Why Some Men Don't Work: Video Games Have Gotten Really Good | Hacker News Reader

Why Some Men Don't Work: Video Games Have Gotten Really Good

nytimes.com

42 pointshvo58 comments

Another article blaming video games?

Honestly, the reason some people out of work play video games are more likely one of the following:

1. They're fun and they reduce the tedium of everyday life. Others could do the same thing with sports, tabletop games, chess, TV shows and movies, etc. There's no practical difference between an unemployed guy playing video games all day and the same person watching TV all day or playing golf all day. It's merely a way to take your mind off all the boredom while looking for a job.

2. Playing games can in theory be a way out of poverty, at least in today's internet social media driven world. How many of these people have YouTube channels or popular presences online? If you have no other practical options, then trying to make money through video game Let's Plays and YouTube monetisation seems like a decent last resort.

And yes, the job market is broken too. Maybe if companies stopped trying to look only for people with every skill and piece of expertise needed in advance and were willing to train people to do jobs, we might have less people unemployed at the moment. Heck, maybe the New York Times could help here. Stop doing the common media thing of mostly hiring upper class college graduates from privileged families (which seems to be a trend at the moment) and start hiring people who want to work rather than those who whine about how poor people act in internet editorials.

YouTube, although marketed as a great entrepreneurship channel, is nothing of this sort, and the stats tell that story , that only a rare few can make a living out of it.

And this is part of a larger "scam" being perpetuated currently, that today is a golden age of entrepreneurship and that's the job of the future , mostly because of all kinds of platforms(like Amazon fulfillment, t-shirt printing, etc) open so many new opportunities for entrepreneurship.

While the stats tell a different story , that there's a decline in entrepreneurship, and if you look carefully, you'll see how platforms actually suck the core out of many small businesses and leave them to run empty shells, businesses largely without a competitive advantage or value creation.

Well that's actually a good point. The 'sharing economy' could arguably be better described as the 'work for free so some millionaire gets richer' economy. Or the 'low paid contractor' economy.

I'm pretty sure if we go back long enough and stretch our imagination we'll find out that the nazis were also the result of video games. :)

The reason must be video games for sure, surely not because you need 5-year experience for a shitty part-time cashier job paying minimum salary because the job market collapsed.

Where do you need 5 years of experience for a minimum wage job? Everyone I know who wanted a minimum wage job got one without any experience, maybe I just know a lot of outliers though.

That was probably a bit of hyperbole on the poster's part, but as an example I once had to work for free for a week in order to secure a minimum wage job washing dishes. I had no formal dishwashing experience and had to prove I could actually wash dishes. This is in CA and I have no education beyond high school.

I didn't think that was legal. Hiring you for a 1 week period with your employment up for renewal at the end of the week sure, but not this.

For example, in Massachusetts unpaid internships are illegal unless you can prove it is job training AND that it does not perform a job functions that you would otherwise have to pay someone to do. Your situation fits the first part (it can be called training) but not the second.

It definitely wasn't legal. But I was desperate.

philz coffee, for real.. i've talked about it elsewhere on this forum

that was the most insane interview process that i have ever seen.. at least in regards to the asymmetry between interview process and the work being hired for.. i joked that i was expecting at one point to be asked to draw up a linked list on a whiteboard, or what is the worst case execution of heapsort

'->' denotes 'if accepted'

email a resume-> fill out comprehensive online application with questions like 'what is your greatest achievement in life' -> vid conference interview -> in house interview to meet the hiring manager -> in house interview where you meet the manager you will be working under

minimum wage, and is even one of the least demanding jobs by cafe standards: philz is all pour over, and each employee is only ever responsible for four cups at a time..this is at least how it is designed, i'd be unsurprised if real employees are required to take on more work during a rush beyond what they were hired to do without any pay incentives to do so..

but really, do you honestly think that everything is fine with the way labor, especially on the low income end, is being treated?

there is a serious problem here that needs to be address instead of ignored by holding up accusations of hyperbole as more important to discuss

your response reads like a dismissal of the gp

there are important factors to consider in regard to your comment

regional: where do you live? where are these labor issues worse? rural? city? east, west, south, mid?

educational: how educated are you and your friends? are those being denied work well educated? primary and secondary school educated?

racial discrimination, gender discrimination, age discrimination, and on and on.. this is a very complex issue

but i'll address your comment being similarly dismissive: Everyone I know who wanted a minimum wage job got one without any experience, maybe I just know a lot of outliers though.

all of your friends working minimum wage jobs had 0 work experience? how old are you? 14?

