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Comment by hinkley | Hacker News Reader

It is. Or at least it is for a lot of us. In working through some things a few years back I realized that when I’m worn out I do certain activities to recharge myself, and some of them aren’t actually recharging, they’re just running down the clock and Time is doing the recharging.

Gaming was very much a pastime rather than a recharging time. Worse, with games it’s too easy to get sucked into a thread that keeps me up well past bedtime, in which case I’m more tired then next day, not less.

Other hobbies accumulate progress, and are sometimes more open to participation by friends and family. Now I spend a lot of time gardening or doing other hobbies, and more of my screen time comes when I’m resting or trying to limit my skin cancer risks (1 pm instead of 7 pm).

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The quote that resonated the most with me here went something like: Life is a series of bricks, placed day by day, to build the foundation of life.

I’d take it one step further and say life also has compounding returns. What you invest today yields returns tomorrow. Not all hobbies yield the same returns.

Gaming as a hobby offers a flat return. The time you put in is the time you get out. There is no progress outside the bounds of the game (except for some fuzzier returns about societal commentaries and personal growth on par with the returns on a fantasy novel - or the future returns of making a game yourself).

The returns of a hobby like glass blowing is the improved ability to create on the other side of engaging in the hobby. Every piece you make sets the stage for the next piece. It’s a compounding return where the investment you make today is part of the return you get out of tomorrow’s investment.

I still play games, watch TV, and read fiction. But I no longer engage with them the way I used to. Now I engage with hobbies that yield compounding returns because tomorrow’s happiness is just as important as today’s.

> Gaming as a hobby offers a flat return.

Not all games, and not for all definitions of playing them.

Some games are tests and potentially builders of skill of various kinds, and the investments made are compounding: self control in the face of stress, economic decision-making, system design, tactical thinking in 3D space, and so on. Some games allow us to go Elsewhere and we change profoundly as a result.

Games aren’t created equally!

You can set the stage for the next level so to speak in either glass blowing or some video game. Not really following your argument.

Blowing glass is a hobby. Today's multi-user video games are a competition.

That's the real difference.

Unless you're exceptional, no one cares about either one. So probably best to do whatever makes you happy.

> I’d take it one step further and say life also has compounding returns. What you invest today yields returns tomorrow. [...]

> [...] Now I engage with hobbies that yield compounding returns because tomorrow’s happiness is just as important as today’s.

You may not realize it, but this defer-happiness-to-the-future attitude is what the original article is recommending against:

Putting things off for the future is the biggest waste of a life. You deny yourself the present by promising the future. You’re relying on the future, which is outside of your control, and abandoning the present, which is the only thing you can control. The whole future lies in uncertainty – live immediately.

I wouldn't say that building on your skillset as (in this example) a skilled craftsman is deferring happiness. You still enjoy what you create today, even if its not as good as what you will create one year from now. I do woodworking and metalworking as hobbies - I've always enjoyed the process and the improvement I see in my work. Its about the journey not so much the end result.

Absolutely! But that's not what I was replying to. That was, roughly, about depriving you of certain joys today in order to increase potential for future joy. Which is what the "Life is not short" article is arguing against.

> tomorrow’s happiness is just as important as today’s.

Aye - I agree with you. The point I was trying to articulate: hobbies with linear returns traded tomorrow’s increased happiness for today’s happiness.

Hobbies with compounding returns still get me today’s happiness! But, after investing in that type of hobby, tomorrow I’ll be capable of more “hobbies” than I am today. Especially when hobbies begin to cross-over (I.e. chemistry and glass blowing)!

Games and TV may mostly give a flat return, but I don't think that's the case with reading fiction. That hones your linguistic skills, your imagination and storytelling skills, can sometimes give you critical insights (e.g., the classic dystopias), and last but not least, can enhance your attention span in an age where many of us are used to jumping from short piece to short piece online and it seems difficult to gather enough time or attention to read a book.

Of course you will learn even more if you read essays, but I think if reading books in general is widely regarded as a good thing to do, it's for good reason.

This seems like you're comparing the likes of 1984 to the likes of Genshin Impact. If we instead choose Opus Magnum as our example of a game, and 50 Shades of Grey for as our example of a book, one would conclude the opposite. Someone with a taste for timewasting games isn't going to suddenly become an intellectual because they picked up a piece of dead tree if the words written on said dead tree are as empty as the game they just put down, and there's more than enough bland genre fiction out there for them to be attracted to.

