Fortnite and the Good Life

https://tinyletter.com/lmsacasas/letters/the-convivial-society-no-15-fortnite-and-the-good-life

by bradstreet • 7 years ago

109 177 7 years ago

neap24• 7 years ago

This essay spends a bit of time trying to figure out whether we should discuss how "harmful" video games are vs. "how virtuous" they make us. The "opportunity cost" approach my parents had seems much more effective to me--"alright, you need to turn that off now. There are so many other interesting things you could be doing right now."

drdrmrwh• 7 years ago

+1 as with most things, the dose makes the poison.

ALittleLight• 7 years ago

I think people are heavily biased towards what looks interesting to an outside observer. A child sat at a desk all day starting at a glowing screen looks like some kind of soulless zombie.

"Screens bad! Go outside and play!"

The child might be doing something mindless, or might be involved in something fascinating - creating or participating in elaborate and vibrant virtual worlds.

I think parents should seek a healthy balance for their children. But that means understanding what's happening and what it means and not trying to promote activities because of how they look on the outside. A child riding his bike around the neighborhood probably looks better to modern sensibilities than one staring at a screen, but I don't know why bike riding should be considered superior to building a world in Minecraft as an example.

jshowa3• 7 years ago

The problem isn't so much the game itself, but the negative health effects from being sedentary and/or evading actual life responsibilities to play games (ie. choosing to not work and play games if playing games isn't providing income). Also, there's the question of whether playing games provides any long term, useful skills which I'd argue they really don't. But I guess it depends on whether your career path is in gaming or not.

gerbilly2• 7 years ago

I don't know why bike riding should be considered superior to building a world in Minecraft as an example.

Nothing against fortnite, but we are animals with bodies, not brains in a jar.

This is why I'd say that riding a bike around¹ is more valuable than playing fortnite.

1: And bike riding can be a group thing as well. When I was a kid,we dirt jumped and mountain biked on the local trails a lot, which was immensely fun.

asark3• 7 years ago

There aren't a lot of activities a person could, theoretically, engage in in public view without getting in some kind of trouble, that look as gross as staring at a screen alone. Any time I catch a glimpse of myself doing it, in a mirror in a video or whatever, I cringe. There's something really icky about it.

The key seems to be catching a view of someone at a computer or in front of a TV or whatever but not also being able to see what's on the screen. It's chilling and creepy for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it is just the "zombie" factor, I dunno.

crooked-v• 7 years ago

Well, there is the physical health aspect, though the gradually increasing popularity of VR may help somewhat with that. Beatsaber is a heck of an arm workout, and VR shooty games involve a lot of squats to stay behind imaginary cover.

chillwaves14• 7 years ago

Sitting and staring at a screen all day is unquestionable bad for your health, from damage to your sight, to damage to your body, to hormone interference.

There is not much positive to say about sitting in front of a screen all day as a person, less so as a child.

viraptor4• 7 years ago

Yeah, I realised that a big problem is that for a person next to me, I look the same whether I play a game, read a book, learn something, chat with someone... I'm pretty sure what looks like a generic "spends time on the phone" is not a great idea for kids. When I have mine, I'm going to have to make an effort to go back to physical books at least and do things like learning something on a big visible screen, rather than privately on a mobile.

wdewind7• 7 years ago

This article addresses moral panic and so it may seem like it is not an extension of it, but I think it basically still is. People have tried for decades, through scientific research, to quantify harm caused by video games and have failed over and over again. Can people become "addicted" to them and use them as escape mechanisms? Sure, But that happens with all kinds of things, from chess to reading to running.

It's rare to see a real impassioned defense of gaming outside of "it's not that bad" but I'd like to go out and say it had a hugely positive impact on my life and I think it's really doubtful I'd be where I am today without gaming. Beyond giving me the foundations of the technical skills I used to become an engineer, gaming gave me tons of social skills as well. As an adolescent I was able to play a ton of different roles in a group in a way that I wasn't able to in real life, even in sports and mock trial and things like that, where other elements of teamwork were present. This prepared me greatly for understanding deep collaboration with teammates at work today. Much more than group projects in school. Like orders of magnitude more so.

