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I recognize that I have been pretty fortunate in life, but I've never been "overnight success, will never actually need to work again" fortunate. I struggle to

I recognize that I have been pretty fortunate in life, but I've never been "overnight success, will never actually need to work again" fortunate. I struggle to sympathize with "I got everything I ever wanted, and now I'm depressed". That framing for the article does not exactly have me chomping at the bit to play his newest game.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mckirk 2y ago
I think depending on what you've built your identity around, suddenly being free of having to strive for anything can be pretty daunting. "Having everything we need, indefinitely" is certainly not something we were prepared for by evolution, and the questions that arise when you are at that point and still need to structure your life around something don't really have easy answers, I believe. So it might actually be a pretty good sign that you struggle to sympathize with this, because the alternative might be that you understand it all too well.
- pferde 2y ago
  I can't imagine how anyone could even achieve such state. There will always be that skill I do not yet have, that book I haven't read yet, that hobby I haven't tried yet, that place I haven't yet traveled to, etc. etc. Maybe if I get to have an active life of 300 years, I could maybe imagine starting to get closer to "having everything I need".
  - kdfjgbdfkjgb 2y ago
    wants vs needs
    - pferde 2y ago
      No, all of those are needs. Some of them are merely a bit higher on the Maslow's hierarchy.
  - Swizec 2y ago
    > I can't imagine how anyone could even achieve such state. There will always be that skill I do not yet have, that book I haven't read yet, that hobby I haven't tried yet, that place I haven't yet traveled to, etc. etc. I can imagine it. After sidehustling and grinding hard for ~10 years, I realized one day that my savings make more in annual interest than my sidehustle brings in revenue. Not profit, revenue. After a bit of math I realized that if I just do nothing unusual – go to work, keep my savings rate – I’ll have the option to retire in 3 to 4 years. The big thing I was pouring my heart, soul, and mind into for so long suddenly feels small and meaningless. Like what is even the point? The sidehustle became more of a hobby. It’s enjoyable but the drive isn’t quite there. The things that used to feel like a big deal make me yawn. So I try to work on bigger more impactful things. But these take longer and so there’s less of that regular dopamine hit of overcoming challenges. And even if ultimately they don’t succeed, oh well not too big a deal. So they just feel less of a pressing issue. The ultimate feeling is one of aimless ambition. I want to do and achieve, but wherefore all the effort when chilling brings almost the same result?
    - VyseofArcadia 2y ago
      > The ultimate feeling is one of aimless ambition. I want to do and achieve, but wherefore all the effort when chilling brings almost the same result? Surely you have more you want to do and achieve than just that one side hustle? Have you never wanted to write a novel? Learn a musical instrument? A language? How to speedrun your favorite video game? Contribute to open source? Plant a vegetable garden? There is so, so much to do, and instead I spend all my time working to keep a roof over my head.
      - Swizec 2y ago
        Yes there is lots to do! And I’m working on it all. But it doesn’t hit the same as when success felt like life or death. My actual needs are met. The rest is gravy. It helps that my dayjob feels like the most effective vehicle for big ambitions. This was a specific thing I optimized for when looking. It doesn’t feel like a necessity or distraction, it’s the thing I want to be doing.
  - mckirk 2y ago
    Of course, there is always something to do. But once you have reached the point where 'participation in anything is voluntary' and you don't have the necessity of work to show you the value of leisure time, I guess you need to come up with new reasons that make existence worthwhile purely for the sake of existing itself. (Which is not to say that you weren't facing the same existential questions before, but 'the grind' is a very good way to keep yourself occupied and not ponder these things too closely, I suppose.) And there definitely are good reasons that make existence worthwhile for its own sake, like using your freedom for discovery and mastery as you said, but unfortunately depression has the nasty side-effect of robbing you of the joy you could find in those causes, and the energy to pursue them.
