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Comment by zogrodea | Hacker News Reader

Is gaming big among tech people and software engineers?

I did (while 18 and younger) play video games for most days of my life, with it being the main thing I did on holidays and also after school on school days, but I kind of lost interest for the most part after I turned 19 (not looking down on others who play them at all).

I remember my university (for tech fields like CS) had a room for LAN parties and also had a Discord (mostly a gaming-related chat platform?) set up by one lecturer for informal chat.

I'm not entirely sure what relationship our industry (most here are coders in some capacity?) has with gaming and would like to see others' thoughts.

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Assuming this question is asked in good faith. I find it hard to believe you could work in the tech industry and not realize that a lot of your co-workers probably play games. Unless you're just the type who doesn't ever speak to people.

I'ved worked in tech for 20+ years at this point and every tech company I've worked at had gamers across all departments but usually programmers/engineers have a much higher percentage of being gamers. Every tech company I've worked at has some area with consoles hooked up to TVs for playing Fifa or Mario Kart type multiplayer games. Most of those companies also had one or two arcade machines too. And then every company has some internal groups/communities for gamers. Even the most serious and least "gamey" of the companies I worked for (a financial tech company) had internal communities for Dota 2 and Valorant...

I would go further and state that many probably owe gaming for their tech career. In the dark ages, installing and running a game could take significant technical effort. Scouring forums and looking for magical configuration or patches that could make it work. That technical knowledge builds upon itself.

when games were far more open to supporting mods and had big communities around it, its where I first cut my teeth programming in earnest without even realizing it.

At some point, the programming became more fun than the playing for me

now kids are modding roblox and minecraft

It’s actually really cool (to me) the irony that both of these games are over a decade old — ancient in the computing timeframe, I would argue — and so widely appealing to all age ranges.

Roblox released in 2006 [0]

Minecraft officially was released in 2011, with a public testing release in 2009 [1]

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roblox

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft

My programming journey started in like 2013ish with making guns on roblox which eventually turned into working on Minecraft mods.

Agree! What got me into programming was building/running my own Counter-Strike server and corresponding stats website. Now with companies running their own servers internally, that isn't nearly as common.

I'm old enough to remember trying to get IRQs and DMAs set, and trying to figure out whether I should use Tandy or EGA mode.

Some even disassembled their games to modify them ;)

I work in startups, and literally not a single one of my coworkers plays games. Maybe it depends a lot on your field or company?

As an anecdote that is completely contrary to yours. I also recently worked in startups (within the last year), and practically single person in the founding team I worked alongside was an avid gamer.

I think the proportion of gamers in the tech sphere vs others is likely overall higher than the norm. I do honestly find it hard to believe others don't think gaming is common in tech.

On my current team in a definitely non-startup corporate-y atmosphere, even many of the devs well into their 40s and above are avid gamers to this day. Meanwhile I'm 30 and while I don't play very often anymore I definitely was one as a teen into my early 20's.

I'm disappointed there was any doubt that my question was asked in good faith! I do regret the obsession I had with video games when younger because of the huge time sink I put in, but I only see that as a me-problem (others likely have a healthier relationship with it).

Thanks for sharing your experience though. That's interesting news to me. I talk with coworkers occassionally, but games don't come up (and neither do other interests outside of work).

> I do regret the obsession I had with video games when younger because of the huge time sink I put in

Don't regret time spent doing something you enjoy. So as long as you enjoyed it, feel good about it.

> Don't regret time spent doing something you enjoy.

This common saying is harmful and borderline hedonistic. Not all enjoyable activities are good activities. Should ex-smokers not regret their past smoking habit, then?

Everything must be in moderation. Playing video games, watching movies, and binging TV shows are great for unwinding after work. But if you do them too much, they can disrupt your life.

Yes, ex-smokers should not regret their past smoking habits. There is no point in letting past decisions affect your present emotions.

Are you suggesting that we should never regret anything, then?