It's also important to note that despite being the safest the country has ever been, adolescents are more restricted than ever before. It is extremely rare for them to have places where they can be free, with their friends, and also trying out new social roles. This is an extremely valuable process and it's really difficult to do these days. I don't think there is anything wrong with Fortnite, but I think if you're trying to figure out why people play it and you reduce that down to "bright flashing colors and escapism" you're missing a ton of the context.

And this isn't to rag on sports and say gaming is better (or theater, or woodworking, if those are your things) it's just to say: it's 2019. This gaming thing has been going on for quite some time. It's a real thing with depth, mastery and real benefits that spread into the rest of your life just like playing sports, or chess or however else you think kids should be spending their time. Let's stop tiptoeing around gaming like it's just a vice and start emphasizing the positive things we get out of it.

badpun• 7 years ago

This gaming thing has been going on for quite some time. It's a real thing with depth, mastery and real benefits that spread into the rest of your life just like playing sports, or chess or however else you think kids should be spending their time.

Sure, that's true, but only for some kids - while for others, games, esp. non-skill ones (say, 100th hour of slashing monsters in Diablo) truly are a distraction and bring nothing in, while they fill the time in child's development that is normally devoted to activities which develop the child in some way. The same thing can be said about other activities, like TV, but I feel like video games may have even less to offer than those. I mean, if you watch sitcoms on TV, you're developing your sense of humor, observe people engaged in funny dialogue etc. I can't see a single valueable thing about that 100th hour of playing Diablo - it's a pure time waster. It's not great for an adult, but especially bad for a child/teenager, which should be growing instead of wasting time.

fabricexpert• 7 years ago

Perhaps 100 hours of slaying monsters in Diablo helps prepare a child for 40 hours a week performing menial tasks for the rest of their life?

wdewind7• 7 years ago

Diablo is orders of magnitude less successful than Fortnite (or even Overwatch, by the same company), and I'd argue the reason is exactly what you are talking about: it's just not a very good game and the things you can get out of it just aren't that valuable. Overwhelmingly people choose more teamwork based, deeply social games. This is what the numbers say.

A second premise I want to address is the idea that using games (or movies or books or whatever) as a mind numbing distraction is a waste of time or the fault of the escape itself. Tons of people are dealing with really intense trauma, and it's not really clear that there really is a better short term alternative for stress management. I think if people are doing things like slashing monsters for 100 hours in Diablo don't look at Diablo, look at what's going on in the rest of their life. Because you can take away Diablo, but you if you aren't fixing what makes them play a shitty game as a distraction for 100 hours you haven't really helped them at all.

Finally: tons of people run pathologically. I mean basically anyone who is serious about the sport does more damage to themselves than is necessary, and runs far more than the optimal amount. I don't think running is exactly the same as gaming, but it's worth examining why we as a culture have no problem discussing Larry's second hip replacement from running 10 miles a day but tremble when discussing Larry's son's 10th hour this week playing Fortnite.

toast0• 7 years ago

I can't see a single valueable thing about that 100th hour of playing Diablo - it's a pure time waster.

I wasted a lot of time playing Diablo II in college; but most of that was in a social context; is playing grindy games with friends that bad?

It's not great for an adult, but especially bad for a child/teenager, which should be growing instead of wasting time.

You can't / shouldn't try to schedule all of a child's time to avoid any waste. For one thing, wasting time is a skill that needs to be developed -- there is so much boredom and drudgery in life that is unavoidable, learning how to deal with that requires practice and doing boring, wasteful things. But also, having some amount of mindless time in your day or week allows you to decompress and relax. Diablo probably isn't the best way, but it's alright. Caveat: I only played a lot of Diablo 1 and 2, maybe 3 was worse; when I tried to play it in Beta, I realized I had no real desire to run around and click on everything anymore.

delian662• 7 years ago

> I mean, if you watch sitcoms on TV, you're developing your sense of humor, observe people engaged in funny dialogue etc.

No, you are not developing your sense of humor. Most of the humor in the "funny dialogue" is conditioned and triggered by the laugh track. Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BFSZ8XzWOM for example.

ajscanlan• 7 years ago

I think you're making a mistake comparing 100 hours of a single game (Diablo) to an entire category of TV.