> but really, do you honestly think that everything is fine with the way labor, especially on the low income end, is being treated?

I never said it was perfect, but I don't think it is anything to complain about in most cases either. Obviously in some cases minimum wage workers are exploited (and workers at different income levels too) but I think it is a mistake to say that there is a huge systemic problem. There is definitely an inequality problem, but I don't think there is a huge problem with the minimum wage jobs themselves.

> all of your friends working minimum wage jobs had 0 work experience? how old are you? 14?

OK maybe I should reword what I said. Everyone I know without experience who tried to get a minimum wage job, got one without an issue as far as I know. I don't know why that is surprising though, places like grocery stores and fast food have lots of turnover, if you apply to a tonne of those places eventually you will likely get to the top of the pile. That's not always the case of course, but in my experience it has been since I live in a decent area.

Seriously. I don't want to become one of those types to shit on journalists, but trying to deemphasize all the world's issues and pinning it on "those boys and their games" makes it hard to defend.

And the article basically boils down to men "losing" 15 hours of work a year due to games. That's a rounding error considering they say men are working 203 fewer hours than they used to. The study also ignores time spent on social media yet still says "it didn't grow as much as games." Bullshit. I see far more people scrolling hours upon hours on Facebook and twitter than I know of who seriously play games.

Games are the symptom. Dig further and you'll find the cause.

It's more the other way around, no? It's easy to get that cashier job if you're fresh out of high school, but no one wants to hire a college-educated 25-year-old to do that, since they'll just be gone in a month when they find a position that pays more than $9/hr or whatever.

Counter-opinion from twitter: https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/881862753115230208

"Table from their latest paper. 1) Nonemployed 21-30 men devoting less time to leisure overall since '04-'07..."

That doesn't contradict the claim that they're spending more time on video games. To illustrate: suppose leisure time goes from 25% to 23% and leisure time spent playing video games goes from 1% to 80%.

(N.B.: the core claim is ridiculous for other reasons...)

It contradicts the claim made in the title that they're not working because of the video games.

The point is precisely that it doesn't.

Here's a counter hypothesis: some men don't work because the economy is bad for them, and they're only playing more video games than they used to because video games have gotten less expensive over the past 20+ years.

The price is definitely a factor here. Look at Steam, Humble Bundle, etc. You can now buy tons of games for less than a dollar each if you time it right.

Steam et al is only half of the equation. Hardware is vastly cheaper also.

It used to be that a decent gaming PC would cost over $1500. Now you can get one (or an equivalent console, thanks to the proliferation of the x86-64 architecture) for around $500.

>Other experts have pointed to a host of reasons — globalization, technological change, the shift to service work — that employers may not be hiring young men.

Right. The relevant, new idea that my comment was meant to introduce is that games are cheaper now, so even NEETs without rich parents can afford them.

Seems its hard to to trace causation either way. It could be that people play video games to escape the tedium of being un- or under-employed, rather than are unemployed because they play video games instead of seeking work.

This. The same people that can be addicted to games may have the potential to be addicted to Chess in other time periods.

But they will be regarded as genius chess masters.

On the other hand, with our surplus of resources, its no wonder a percentage of our people can afford to do nothing but play games.

Also, with our constrained resources, no wonder a percentage can only afford to play video games (as opposed to other pastimes that require significantly more space, transportation and equipment).

Superficially both resource arguments look like exact opposites, but I don't think that they are really conflicting.