rachofsunshine 2y ago
Depression is not about the world. It's about your own internal state - the way your own brain is wired up. To a first approximation, "I am depressed" is a statement about a particular neuron not getting stimulated, which is only related to how your life is going in indirect ways that - like all proxies - leak a lot. If tomorrow the greatest dream of AI was achieved, and we had a perfect benevolent AI that would shepherd humanity to comfort and safety forever, that would be just about the best outcome imaginable in material terms. But I think I'd be unhappy with it, because I derive a lot of my personal sense of worth from what I do - from what I build and for what I contribute to other people. I don't know what I would do in a world where that was no longer needed. I'm great at being helpful! I suck at being fun. Is that healthy? Probably not. (It's actually something I'm working through at the moment, that I increasingly understand as a consequence of both personal and societal-level abuse.) But we're not all healthy creatures. We live our lives as the people we are in each moment, including the ways in which we're dumb and flawed and insecure.
- MonkeyClub 2y ago
  > that would shepherd humanity to comfort and safety forever If Calhoun's mouse utopia experiments are anything to go by, such a seemingly idyllic situation would spell out humanity's death in very real terms.
  - soperj 2y ago
    Calhoun's utopia was about overpopulation, not about idyllic situations.
- csdvrx 2y ago
  > I derive a lot of my personal sense of worth from what I do - from what I build and for what I contribute to other people. I don't know what I would do in a world where that was no longer needed. Is that healthy? Probably not. (It's actually something I'm working through at the moment, that I increasingly understand as a consequence of both personal and societal-level abuse.) Since you are wondering about the healthiness of that emotion, try to read C.S. Lewis "The Four Loves": the Need love/Gift love opposition may have answers for you.
banannaise 2y ago
Framing this in terms of The Beginner's Guide, I think it's more like: "I just completed a project into which I poured not just all of my time and energy, but also all of my self-worth. It was a massive success. Now I have nowhere to place my self-worth. Doing this again would be both (1) unlikely to succeed, and (2) extremely toxic, just as doing it the first time kind of was. So how do I get out of this mindset without completely destroying myself?" Amusingly, his response to that question was to make a game about it. Few people get rewards on that scale (and thus the chance to exit, or at least the time to think about it), but many develop similar relationships to their work (or art). An exploration of the problems in that dynamic (as in The Beginner's Guide) is therefore relevant to a lot of people.
- npinsker 2y ago
  To add to that -- one part that stuck out to me was when he said he "...[feels] like a guy who had gotten rich making jokes about video games, trying to deceive real writers into thinking that I’m a real writer." The article implies present tense, as if perhaps Wreden still feels this way. If your dream is to make a great game, and you achieve that, sort of -- it's great to everyone except you -- I think it makes sense to feel more alienated and unsure of yourself than ever, or if your game had not been received as well.
- Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
  "Now I have nowhere to place my self-worth." Huh...I'm a bit nihilistic and have never felt a need to put self-worth into something. I just want to relax and play games.
  - irishloop 2y ago
    Nihilism can take many forms and is not necessarily indicative of a optimistic or pessimistic worldview
miunau 2y ago
It happens a lot in creative fields. I personally get depressive after putting an album out, and I know I'm not alone in that based on discussions with other musicians. Something about being in the mode of making something for so long, and then it's just... done. When you're deeply involved in something, it changes your personality.
gs17 2y ago
