> Nobody has the energy to learn how to play Axis & Allies after working for 12 hours.
I've found that to be a very helpful heuristic in noticing when I'm pushing myself too hard. If I'm struggling to remember the last time I did something fun that was new or challenging, I'm probably putting too much energy into work or other serious stuff and not leaving enough left over for any other parts of my life. Sometimes that's a deliberate choice to take care of something important. But often it seems like an easy trap to fall into without meaning to, and watching out for a lack of energy put into fun things is a good way to notice.
The nice thing about world of warcraft is it gives you the sense of progress without having to actually invent anything yourself. The only creative aspect of WoW is your build, but most players just copy the "best" builds from theorycrafters online.
I've been doing improv comedy classes lately. They're hilarious and exhilarating. In improv we talk about playing "at the limit of our intelligence". Walking on stage with no idea what you're going to say or do, and figuring it out in the moment - its the stuff of dreams and nightmares.
Not all play is created equally. If my cup was empty after work, there's no way I'd have the capacity for improv.
In retrospect I think World of Warcraft was the only socializing I could really handle after some really traumatic events in my life. I excelled at the raiding aspects and was in a top guild; I became an officer which was a whole different can of worms.
It’s funny because I feel like the soft skills I developed wrangling talented sixteen year old boys to get them raiding, while keeping them from harassing girls in the guild and instead keeping them focused has helped me more than I knew as a SWE team lead, ten years later. In a lot of ways work politics is EASIER. At work nobody gets upset and tells you all about how intimate they’ve been with your mother.
May sound stupid, but I credit playing it since 2003 while in preschool (stopped around 2007, bounced back/forth a bit from 2007-2010ish) with leading me down the life path that ended up getting me a full ride scholarship in engineering.
Also the life path that ended up getting me a completely busted neck & shoulders.
It taught many people programming, as they found many things about the game tedious & wanted to automate with bots.
If you search “RuneScape” in the HN search bar, you’ll find many anecdotes of HN users getting into programming after writing bots/scripts while they played RuneScape as a young kid/teen.
I think that falls into the “tricked into learning” category.
Minecraft has done the same for many a bit younger than I am from what I’ve heard. Roblox as well.
I’m having a lot of fun with Duolingo right now. They definitely gamified the process of learning words (if not conversation, but I have a Spanish speaking friend who is cheering me on), I keep gaining experience and I have no idea what the point of the exp is but it has leaderboards and everything.
It’s also smart about putting you in “bronze tier” leaderboards then slowly upgrading you if you’re more into it, so you’re competing with your peers.
> The nice thing about world of warcraft is it gives you the sense of progress without having to actually invent anything yourself. The only creative aspect of WoW is your build, but most players just copy the "best" builds from theorycrafters online.
I’m actually writing a book about this price topic (in the realm of your analysis). It’s specifically about RuneScape, working title: Why We Play.
The first three lines are:
I’ve played a game called RuneScape for 5,000 hours and I don’t know why. Was all that time wasted. Was any of this experience valuable?
My thesis has something to do with realizing that (if the lower aspects of Maslow’s pyramid are sorted out) many individuals are driven to pursue tangible goals they set for themselves regardless of the domain, and regardless of the fact that nobody else will give a shit. What sort of frameworks lend themselves to this impulse. (Hint: what makes games like RuneScapeWorld of Warcraft compelling frameworks for this “drive”?)
Is this subtly just chasing dopamine hits by doing things that we are good at?
I hadn’t played video games for years when COVID hit. Call of Duty Warzone launched and since my finances were in order, family was stuck at home, I promptly got pretty addicted to the game. I could play for hours on end chasing the wins. When I died I could reflect on what went wrong, make plans on how to avoid it happening again, and try again right away. Games are so quick that you can iterate and see the results within hours. Other things in life usually take weeks or months to see progress. It’s addicting. I still have to keep the PlayStation disconnected because playing one game can easily turn into playing all week.
Real life requires a lot more work to get the same reward.