Listen, one line goes up, and the other goes down, and here in America we STRICTLY ABIDE by the narrative that people who don't find outrageous success in all of their endeavours are lazy.

Please, get with the program!

The whole argument is built on ignoring the question "why aren't employers hiring young men" and asking the very presumptuous question "Why don't young men want to work?"

I can't get access to the full paper without paying $5, which I'm not going to do, however the abstract doesn't sound very convincing either, making the argument that video games take up a larger percentage of men's leisure time, and younger men have more leisure time than older men, so video games must be stopping men from working.

It's not a very convincing argument, and the converse could just as well be true: older men would prefer to spend more time working than enjoying leisure time.

The paper can be freely accessed at NBER (http://www.nber.org/papers/w23552). There's no need to pay anything.

Anyway, it's not really a presumptions question. Or at least, it wasn't supposed to be: the fact that people are doing something doesn't imply anything about what they should do, and neither does describing their choices imply anything about either the socially preferred set of choices or the authors' preferred set of choices. So if young men were putting in less work hours so they could stay at home and play video games, that would be nobody else's business.

But the issue is that that doesn't to be the case, and the authors made no effort of trying to tackle alternative explanations. When I read an economics article, I expect that even if the authors won't try to address alternative explanations, they will at least acknowledge they exist. After skimming the article, that doesn't to have happened at all.

Don't know how the authors want me to believe that video games are to blame for the lower working hours of young males when they followed closely the working hours of older males up until 2008, either. Are they gonna pin it all on Halo 3?

> You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.

> You are eligible for a free download if you are a subscriber, a corporate associate of the NBER, a journalist, an employee of the U.S. federal government with a ".GOV" domain name, or a resident of nearly any developing country or transition economy.

I am none of these things.

The drop in employment is mostly that men in college aren't also holding down jobs. Maybe video games have something to do with that but I'm not very concerned.

https://www.economy.com/dismal/analysis/datapoints/295750/Ar...

> One hears this regret in talking to older gamers. “Of course gaming has interfered with any attempt to look for or do any serious work,” says Arturo, 29, who reckons he has spent 600 hours playing Kerbal Space Program, a space-flight simulator, and possibly more at Starcraft II, a strategy game. He doesn’t just miss the forgone income and opportunities; he could have been reading, he laments. But those hours are gone for ever.

I've been working for 10 years, since my early 20s. I've also played Dota (2) for 2000 hours, and read VB.Net books, and spent time with friends I no longer have contact with, and working out even though I'm now kind of out of shape for the last couple of years (started a c25k to catch back up).

My point is, a lot of things I've done in the past are "gone" now. A lot was leisure, some was exercise, some was work related. None of it is relevant now, to my life, to my work, etc, yet I see no point in regretting any of it.

All experiences shape you, no matter if they were good, bad, productive or not. And even if you spend all your (free) time being "productive", you don't guarantee that it's long term relevant, or that you don't die of stress.

A balance is probably good, and games are a lot better than other passive pastimes.

Ugh, wouldn't be working either if I could find a switch already.

I like this article much better: https://www.1843magazine.com/features/escape-to-another-worl...

Just as an interesting datapoint, people subscribed to gaming-relating subreddits as of June 2017: 22,482,107

Versus people subscribed to programming-related subreddits (not counting r/ProgrammerHumor): 2,287,089.

There are currently ~290 video-game related subreddits with over 10,000 subscribers.

Just wait until VR MMOs. I guarantee many lives will be completely destroyed...

Only if they can make the headset comfortable enough to wear for hours on end. I have a PSVR and the longest I can go without taking a break is an hour for some games (i.e. Rush of Blood) and 15 for others (Resident Evil).

For the first one, I just get sweaty and fog up the lenses. For the second one I actually get motion sick (even though Rush of Blood has far faster motion, the presence of a fixed position object alleviates the motion sickness)

Yeah, as much as the games industry has grown since 2004, a VR WoW (modern equivalent) when VR is cheap/available enough will be incredible/terrifying.

