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Comment by AndrewOMartin | Hacker News Reader

If you're wondering whether to get involved in this game, and you've ever suspected you're a little vulnerable to getting addicted, then I'd suggest keeping a very cautious exclusion zone around Factorio.

Alternatively, if you do get ensnared, then installing a mod which allows you to edit and experiment freely might help you "see the matrix" behind the game and dispel the enchantment somewhat.

The jokes about losing days, months, sleep, relationships, and jobs are not always jokes.

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I bought it for myself Christmas 2023. I spend the first week of 2024 playing in 36-hour streaks, did not show up to friends and relied on SO to supply me with food. Second week in January i went back to work, but spent most of my time outside of that playing. I restarted social activity in February, around May the addiction had largely burned out and playing increasingly didn't give "the kick" anymore. I had around 500 hrs of Gameplay at that point.

These weeks i still plan to waste every other evening with Factorio, but usually i end up programming or doing housewife stuff instead.

I think i would do that again. Thanks to SO for supporting me when doing silly things.

The way I stopped myself is by launching the rocket to space once and then never opening the game again, as I have seen everything it has to offer.

I think my worst nightmare would be if Factorio and Civ had a baby, as in the same Factorio gameplay, but with a bunch of playable characters that essentially just tweak the numbers a bit.

You might want to check out Dyson sphere program if you haven't already. The fixation will likely go away much quicker then factorio's, but its another take that has its own charm

I think I fall on the vulnerable camp but after a very intense phase I fortunately lost interest after a few weeks. Refactoring is not fun, and I prefer to be payed for it. So for me long term addiction is not a risk , but short term you better have nothing else to do.

I like to tinker, but at some point it all just becomes overwhelming and I just loose the feeling. As next step would be having to rebuild everything again. And that would mean setting up the production for bots, parts, and so on with big enough scale... I just don't have that in me...

"If you think you'd really love playing this computer game, please consider avoiding it" - I'm sure Wube will be delighted to see this advice at the top of the HN comment thread!

> "If you think you'd really love playing this computer game, please consider avoiding it"

Addiction isn't equal to "really lov[ing]" something, and it's childish to equate them.

Video games are incredibly addictive and ruin a lot of lives. That's not to say they're not valid or good forms of entertainment. Some people just can't handle them.

100% agree. My friends and I have played WoW on and off since release, and I never thought much of it. I could easily step away from it and used it mostly as a way to keep in touch with that group. We recently found out how much of a toll it has taken on one of ours friends lives who has pretty much always played even while the rest of the group was taking breaks.

OK - call me childish, but Factorio is a one-off payment of £35. There's no danger of spending more money than that, so the only thing you'll be wasting is your own time playing it. It's an over-reaction to characterise it as posing some kind of life-threatening danger.

Play a lot of Factorio and yep - you've wasted a bunch of your time (ask me how I know :-) ).

(of course there's the Space Age expansion - that's another £35)

I have found that procedural generation tools such as Blender are a good substitute for (single-player) Factorio. Especially the node DAGs such as shaders and now geo-nodes feel a lot like belts, inserters and assemblers.

Plus in the end you are not just increasing some game item count, but get beautiful scenes to marvel at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW9pCT5ouZ8

I mostly just leave it running in the background and tweak as things happen. I don't rush it, but the game has a tendency to try to rush itself on me, thankfully you can make settings changes.

Man I wish I could have gotten into Factorio the same way other people have. I bought it very early and have been trying to play it at least once every 6 months or so since then, but somehow it just didn't "click" with me.

I think it's because of the graphics, while they look cool in close-up, they are just a bit too cluttered and "washed out" when zooming out, making it hard to see the whole picture of your factory.

I will probably try this one as well but I don't have very high hopes...

More than 3000 hour in. Although I’m not playing currently, I feel like I have to take the last quarter off work.

I got sucked into Satisfactory for weeks and as much as I want to try Factorio, I am heeding your advice

Cracktorio, Satisfactory, Captain of Industry, Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic...

Who needs drugs when you have these.

I am curious what draws you to Satisfactory. I played a decent amount of Factorio and thought Satisfactory would scratch the same itch, but could not get into it

I think it's the same progression treadmill a lot of games have. Subnautica did this really well too, and Stardew Valley. Doing something manually and then getting to automate something that used to be really tedious really engages my brain in just the right way. I also generally like world exploring, I liked the music, I liked the immersive 3D element of it, the sort of vague quirky story/premise. It's making me want to play it again to talk about it - thankfully got rid of my gaming PC.

I generally install cheats in these games to move them along faster so I can get bored with them ASAP and get back to regular life.

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