I think it's really more of the "like a guy who had gotten rich making jokes about video games, trying to deceive real writers into thinking that I’m a real writer." feeling he mentions in the article than just being successful. I can't say what actually was going on in his head, but I can imagine making what you see as a joke and then having it get huge, you receive massive praise for it, and people demand more and more of it and consider you to be "the guy who made that funny joke back in 2011 and should tell it again but better" would relate to his issues. The newest rerelease of it really felt like he wanted to move on for good.
amiga386 2y ago
If you take a look at someone like Markus "Notch" Persson, he was on a roll of being incredibly famous and at the head of one of the best-liked games in the world. It was too much pressure at the top, though, and he sold the project to Microsoft and became a billionaire; but what that actually meant is that Microsoft took it over entirely, and he was nothing. He didn't even get the position of "esteemed creative inventor who now only occasionally provides creative direction instead of being responsible for every last thing", that some people get when they sell their projects to faceless behemoths. He had a further fall from grace in that the public didn't like his stated values on social media, and Microsoft took the opportunity to completely erase him from Minecraft - removed all mention of his name, and he's not invited to anything. So now he sits alone in his mansion and cries himself to sleep, because while "never work again" money is nice to have, he'd rather have the kudos and recognition of being the creator of a much-loved game. And that's the one thing he can't have any more.
- yvdriess 2y ago
  It is interesting to contrast Notch's arc with Zach Barth's, if you are familiar with the Infiniminer[1] connection. The latter has continued to make small idiosyncratic games with a small team and following his own interests. [1] https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Infiniminer https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Infiniminer
  - tijtij 2y ago
    The latter has also been less of a vitriolic edgelord on Twitter since he started working on Infiniminer.
- gs17 2y ago
  There's another part of his story, where he did try make new games post-Minecraft and never got very far, and eventually gave up on making anything on a larger scale again. Scrolls had a lot of issues in development. 0x10c had some interesting ideas, but there was no way it would ever be "the next Minecraft".
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
antiraza 2y ago
An adage that I find more true than false through my own experience: It's harder to manage success than to manage failure.
JohnCClarke 2y ago
It does sound counter-intuitive. However "Post Adventure/Mission Depression" is very common. See e.g. https://worldextrememedicine.com/app/uploads/2022/07/Lukas-Haitman-Out-of-the-Blues-WEM-Poster.pdf https://worldextrememedicine.com/app/uploads/2022/07/Lukas-H... As a person in tech, I have met many millionaires and a few billionaires, and it is really true that huge wealth does not in, and of itself, bring happiness. They're basically still stuck with their old problems, but now also surrounded by sycophants and leaches.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
allenu 2y ago
The lack of sympathy is understandable, though I do think becoming depressed after a huge success is probably very common. You've spent so much of your waking life for years working towards a goal and then you attain it, and maybe that success no longer needs your hard work, so there's a massive vacuum in your life. Obviously there's more to life than business success and it'll take time to find your purpose again, but that come down, I think, is natural. It reminds me of the article about one of the co-founders of RxBar and how he was finding it hard to search for meaning after they sold their company for hundreds of millions. It was posted here years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21138106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21138106
irishloop 2y ago
"Wherever you go, there you are" No amount of fame or success will alter who you truly are inside. If anything, laying your happiness at the foot of external validation from others in the form of critical success or fame is a poisoned apple. There are plenty of examples of wildly successful people unable to manage their own demons -- see Kurt Cobain or Anthony Bourdain.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mckirk 2y ago

