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Comment by Timpy | Hacker News Reader

I lived in a tower block in Moscow for a year. This brings back a melancholy feeling that I'm not really fond of. Eating kolbasa and eggs in my concrete cage while the snowy dark winter taps on my window was very much the experience I had. If the purpose of art is to move something inside the audience, this looks quite successful to me. I think I won't be playing the game though.

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I'm originally from Ukraine, Odessa. It indeed brings a lot of memories (mostly from childhood), but I have a slightly different perspective on it. When I moved to New York, ~8 years ago, my budget for rent was around $2,000. I checked 20+ different apartments, worked with a ton of agencies. I couldn't believe my eyes – so many people in NYC (Manhattan specifically, the place I always wanted to live in) live like rats, an order magnitude worse than what you can get in Odessa for $300-400. I ended up getting a decent studio for abysmal $2,700. I moved to Brooklyn since then and live at a much better place now, but a ton of people still live in conditions, IMO, way worse than the ones shown in the game, paying $2000 a month ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sure they do it by choice. You also have the option to live somewhere else though

> I couldn't believe my eyes – so many people in NYC (Manhattan specifically, the place I always wanted to live in) live like rats, an order magnitude worse than what you can get in Odessa for $300-400.

Odessa is a city of less than a million people while 8 million are crammed into New York. The more apples-to-apples comparison would be Moscow (12 million).

Plenty of people are willing to trade space for location. They want to be in the center of all the action.

And prices are dropping rapidly as the city empties out because of Covid: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/12/big-drop-in-manhattan-rental...

Fascinating, when comparing rat-holes New York is the expensive one, Moscow a bit less....it nearly sounds like unlimited communism was not much worse the unlimited capitalism.

Where I live you can get a decent apartment for $600/mo. It may be in a poorer area, relationship issues pop up with your neighbors more often, and homelessness crops up more, the place in of itself is completely acceptable. I've lived in one of these slums too. They're not that bad and in a pinch if you have to, moving there will get the job done.

I grew up in a building constructed as part of the series that just barely preceded the infamous Khruschevkas. This game feels quite real. That said, I’ve lived most of my life in a dilapidated building in New York. The models and textures would have been different, but the feeling remains the same. I’ve certainly had enough of cold, dark winters for one lifetime.

Assuming they're far enough removed from my lived experience, melancholy/lonely settings have always had a comforting/evocative/alluring effect on me. I think anything that's sufficiently distinct from my present reality can act as escapism, even if it's not an alternate reality that I would actually want, per se. It's a weird sort of feeling.

Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.

I like this quote :)

Original version:

    La mélancolie, c'est le bonheur d'être triste (victor hugo)

Melancholy is what you feel watching the movie Melancholy.

It’s weird, I’ve heard that definition before. But it has never clicked in my mind. I feel melancholy in a different way. I’m lucky though, I had a happy childhood and I have a happy adult life too, I also haven’t lost too many relatives/friends in my lifetime. So when something reminds me of my childhood I’ve never experienced sadness. Is there another word that would fit better my feeling?

Nostalgia, maybe. That's the pang you sometimes get when thinking back on better days, or on days that seem better across a span of years than they did when they were new.

There can be different reasons to be sad for a long gone past:

* You were sad in the past and you're remembering being sad

* You were happy in the past and you're a bit "sad" this time has gone or that you forgot what it was like to be X etc

I believe melancholy is the latter. You're not truly sad because you're also enjoying a nice memory but at the same time you're also a bit sad it's gone (hence the "happiness of being sad")

I had this experience in a small city in Ukraine in winter; I liked the daytime working in the office, but at night in those concrete (quite decrepit) buildings, I only wanted to go back home. This building in the game looks much better but the feeling when I watch it indeed is the same.

Looks exactly like some of the suburbs in Finland as well. Gives me the same feelings.

What was your favorite and least favorite part about that experience?

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