I find it weird that your gold standard of a good hobby is the ability to produce. I personally think those "fuzzier returns" you sort of disregarded are far more important.

Also, particularly in video games, each time you engage in it you get better. I've been recently trying to get back into video games after over a decade of off time. The gap I feel is tremendous. Gamers have advanced so far ahead that a good gamer from 2000s will have incredible amount of trouble playing newer games.

And yet, you are only "getting better" at the game. Your in-game skills don't translate to the real world. Games have psychological and social benefits, but I don't think getting better at a game skillwise has really any transferrable value outside of the game itself. In fact, if you put more effort into improving your in-game skill, your real-world life usually suffers. (In my experience.)

But to serious gamers, those interactions in and around those games are their real world. Say someone dedicates themselves to learning the piano, a Real World activity, and they enjoy it, and they can entertain others with their skill, why is that any more real than getting deep into a game? In the end we all die and take nothing with us, nor do we leave anything behind which will last all that long. If everything is ultimately futile, why make a distinction between one pursuit and another?

I second your sentiment, I think this articulates my thinking much better. I see people trying to prove that yes games have "transferrable skills" to "real life" and I am sitting here thinking, why does it matter? It's my hobby!

PS: Used those quotes because I don't think people have clear idea about what they mean by those terms.

> In the end we all die and take nothing with us, nor do we leave anything behind which will last all that long. If everything is ultimately futile, why make a distinction between one pursuit and another?

This viewpoint is destructive. Your actions affect your future and the futures of the people around you. They are not futile. When someone learns to play the piano, it becomes a tool that can be used in countless applications in a person's life. When you learn to wall jump in Metroid, you learn to wall jump in Metroid and maybe in some other games. The variety of application just isn't there. It's just not comparable.

Can you enumerate what tools you gain by learning piano?

Actually, a lot of skills used in video games do translate to the real world. Puzzle solving (aka logic), language, map reading, navigation, communication, working with a team, and more. Some games even have a particular bent towards 1 skill, such as programming games and geography games. And that's not even including all the games that are designed to be educational first and fun second.

They are generally soft skills because no games really let you physically do things yet, but that doesn't mean they aren't useful skills.

Games have helped me build a network of acquaintances that actually ended up helping my career/life.

You must be one of those people who think they don't need linear algebra in their life.

I played a lot of Rocksmith and it helped me a lot to play the guitar. I know personally some people who went from couch potatoes to mildly active thanks to Ring Fit. I met dozens of now long time friends online because we share this common interest in video games. I think you may have a bias against this media.

Love Rocksmith, I own a physical copy! I played a LOT of Guitar Hero as a teenager. Comparing the two: Rocksmith provides compounding returns - my time playing Guitar Hero did not.

I second dota’s take in a sibling comment, it was insightful. Not all games are created equally.

Both your examples are games that are built on real physical activities. It's no surprise that they teach you skills that are relevant outside of the gaming context. The majority of games aren't like that, which is what I was talking about.

I don't really have a bias against games and it's puzzling to me that most commenters here completely misread my comment to that extent. I used to be an avid gamer, until real life took over. Just speaking from personal experience having logged thousands of hours on and off Steam. It probably helped keep me sane, but I have a real hard time pinpointing how it has affected/improved/touched my current life now that I don't play games as much.

> And yet, you are only "getting better" at the game.

I don't get it, why is that not enough? Why can a hobby not be about only me and my personal growth/goals. Its a hobby, what I am failing to understand is why does it need to be productive? If I stick to playing challenging games, I feel a sense of growth which unfortunately I cannot articulate. That is enough for me, but yeah YMMV.

That the "real world" is actually "real" is a big assumption to make.

If that sounds weird, remember that a number people who were considered wise claimed that the "real world" is not as "real" as you'd assume and life is transient. And they'd probably say that it's not worth spending the effort to learn "real life", "productive" skills since they don't translate to the "meta-real-world" anyway, and the more you put effort into improving your "real world" skills, your "meta-new-world" skills suffers.

It feels like I might be paraphrasing some verses of the Bible at this point...

uh what? Games have definitely gotten easier since the 90s

I don't know man, I downloaded Cup Head because it looked cute and it has been kicking my ass since like a month. I know it is one of those notoriously hard games but I think the point stands.

