It has no merit. Do you look at your hobbies as wasting your life? I certainty don't. My alone time playing video games is just as important to me as when I'm going hiking or camping with friends.
[I've spent 450 hours in Factorio, but stopped soon after my partner nick named it Divorcio.]
This "if it isn't productive it isn't worthwhile" attitude is toxic.
Not to mention the game in question has at most what... 100 hours of content ? it's not comparable in any way
The old idea that “nobody on their deathbed wished they spent more time at work” can easily apply to your side hustle.
The point is that of the ways one chooses to spend those hundred or so years, people often find later in life that they wish they'd spent the time differently. They realize that they could have achieved much greater life satisfaction if they had.
I don't believe in a literal hell, but someone once posited (sorry, cannot recall who at the moment) that hell is the "eternity" of thought that occurs as your consciousness fades away. Those thoughts you're thinking are the last thoughts you'll ever think. People don't want their last thoughts to be filled with regret. People want to die in peace.
But the broader point isn't top optimize your life around the time you'll eventually spend on your deathbed - that's just where everyone ends up. The point is to optimize your life so that you are satisfied with life - something that is not limited to your dying hours.
Thinking about your deathbed is really just another way of living in the future instead of the present. On your deathbed you have a completely different set of priorities and abilities, and there's no risk to the fantasy. Because you don't have to actually live it.
I definitely don't disagree within where you ended up. "The point is to optimize your life so that you are satisfied with life - something that is not limited to your dying hours." But I think this idea of reflecting back on an idealized life can be too heavily biased to be useful for some people (me maybe?) I think there's this notion of a sort of toxic ambition, which would be similar to the buddhist notion of living in the future. Seeing a lot of really high functioning artists, I think most reach the point where they realize it's not about the accomplishments, it's about taking enjoyment from the day to day practice of their craft.
But I played video games for most of my youth, and certainly I reflect back and think, maybe if I'd focused harder on school, and gone to a better university, I'd be in a better place now. Probably. But that's not who I was. Shit it's still not who I am. I reflect back fondly, but I just don't enjoy them anymore.
And that's sort of the point. Maybe you will look back and regret your life, but that feeling of regret is such a small part of it.
> Thinking about your deathbed is really just another way of living in the future instead of the present
If you spend all of your time thinking about your deathbed, sure. But I'd argue that being cognizant of this period of time and planning ahead is not the same as living in the future any more than spending your weekdays focused on getting work and chores done so you can enjoy the weekend unencumbered is living in the future (or eating healthy foods, not smoking, getting your exercise, etc).
As with everything, there's a balance to be struck.
And for what it's worth, I'm a gamer. I still actively spend time playing games because I enjoy it, and I get to interact with some of my friends.
But I think spending a few minutes reflecting on whether or not one's habits are serving them well, and how they will feel about those habits years down the road is also warranted.
> ...but that feeling of regret is such a small part of it
My point is that regret doesn't need to be part of it at all, and once you've reached that point, there's no going back. Someone may reflect on their time spent in <game of choice>, and realize it's a net positive in their life. Someone else may realize they need to make changes. The only time that such a reflection can have an impact on the outcome of one's life is when it's early enough to still matter.
The point isn't that people should stop playing games, or that they should live their life in the future, but that people should reflect on life choices early enough to make changes if changes are warranted.
I personally don’t think it’s worth heavily optimizing for those potential last 40 years. But, they should be part of long term planning at least as something that might happen.
In fact, building a valuable set of useful skills seems like the precise opposite of toxicity. Rather, it improves and adds value to your life.
I would ask: are you happy? If you are, then you are doing it right. If you aren't, then do something different.
Aside from the health benefits, fitness enthusiasts do it for the community, the feeling of accomplishment, the personal satisfaction, and in some cases, literal addiction.
Those four hours/day on a bicycle don't seem inherently more valuable than three hours on a game and one hour on a bicycle. But someone spending four hours on the bicycle will be held above the person spending three hours on a game. Why?