People keep insisting that something cool and futuristic will destroy people's lives, which seems like a bad excuse for ignoring all the awful, mundane, present-day things destroying people's lives.

For instance, I expect paramilitary activity to start killing a few people on a regular basis, and it's not even the future yet!

Games have become more popular and potentially more addictive, not necessarily better (for my definition of better, games nowadays are generally worse than in the 90s and early 200s).

Whats your definition of better

The good ol days are always better.

And the new generation is always lazy.

and the older generation have always had it easy

Nostalgia

The original Thief was released in 1998, and I haven't felt more immersed by a game since. The next year gave us Superman, though, and I have yet to play a game as horrible in the ensuing years, so there's that. I guess what I'm saying is that I disagree with GP's premise.

Well, 1998 didn't only bring Thief, it also gave Baldur's gate, Grim Fandango, Half Life and so on, masterpieces. AAA games were going where no one had gone before, and were not afraid to innovate. Fast-forward 19 years and not even graphics are evolving anymore, nevermind gameplay.

Sure, the worst games of the 90s are worse than the worst games of today, but the best games of the 90s wrote history, whereas today's best games are mostly consumables meant to pass the time until the next Steam purchase.

A lot of Games these days, especially in mobile and online, are focused towards giving players quick rewards and keeping them addicted rather than providing a meaningful experience.

On the other hand you have some excellent experiences available like Papers Please, Hotline Miami, KSP etc. So it isn't like games in the old days were better, rather you have more shittier stuff available today that is much better marketed.

I can agree 1000% with this

Games like Papers please are outliers, not representative for today's gaming market. Back in the day you'd have AAA teams constantly trying to innovate (classic examples Bullfrog Lionhead Looking glass Westwood Black isle and so on and so on). Nowadays AAA teams simply rehash old concepts, focus being put on milking existing franchises and marketing, artistic freedom sacrificed in the name of pandering to the lowest common denominator. Games today are generally worse because of that.

Better is when games are treated like art, not consumables that you churn out every year to milk the brand/franchise.

I knew I'd be accused of nostalgia because people have the tendency to talk out of their ass without knowing the subject. While I do hold a degree of nostalgia, I am capable of seeing when a game ages very badly, and I also enjoy some modern games quite a lot. My opinion that games today are worse is based on a long history of playing games and seeing if the newcomers are a revolution, evolution or recycled material. Most of the stuff that comes today is either recycled crap or, worse, a terrible idea that someone thought would be good. For example, Divinity original sin is a good RPG to couch coop with friends and family, but the complete mash of ideas (zombies, necromancers, trolls, ogres, and much more, a children's recipe basically) makes it very frustrating; good execution gameplay wise, but atmosphere and immersion are kind of bad. Would write more but I'm on mobile.

Golden ages just switch eras/platforms

Not really. For example 90s gave us the RTS and FPS genres as we know them today, among others, and basically were the building blocks for making gaming mainstream. They were a renaissance of sorts, and many elements you see in games today can be traced back to that period. What did the last decade do, apart from going after a wild goose chase with the mobile fad, and adding microtransactions which didn't really improve the gaming experience?

I know women who play puzzle games on their phone but don't consider them games.

Had a girlfriend ages ago addicted to Candy Crush. I remember one Sunday - she'd invited her sister and mum round for Sunday lunch, which I was cooking.

Came out of the kitchen and saw all 3 playing the same game. Went outside for a cigarette and the lady upstairs was leaning out of her window playing the same game but with the sound on ('tasty...' etc)

We didn't last long after that.

I'm not having a go at them playing the game, I am pretty good at procrastinating myself in different ways (on this site for example), but I swear there has got to be a scientific study somewhere on the birthrate being affected by people playing CC or mooching on Facebook.

Got a laugh out of "Recreational computer time"

If these men aren't working, where are they getting the money to buy vidya and keep a roof over their head while they play? Their parents?

It you didn't read, they are talking about overall average declines in working on the order of a couple hours a week.

It is entirely possible that they're Hikkomori.

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