On Factorio and those kinda game:

To me, Factorio is very basically just simplified Eagle with monsters (Eagle is PCB designer software). You have underground belts (vias), smelters (ICs), inserters (Caps, resistors, 2 lead parts). Then you throw some monsters in there to give some random fuzz on the designs and make things a bit more 'spicy'.

Mincraft is much the same, it's a very basic Solidworks. You can extrude and loft with the voxels, put in some basic digital electronics (redstone), some basic fluids (water/lava), and make simple machines (look at mob-grinders). Throw in some randomness with the creepers and other mobs to make things spicy.

Kerbal is also the same. It's a basic flight simulator. You can mess with staging, centers of mass, and centers of thrust. You can do simple ballistic and orbital mechanics. Then you throw in the wonkiness of the physics simulator and the fan-named 'Kraken' and you have the randomness of monsters (I think they could have done better in this regard)

A lot of these 'indie' sleeper hits seems to be like that: Take some industrial design software, make it so basic a 7 year old can use it, throw in monsters to mess up the designs and to shoot/stab.

Other software that could be used for this process is Z-max (optics design software), some kinda Wall-Street software that's not just excel, maybe some urban planning but better/more random than SimCity/CitiesSkylines, other stuff.

Any ideas?

EDIT: Here is a wiki page of possible avenues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Computer-aided_engine...

So I've played all the ones that you've mentioned and loved them (especially Kerbal Space Program), but I'd like to point out that they're fun to play because they're games, whereas similar industrial software applications are not games. This is a very meaningful distinction because the addition of game mechanics makes them fun to play around with.

I also don't think the connections are quite so close as you make them out to be. Factorio is at its heart a survival game -- you can't just dismiss the enemies as added "spice", as they are an integral part of the challenge. The advanced factory automation becomes necessary to build up your tech level high enough to take on the higher level monsters that come at you later in the game.

I mean, I really like messing about with SW in my free time; the X-Wing is coming along, but I don't really have the ram.

I get that they are games at the end of the day, but many of the elements/mechanics seem to be from 'real' software (in this category of game). It's not a criticism, it's just an observation.

For more on how to go into video game theory, PennyArcade's XtraCredits series is pretty binge-able: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCODtTcd5M1JavPCOr_Uydg

I beg your pardon. Photoshop has always been the best computer game ever!

> some kinda Wall-Street software

http://store.steampowered.com/app/271240/Offworld_Trading_Co... ?

Railroad Tycoon 2 had a better market simulation component than Offworld Trading Company, which in my opinion never really came to completion. OTC just doesn't have any depth to the gameplay, or for that matter the game mechanics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Tycoon_II

How is OpenTTD in comparison? http://www.openttd.org/en/

Do you have any other examples of games which simulate markets well?

I haven't played a game in the longest, mostly because I find it hard to justify the time ... I've been reading lots about economics and finance and if I can get some "experience" to solidify the concepts while still having fun at the same time then what the hell, I wanna do it!!

M.U.L.E. is a old-school classic in this regard.

Looks cool but a bit too old for me :/

I've played that - Offworld Trader Co is seriously a day trader simulation, but with commodities on Mars.

Astroneer is like Minecraft without the 90 degree angles.

https://astroneer.space/

The EVE-Online marketplace should satisfy the "kinda Wall-Street software" requirement.

(No I'm not making the spreadsheets in space joke.)

True! The exploding bridge with dynamite about 10 years ago, and Workd of Goo: blob-bridges and structures, more recently.

Edit: Pipe Dreams(?) about 20 years ago, and more recently Where’s my water.

You just gave me an idea.

Awesome! Glad to have helped.

410 hours deep in Factorio here - with no end in sight. I slowed down for a while but then discovered the Warehousing and Loader mods which allowed me to build entirely new types of factories. I haven't been this addicted to a game since Transport Tycoon Deluxe.

I don't really play games at all, but I've had Factorio bookmarked for a while, thinking I wanted to try it. Think you've just convinced me.

Just one word of advice: be careful :) It's highly addictive.

It also gave me a good case of insectophobia from the enemies you face.

But is it Skinner Box addictive?

No, more like ‘nerd sniping’ addictive.

"This game is like crack for programmers." -kentonv

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11269098

It totally is. I had to remove it from my computer after too many 2am nights.

Well worth it. Active developers, huge modding community, and gameplay that appeals to engineering minds.

I wish I could make people play Factorio as some kind of training.

My son (9), who showed me the game, spent the longest time building parts manually. I kept showing him how to automate, but it didn't really "click" until I was pumping out solid lines of green potions in front of him, then he understood the magic of automation.

It felt oddly similar to interactions with various business departments.

"Look, we're never gonna leave the planet -- I mean, make a profit unless we automate. Otherwise the aliens -- 'er, our competitors are going to rip us to shreds."

I mean, expecting a 9-year-old to grasp a production process completely, then conceive of automating it seems a bit optimistic.

It's not that hard - 9 year olds aren't stupid. You just have to show them the change in pain a couple of times for them to "grok" it.

The pain, in Factorio terms, is having to sit there not doing anything. Boring. Once you set up an assembler to do it for you, suddenly you can fill that time with whatever you want to. The simple problem/solution/reward loop Factorio presents around automation works remarkably well.

Optimization, however, is harder to teach.

It's probably more along the lines of incentives, trade-offs, and pragmatism. If you can survive and have fun while making everything manually, why bother to automate? If suddenly, the proverbial bear is gaining on you such that you realize that the status quo won't cut it down the line, then the cost of automation becomes worth it.

If anything, it probably means that the nine year old is faster at making a known factory manually than the parent.

And in this case, the "bear" is biter evolution. The biters (enemies in the game) get stronger over time. At the beginning they're trivial to kill with your basic weapons or turrets, but as they get stronger you'll need walls, AP ammunition, and then finally laser turrets (in increasing numbers) to fend them off. If you aren't automating construction of this stuff then you'll fall behind and get killed.

I discovered this in my first play-through because I was prioritizing high tech research over military research, and thus didn't get laser turrets until well after I needed them to take on the stronger biters. I had to roll back an hour and change my research priorities to get them in time to prevent getting stomped.

Disagree.

There are great YouTube series if you want see before you buy.

Katherine of Sky is particularly good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxlpQMJt8XA&list=PL4o6UvJIdP...

There is also a demo version of you want to actually try it

I have the same feelings to Dwarf Fortress.

What blows my mind about Factorio, besides the excellent game design and execution, is how fucking rock solid and silky smooth it runs, in spite of its extreme complexity and vast number of moving parts.

I've logged many many hours of game play, and leave it running for days at a time, and it's never crashed, stuttered or even bogged down on me once! (Maybe I'm just not making big enough factories, though.)

While we're on topic of Factorio (and similar games like SpaceChem), here's a new indie game that should appeal to HN users about digital logic and CPU design: http://pleasingfungus.com/Silicon%20Zeroes/ (not my project, I ain't no shill, though I have met the dev on IRC).

I had to stop playing Factorio after about 2 hours. I'd probably end up spending months on it ... ... such an addicting game!

Absolutely fun, though.