The two activities can be strikingly similar in some ways (aside from the fitness outcome).
- Spending time riding/playing with other cyclists/gamers (community)
- Spending time riding alone (solitude)
- A sense of personal satisfaction at certain achievements (e.g. riding a century, or unlocking a rare achievement)
But aside from the personal fitness gained, spending an three extra hours on a bike doesn't seem intrinsically any more valuable than spending those same three hours on RDR2, if they're bringing the individual a sense of satisfaction.
I do think that this is all about balance, and as others have pointed out, addictions come in many shapes and sizes. I know people who are absolutely fitness addicts.
> building a valuable set of useful skills seems like the precise opposite of toxicity
Values are personal, and usefulness is contextual. I know plenty of people who have successful careers, make good money, and then sink inordinate amounts of time into their hobbies, some of which might not look valuable depending on your perspective. For such individuals, it's unclear why they must necessarily spend time learning more skills, and why that is valuable when the bases are already covered.
Exercising seems like the opposite of toxicity, but anything can become toxic if taken to an extreme.
>building a valuable set of useful skills seems like the precise opposite of toxicity
eh, there's a limit. i spent past 10 years pretty much solely focused on gaining skills & career advancement and my one of my biggest regrets is not playing more vidya. i personally think work addiction is a bigger unspoken problem in society than game addiction. it certainly was for me.
You don't have to be productive 24/7, you don't need a value justification for everything you do, and you don't need every expense (whether money or time) to result in a net positive cashflow or whatever.
It's Factorio, so, yes.
After a normal work day, after all my daily chores are done, gone to the gym and other things to take care of myself, I have maybe 2-3 hrs of free time. If we’re generous and say 3 hrs, that’s 150 days straight of spending your free time on a game and not your partner.
That equals 2.4hrs/day, 16hrs/week since the game was released, which might be more indicative but still depends on the reset of their life obligations and what else they seek value from.
Very different from someone that plays video games a few hours every day
I've played RDR2 singleplayer and I get a prompt about cloud saves every time I launch the game on a new PC.
If he's playing multiplayer, this should be even easier. Rockstar should have the savedata.
Proton is free, open-source, and strives for compatibility with Windows games. Could have used that.
They still get vendor lock-in either way (because you have to stream from _somewhere_) so making it worse in this fashion doesn't achieve any particular goal that I can see.
I can see at least three goals it achieves:
1. It helped to establish the superiority of Google engineering (in the minds of Google engineers), e.g. "We can do it better because we're Google."
2. It helped somebody (or multiple somebodies) in Google get promoted.
3. It signaled to the market that even as a new entry into the gaming market that Google has a big stick to wield and publishers/developers will have to bend to their will, and /will/ do it.
Furthermore, controlling the full platform has enormous advantages in terms of scalability, low-latency streaming and control.
The hubris to go ahead with something like this....
Years back, I spent roughly 20,000 hours in WoW, starting 2006 and the last time I played, a year or two ago. 20,000 hours doing the same stuff, one could argue, but those hours have brought me joy, relaxation, excitement, and friendship.
Downtime is important — how you choose to decompress is up to you, but it's important, especially with high stress or high pressure jobs. Some months you'll be putting in 80 hours a week, weekends included, and other times you'll lower it, to take a bit of a breather, 40 hours a week with some games or TV.
We shouldn't be calling people addicts because they go fishing every Sunday, or watch TV every evening, or, play RDR2 every day.
I agree it's a lot of hours but for a game you really like (with an online component no less), it's possible once you consider that it's probably instead of watching TV, reading, and other free time stuff. (I.e.: treat it as cumulative free time instead of "this one game is 6k hours")
49.5hrs remain in my week.
Reduce that by another 39.55h. I have fewer than 1h30m available a day now.
I have not done any errands, have no food for the coming week, my clothes are dirty, and I have not seen or called any of my friends or family.