A more apt comparison would be comparing 100th hour of Diablo vs 100th hour of a single sitcom, which by then you may be on your second watchthrough and have already got everything out of it that you could.

dnissley• 7 years ago

The thing that sets video games (and social media) apart from these other things that you mention is that they are far more updatable, and not surprisingly this attribute is taken advantage of for good and for ill. The ill of course being that they are able to be updated in such a way that they hack your attention / biology ever more efficiently over time. This doesn't happen with chess, reading, or running. At least, not without these activities becoming intermediated by updatable technology. Which IS happening, but still, not as much.

manfredo3• 7 years ago

I think this may be one of the reasons why I've trended away from many internet-connected games as of late. I get the feeling that they're really just Skinner boxes under the hood.

Maybe I'm just a curmudgeoney old man (though I'm only 26), but older games just have this more genuine feel. They play the way they play, and while they often have rough edges, I don't get the same sense that they're trying hard to keep the player engaged. I get this nagging feeling that modern "games as a service" have this relationship with the player where they keep them engaged enough to be sucked in but refuse to have a cathartic conclusion. I've grown to appreciate games that end and say "that's all folks".

jupiter90000• 7 years ago

Judgments about wasted time are incredibly subjective and prone to errors, not to mention unclear in relation to what might be the ultimate nature of a human's existence and life. I know some people that love woodworking for example, to me it's a waste of time. I've enjoyed hiking and going in a canoe somewhere, to someone else that'd be a waste of time they could be building a startup. That in turn could be a waste of time for someone who finds spending time with family more important. Anyway, not saying I haven't called things a waste of time, just when I'm honest about it it's really just what I think, not the universal truth.

"That 100th canoe stroke was such a waste, he could have been {0}ing." - Person who judges what other people want to do

formalsystem• 7 years ago

When I was a teenager I used to play chess competitively and when I mention this to people, they look at me all impressed. When I mention that I now play Dota competitively, I get an "oh I hear that game is really addictive" or "I'm not a video game person". And since I've played both for quite some time now I can promise you that playing any interesting game is not a passive experience and is in fact pretty brain melting if you get into it.

"I don't like games" to me now sounds a lot like when people say "I don't like music" or "I don't like books". You may not like specific genres but not liking an entire medium is often just a sign of miseducation.

I would challenge the most dedicated of programmers to build an efficient factory in Factorio or an adventure buff to see what it feels like to beat a monster like in Sekiro or Dark Souls. The Witness, Baba is you, Crusader Kings 2 etc.

Please play any of those games and tell me that gaming is a passive activity.

daeken2• 7 years ago

It's rare to see a real impassioned defense of gaming outside of "it's not that bad" but I'd like to go out and say it had a hugely positive impact on my life and I think it's really doubtful I'd be where I am today without gaming.

I owe my entire career to gaming. Shadowrun on the Sega Genesis made me want to be a hacker, EverQuest hacking turned me from a mediocre (at best) web dev to a competent reverse-engineer, and my first serious startup came about because I wanted to play Oblivion on OS X. Every huge leap in my technical abilities came about because of games; I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am today without the pushes that these amazing works of art gave me.

Macross82996• 7 years ago

Out of curiosity, what was the startup doing and did you ever get Oblivion running at a 100% similar experience to native? (Bethesda bugs and all)

alexgmcm• 7 years ago

Shadowrun was an amazing game.

Whenever I mention it these days people think of the FPS.

jrochkind1• 7 years ago

From the OP itself:

So, I'd suggest re-framing the question. "Will playing Fortnite cause my child (or me) quantifiable harm?" is not the only question we should be asking. Given what is usually meant by that question, the answer is almost always "no." But, in addition to that question, we might also ask how playing Fortnite figures into our pursuit of the good life, individually and as members of distinct moral communities. Answers will vary, of course, and they will most likely be conveyed by narratives rather than statistics. I suspect they will also be less sensational and more nuanced than the answers the first question tends to get. Moreover, the latter question and the answers that follow will not elicit simple and programmatic action points, rather they will elicit the deployment of practical wisdom.

