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Comment by Wintamute | Hacker News Reader

> We're capable of creating endless numbers of worlds and species, but we can't think of new things to do with them.

> What's sad is despite all our ingenuity, so many of our mechanics reinforce ideas and behaviors we know to be harmful.

Reality Check: You are a lifeform that feeds on the transition of matter from low entropy to high entropy states. We very literally consume worlds. We should try and do that in a way that doesn't undermine our own survival chances, and, as long as that doesn't interfer with the previous point in a way that minimises harm to other lifeforms that we consider useful or beautiful. No amount of virtue signalling and related posturing is going to change that fundamental reality.

It's very typical of Kuchera and Polygon to produce such badly thought-through moralising on videogames, but considering how closely the theme of the game runs to a fundamental physical truth of the human condition I find the criticism rather crass.

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>>> You are a lifeform that feeds on the transition of matter from low entropy to high entropy states

This is a video game. You could be anything, do anything. Introduce mechanics that do not require the consumption of worlds. Lots of games have mechanics that don't require stripmining planets.

I read the tweets more as disappointment that we can't do something different in our creation. Just because the real world is built on consumption doesn't mean all art has to be.

If it's art, perhaps that's exactly the point the artist is trying to make. I think I tend to agree with critics of the article, because rather than explore that point, they use it as a chance to generate pageviews by an incredibly shallow moralizing of something that could be considered art.

Any transgressive or satirical piece of art could have this exact same critique leveled at it, but generally they don't because critics in other media have a more nuanced understand of the relationship between art and the artists intentions.

Should all cameras be forced to create Dadaist interpretations of what they capture instead of a best-attempt at the actual image?

The camera's mechanics aren't as restrictive of what or how you can take pictures as NMS is of what you can do with its simulated universe.

If the games not based on consumption how will they monetise it post-sale though!?! /ignorant-cynicism

What do you mean? Marx made plenty of money off his books.

Interesting thought that I've not explored before, any idea how much - what he did with it initially?

> Just because the real world is built on consumption doesn't mean all art has to be.

Correct. But because the real world is built on consumption, criticising creative expression for exploring that is at best invalid. What's going on with Polygon is that they're making this invalid criticism to further their political narratives.

What are their political narratives?

Whichever shallow ideologies and narratives happen to be trendy. The sort that frequently spring forth from the rich vein of cultural authoritarianism that runs though most journalism these days.

You are accusing a blog of having shallow and trendy ideologies, but you can't even describe them?

I chose not to in this case, leaving it as a sort of exercise for the reader. If the cultural authoritarian nature of certain types of modern media, of which Polygon is but one example doesn't immediately ring some bells for you then I'm not sure we have a lot of common ground. And me listing out a set of what I believe to be negative ideologies and narratives might quickly get off topic and acrimonious. Was I wrong?

While I agree with you in general on the subject of Polygon's political bent, I don't think the criticism is invalid because of it. The crux of the issue is this:

> There is no way to create on these worlds

You needn't look at anyone's politics, pro or con, to wonder: in a world where the second best selling game of all time is Minecraft, how much sense is there in a galaxy-sized sandbox where you can't build anything?

The difference between NMS and a game like Minecraft is, that although the latter also has the same resource-consuming and animal-killing type of exploration and exploitation, it also allows for sustainable practices like planting trees and breeding animals, and doing other things that increase utility and lowers in-game entropy. Even Spore has this. There's nothing wrong with expressing a wish for a game to go beyond some perceived harsh reality of invasive consumption with just minimizing harm. Reality and the human condition is more than just that.

I'd argue Minecraft even encourages sustainability. I remember creating farms, because it was easier/safer than exploring and stripping.

The sustainability practices that you mention are needed when the demand on resources exceeds the ability of the resources to otherwise replenish: a conservation problem. It sounds like in NMS it would be sustainable for a single explorer to attempt to strip mine the planet and nuke the whales since the influence a single player could exert is insignificant on a planetary scale.

And if you've walked around one of these simulated planets it's unreal insignificant you are!

In fact I find my brain tends to do the common human ego-centric thing and compartmentalizes the entire planet to only that which I've experienced.

Yet if I just land on a planet and tape the joystick to move my avatar forward... well I could go walk away and come back in six months to a year and see if I made it back to my starting position... and even if I recorded it to watch it at my leisure, my FOV will only cover a small fraction of the total surface area.

It's a gross exaggeration to suggest a single, lone character could "strip mine" an entire planet by themselves.

You need to gather enough radioactive isotopes to power your magical space plane and keep you alive and a few other elements to manufacture upgrades and that's about it. It's not like you're managing a global conglomerate with trillions of dollars of capital invested in machinery to extract every last mineral from the surface.

update

I think it says more about the people who interpret the mechanics this way than any statement Hello Games could be making by utilizing these mechanics.

Well put.

When Reed Richards prevents Galactus from consuming Earth, he's really screwing up the natural order of things. The jerk.

Richards, in fact, is interfering with the natural course of the universe. Galactus is a force of nature. He must exist for the universe to continue.

Richards intentions were selfish, but completely understandable and relatable.

But Humans and their actions are also a part of the natural course of the universe, so Richards was just acting according to the natural drive for survival of himself and his species.

"Reality Check: You are a lifeform that feeds on the transition of matter from low entropy to high entropy states. We very literally consume worlds. We should try and do that in a way that doesn't undermine our own survival chances, and, as long as that doesn't interfer with the previous point in a way that minimises harm to other lifeforms that we consider useful or beautiful. No amount of virtue signalling and related posturing is going to change that fundamental reality."

Joseph Campbell said it most succinctly:

"(All) life lives on life".[1]

[1] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/801710-life-lives-on-life-th...

Plants

Except autotrophs.

Not just humans, all life. Life is taking the chaos of the universe and imposing order on it. Holding that sort of structure causes entropy; the chaos of the universe causes entropy. The universe is going to fill up with entropy no matter what. It might as well be ordered, so that something can experience it, rather than chaotic, with nothing to experience it.

Contrarian clickbait 101: 'x is popular this week - let's write a piece "why x is bad"'

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