I think depending on what you've built your identity around, suddenly being free of having to strive for anything can be pretty daunting. "Having everything we need, indefinitely" is certainly not something we were prepared for by evolution, and the questions that arise when you are at that point and still need to structure your life around something don't really have easy answers, I believe. So it might actually be a pretty good sign that you struggle to sympathize with this, because the alternative might be that you understand it all too well.

pferde 2y ago
I can't imagine how anyone could even achieve such state. There will always be that skill I do not yet have, that book I haven't read yet, that hobby I haven't tried yet, that place I haven't yet traveled to, etc. etc. Maybe if I get to have an active life of 300 years, I could maybe imagine starting to get closer to "having everything I need".
- kdfjgbdfkjgb 2y ago
  wants vs needs
  - pferde 2y ago
    No, all of those are needs. Some of them are merely a bit higher on the Maslow's hierarchy.
- Swizec 2y ago
  > I can't imagine how anyone could even achieve such state. There will always be that skill I do not yet have, that book I haven't read yet, that hobby I haven't tried yet, that place I haven't yet traveled to, etc. etc. I can imagine it. After sidehustling and grinding hard for ~10 years, I realized one day that my savings make more in annual interest than my sidehustle brings in revenue. Not profit, revenue. After a bit of math I realized that if I just do nothing unusual – go to work, keep my savings rate – I’ll have the option to retire in 3 to 4 years. The big thing I was pouring my heart, soul, and mind into for so long suddenly feels small and meaningless. Like what is even the point? The sidehustle became more of a hobby. It’s enjoyable but the drive isn’t quite there. The things that used to feel like a big deal make me yawn. So I try to work on bigger more impactful things. But these take longer and so there’s less of that regular dopamine hit of overcoming challenges. And even if ultimately they don’t succeed, oh well not too big a deal. So they just feel less of a pressing issue. The ultimate feeling is one of aimless ambition. I want to do and achieve, but wherefore all the effort when chilling brings almost the same result?
  - VyseofArcadia 2y ago
    > The ultimate feeling is one of aimless ambition. I want to do and achieve, but wherefore all the effort when chilling brings almost the same result? Surely you have more you want to do and achieve than just that one side hustle? Have you never wanted to write a novel? Learn a musical instrument? A language? How to speedrun your favorite video game? Contribute to open source? Plant a vegetable garden? There is so, so much to do, and instead I spend all my time working to keep a roof over my head.
    - Swizec 2y ago
      Yes there is lots to do! And I’m working on it all. But it doesn’t hit the same as when success felt like life or death. My actual needs are met. The rest is gravy. It helps that my dayjob feels like the most effective vehicle for big ambitions. This was a specific thing I optimized for when looking. It doesn’t feel like a necessity or distraction, it’s the thing I want to be doing.
- mckirk 2y ago
  Of course, there is always something to do. But once you have reached the point where 'participation in anything is voluntary' and you don't have the necessity of work to show you the value of leisure time, I guess you need to come up with new reasons that make existence worthwhile purely for the sake of existing itself. (Which is not to say that you weren't facing the same existential questions before, but 'the grind' is a very good way to keep yourself occupied and not ponder these things too closely, I suppose.) And there definitely are good reasons that make existence worthwhile for its own sake, like using your freedom for discovery and mastery as you said, but unfortunately depression has the nasty side-effect of robbing you of the joy you could find in those causes, and the energy to pursue them.

rachofsunshine 2y ago

Depression is not about the world. It's about your own internal state - the way your own brain is wired up. To a first approximation, "I am depressed" is a statement about a particular neuron not getting stimulated, which is only related to how your life is going in indirect ways that - like all proxies - leak a lot. If tomorrow the greatest dream of AI was achieved, and we had a perfect benevolent AI that would shepherd humanity to comfort and safety forever, that would be just about the best outcome imaginable in material terms. But I think I'd be unhappy with it, because I derive a lot of my personal sense of worth from what I do - from what I build and for what I contribute to other people. I don't know what I would do in a world where that was no longer needed. I'm great at being helpful! I suck at being fun. Is that healthy? Probably not. (It's actually something I'm working through at the moment, that I increasingly understand as a consequence of both personal and societal-level abuse.) But we're not all healthy creatures. We live our lives as the people we are in each moment, including the ways in which we're dumb and flawed and insecure.

MonkeyClub 2y ago
> that would shepherd humanity to comfort and safety forever If Calhoun's mouse utopia experiments are anything to go by, such a seemingly idyllic situation would spell out humanity's death in very real terms.
- soperj 2y ago
  Calhoun's utopia was about overpopulation, not about idyllic situations.
csdvrx 2y ago
> I derive a lot of my personal sense of worth from what I do - from what I build and for what I contribute to other people. I don't know what I would do in a world where that was no longer needed. Is that healthy? Probably not. (It's actually something I'm working through at the moment, that I increasingly understand as a consequence of both personal and societal-level abuse.) Since you are wondering about the healthiness of that emotion, try to read C.S. Lewis "The Four Loves": the Need love/Gift love opposition may have answers for you.

banannaise 2y ago

Framing this in terms of The Beginner's Guide, I think it's more like: "I just completed a project into which I poured not just all of my time and energy, but also all of my self-worth. It was a massive success. Now I have nowhere to place my self-worth. Doing this again would be both (1) unlikely to succeed, and (2) extremely toxic, just as doing it the first time kind of was. So how do I get out of this mindset without completely destroying myself?" Amusingly, his response to that question was to make a game about it. Few people get rewards on that scale (and thus the chance to exit, or at least the time to think about it), but many develop similar relationships to their work (or art). An exploration of the problems in that dynamic (as in The Beginner's Guide) is therefore relevant to a lot of people.