Imagine living that lifestyle for 1,046 days in a row.
(Truth be told, I'm positive sacrifices were made. Cut the exercise, order delivery, eat while playing, don't shower, etc)
Wild.
When there are significant negative consequences.
Why should something that unstresses, revitalizes and inspires you should be an addition.
With that logic, food is an addiction. Sleep. Rest. Even poetry and art.
https://howlongtobeat.com/game/27100
6000 hours is multiple orders of magnitude beyond that point, so it feels like a point where it's a lot safer to reach for an absolute judgment that it really is "too much".
Eventually I set up the household to Mac & Linux only to help increase the friction. Along with a lifestyle overhaul - new hobbies, and actual sport played outside, non-gaming seems to stick.
Gaming addiction is real and it can truly destroy a life.
The lifestyle changes I mentioned have displaced gaming in my dopamine system. I also never want to get sucked in again. That is my main defence.
I try to get out of the house on various adventures or even regular walks at every opportunity now.
Also I took up some hobbies like reading and photography. Some people golf fanatically and they seem to be better off for it.
At first, I unconsciously replaced game time with social media time, doomscrolling, news. Don’t do this. Be conscious and deliberate about subbing in quality leisure time.
The main thing is to treat games like a serious addiction if it is one, and replace it with a full and rich life. This is obviously not easy, but that is, in part, the point.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33036297
> I like this rule of thumb to know if a behavior can be a psychiatric disorder: "when it interferes with normal functioning". It's purposely vague and subject to interpretation but it's a good first filter.
If these new "addictions" aren't interfering with "normal functioning", then they're not disorders. They're just normal parts of that person's life.
Yay steam .... Installing...
Alt d Type steam Click or hit enter on app from dmenu.
Done.
Hardly something one figures out or learns to do, esp if they already use Linux.
"Oh, Linuxville! I love that place, it has a great casino."
Haven't looked back since, barely play games anymore (I did go through a stint of WoW).
Amused Linux is super supportive of games now. :-)
I "game" about a 2-3 hour per week gamer though I'll go a few months not playing at all. Board games with friends works well on steam (tabletop sim/teraforming mars/wingspan and lords of water deep.. ).. with video chat back channel which is the best part. Black Mesa/Portal/Alien Isolation which work well on my intel/Nvidia based laptop from 4 years ago (PopOS).
With the steam deck being linux based, I suspect using linux will be better and better for gaming.
The Bezos-like individuals who have no lack of money yet still work relentlessly, even to the detriment of the other factors in their life, are a dime a dozen. And a person of his sort saying he wishes he could work less hard would be seen as little other than a humble brag, even if he may mean it absolute and desperate earnestness.
And getting slightly philosophical for a moment, I doubt there's anybody on their deathbed that would regret spending as much time as they did doing the things that they enjoyed, unless those things started to themselves cause even greater problems. And a playtime alone does nothing to inform one as to the chances of the latter. For some, 5 hours a week might start causing problems - for others 60 hours a week would be perfectly fine.
It's the reason people have interventions: for a person addicted to something, it can be hard to actually admit that they're addicted to something. That should qualify, even if that person won't admit that their behavior has become a problem.
For an addiction X, you can ask questions like:
* do I think about X most of the time
* would I choose X over family/friends/health
* when engaged in another activity, do I want it to be done quickly so I can go back to X
* do I feel distressed when I can't do X
* ...
Why do you think there is so much investment into the metaverse?
When it negatively affects your life outside of that activity.
We're also talking about someone who is apparently a steamer or YouTuber.
When you are doing something society thinks is uncool.
If someone spent that amount of time training to say run a marathon, nobody would blink an eye. Probably they would get praise for being dedicated.
Reminds me of the poor vs rich double standard meme.
Poor guy getting drunk == "a bum"; rich guy getting drunk == "just having fun".
