Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

So I was the kid playing SimCity and Civ and Legos and all these other "builder" toys growing up, who now has a 7-figure job at a FANG and still plays these sort of constructivist games on the side. I'm also the parent of a kindergartner who spends a bunch of time playing Factorio and Cities/Skylines and Kingdoms Reborn and Legos. I'll tell you why I think people prefer to create elaborate worlds inside games rather than get that 6/7-figure job at a tech company:

You are not actually a builder at a modern large tech company.

My day job consists of lots and lots of org politics. I'm technically in management (though I tried to keep my SWE title as long as possible), and I view my job as "I put up with the political bullshit so that my reports don't have to." But realistically, they are not builders either. They are spelunkers, hackers, maybe even developers - but the majority of their job consists of digging around in a 5M-line codebase to understand what is possible, communicating that back up to management, and then implementing a trivial change because trivial changes are realistically all you can do in a 5M-line codebase. The builders were the folks I learned from, who were employed as SWEs 20 years ago.

Computer games create just enough of an artificial, static sandbox that you can learn the rules and get really good at putting together parts. In a big tech company, some executive is going to change the rules in 3 months, and everything you know will be obsolete in a year. And that's not because the execs are stupid or capricious (although sometimes they are), but because the market's rules change every 3 months or so. Like it or not, a market economy's function is to satisfy people's desires, and as the article notes, people's desires are fleeting. But building requires foundations, it requires stability, and so we create that artificial stability with games so that you can build.

I’m in the same position as you, and I agree wholeheartedly. The one thing I’ll say is that I think 20 years is optimistic.

I’ve been involved in a few huge, greenfield projects that were mostly building new things from the ground up. There was an air of “true” building around. But it was astonishing how quickly that faded away. It took less than a year after our first launch for a lot of people to start leaving the team, citing reasons like their job was now just drudgery maintenance work or small feature adjustments, which is definitely less attractive and inspiring.

And that is reinforced by career paths as well. See: the trope about Google promotions based on new launches, not bugs fixed. And people definitely idolize “the engineer that built Linux” more than “the engineer that has patched 1000 linux bugs”.

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head on why I would rather “waste” time in Factorio than program at my enterprise SWE job. Because it’s closer to being a historian than a builder.

We just need to make a market for "I'll pay you $500 to upgrade this save game file's factory from yellow to red belt", and have buyers and sellers, and then we can have it actually be a job. Because there's some parts of factorio I enjoy, and some that I don't, but that's the addictiveness of it.

This exists for several games. Probably not Factorio specifically, but games like WoW or Everquest have loot & XP farms where people just grind for hours to make a super powerful character for you and then sell it.

I think the Factorio equivalent would be more like licensing chip designs. It doesn’t have the same false scarcity as other games.

I've noticed some weird things. It seems that a few decades ago technological progress was about building the future we saw in Sci-Fi. Trying to build the things we dreamed and saw. But now it seems we just try to make hardware faster and smaller or software more... subscription-y. Even all the AI stuff isn't building these Star Trek, Star Wars, whatever like futures, unless we're talking about the dystopian near Sci-Fis of Black Mirror. I've also noticed that people are far more pessimistic about the future and at least in my social circles, I know far fewer people that read books or watch movies anymore. There's fewer people I know engaging in these world building activities, even in technological circles. There are definitely plenty, but these are never the people leading teams or even seem to be allowed to try many of their ideas. I think the thing is Silicon Valley stopped dreaming of the future world, and only about their future pockets. (an obvious over generalization, but dramatic for my point)

Technological progress is still about building the future we saw in Sci-Fi, it's just that sci-fi has become increasingly dystopian. Parts of Black Mirror, The Diamond Age, Her, Children of Men, Upload, Don't Look Up, The Day After Tomorrow, etc have all made it into reality.

Note that sci-fi goes through cycles. The optimistic Star Trek or Jetsons future was a product of the 1950s and 1960s, when people were generally pretty optimistic. 30s/40s sci-fi is Brave New World and 1984, which is a decidedly different vibe (and also came true in many ways).

This argument is so tired. You bring up "Her", do you not realize in star trek Data had romantic interests? The tech in those books is not what makes them dystopian and the reason those books have dystopian themes is because stories require conflict to be interesting. The tech is just a cool veneer.

> the reason those books have dystopian themes is because stories require conflict to be interesting. The tech is just a cool veneer.

No, that's just an excuse for lazy writing. And if our stories are predominantly this basic, it's hard to create a future that's better.