Like I said, everything must be in moderation. Regrets are effective for reminding us not to repeat the same mistakes. But of course if we regret our mistakes 24/7, it will only depress us and discourage us to do anything.

Yes we should not regret anything. Regret is not effective for reminding us not to repeat mistakes ( the experience of the mistake is enough to do that, and not the same as regret)

You have a different definition of "regret" from what most people think, then.

Nerd alert.

Opportunity cost is real.

Opportunity cost is definitely one thing I had in mind. Other than that, my peers were committed to various things like fundraising for charitable organisations, doing something good by serving people in one way or another, voluntarily taking up responsibilities or just becoming a more well-rounded person by spending their time doing various things instead of just one thing.

While they all did that, I just stayed at home playing games instead and acted like the sole purpose of life was to enjoy myself which is something worth regretting (and happy I've made some progress since then).

It's not. Every instant of your life you're making choices that lock you out of opportunities. To claim that you're able to measure the opportunity cost of your current path is to claim that you're able to know the path that would have led to the greatest reward and measure that reward. At best you could say that in hindsight a previous choice you made was suboptimal.

Try to not do this to yourself too much. Everybody needs an outlet, and you can't beat yourself up for spending time relaxing or enjoying instead of hustling with a side gig or something.

I’m not beating myself up. I’m consciously choosing to engage in productive and enriching hobbies, while refusing to rationalize away those that are time wasting.

I don't consider playing video games time wasting. If they were, then watching movies is time wasting, enjoying art is time wasting, playing board games or sports with friends is time wasting.

Certainly, an addiction to gaming is bad, as is playing games too much to the detriment of the rest of your life. Ultimately, everyone should do what they find enjoyable in the moment that they will simultaneously not regret later in life. Totally understand if video games fall under that category for you, but I dispute them as "time wasting" as a general statement.

All activities are inherently "time wasting". After you're gone and dust - it's not like you'll be regretting playing the latest release of FORZA versus taking yet another Rosetta Stone course...

What are those hobbies?

Reading non-fiction, writing open-source software, taking continuing education classes at my local university, learning foreign languages, self-study, volunteering, travel.

That's cool! I do all of those things as well, minus the uni classes and open-source. But for someone who has no interest in travel, then learning foreign languages would be a waste of time. I personally consider writing open-source software a waste of my time because it would be taking away from my closed-source side project ventures.

You can totally min/max your entire life and only do things for self-improvement, but then to what end? What do you expect to derive out of the continuing education classes that is going to be significantly valuable to your life/career?

I think it's important to note that many people are actually quite satisfied with their position in life, a lot of us are making a lot of money engaging in interesting work, so at a certain point doing things for the sake of minimizing opportunity cost comes with diminishing returns as you've already made the most of the opportunities you've already had. The whole point of working hard is to reach some stage of life where you can actually reap the rewards and have the time and resources to enjoy yourself however you please without worrying about it.

I don’t really use my language learning for travel—nearly everyone speaks better English than I do their native language.

But in the same way that learning Haskell or Lisp can change the way you write and think about code, learning a language like Japanese can fundamentally change the way you think about everything. There’s intrinsic value to being multilingual.

Of greater pragmatic benefit is that if you learn a language, like Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, or French, you gain exposure to a whole different media landscape, including information on news and world events that is drastically different from what you encounter in the anglosphere.

What makes any of those things more or less valuable than playing a video game?

Volunteering, sure, but the rest are just as self indulgent as any other pass time. Just because you value them higher doesn't mean you should discount the things that other people do to enjoy themselves.

In our intensely competitive capitalist society, gaming has a low expected utility. It also doesn't usually reinforce skills that make you more employable. You also usually don't get a salary or remuneration.

The elitist in me wants to say games are little more than hi-res Skinner boxes. But properly applied, games can teach us strategy, reason, and problem solving. Is that why I play God of War? No. I play it because KRATOS SMASH

All of those activities enrich my life and help me grow as an individual. I think someone should always be learning throughout their life, and I have yet to see a video game that accomplishes that.