npinsker 2y ago
To add to that -- one part that stuck out to me was when he said he "...[feels] like a guy who had gotten rich making jokes about video games, trying to deceive real writers into thinking that I’m a real writer." The article implies present tense, as if perhaps Wreden still feels this way. If your dream is to make a great game, and you achieve that, sort of -- it's great to everyone except you -- I think it makes sense to feel more alienated and unsure of yourself than ever, or if your game had not been received as well.
Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
"Now I have nowhere to place my self-worth." Huh...I'm a bit nihilistic and have never felt a need to put self-worth into something. I just want to relax and play games.
- irishloop 2y ago
  Nihilism can take many forms and is not necessarily indicative of a optimistic or pessimistic worldview

miunau 2y ago

It happens a lot in creative fields. I personally get depressive after putting an album out, and I know I'm not alone in that based on discussions with other musicians. Something about being in the mode of making something for so long, and then it's just... done. When you're deeply involved in something, it changes your personality.

gs17 2y ago

I think it's really more of the "like a guy who had gotten rich making jokes about video games, trying to deceive real writers into thinking that I’m a real writer." feeling he mentions in the article than just being successful. I can't say what actually was going on in his head, but I can imagine making what you see as a joke and then having it get huge, you receive massive praise for it, and people demand more and more of it and consider you to be "the guy who made that funny joke back in 2011 and should tell it again but better" would relate to his issues. The newest rerelease of it really felt like he wanted to move on for good.

amiga386 2y ago

If you take a look at someone like Markus "Notch" Persson, he was on a roll of being incredibly famous and at the head of one of the best-liked games in the world. It was too much pressure at the top, though, and he sold the project to Microsoft and became a billionaire; but what that actually meant is that Microsoft took it over entirely, and he was nothing. He didn't even get the position of "esteemed creative inventor who now only occasionally provides creative direction instead of being responsible for every last thing", that some people get when they sell their projects to faceless behemoths. He had a further fall from grace in that the public didn't like his stated values on social media, and Microsoft took the opportunity to completely erase him from Minecraft - removed all mention of his name, and he's not invited to anything. So now he sits alone in his mansion and cries himself to sleep, because while "never work again" money is nice to have, he'd rather have the kudos and recognition of being the creator of a much-loved game. And that's the one thing he can't have any more.

yvdriess 2y ago
It is interesting to contrast Notch's arc with Zach Barth's, if you are familiar with the Infiniminer[1] connection. The latter has continued to make small idiosyncratic games with a small team and following his own interests. [1] https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Infiniminer https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Infiniminer
- tijtij 2y ago
  The latter has also been less of a vitriolic edgelord on Twitter since he started working on Infiniminer.
gs17 2y ago
There's another part of his story, where he did try make new games post-Minecraft and never got very far, and eventually gave up on making anything on a larger scale again. Scrolls had a lot of issues in development. 0x10c had some interesting ideas, but there was no way it would ever be "the next Minecraft".
bigstrat2003 2y ago

antiraza 2y ago

An adage that I find more true than false through my own experience: It's harder to manage success than to manage failure.

JohnCClarke 2y ago

It does sound counter-intuitive. However "Post Adventure/Mission Depression" is very common. See e.g. https://worldextrememedicine.com/app/uploads/2022/07/Lukas-Haitman-Out-of-the-Blues-WEM-Poster.pdf https://worldextrememedicine.com/app/uploads/2022/07/Lukas-H... As a person in tech, I have met many millionaires and a few billionaires, and it is really true that huge wealth does not in, and of itself, bring happiness. They're basically still stuck with their old problems, but now also surrounded by sycophants and leaches.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

allenu 2y ago

The lack of sympathy is understandable, though I do think becoming depressed after a huge success is probably very common. You've spent so much of your waking life for years working towards a goal and then you attain it, and maybe that success no longer needs your hard work, so there's a massive vacuum in your life. Obviously there's more to life than business success and it'll take time to find your purpose again, but that come down, I think, is natural. It reminds me of the article about one of the co-founders of RxBar and how he was finding it hard to search for meaning after they sold their company for hundreds of millions. It was posted here years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21138106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21138106

irishloop 2y ago

"Wherever you go, there you are" No amount of fame or success will alter who you truly are inside. If anything, laying your happiness at the foot of external validation from others in the form of critical success or fame is a poisoned apple. There are plenty of examples of wildly successful people unable to manage their own demons -- see Kurt Cobain or Anthony Bourdain.