Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

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Then there are the "social games", which to me is really an abuse of the word "game", since they are nothing more (IMHO) than exercises in feeding addiction and inducing compulsive behaviour. There is no element of skill. It's simply who can purchase the most.

A game that markets itself through a social network is not intrinsically social. It's just parasitic. Zynga is Facebook's tapeworm. Games, for over 5000 years, have been a lot more social than Fartville. This Zynga shit is alienating. It's about as "social" as playing the lottery is intellectual because it involves numbers.

I was at Google during the Real Games battle, and inadvertently became somewhat of a lightning rod for it. I'll skip over the whole history but just say this: if decisions had been made on merit rather than rank, Google+ Games could have been something, and if it had, Google+ would have become an actual contender in the social space. I saw first-hand the damage that Zyngaism can do to a potentially major product.

I think all of this Zyngarbage is an attempt to emulate the success of Magic: the Gathering and its iterative pay-to-keep-current mechanism, but without the insight and work that made Magic (in spite of its annoying pricing model) great.

There will be a flight-to-quality in the gaming space (Zyngarbage will always exist, just as third-rate porn always will, but it will become a low-margin commodity) but I have no idea when it will be and what it will do to the current cottage industry.

You have interesting things to say, I'd like to hear more about the Google+ story for example, but your delivery (because you're so angry) makes it nigh unreadable.

That's funny. For me it had the opposite effect. Obviously he has a conscience, for anyone with an intellect who is not the least bit offended by Zynga-ism is, arguably, lacking in that capacity, i.e., in need of a real conscience.

I'm a huge fan of Church's writing in general but I too find the namecalling to be an unfortunate distraction.

"Makes it unreadable, to you"

It seems like a common handicap amongst otherwise smart and capable people, to possess the inability to ignore tone, style grammar etc, and just judge the message on the strength of it's argument alone.

"its"

I consider it a strength to notice both and critique each accordingly. Otherwise you guarantee that you will inadvertently irritate either the big-picture people or the detail lovers (as you have just, ironically, seen demonstrated).

Ironic?

Err No, it is in fact rather apt. As of now, there are two replies to my comment, both nitpicking on the grammar, instead of DH6.

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

Otherwise smart and capable people are often handicapped by an inability to ignore tone, style, grammar, etc. and judge the argument alone.

You need to accept the fact that people will evaluate posts based not only on what they say, but on how they say it as well.

No one needs to accept anything, I'd much rather listen to a badly worded, foul mouthed tirade that rang true, than eloquent diction, suffering from serious flaws in logic.

And yes you can have both, but that is not relevant to the argument. The interesting part is that x, (being well spoken), is not a necessary and sufficient condition for y(having a solid argument), yet many behave as if that is the case.

> No one needs to accept anything ...

Suit yourself. But time is well-spent learning to craft readable sentences.

> The interesting part is that x, (being well spoken), is not a necessary and sufficient condition for y(having a solid argument)

It's necessary but not sufficient. Having literary skill won't save a bad argument, but lacking literary skill will surely undermine a good one.

Grammatical ability is a sign of respect for the reader/listener. Without that sign of respect, one is placed at a crippling disadvantage in advance of presenting the argument.

It's not necessary nor sufficient. The logic of argument, does not rely on the emotions of a listener.

Eg. Claim1: The motherfucking sun is deff larger than da moonz!

Without getting into petty semantic deconstruction, the essence of the statement is true, regardless of the respect (or lack thereof) for the listener. You seem to be confusing logic, with persuasion and communication.

> The logic of argument, does not rely on the emotions of a listener.

No, only the outcome -- effective communication.

> You seem to be confusing logic, with persuasion and communication.

You seem to be confused about the purpose of writing -- which is effective communication. Without an awareness of the recipient, writing becomes onanism.

BTW apropos the topic, both your sentences above contain an unnecessary comma.

Ok

Wow, can you two get over yourselves please. This is so awkward, pedantic and embarrassing.

A very very interesting point to think about... I don't see this original post as having a difficult tone or serious grammar issues. Would be interested to hear more of your thoughts about this issue...

I tend to feel that when someone gets angry and start calling names, it signals that either the person hasn't really thought things out or the person has difficulty seeing other points of view. There are multiple perspectives on many engineering topics.

Something you and the parent are missing: the Zynga-style "social" games are overwhelmingly (80%+) played by a completely different target group than 99% of all computer games before them: adult women.

They are most definitely not going to disappear unless there is competition that appeals to that target group more, and the (admittedly short) experience says it's not going to be something with a big element of skill.

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