I’ve played a game called RuneScape for 5,000 hours and I don’t know why. Was all that time wasted. Was any of this experience valuable?
this is really puzzling to me. you don't know why you play? do you know why you watch tv?
there are many possible reasons, and not always reasonable ones, but in general i do know why i play games or watch tv.
to name a few more sensitive ones: boredom, loneliness, escapism.
the question is, do those activites cause you to neglect more important things in an unhealthy manner.
heck, the same can be said for reading and commenting hackernews.
is this discussion important or am i just looking for a some social connection instead of say spending time with my family?
well, it's certainly not important, so i get the same benefit as making progress in a game. it's something i like to do at the end of the day to wind down. (well, more tv and playing games rather than HN)
it serves a purpose that is meaningful and worth it.
recently i discovered that my brother played a game that i like too, so we arranged to play on the same server. suddenly playing this game is not only to relax but also to keep in touch with a family member who lives in another country.
i guess others have different levels of awareness how playing affects them, so i can't generalize or judge. personally i find this awareness important exactly to avoid wondering if that game isn't a waste of time.
You may be interested in what Ted Kaczynski says in his Manifesto. He hypothesizes that, with the majority of our biological needs fulfilled by society and technology, we are left with mostly “surrogate activities”: activities which do not need doing, but we have to do something with our time.
I work out a lot. That’s my surrogate activity. It’s something where I can push a boulder indefinitely like Sisyphus and there is no limit to how much I can do it. For others it is grinding on video games. For others, it is work (let’s be honest, how many of us can really say we “work to live” when all our money goes to consumer luxuries? Obviously situational). Once you start looking for it, you may notice a lot of people have surrogate activities.
I’ll go a step further and say that activities which are more accessible and give someone a better chance to feel part of something larger than themselves lend them best to be surrogate activities. I also think tasks which have no end make particularly good surrogate activities.
I remember having to write an essay in high school about playing & the human being. Then I assumed that playing is a privilege of the kids and young adults. Now, later in life, I've changed jobs not only for a better pay, but also because I started feeling that everybody was becoming too serious at my last workplace.
Either that or I've lost my perspective, and to be honest I've always felt that I'm a bit too serious and that was alarming to me - I give too little space for playing and too much space to passive entertainment.
I've felt the vicious cycle the article tells too: not playing enough made me dull, depressed and that in turn makes you loose the appetite for playing.
This is why I think companies should use fun tech when possible and practical. Sure, we could all do things in the most boring and predictable way possible, but if I’m just going to grind out menial crap in the same way every day, I’d leave for somewhere paying more.
Definitely. But for a company it’s much harder to switch technologies. I am currently leading a team of devs where I work, and I often get complaints about not using the latest features of the language or better languages. The choice is made by the company and for good reasons. I tell them exactly what I said here. Find the way to enjoy work and celebrate your achievements, it doesn’t matter if it’s Java, Kotlin or C#, at the end what we’re doing is solving business problems and that can be a lot of fun.
the problem is that it is rarely practical or even possible. if you think some tech is more fun than others then go find a job where that tech is used, or look for work where you can choose the tech yourself. but unless you are a lead developer in a greenfield project, such an opportunity will be very rare. most projects already made the tech decisions before you get to join.
i think it's better to try to find the fun in other aspects of work. in a great team, where you enjoy working together, where boring work can be made bearable by facing the challenge together.
some companies provide 10% or 20% time for employees to work on projects of their choice. google was famous for that, but i heared it's no longer as prevalent as it used to be.
in any case i'd rather have a fun team on boring work than a fun toolchain with tedious coworkers.
The human race will begin solving it's problems on the day that it ceases
taking itself so seriously.
To that end, POEE proposes the countergame of NONSENSE AS SALVATION.
Salvation from an ugly and barbarous existence that is the result of taking
order so seriously and so seriously fearing contrary orders and disorder,
that GAMES are taken as more important than LIFE; rather than taking LIFE AS
THE ART OF PLAYING GAMES.
To this end, we propose that man develop his innate love for disorder, and
play with The Goddess Eris. And know that it is a joyful play, and that
thereby CAN BE REVOKED THE CURSE OF GREYFACE.
despite being the height of 60s acid-washed dada, sometimes the ol’ principia says fnord something that’s probably even true.
I’m absolutely awful at setting aside time for self directed recreation, and even worse still at indulging it when I do set aside the time. And I’ve gotten gradually worse about it as my life and responsibilities grew with adulthood and particular life circumstances.
Gratefully, my pup needs play daily, so my duty instincts naturally reserve time wherein I not only can but must do something fun. And she’s really fun to play with! If it ever feels like a chore beforehand, that feeling vanishes instantly and it really is just play.