I think games have moved away from precision challenges to more abstract ideas. Like Doki Doki Literature Club, I have no f'ing clue whatever that is all about but I am experiencing it. Challenge for me comes from the fact that it relies on peoples knowledge of tropes to enable different story progressions. I don't have that because last game I played was in like 2009.

Another game I am having trouble with is watch dogs 2. I know, AAA game, made for less than pro gamers. But again, they are relying on my knowledge of AAA games for conveyance. I regularly have moments where I am thinking, what do I do? where do I go? Now I have played GTA vice city, so open world is not an alien concept. But the scale of it all, its just magnificently complex.

Edit: I occurs to me all this can just be the fact that I suck at video games. But I used to be good at them, that's the point.

Edit 2: This video explains my feelings better than me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw

The productivity of most so-called 'productive' hobbies is an illusion. What does it mean to 'produce'? To transform something that doesn't have value into something that does have value? Value to whom? The output of the majority of hobbyists' work has no value to anyone but themselves, and if it has no value to anyone but the creator, it's just consumption with extra steps. And if it has financial value to other people, that's not hobby, that's a second job.

There's a reason why most artistic pursuits are either completely nonviable as a profession or are a lottery where the top 0.01% become superstars and the rest barely break even or lose money. When the thing one 'produces' is something people will do for fun, supply massively outstrips demand, and more entries into the hobby doesn't produce more valuable items, it produces more tat that nobody wants.

I don't think they're talking about a physical 'product'. They're talking about building character, making themself a better person, learning a skill etc

If it's all about perceived self-improvement with no consideration for real-world applications or end products, there's no difference between practical skills and virtual ones. All that matters is that the person in question believes the experience to be valuable.

EDIT: I guess it's worth mentioning a minor exception for basic life skills that some people do as hobbies, like sewing, gardening, DIY or cooking, but those have diminishing returns. You can probably learn everything you need to know to not be reliant on tradesmen or vendors for those sorts of things in a year, and beyond that you get stuck in the same place as the hobby craftsman or hobby artist, where the chance of real financial success is basically nil so you're just doing it because it's an activity you personally enjoy.

I can follow this.

But where I’m getting tripped up: today I smoked out of a glass pipe I made. I can’t smoke out of my level 80 night elf druid.

Nor can I combine my level 80 night elf druid with my Diamond IV rank in Halo to get a compounded return. Those two games and skills are isolated. But I can combine what I read in John Dalton’s A New System of Chemical Philosophy with glass blowing to make interesting things that bring me joy (I.e. replicating experiments of John’s at home with purpose built glassware)

It’s not just production for productions sake, or production for the sake of society. It’s increasing my capacity to produce for myself. I feel like I’ve grown in a way that I can build on tomorrow after a session of practicing this class of hobby.

Maybe the distinction truly is arbitrary - but something about this path feels significantly more fulfilling the further down it I go vs. the literal years I spent in virtual worlds. In the virtual worlds the potential felt roughly constant while these hobbies feel like they have an ever expanding horizon of potential.

MMOs and competitive online shooters aren't time-efficient games. They're live service games that are essentially built to be time-sinks. People who regret playing them do so because the regret is real. There's a lot of advanced psychology that's gone into ensuring that people play them for as long as possible. This leads to people playing the games long after they've stopped having fun, and only quitting when they realise they've not been having fun for months, possibly years.

But this isn't a problem specific to games; this is a problem with predatory marketing. If you'd instead spent that time playing a wide variety of shorter experiences without grindy filler, I wonder if you'd feel the same way. Maybe niche hobbies don't have the attention of same predatory actors because there's not the incentive for them to do so, but that's not an argument for productivity, that's just an argument for obscurity.

That's as may be, and especially true if you're playing them solo, but playing coop games online with friends, even "inefficient" ones are enjoyable social experiences that can be done even without being co-located, which isn't something that's easy to substitute with other activities.

I play games with friends and coworkers online that I wouldn't otherwise interact with much, and it helps us stay in touch with each other and foster a relationship that would likely otherwise burn out.

If I was playing the games alone, I'd maybe regret it over playing a different and "better" game, but I'd rather do inefficient things with friends than efficient things alone a lot of the time.

There are some of us who give advice to prospective college grads that they should do some volunteer work if they can't find any professional experience prior to graduation.

