games) tend to have very simple interactions and objectives, compared to an MMO: there's a clear objective to win that's shared by everyone. Some MMOs have much more interesting interactions, where each person is interested in a different thing, and I think this contributes to a very rich atmosphere that isn't just 'Go win, try to win match, go out', i.e. more life-analogue (without other limitations of life, like you can't actually die, and being poor isn't as terrible as it often is IRL :( ).

squidsoup 3y ago

We’re an irrelevant blip in the natural history of our planet. Everything is a waste of time.

suby 3y ago
We are arguably in one of the most important blips in the history of mankind.
- Jensson 3y ago
  We are also in among the most important events of Earths history, just releasing all that trapped CO2 back into the atmosphere reversed many millions of years of robbing the biosphere of CO2, it will affect earth for many millions of years to come with more plantlife and warmth, maybe dinosaurs will be back in 100 million years if we release enough CO2 since they do better in warmer richer environments.
  - thejohnconway 3y ago
    Birds are the only surviving branch of dinosaurs. They well in all climates, but specifically well in very cold ones.

serf 3y ago

The only tried and true metric that HN always falls down to question universally : "Why did you do that if it doesn't make money?"

lee-rhapsody 3y ago
this entire website is populated by wannabe SaaS founders

justanotherjoe 3y ago

It's just one way to get enjoyment out of life. It's worth remembering that the logical conclusion when all human works are automated, we'd be left with play. In that lense, wouldn't play be a good thing? Otherwise why are we fighting so hard for it.