Video games are still very fun and very profitable for the rest of us. Wish I could mute HN accounts like I mute ppl on twitter, not enough to signal an explicit exclusion but enough for me to ignore whatever they have to say in the future because of misalignment of values in the present.

I started playing TTRPGs like D&D with some friends about a year and a half ago. They feel closer to the ideal of what my brain wants from at least some kinds of games.

Somewhere between TTRPGs, reading (esp. fiction), and embracing balance (why have I always been looking for "that one thing" that I can put all my time into, anyway?) I feel I get at least some of what I crave from games.

The material rendering and poly count keep getting better, and some of these games are really beautiful, but the fidelity of the simulation itself hasn't really changed since 1998.

I do still enjoy games that actually do something new. I liked Minecraft when it came out, and Sleep Is Death, and Yume Nikki... in fact, there's a whole genre of "weird games" that can still be a lot of fun, because you're never sure what will happen next. The sense of wonder returns. Haven't found any good ones lately, though.

I want something like a MMORTS with automation and no hella long timers, on a multi faction map (4?) where you wage war and the game is intended to have an eventual total winner (maybe across 3 months?) Where wins create real consequences like buffs, resources, strategic locations etc. Then it can reset and we can play again.

I could see roles and interactions playing out a lot like EVE online where some mine, some build things, some just want to fly a puny ship and shoot stuff.

This could be fun but on a globe w/ contemporary warfare units.

In the past I've found hints of this flavor in games like Future Cop LAPD's "Precinct war mode"[2] (playstation), Dark Age of Camelot MMORPG, Earth 2025[1]

[1]: https://www.giantbomb.com/earth-2025/3030-36263/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Cop:_LAPD

In Linux, you can download software, and learn to use it to solve a wide array of problems. You can edit files, one of life's simple pleasures. If you find yourself repeating a task, you can find ways to automate it. Doing an old task faster means you levelled up, which gets the blood flowing. You can explore vast worlds (ecosystems/code bases) and satisfy your intellectual/narrative curiosity. The game has multiplayer elements too.

All of this is lots of *fun* if you're not doing for $JOB. I'm personally addiccted to this video game, and play it hours daily.

The above is sort of a joke, but I really do feel this way. Linux+OSS is a video game.

Some passages were downright unintelligible. The rest had such a wild, drunken stagger to them.

But worst of all is the point being made. Essentially: “I can’t move to an apartment on Jupiter, therefore space travel is boring”

Friendly competition with and against thousands of other people is like a higher purpose, but it's more pragmatic, easier to find, and probably more fulfilling than a game with a higher purpose but no community.

Escapism is definitely aiming at that future we just don't have the tech, but that doesn't mean they can't be enjoyed anyway. Personally I thought we would already have VR and so I keep playing to experience it as soon as possible.

> Think of any popular game (csgo, valorant, Fortnite, apex) ... Of course, they have differences like unique visuals, new items, and various ults/powers, but at the very core, it’s the same rotten stew.

I think this criticism is coming from an angle that would surely include chess... it's boring, has 8/9 pieces only, and it hasn't changed in decades or centuries. I think that is missing the point, especially with multiplayer games.

Another interesting model of game is one where the act of playing it leaves you with an interesting and personal artifact, like the bases you end up making in Minecraft, the factories and lines of automation you make in Factorio, the codebase you build in Screeps, etc. These games are great for pushing you to pick up skills in building kinds of things that you find interesting but wouldn't otherwise have a good excuse to work on.

Games that don't fall into the above two models seem to mostly be about exploring the same space that everyone else does, and that kind of thing has a tendency to run out after a while and can be limited in how often they give you unique experiences. (It could be a physical carefully-constructed space in the game you're exploring, or the space of possible ways a Counterstrike match can play out, etc.) I think it's important to recognize in a game when you've finished exploring the space of the game and now only re-treading familiar ground, and to decide if you're still getting something out of that. When thinking about designing games, I wonder a lot about how to make the experience space wide and avoiding having long-time players only be re-tread familiar experiences.

It's the author, the latest game in that "look at my gamer creds" list is from 2015 and it's the fifth sequel.

With the exception of payday which is an incredibly shallow online thing, all of the games in the list are a sequel whose original title, and core gameplay is more than 20 years old at this point.

And sure if you are playing the same game as 20 years ago you might be bored at some point.