Yes, gaming is big among people who work in tech (software engineers, sysadmins, etc). It's uncommon to be working in tech and not be a gamer, in my experience. Not unheard of by any means, but not the majority either.

I was a huge console gamer in my teens, then transitioned into a PC gamer in my young adult years (helped by the yo-ho attitude of the era), then became aware of the scene and have pretty much treated any AAA title as guaranteed spyware trash until it gets cracked and (fitgirl) repacked.

I play maybe a game a year, where I basically do not sleep for a week, use/develop trainers to get past the grind-ey aspects of the gameplay, and essentially finish the game for the plot, as fast as possible so that I can resume my normal work life of unpaid overtime.

I keep up with interesting games by watching good youtubers like Jacob Gellar[0], but essentially I don't really play any small indie games, with the exception of Dwarf Fortress... though I mostly just like to read the colourful dev blog[1] instead of playing it.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMGEjgYJhEc

1: https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

I've worked in tech for a number of years. I think I'm in the same boat as you. However, I can confidentially say that videogames were merely a conduit to social experiences with friends. i.e. you wouldn't find me grinding a game by myself just for the sake of getting good. For my friend group, that was consoles in our teens, and PC in our early 20s.

I've mostly given up on traditional PC gaming. I have a Nintendo Switch and a Steam Deck. I use the Deck occasionally to play games that aren't available on Switch, but otherwise the Switch is preferred, because it enables social interactions so easily.

Now that I'm reaching mid-life, I cringe at the thought of taking time off work to play a game. If it means that much to you, more power to you. Apparently I've separated from the hardcore gamer scene.

To add a datapoint, I also gamed a lot (18 and younger) but quit when I started my SWE career some 15 years ago. Have not had a desire to play since then.

I probably played mostly though never voraciously in my 20s--I was never really much of a console gamer and PCs didn't really exist earlier to any great degree. I sometimes still dabble--like I was into the Wii sports games for a while--but I basically grew out of it more than not. I think that's a pretty common pattern for a lot of people. What I do still play is mostly on mobile when I travel.

I find a lot of millennial devs like me are old, have responsibilities, kids, a family, barely have time to game.

I bought a PS5, only own one game and I barely play with it. I just have either no time or little energy to play. I wanna get Spider-man 2, but I know I'd just end up not playing it.

Now the Nintendo Switch is another thing. I still play it quite a bit, especially the Zelda game. It's just so easy and convenient to pick up anywhere anytime.

It boots up quickly and it's just so convenient.

And that's it. That's life for a lot of us, squeezing in gaming here and there whenever there's time, whenever the wife gives the go ahead or whenever you've tackled your day-to-day responsibilities.

As a millenial devs with kids, the switch is really the only reason I game for what you mentioned. Quick, easy and convenient. Also, my son is of the age of playing video games (7) and the switch just has good games to play two player with him on. (Time honored tradition of kicking the kids butt in Mario Kart).

My main concern with games is avoiding the gambling. My kids are not old enough to video game on a console yet, so they just play some educational iOS game or maybe some from Apple Arcade.

I used to play games on Xbox like Modern Warfare 2 and Halo, but I lost all interest many years ago. The games got too complicated, and as I understand, now you have to pay for more and more add ons. It all seems very complicated.

Oh yea, that is another thing I enjoy about the Nintendo ecosystem. I have co-workers who are single and still game a lot and the whole paying for add-ons to be competitive, or to get a feeling of completeness about a game and what not is something I really enjoy about the Nintendo ecosystem. Sure Nintendo games can have DLCs, but I've not met one yet where I felt like the DLCs were required to make the game feel complete or to be competitive (like map packs on Call of Duty). You can play BoTW without the DLC and still have a really good time, also really re-playable.

Edit: Sure, Map packs weren't required. But it was shitty when all your friends had the map packs and wanted to play the new maps online and you didn't have them.