The same goes for walking: also importantly beneficial if one is able, also something I suck at doing for my own isolated benefit, also something that’s an instant joy with pup. So much so that having her has transformed my general walking attitude from “okay I have to go there or […consequences]” (or even “screw it I’ll just deal with […consequences]”) to “let’s go exploring!”
I know not everyone is suited to dogs and vice versa, but in case this resonates with anyone: yeah you probably should get the dog (assuming you’re prepared for the actual responsibility parts), or spend more time enjoying stuff with the dog you might already have. They’ll make you wanna have fun even if you’re not in the best spirits.
Play is how learning happens. Learning has telos and delight is it's
reward. That's why "machine learning" is not true learning, it's
"annealing/impression" - no more.
This is part of it, a lot of play is taking ideas that have already been around and allowing yourself to come to a personal understanding of them. In sports this could be biomechanics, in math this could be an understanding of a complex theorem. I guess in a sense ideas can still be considered novel to each person until that person gains understanding.
This review and a single screenshot is all I needed to get the game. I’m not sure a review has ever overwhelmingly convinced me to buy something faster than this.
One thing I think that can best supplement or rekindle this is: disconnecting from any technological device you use like your phone, tablet, laptop, computer and just linger/lounge around. Normally you'd find something to do or play with by then. If you have a well-stocked space (office/studio) you'll come to find play soon enough
OpenStreetMap is easy but has as much satisfaction as Factorio for me because it actually is helpful and has directly tangible results. Makes it feel somewhat game-like after you've done a couple edits and are just doing the routine things (not having to look up details about how to map a feature you're not familiar with). It's just the right amount of challenging to be enjoyable for me.
Forest walks, books, coding games or simulations, playing games like Creeper World 3 or Parkitect or Geographic Adventures, those are more common things I guess
Similar to OSM, there's a bunch of other open data projects where tidying up or improving some unloved corner is a similar mental state as doing a jigsaw.
How do you play the wiki game? There's no instructions anywhere lol. I don't get it...
EDIT: oh I see:
> The game, at its most basic, presents players with a Challenge: that is a Start Article and Goal Article that must be connected via clicking article links, during a given Round.
> Different game modes require players to connect articles the fastest, with the fewest clicks, or other combinations and variations.
I got into surfing a couple years ago and try to go as often as I can now (usually a few times per week).
I don't care that much about getting better, though of course it happens naturally with time. I just like being in the ocean and how it forces me to be present. It never fails to bring me a sense of peace while I'm out there, and I feel great after a session.
The downside is that the places I'd be happy living in are now greatly reduced.
Code golf [0] can be a fun outlet if you want to learn a new angle of something you already know. Similarly, I've recently taken to building extensions for things, e.g. a simple utility for Chrome [1], since it allows you to go from nothing to something useful super quickly. Outside of coding, any form of art is beyond liberating — music, dancing, photography, etc. You use your mind in a completely different way and it feels like a fresh breeze blowing through the hallways of your head.
Disc golf. I started playing during COVID. It's the first new hobby I've picked up in over a decade.
If you have a course nearby, it's a really accessible sport because all you need is a couple of plastic discs. It's a great way to get outside and walk a couple of miles. Plus it has a lot of nerdy elements (disc flight numbers, release angles, form, plastic types, etc.). And for me, it's fun whether I'm playing by myself, with friends, or with my kids.
Music is huge. Listening and playing. I find that playing guitar provides an outlet unlike anything else. I assume the same goes for any musical instrument.
> If it feels like goofing off, that’s probably play
I find this article so strange because I don’t like goofing off. I don’t like sports. I occasionally play board games but am not that into them because I don’t have much interest in putting in the effort to be good at them. Meh,
maybe I'm hopeless.
Nah, I’m the same way but I am realizing that “I” am in fact the most important project; and to work on that project effectively, the “I” needs playtime. So I’m working at building that playtime into my schedule. Good luck.
I've found that to be a very helpful heuristic in noticing when I'm pushing myself too hard. If I'm struggling to remember the last time I did something fun that was new or challenging, I'm probably putting too much energy into work or other serious stuff and not leaving enough left over for any other parts of my life. Sometimes that's a deliberate choice to take care of something important. But often it seems like an easy trap to fall into without meaning to, and watching out for a lack of energy put into fun things is a good way to notice.