Macross82996• 7 years ago

The good life as members of distinct moral communities ... I suspect [answers] will also be less sensational and more nuanced

I really don't know about that. Defining "The good life as a member of a distinct moral community" has lead to all sorts of sensational moral panics of the past. i.e. "what kind of good Christian plays D&D"?

matt_lo2• 7 years ago

I play Fortnite almost every day for varying reasons:

- I have adult customers who like playing/talking with someone who makes what they buy.

- I have former colleagues I talk to and catch up with.

- I have gaming friends who want someone whose competitive to play with.

- I use it to decompress for the day... or add a ton of stress, depending on whether I can "edit my builds" fast enough for the dub.

tl;dr: From my perspective, Fortnite is a social network.

VectorLock• 7 years ago

I'm curious what kind of business do you do where Fortnite is a significant way to interact with your customers?

matt_lo2• 7 years ago

I wouldn't say it's significant. It's a handful of customers who play occasionally. No where near as much as I do.

I run a support bot business.

gfodor• 7 years ago

As we've worked on Hubs at Mozilla it's beginning to feel like we're one of what will become several key mechanisms for introducing avatar embodiment into our lives. There are a number of trends (VR, gaming, etc) pointing in this direction so it seems like wrangling with the moral questions around remote embodiment will become more and more prevalent.

DiJu519• 7 years ago

so cool :) !

phinnaeus• 7 years ago

Does anyone remember ViOS?

skybrian2• 7 years ago

There may be opportunity cost, but you can't beat something with nothing. Whatever activity you think is a "waste of time" needs to be compared with something specific that's allegedly better.

What, specifically, should the kids playing too much Fortnite be doing more of? Encourage them to do that.

victorbstan• 7 years ago

Weird flex, but ok.

manfredo3• 7 years ago

Really, games are like any other piece of media. Engage with them passively, and uncritically and one won't get much value out of it. Engage with them actively and they can have a positive impact.

My parents didn't really care what media I consumed but cared more about how I consumed it. Plenty of games have the potential to explore and foster interesting experiences. I've learned a lot through games. In fact I'd say that two of the most important things I've learned I've learned through games: the importance of a strong work ethic, and discovering my passing for computer technology (which later led to a career in software development). Games can be mindless and intellectually numb. But the same could be said of any other piece of media.

Granted I am of the opinion that battle Royale games provide less than strategy games, and most RPGs but I am not nearly experienced enough in the BR genre to have much conviction in this opinion.

jdmichal• 7 years ago

I think most games have orthogonal twitch and strategy components. All games of course have some strategy -- even decided games like Checkers have the optimal strategy, along side unoptimal ones.

There are "action" games (high twitch) that have very high strategic content. The kicker is that sometimes twitch can serve as a ceiling for strategy. That is, below a certain twitch level, some strategies are not viable or available. Games with very low twitch minimize this, like turn-based RPGs and strategy games. But even StarCraft requires high twitch (aka unit micro) to execute some strategies!

manfredo3• 7 years ago

Even ostensibly twitch based games have a lot of strategy. 2D fighters have tons of strategy, so do games like * Souls. Stealth games also require good strategy and spacial reasoning coupled with strong execution.

joelmartinez6• 7 years ago

I think this comment is right on the mark. The core question parents should be asking is, how is my child engaging with the game? If it's a few hours of spending time with friends, great. Even if it's many more hours and they are engaging in a competitive manner that can be a rewarding experience. However I suspect that the much more common modality is a mixture of active and passive consumption, which can quickly become passive due to some elements of the current gaming environment. My personal experience with ~3K hours of Dota throughout high school and early college was highly mixed, with periods of intense engagement and many many more of mindless playing or watching twitch (outside of the 3K in-game hours).

I think that there are valid concerns to the high potential for passive time-sinking in these modern games which exist with an entire ecosystem of a competitive scene, streaming personalities, skins, friends, and more. There are healthy ways to engage with each of the elements of these ecosystems, but it is something that should be discussed and monitored.

jdreyfuss• 7 years ago

Interesting article. I like the re-framing of questioning gaming (and other uses of technology) from the basis of what it adds rather than what it subtracts.

I believe there is value in gaming. There's value in storytelling, in mastering small skills, and in the positive feedback of progression. There's value in shared experiences and in the communities that spring up within and around games.