But yea, I really hate the gambling aspects some of the big AAA studios have adopted.

It depends on the age I think. I used to play a lot of games but as I've gotten older I've found myself with less time. I've also noticed my reflexes have gotten a lot worse, I'm in my late 30's I struggle with some multiplayer games like Counterstrike or Dota those competitive multiplayer games are no longer fun for me anymore.

I still like to chill out with a good single player game from time to time like Civilization or Total War series. I enjoyed Baldur's Gate 3 when it came out earlier this year.

I'd say gaming went from something I did often in my early 20's to occasionally by the time I was in my 30's.

The replies to this comment surprise me a bit. I'm in a similar situation as you. I used to play video games all the time as a teenager. When I went to university, I stopped playing at all. In hindsight, it was a mix of inconvenience (I wouldn't dare to bring a desktop to a tiny dorm, and good luck playing on a laptop!) and the fact that I wanted to try many things that were new to me at the time. Even then, I still lack motivation to try downloading and play a game. None of my coworkers seem to play games regularly either. There are plenty of social activities one can do that isn't gaming.

>None of my coworkers seem to play games regularly either.

Are you sure? Since you don't game, I imagine you normally don't ask people what they've been playing lately. Just because they don't bring it (or don't bring it up when you're around) doesn't mean they don't play games when they're alone.

>There are plenty of social activities one can do that isn't gaming.

What a strange thing to say, especially since I can replace the last word with just about anything and the idea remains equally true. Are you saying to you an activity has no significance or importance (or at least not enough) if it doesn't have a social component? I'm not trying to be combative, just trying to understand your point of view.

I'm similar. The ability to socialize and party at-will eclipsed my desire to game.

I gamed a lot as a kid and much less as an adult, though it took a bit longer for me to put it down than you did. I'd say that video games are what got me into computers; I wanted to be a game developer as a child. I never really took to straight software development though; I'm more of a devops type these days, and I'm frankly a bit glad to have avoided the gaming industry because I'm not particularly happy with what it seems to have largely become. That said, there are still some smaller studios doing impressive, innovative work and it's very cool to see that.

I would feel very confident saying that the percentage of gamers is higher among tech people than people in general. It's easy to point to pretty direct relationships with tech and gaming - and with overlapping cultures.

It is. Some games I completed in the last few years: Cyberpunk 2077, Horizon, Mass Effect series, Max Payne, Deus Ex, Alan Wake...

My 30-40ish friends and colleges also play casually or actively and they are in tech.

I found my interest in video games died when I started working. Whatever button in my brain video games were pushing is now being pushed by the day job and I get paid for it.

I'm curious, if you don't mind me asking what field of work are you in?

You know, shooting demons, solving mysteries, jumping over koopas, that kind of thing…

My company is hiring, we’re looking for a rockstar koopa jumper

A x10 koopa jumper can not only get the work of ten other employees done, but encourage good planning and future building for better koopa jumping in the future, whereas ten bad koopa jumpers will not only jump very few koopas, but also burn bridges and create koopa jumping debt that will sink the company.

unsurprisingly, challenging jobs have all the hallmarks of a challenging game, requiring skills for logistics, resource and project/timeline management, meta-analytical skills to break-the-beta, curious mind to dig further.

Oh yes, and rockstar koopa jumping skills too (drats, so thats what my current job is lacking).

There are a lot of tech people and programmers in the game industry and in game-industry-adjacent industries (like mocap, lidar, etc), especially around LA. A lot of that work is somewhat thankless, but getting industry-only passes to E3 was a one of the few cool perks, especially back when E3 was off-the-walls with porn stars and insane swag.

I'm surprised this has been asked. The majority of sw engineers I have worked with over the past 20+ years have been gamers. I'd prepared to go out on a limb and say the most effective and productive people I have worked with have tended to have been the biggest gamers.

I'd say gaming is similar to sports in that it's an easy way to find common ground with other men when speaking casually, at least in my Zoomer cohort.

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