All Work and No Play (2021) | Hacker News Reader

All Work and No Play (2021)

dissentmagazine.org

39 pointsherbertl13 comments

Tangentially, I feel that the technical pursuit of hyper realism and novelty in various media over methods that require active participation of your imagination and intellect are a part of why many of us feel so disappointed and underwhelmed today.

I look at today’s sci-fi blockbuster or television show where unbelievable sums of money and effort were spent on highly detailed, elaborate CGI sequences and, more often than not, I’m not very moved and forget about it almost instantly. However, I watch an old Star Trek episode that has hilariously bad effects thrown together as cheaply as possible and I can _feel_ parts of my curiosity, imagination, and so on shift into motion. In order to make that embarrassing sound stage with a guy in a rubber suit work, I actually have to participate in it, provided the crew was skilled enough to provide a fertile playing field and a compelling scenario. It’s no different for games.

Being shoved through bigger, louder, and more audacious carnival rides where you just kinda walk from point A to point B becomes disappointing after a while. The disparity between the scope and ambition of the presentation and your actual engagement greatly amplifies any sensations of being underwhelmed and disappointed.

That's because the things adults in western culture are most hooked on isn't their own imagination, but other, wealthy, attractive people and what they say. That's why there is always this push to make things look closer to reality, and why any kinds of animated works that were popular by themselves have this inevitable shift to the "real medium" of live action. They want to sell you on real people as brands, not silly cartoons or artists.

Whether that speaks to the power of the advertising machine or the lack of imagination in the people is a question left to the reader.

Keeping up with the Benjamins is certainly a bottom trawling psychological mechanism in the chest of tools employed by media, but I don’t think it accounts for the sum state. Genuinely astounding and wide reaching works are actually pretty rare when you compare them to the vast sea of lesser works. Entertainment lives on a string of less frequent and more singular booms, but the industry that pops up around it survives off the hype or lack thereof between. So, they push quantity over quality and authenticity, and reprogram consumers around that hype train. Worse than that, they might reach for dark patterns to artificially and negatively prop up engagement, which rots the whole thing from the inside out.

You specifically mention this as an ailment of western culture, how are other cultures, what are they most hooked on?

I have recently started to watch Star Trek Strange New Worlds and I absolutely love how good it looks. Whereas with the rubber suits of ST:TOS I had to fight disbelief all the time (no offence to a 60 year old show on a budget that had to look believable on a 20 inch b&w analog television).

This won't solve bad writing (hence why I stopped watching Discovery), bad characters, bad acting or a bad setting but I can't follow you at all about it being a problem.

I didn’t actually say it was a problem, although I did have a part clarifying that looking good can only help but I don’t think can be relied on to drive a work very far on its own… I deleted it because I felt I was already well beyond rambling and it was implied in my first sentence.

What a weird article. Feels like two or three little articles under a trenchcoat.

Just this evening I finally got my old gaming PC out of the closet and back up and running. My 15 year old son helped me troubleshoot driver issues and bios errors and we got it functioning. Loaded up the old steam library and I spent about 20 minutes creating a playlist for him. Braid, Subnautica, half life 1 & 2, portal, vvvvvv, rimworld, myst, and a few more not in steam, dungeon crawl stone soup, Spelunky. These were just what I already had. All chosen for their gaminess and not their realism. Maybe half life 2 is one that was trying for realism (at the time).

Just like I require some actual book reading and not just graphic novels. I wonder if the games you played will be a sign of 'culture' at some point.

"Their a good family but they only play halo and battlefield"

well that read got more and more bizarre the farther I got in. Started with a simple allusion to "hype" culture, advertised Schrier's new (at the time) book about the devs trying to live up to that hype, and then somewhere we took a left turn into corporatism and how entertainment is just a "work simulator". Then by the ending 10% we go to the typical preaching to the audience about better work conditions.

It ends up feeling like 3 different stories stitched together instead of one solid thesis. I don't know what to make of it. Things only got worse in the 3 years, so all it seemed t provide was nice platitudes to hope for.

Yes. The two books by Schreier: "Blood, Sweat, and Pixels", and the sequel, "Press Reset". Both are worth reading, and better than this article.

The article author touches on the gamification of work, but doesn't get very far with it. Games as a "work simulator", or "grinding games", have been around for years, but they're less popular than they used to be. There are many of them, though, from "Modern Farming" to "Lawnmower Simulator".

Yes, there really is a lawnmower simulator game. It's a total grind. You work for a lawn-mowing business. You have to walk the lawn before mowing and pick up rocks, to avoid damaging the mower. Then you mow, not missing any spots or damaging flowerbeds. Then you get paid. Then you may be able to buy a better mower.[1]

Now get back to work.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anIUhgxk-B8

Are they less popular? Or is every game just a version of a grind simulator?

Achievements and badges, I believe, are ruining games. The focus isn't on the actual gameplay, but on completion. It's a job.

Here's my hot take: souls games have taken this to the extreme.

The boss battles require you to try over and over and over to learn the specific move sequence to beat them. The games require a nearly specific progression of both in game and out of game skills and muscle memory.

That's not entertainment, it's studying!!!

One of the great lessons of game design is that learning is fun.

So games that require thought are more engaging and fun. There is a threshold where it isn’t fun, but that’s different from person to person. Lots of people like the souls games, myself included.

Try asking yourself, what isn’t a grind in my favorite game? Chances are that requires thought.

>what isn’t a grind in my favorite game?

My all time favorite electronic games are (a) Descent [1995] and (b) Hillsfar [1989]. There is no grinding in those games, at all.

>So games that require thought are more engaging and fun.

It's not thinking, though. That's my whole point. It's memorization at best (souls games), and mindless point a to point b clicking at worst (Robocop Rogue City is the most recent example I can think of here). They're not puzzles, they're not thinking, they're just little achievement drips.

I agree that learning is fun. The Dr. Brain and Gizmos and Gadgets were FANTASTIC back in the day.

I would argue that games today don't really require a lot of learning. They're intentionally made so you feel a sense of accomplishment for just following the series of clicks.

Maybe I'm just old and jaded. Who knows.

Also, somebody needs to remake the Dr. Brain games. I just realized I need that in my life today.

"utopian work simulator" well said. These games give the illusion of accomplishment and progress.

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