My own struggle is with the diminishing returns. The "danger" of games to me, such as they are, is not in the value-per-unit-of-time ratio, but rather in the total amount of time that they can suck up. It's not hard at all to spend hundreds of hours in games. For me, if I take any given hour of gaming and compare it to an hour of something else I could have been doing, I'm quite happy to have spent it gaming. But when I take the sum of that time over a year, or a lifetime, and compare it to other pursuits, that's when I start to question it in my own life.

tl;dr: the "danger" of gaming to me is not in the content of games, or in gaming not having anything to add to someone's life, but rather in the fact that, for many people, gaming seems uniquely able to suck up so much time -- much more so than what it ultimately adds.

dna1133• 7 years ago

As someone who spent much their teens logged into World of Warcraft, I wish people would be a bit more open minded about this.

Someone like Prince Harry saying that Fortnite is a waste of time, is seriously damaging to the image someone might have of themselves playing it. I doubt Prince Harry has got the first clue, and his opinion of it being a waste of time is totally subjective.

It took me probably a decade until I realized that the large chunk of my teens I spent logged in to World of Warcraft were not a blemish on my life. The game had so much depth, it was incredibly challenging, and the social aspect was a huge part of it. My family and our societies negative view of the game encouraged a negative view of myself, seeing as I enjoyed it so much.

Of course you should encourage variety, but let your kid play the fuckin game!

jacobush• 7 years ago

For how many hours a day?

dna1133• 7 years ago

I averaged probably 3 hours a day.

alanfalcon• 7 years ago

The same activity can be "numbing" (used to escape real problems and responsibilities) for one person, and energizing and truly comforting to someone else. World of Warcraft absolutely had (and has) people who fall on both sides of that divide, and I'm sure the same is true for Fortnite. It can also start as constructive/energizing and become numbing/escapism if you make someone feel ashamed of it, as you say.

brightball• 7 years ago

Having spent a ton of my teens playing online games, I agree with you to a point.

It’s also a little dismissive to assume that this is just like every other game. There are so many psychological tricks going on to add a “feeder pellet” aspect to some games today that they are truly designed to be addictive. Games with in app purchases or ads, are usually built for it. Games that have timed reward systems to incentivize you to keep coming back at that same time every day are also part of it. You see these systems with most of the “free” games on touch screens and as a parent I can tell you that my children are significantly different playing them vs playing any other game with their friends (even online). It’s a noticeable enough and shocking enough behavioral change that you have to remove it.

When not having access to a game for a certain period of time creates anger or tears, it’s no longer just a game.

greiskul2• 7 years ago

Does Fortnite implement any of these dark patterns? I think the only paid purchases in it are cosmetic in nature, no? And the game itself is mostly skill based.

It doesn't even have the MMORPG hook where if you don't play, your character is weaker then of people that play more then you.

saluki• 7 years ago

y, has anyone seen kids playing Roblox? It actually has a slot machine looking mechanic? I'm a fan of Minecraft, Fortnite and PUBG but Roblox just looks like gambling for kids. Any thoughts?

dageshi• 7 years ago

I've seen player bases (or at least parts of them) beg for these systems to be introduced. Battlefield being the most recent example I can think of. They built Battlefield 1 which didn't really have any "feeder pellet" mechanisms then at some point they asked what the community wanted in the game and the response came back "We need daily challenges/rewards to keep us playing." It wasn't enough to just play the game, some particularly large subset of the game needed something to be constantly working towards to keep them playing, they needed a short term goal/reward.

So they introduced timed challenges (get so many headshots in one life, get a skin as reward) into BF1 as an update and then expanded that in BFV.

astrobe_• 7 years ago

That's why I prefer free open source games. Not only the gameplay is not tainted by grey/dark patterns, but also if it is an online game you don't depend on one company running the servers.