Side rant, the number of hours in the list don't successfully accredit Sandy as an avid gamer, at least to me. I am pretty sure I have more hours on Civ 5 alone as she does on all games combined, never mind the grand theft auto series. I think I might have less on GTA 5 but that's because GTA: San andreas is better.

That doesn't mean that games are boring though, especially when looking at the subset op mentioned. In most of those games the goal is to beat your opponent (with the exception of metal gear and payday) through dexterity or skill - it's high intensity and can get hollow when you stagnate in skill level.

Other goals might be engineering success (factorio, dyson sphere project, satisfactory), or unique experiences (stanley parable, superhot), or group fun (among us, gorilla tag), or just a great storyline (disco elysium, undertale, hades).

One goal might be played out for OP, but there are many other ways to enjoy games.

Not to gatekeep but: trying to say you are an experienced gamer, and proving that with less than a thousand hours of the most popular and normal games of the last 20 years does not lend credence. And your 4th most played needing 14 hours? Please.

There other comment nailed it. This is like watching only marvel and complaining about movies. And not even a lot of marvel movies.

It is not worth my time to dig into the minutea of this, but let me just say: you do not have any idea what you are talking about. If you it don't like video games that is fine, but this article is just bad and ignorant. And written by someone who is not familiar with the medium.

The good stuff is out there, it's just not marketed as heavy as AAA games, instead it requires active discovery (and it's the same with "modern" blockbuster movies or music).

That's it, huh? Want me to pick up any other scientific advances for you while I'm out? A warp drive or time machine perhaps?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw

I think games both appeal and do not appeal (to different people, or the same person at different times in life, respectively) because of the limitations of what the game allows you to do. It can be empowering to feel like you understand the world of the game you are playing, or disempowering to have to follow the arbitrary rules created by the developer.

I really enjoyed Red Dead Redemption 2, Outer Wilds, INSIDE, Disco Elysium, Twelve Minutes recently. Basically games that actually have a story or feel like art instead of a grindy competition.

Games before used to "feel" mysterious. I am looking at you Ultima, Everquest and perhaps Anarchy online. Initially there was no guides or answers, you had to really explore and this made the world(s) feel mysterious. Anything could happen. Nowadays the entire game is datamined, guides are written and everything is known even before released, very sad. Perhaps "streaming" games could solve this issue, where no assets are present on no client, just a real time stream ala stadia. But, I suppose latency, graphics quality, etc makes this hard.

We need to evolve and democratize game development tools for creating more fantastical content. Less polygons, more management of complex systemic interactions.

The (traditional) roguelike scene has been struggling with this since its inception. As codebases grow and things get added, managing the complexity becomes a massive headache-inducing mess. But it's precisely this complexity of interaction that makes a game deep and interesting. Every thing added requires an exponential increase in logic, as code is needed for interacting with every other thing from before.

NO TOOL EXISTS today that makes it easy to add things to a game and define how those things interact with other things, on the content creation process level. How crazy is that?

Right now, there's a translation layer in the way -- your controller, keyboard/mice, wands all get translated into in-game actions, and in different ways from game to game. You always have to spend time learning this translation. Ugh.

Come on, folks. Build me a haptic suit or something similar that I can use to control my avatar. It'd track my fingers, obviously. Of course, a good high-resolution VR faceplate with no cables dangling is a requirement.

Every game would have an obvious interface, and you'd get some exercise also!

Build this for me before my time passes!

(It's probably dangerous for me to say this, but I could fund this endeavor.)

I'm just not interested in pouring vast amounts of time into building game skills that have zero applicability elsewhere. Life is too short. In this sense, video games in general are a unitasker[1].

Now, if there are games with some pedagogical value, e.g. puzzle games where we need to apply/develop knowledge of chemistry to solve problems, I could warm to the idea.

[1] https://lifehacker.com/watch-alton-brown-demonstrate-why-uni...

Let's also not forget that boring TV programs and boring games serve a purpose; sometimes you want to do something mindless and boring. Both these roles have broad mainstream appeal, but note of course that there is (or seems to me to be) an overrepresented enthusiast audience that wants tough gameplay that require investment and perseverance to complete.

My impression of Rust and Tarkov is that they manufacture meaningful competition well, but they don't create friendships as quickly, and they especially don't create friendly rivalries and working relationships between people on the same team.