Lots of hobbies still tackle basic human problems like communication and organization, and getting any exposure to these is not only good, but it might take some of the pressure off by not mixing multiple things you struggle with at the same time.

so now they have a lot of things can give their grandchildren. yes, kids usually do not like them, but this still happy

I like your phrasing here a lot. I have come to a pretty similar realization recently. For me a small about of gaming does recharge me, but as you say it’s really easy to get sucked into spending too much time and ending up tired or sacrificing other recharging activities like exercise and socialization.

I think it’s possible to weave socialization and accumulated progress into the gaming experience and have it be a fully enriching hobby. But many (most?) single player experiences are just a pastime for me, as you say.

When I was young I realized I was escaping into games and damaging my life and relationships (one of the tests for addiction) and so I’m always going to hold them at arm’s length.

When I realized I needed a change I latched onto the fact that most people wouldn’t understand my excitement for an accomplishment in a video game, it wasn’t something I could bond with people over. But if I stopped fucking around and put that energy into programming, I could have accomplishments people understood (that turned out to only be only partly true. I still have programming accomplishments that my peers and communities don’t understand).

Bonding over games has shifted a bit since then. I know a hard of hearing kid who socializes online because conference calls make everyone have the same problem: differentiating two speakers is difficult. Everything sounds like hearing aids sound.

But it’s still easier for people to comment on my garden than whether I have finished the Thieves guild or stormcloak quest line in Skyrim, as an elf.

But why is socialization recharging and “pastime” not? My bet is because the former allow you to talk through the issues.

Regarding that last sentence, it's the exact opposite experience for me.

I see multiplayer experiences as just a past time, and singleplayer experiences the one that can have a meaning and are valuable by themselves.

I think the key point here is what singleplayer games are we talking about, because the offer is more varied than ever.

> But many (most?) single player experiences are just a pastime for me, as you say.

By this measure reading books would also just be a pastime? I see gaming more like an interactive story (especially singleplayer).

I think Seneca would roll his eyes at most of these responses TBH. Who cares if you're just gaming to "pass the time"? When you're gaming, you're having fun and enjoying your life in the moment. It's only afterward when you start the cycle of criticizing yourself for not doing something "productive" with that time that the negative feelings enter. In fact, the whole exercise of feeling bad about yourself for playing a fun game and relaxing is exactly PART of the problem Seneca talks about - unless your gaming habits cause you to destroy your links to other important sources of joy and health, you shouldn't feel bad about having a fun "pastime" activity, that is just as valid as keeping a garden or reading a good book of fiction.

It's been a while since I read Letters from a Stoic, but I have a feeling Seneca would scoff at frivolous pursuits - leave such things to the Epicureans. He comes off as a bit of a (humorously) grumpy old man in that book though.

As an ex WoW player, I’m rolling my eyes and I haven’t been dead for 2000 years.

Many games turn into jobs. The sense of fun degrades over time, and the self recriminations aren’t baseless.

If you're not having fun with the game and you're extinguishing your social and physical health, then you have a gaming problem. If you're admonishing yourself for playing a single player game to recharge and relax, as in the cases I responded to, you have a self-admonishment problem.

Replace game with solitaire, is it now viewed differently?

Does every human activity need to be productive? Why would you care what others think about your hobbies?

My point was merely, some have a bias for types of hobby, not its healthiness.

I know someone who, while depressed was playing solitaire and one other casual game for hours every day, for months. It was definitely not healthy.

Specifically, commenter you responded to cares. Because, as he puts it "it’s really easy to get sucked into spending too much time and ending up tired or sacrificing other recharging activities like exercise and socialization." He literally describes negative overall impact he perceives. He is not feeling bad for gaming for irrational reasons, he says it makes him tired and makes him sacrifice exercise and socialization.

He even admits it is theoretically possible to do it differently, but also observed people not doing it differently in practice.

The problem is that the things you think you enjoy and that recharge you may not actually be what you empirically enjoy and what empirically recharges you.

For example, playing a game, or browsing youtube, or scrolling through social media, or reading the news, or even browsing HN for that matter you may think of as something you do to relax. It could be, however, that actually, doing some woodwork, or practicing a musical instrument, or learning a language, or going for a walk in nature, empirically recharges you a lot better, and you actually enjoy the days when you get to do these activities a lot more - and it makes your time outside those activities more enjoyable too.

These are just examples, it may not work for you in the same way, and all of these activities can be done in 'recharging' and 'non-recharging' ways perhaps. The important thing here is that what you think recharges you and what empirically actually recharges you may be very different things.

I like how you expressed the first two paragraphs. Both I something I can completely relate to.

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