UnpossibleJim2• 7 years ago

Am I the only one who feels like this is another echo of moral panic of the great Dungeons & Dragons scare of the mid eighties, which then morphed into the WoW scare of the early 2000's, which has now morphed into the Fortnite scare of 2019? It seems like every 20ish years there is a new and terrible game for parents, media and establishment to find and reach perfect harmony about that coalesces into a cry of "What about the children?!" all the way t Capital Hill and beyond. Ugh.

lghh2• 7 years ago

Compared to the D&D scare, this is less of a moral panic of fear of the unknown and more of a panic of lost productivity. D&D's panic, or at least how I understand it, was more like the panic around Harry Potter. Fortnite is more similar to getting mad at your kids for watching too much television or WoW.

TheGRS2• 7 years ago

It's not every 20 years, it's pretty much a constant. Some games or trends just happen to get more mainstream attention than others.

I don't think we're ever going to truly get rid of this sense of "this thing is bad for my kid, we need to get rid of it!" Since ultimately some bad thing happens to a kid/parent and they feel more validated amongst others who feel the same way about that thing. That's an incredibly powerful emotion.

We probably just need to be better at getting people to be generally more open minded and to see the world in less black and white terms.

accnumnplus1• 7 years ago

If you play fortnite backwards there are satanic images.

Moru• 7 years ago

Every GTA release is aimed to chock more than the previous one. I watched store clerks with a long line of kids wanting to buy GTA V, they asked for phone number to parents to ask for permission to sell and informed what type of game it was. Great hype for the game :)

taneq• 7 years ago

It's all the fault of that devil music those kids are listening to these days.

andrepd• 7 years ago

Am I the only one who feels like this is another echo of moral panic of the great Dungeons & Dragons scare of the mid eighties, which then morphed into the WoW scare of the early 2000's

Don't forget the late 90s Doom scare, the sole cause of Columbine.

rdiddly3• 7 years ago

Not only are you not the only one to notice this, it's addressed in TFA.

"I get that these concerns are sometimes misguided and overblown, but I also think that it's bad practice to assume that present fears are wholly illegitimate simply because you can think of analogous concerns in the past that in retrospect appear 'ridiculous' to you."

fullshark• 7 years ago

If someone like Prince Harry just sharing his opinion that it's a waste of time is seriously damaging, that to me indicates that he may be hitting a nerve there.

recursive• 7 years ago

As someone who's never played Fortnite or WOW, Prince Harry kind of sounds like he's trying to hit a nerve.

dna1133• 7 years ago

It's hitting a nerve because it's not just Prince Harry, its many people, and often times its parents, and friends. It's the collective "your'e doing it wrong" coming from society.

Its not such a big deal from one person but if it's something that is a significant part of your life and you are constantly bombarded that it is negative then yeah its gonna have a negative effect on you.

chongli• 7 years ago

It's hitting a major nerve. Video games are far more dangerous than comic books or movies or TV. Why? Because they're a success surrogate. They take people who may feel disillusioned with the difficulty of making a life and give them an easy fix. It's the number one problem with video games: they hijack the reward mechanisms that are supposed to motivate you to improve your life. This puts them on a level closer to hardcore drugs than to other forms of entertainment.

izend• 7 years ago

I bet Prince Harry doesn't think all those hours at the clubs [1] was a waste of time (trust me they are definitely a giant waste of time too).

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-harry-takes-quite-a-sh...

chillwaves14• 7 years ago

I doubt prince harry spent literally thousands of hours at the club as the majority of WoW players do. If not 10s of thousands of hours.

madrox2• 7 years ago

I was 33 before I really got over the shame I felt for doing the things I enjoy, like video games. Because of that experience, I hope I will be a better parent in this regard than most. The cries of moral bankruptcy in video games seems to be relegated to a segment of adults that are only getting older, which is as it should be.

rdiddly3• 7 years ago

There are no adults or children who get younger, so...

meowface• 7 years ago

MMORPGs (like EVE Online) inspired more creativity and entrepreneurial thinking in me than almost anything else I did in my life. I'm kind of glad I don't play them anymore as an adult, since they would likely consume a huge chunk of my time, but they were a very formative experience for me and I don't regret dedicating much of my teenage years to them.

