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Comment by rgoulter | Hacker News Reader

I played one game of Factorio that took about 30 hours; I 'almost' finished then decided I was done with that.

Then, when I was between jobs, I thought "oh, I see how I could do a better job; I'll just play one more game.." and my playtime quickly went up to 120 hours. I was writing TODO-lists in a book, etc. (The "craft no more than X items by hand" achievement was fun).

I mean, +1 to both "if you're on here you'll love it" and "if you're on here, be careful you don't spend too much time on it".

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Recently, my gf found me still awake at 05:00 playing factorio. Had completely forgot the time and thought it was closer to 02:00. That's when I realized that I had to stop playing the game because it is so addictive. I simply can't play that game in moderation.

Oxygen Not Included has the same sort of effect for me and my experience with that game has kept me from picking up Factorio. Once you start getting into ONI's automation tools and design optimization; time just ceases to exist.

It remains the first and only game I have ever fully removed from my Steam library (not just uninstalled) after purchase.

ONI is great, yet one 'game' is much longer than Factorio. I bet you can launch a rocket much sooner in Factorio than in ONI. Also, I found Factorio easier and less stressful than ONI. There's no real 'lose' case and the progress feels faster.

+1 ONI. Truly a black hole that manages to warp time itself.

Also maddening being an early fan in beta, then repeatedly throwing out whole designs, plans and game files as they kept adding new things in the game and changing them.

However I've found ONI nukes my modest computer much more rapidly than Factorio. That was disappointing, coming from massive sprawling Factorio bases.

This is why I've never played Factorio and do not plan to. It sounds like exactly my kind of drug.

I have two friends who said the same... it's kind of weird to think there are games that can just be too good or dangerously good.

But then, some other friends just don't like it. Still a personal thing I suppose.

on the other hand, the first few times I played factorio, I started thinking how to optimize my household...

I have played the game to completion once. I was utterly addicted and could not tell time while playing. I would say something like "Ok, just 5 minutes to finish this and save." and an hour later still be playing. I have over 60 hours in the game and I played it for like a week. It was bad. I have not let myself go back.

This is one reason I think it's important to that kids be exposed to video games.

You need to learn how to stop when you need to do other things. It's better to learn that when you're young and the consequences of overplaying a game are simply that Mom and Dad will be mad. Later in life, the stakes get higher: If you can't make yourself turn the game off when you need to, you might flunk out of college or lose a job.

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