> our stories are predominantly this basic

they are unfortunately

I think you're oversimplifying and dismissing the issue.

> have all made it into reality.

I don't like this. It sounds like you're saying it is we who are intentionally creating this dystopian world. Or that we build this because this is what Hollywood shows us. One sounds like we're all evil (maybe we are), and the other sounds like a conspiracy.

> Note that sci-fi goes through cycles.

Saying it goes in cycles dismisses the aspect that we are the ones in control. And let's be honest, we're the nerds, it doesn't matter what mainstream sci-fi is in vogue. It matters what we watch and what we're trying to create.

All things "go through cycles" and that's not a meaningful thing to note. It is dismissive of the causal factors and as if we are subject to fate. The future and world is in our hands. We are the creators and masters of our future, our society, our culture. It is not father time nor are our thoughts and dreams controlled by others. You can argue that our capacity to make those dreams a reality are, but not the dreams themselves.

I want to add more context to my previous statement. Antoine de Saint Exupéry once said

  If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

What I'm saying is we've lost this longing. We've lost this dream. And thus, we stopped building ships.

We've also lost the willingness to push back on stupid/evil ideas. I thought software engineers had options! We're in demand! We can pick and choose and find a company doing good! At least that's what HN tells me. Yet, when Bossman tells us "Go build the Torment Nexus" we say "Well, I guess I have no choice! Bossman told me to do it, and he's the one paying me!" And we go off and build the Torment Nexus (or Social Media) and the world is worse off for it.

Yeah this is odd to me too.

Not I think we should be clear that it doesn't matter if we're in demand or not[0]. You always have a choice to not build the Torment Nexus. Sometimes it's harder than not. You might not know what you're building (you can always turn back when/if you find out). Some things aren't worth the money and it's important to always remember there are other ways to make money. You may be a cog in a machine, but all cogs serve a vital role, even when there is redundancy. People forget that without our labor (whoever "we" are and what "labor" we do), the Tournament Nexus can't be built.

But the trouble with the Tournament Nexus is that sometimes it's built without anyone actually intending to build it. It's more important that we remember this and stay vigilant. That we don't always dismiss others who say it's being built. No one likes to hear that because they think it means someone is claiming they're doing it purposefully. But did we also forget that the path to Hell is paved with good intentions? And that's what needs to be remembered, that evil is often built by people trying to do good.

[0] clearly we are though since it's our labor that created the wealth of the wealthiest people and businesses.

Ok, so why don't you build things for fun that affect the real world outside of your office job?

And before you tell me you are too tired of coding from your day job, which is the cliche response to this question, you can do anything, even woodworking, it just has to affect the real world and not a video game.

The not-cliche response coming from about 8 years of experience as an entrepreneur: most people don't want you to affect the real world, or at least their real world. Most folks want to tightly control their environment, and today's world of cheap manufactured goods is already oversaturated with physical products.

I think this is the real reason why people aren't building, and on a societal and not just individual level. Other people don't want them to. Just look at the response whenever someone tries building new housing or mass transit. It's endless environmental reviews, neighborhood reviews, lawsuits, public hearings, ballot initiatives, etc. The market for mobile apps dried up not because there aren't enough of them (there are millions) or that they're crap (90% are, but 90% of everything is crap), but because most people already have the apps they need to manage their daily life.

When it comes to my real world, I do plenty of stuff. I garden, largely unsuccessfully, but now that's ballooned into construction projects to keep the dear away. I had the kids helping me redo my home's gutters and putting new crown moulding on, as well as assembling furniture and caulking the driveway. I'm in the process of organizing my kids' toys. But these also have diminishing returns: once the gutters are done I hopefully won't need to re-do them for another 10-20 years, the driveway caulking should last a few years at least. I don't feel any particular need to pick up a hobby like woodworking just for the sake of doing it; that's just as unproductive as computer gaming, but generally less fun.

> Ok, so why don't you build things for fun that affect the real world outside of your office job?

> And before you tell me you are too tired of coding from your day job, which is the cliche response to this question

For the first point: I do, but this does not change what you consider a cliché responses that

1. I am often very tired from my job

2. I can only invest little time (at night and at weekends), which is far too little to affect the world around me. I nevertheless invest these precious little ressources, but the reasons lie in my personal convictions.

What a terrible argument. We're people, not machines. We cannot spend all our time working. People have passions, families, and lives to live. I'd even argue that ignoring those things makes it harder for people to get the ideas to build the things that actually matter.

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