_bxg1• 7 years ago

The point is that it's not as simple as "games are good" or "games are bad". Not only is each game different, each person is different, and each combination of the two affects a person on many different dimensions, some good and some bad, and the definition of what it truly means to move in a positive direction of personal growth is multifaceted and nuanced, such that blanket statements can't really be made. An individual (or an individual child's parent) needs to look at their particular case and consider all dimensions of effect, together.

noonespecial• 7 years ago

Prince Harry? The advice of a Royal who will never need to work at anything about what is or isn't a waste of time is about as useful as a codfish's advice about mountain biking.

on_and_off• 7 years ago

hear hear ..

The fact that we care as much about the life and opinions of celebs or nobles is one of the weirdest human traits.

We are not that far from tribal cavemen yet.

woah• 7 years ago

Vitalik Buterin played it so much that he named his startup after a race of evil elves, the Ethereum. Now Ethereum is one of the most successful online games around, with some “whales” dumping tens of millions of dollars into it.

chillwaves14• 7 years ago

How productive for society.

Tycho• 7 years ago

It is indeed mean to shame people for their counter-productive lifestyle choices but if it warns off others from going down the same path maybe it’s worth the cost on a societal level.

ct520• 7 years ago

Uh good for you. I still think it’s a waste of time, glad you feel better about something you invested so much time into.

chillwaves14• 7 years ago

I couldn't disagree more. The problem with spending literally thousands of hours in a game is most of what you experience and learn is not transferable to real life.

You are playing in someone else's sandbox and I have no doubt that it stunts developement in the real world.

-someone who spent far too much time playing these games.

Once the game is gone you will have nothing to show for it. It's worse than any hobby because it demands so much time with so little return.

AQuantized• 7 years ago

I largely disagree with this. In WoW I spent a ton of time reading and writing with other people, organizing and recruiting for a bunch of guilds, and making a lot of great long term friends.

That's not to deny that you can avoid doing those things, or that many games don't provide those same opportunities, but rather that it's not a fundamental property of games that you gain nothing beyond the game. I gained a lot from my time in WoW.

I think this also ignores that the alternative for a lot of people would be watching TV or using social media.

It's possible there is a problem with games like Fortnite in that you're communicating almost solely by voice and there's a very limited complexity, but it might just be that there's something about it that I don't get.

Yajirobe2• 7 years ago

Yes, everything in life should be measured by how much applicable it is to the real world.

rchaud3• 7 years ago

Someone like Prince Harry saying that Fortnite is a waste of time, is seriously damaging to the image someone might have of themselves playing it.

I find this hard to believe. I was 12yo when Carmageddon and Postal came out. Both were widely covered in newspapers and cable news as excessively violent, and bad for kids. I still played the hell out of both. Why would I have cared what Prince Harry thought?

pierotofy• 7 years ago

Maybe we should just tell kids to watch TV. Wait...

chillwaves14• 7 years ago

How is TV a defense of videogames?

yters• 7 years ago

There seems to be at least some objective criteria for good and bad uses of time. In general, almost everyone has the same set of needs in order to flourish, and the same requirements to meet those needs. So, uses of time that better fit the general requirements for flourishing are objectively better. For example, everyone needs to be healthy, and subsisting on a diet consisting entirely of candy is unlikely to be healthy for the general population (although I did hear about a guy living only on Mars bars).

With video games, while we minimize the importance of geography due to virtualization, geographically located communities seems to be the most beneficial for our social wellbeing. From a purely evolutionary viewpoint, we cannot reproduce virtually (yet!). Sinking all of one's time into online games and relationships will diminish our ability to develop geographical communities.

On the other hand, it's wrong to write off video games altogether. As an artistic medium, they are pretty unique and their true potential has yet to be realized. I think the indie scene is great in this regard. And exposure to great art is essential for human flourishing.

icebraining2• 7 years ago

From a purely evolutionary viewpoint, we cannot reproduce virtually (yet!)

Sperm donation and IVF is quite virtual already.

davidwitt415• 7 years ago

Video games are fine, but as I tell my sons, there's a huge difference between learning how to play guitar and learning how to play Guitar Hero. Virtual worlds are fine to engage with, but those accomplishments are virtual and ephemeral, while real world skills remain with you.

jmckib2• 7 years ago

I'm sure you're well-intentioned and want what's best for your kids, but I'm going to push back a bit. My ability to play video games in general has improved over the years, and for me it's a source of pleasure. It's not ephemeral because many of the games I play now have the same mechanics as the ones I played when I was a kid.