Poor guy gets money from the govt. == "a leech"; rich guy gets money from the govt. == "a stimulus for the economy".
Huh? That's the exact opposite of everything I've seen. Rich people are called leeches just for being rich, let alone receiving money from the government.
Not sure about genuine addiction, but you can have an unhealthy relation with your hobby, e.g. when it becomes a compulsion or when it turns into some sort of broken coping mechanism.
But just as well you might find it fun, fulfilling, or treat it as a learning experience, all without losing your head over it. Also some couples might share a hobby, some might consider participating in said hobby their quality time.
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us" - Gandalf (J.R.R. Tolkien)
It was fun! Yeah, it was a lot of fun. But there are real things I could have accomplished by balancing that time with other things. I have good memories of COD4, but I still can't play piano.
And 1440 hours isn't even a lot compared to what some people are doing.
Other than sporadically playing video games with my children, I haven't played regularly since I was a kid.
But that's me. I wouldn't presume to know best for anyone else - why do you think your experience is applicable to others? Is someone binge watching Netflix really better for you than playing video games? Death scrolling TikTok or Facebook? Collecting beanie babies?
I think there are a lot of things people do for varying degrees of mindless entertainment but for some reason video games are singled out as particularly bad.
But I don't think it really stops there— I would hope that my spouse, siblings, and close friends would feel comfortable enough speaking into my situation if they observed me falling into a pattern of behaviour that looked to be self-destructive. We need checks and balances in our lives other than the just the extreme end of having to stage an intervention when someone's bad enough that they're hitting rock bottom.
I was never a competitive COD player either. To this day I'm just OK at it. My k/d ratio is still < 1 (or "negative" as people oddly say)
I don't doubt that millions of gamers have no such cognitive dissonance and simply enjoy their games, of course. For certain specific games, I certainly have no regrets. Some games such as SOMA were even transformative experiences.
It's weird because I still think of myself as a "gamer", but I realized I've spent almost as much time building and tinkering with my current PC as I have actually playing games on it.
No one is attacking hobbies or video games, the argument was: The argument of playing 6k hours of RDR2 in 2 years being too much might have some merit.
It's up to each person to decide where the line is for them, where a satisfying hobby becomes a destructive habit. If someone has no desire to form external relationships and they're completely content with their life, good for them for figuring things out. I'm not going to impose my arbitrary rules on them.
I love RDR2 and play it passively (a few hours a week), but I completely get how someone could get sucked in like that. I can't think of any other game that provides such an immersive world, you can get lost in its details for hours on end. Just riding your horse around with no destination in mind is a very relaxing and almost therapeutic way to pass time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dead_Online#Additional_con...
I don't think you really understand how much that is. That is every single day, rain or shine, healthy or sick. If you miss one day, you have to do it for 13.4 hours the next day. You absolutely do not know someone that reads that much, not for 3 years straight.
would you say i'm an addict?
I bought Stadia and read the contract, I was under no illusion that I could export save files or progress to other platforms. You don't own the games you play, if you cared you'd buy from GoG.
But the number of hours that user put into that game is quite literally 1/4 of all the hours since Stadia launched three years ago. It's nearly 3/4 of an entire year, sleeping and waking, spent on one game. That cannot be healthy or enriching.
Society will say, if you want to have a family of seven kids, awesome! If you want to pull a David Hogg and not have kids, awesome! Affirmation for everyone!
I've got a pretty wide tolerance for "you do you", but objectively speaking, no. Not all lifestyles are equally valid and/or good.
Six thousand hours in a video game is not good.
There's a difference when your hobby is, say, lifting weights a couple hours per week, vs being manipulated into playing a video game 6 hours per day and buying lootcrates every couple of days.
The value added from 6k hours of investment in RDR2 is at best cosmetic and trivial. The real pain here is buying the game on another platform, if that hasn't been done already. At any rate this was a cloud service. Can't trust any of them to maintain the product you want indefinitely.