People like listening to guitar, but there are also a lot of people who love watching others play videogames on sites like Twitch. Of course both playing videogames and playing guitar professionally aren't a realistic goal for most people.

linkev1172• 7 years ago

I don't think the amount of utility for guitar is the same as for video games.

I understand very few people get to be professional guitarists or gamers. However, after that there are rapidly decreasing returns for video games. Guitar can be a source of pleasure for people you meet. It's a far more interesting skill than playing video games decently well. Guitar challenges the brain more; its learning curve extends farther than any video game. Guitar opens up a world of creativity and improvisation, name me a video game that can provide something at that scale (I'm an avid gamer so I'm sure there are none). Plus, it can get you laid.

I just don't buy that playing video games can provide much benefit. It seems like a meager reason to justify a questionable habit.

percentcer• 7 years ago

I'm not really a fan of that guy at the party who pulls out a guitar, but I'm always down to play some Guitar Hero with other skilled rhythm gamers.

spinach• 7 years ago

Why? I love listening people play guitar live.

Is it because he makes you feel bad that you wasted your time playing video games instead of learning the real guitar?

anonytrary2• 7 years ago

I used to play MMORPGs in high school. You learn a lot about business, focus, and prioritization with video games. Sure, these are ephemeral worlds, but you are still learning and things you learn stick with you.

chillwaves14• 7 years ago

And what if you spent your life learning in other venues, could not still learn these things?

mhh__• 7 years ago

The point about Fortnite basically being a real place is very astute.

evrydayhustling• 7 years ago

Love this article but take issue with this statement: "The experience of place is an irreducibly embodied experience.". The author moderates it by pointing out that there is a physical experience of gaming, but I think this misses the point that we don't yet know the limits of virtual experiences.

There is a similar attitude when folks insist that robotic embodiment is required for AI, or that AI structures must mimic the human brain to achieve "real" intelligence. I think these attitudes, by trying to draw a bright line, lead people to consistently underestimate how powerful new media can be.

Animats• 7 years ago

This is just some guy commenting on a New York Times article. The actual article is better.[1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/opinion/sunday/fortnite-s...

skilled• 7 years ago

In my experience, there are either two parts of the brain or two personalities within you that constantly feed on one another.

For example, when you start playing World of Warcraft again, and a week later it feels like you are a crack addict who needs 10+ hours every day. But the game feels great. It feels great until you hit a wall either in-game or in real life.

And the younger you are, the more difficult it is to hit either of those walls. Last year I hit a bit of a slump in my life and had a few 'dark' months, so I downloaded WoW right around the time of when the new expansion was coming out.

Not only did I realize that Blizzard has surgically removed the "soul" of the game (for whatever reason), I also realized that my conscience can't really keep up with the game for that long.

dorkwood2• 7 years ago

I went through something similar to the author once, where I looked back on all the time I spent playing games in my youth and thought “wow, what a waste!”

What I came to realise, however, (after reading about Self Determination Theory) was that I likely spent so much of my time playing games because it was the only way for me to experience autonomy and competency as a young adult. I had no other way of meeting those needs.

Games taught me that if I practice at something, I can get better. They gave me a world I could exercise control over when everything else in my life was determined by school and my parents.

If you know someone who you think plays too many games, look to see if they have any other ways of meeting those basic human needs for autonomy, competence, and social interaction. If their lives are deficient in one or all of those areas, games can be a lifesaver.

stiglitz• 7 years ago

A lifesaver or a crutch.

dorkwood2• 7 years ago

Can't it be both?

narrator• 7 years ago

The worst part about playing video games is you get a brain full of lots of totally useless video game trivia. When I realized that programming was almost as fun as playing video games I just did that instead. Even the most aimless screwing around programming will have a better long term impact on one's life than videogaming IMHO.

teekert• 7 years ago

"I can't quite claim that playing hours of Mortal Kombat, most of those socializing with friends, was good."

I played a lot of Street Figher on the SNES, always loved it, always played or some time with friend and then do something else. I don't think it was bad?

Fortnite and the Good Life

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