I feel the same way, although it's even worse with Zachtronic games (like SpaceChem for instance). At first I enjoy them because "it's just like coding" but then after an hour or so I think "well, it's just like coding" and I realize that I could be doing something more productive. I guess it must be like playing Guitar Hero if you're a professional guitarist.

I think these games are great at teaching people about concurrent programming, race conditions and locking though.

Anecdote: I got my first programming job while in the middle of a SpaceChem run (previously, I was just a hobby coder). I quit the game in a few days after starting that job, as I found it required the same "brain juices" I had already depleted at the office.

Yes, my greatest lament about life is that “brain juice” appears to be a limited resource

But I believe, there are different types of "brain juice".

I run out of the one required for nasty bug finding, very soon, but when that one is gone (and after a short break to clear the mind) I can go on creating new code/architecture for hours.

I didn’t really see these nuances until I was diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed stimulant medication. It basically gives me a large tank of “rainbow juice” that works for any task and lasts 4-6 hours.

Going back to the parent comment, one remarkable effect of this is that I rarely desire to play video games like I used to. It seemed like I always had enough juice for video games but rarely for other life obligations, but with the rainbow juice I am just as motivated to do all that other stuff as I am to play video games.

I would not feel comfortable needing a drug to be productive.

I do struggle a lot at times with focus, but I rather try to balance it with good and healthy livestyle. Lots of sleep. Exercise, meditation ..

But I have a toddler boy, who can mess with sleep and rhythm a lot, so having the possibility of a "rainbow juice" is definitely tempting.

Have you noticed bad side effects? Do you allways take ritalin(?) for work? Or just on special occacions?

I’m probably on a very similar drug to OP. I take it monday-friday.

Common side effects of ADHD drugs are loss of appetite, difficulty sleeping, and increased heart rate. It basically puts you into fight or flight mode for 6 hours a day. More blood to your brain + muscles, less to everything else (digestion, immune system for example).

One weird thing about it is the first few times you take it you’ll get a feeling of euphoria, like you’re on cocaine. This is _not_ the way the drug is supposed to feel, it goes away if you stick with the same dose for a while. Some people keep going up because they think the euphoria is part of it, and that’s really dangerous.

It really does work incredibly well for me. Especially for programming, where you’re most productive when you’re not pulled out of a flow state. I went from a B average to straight A’s when I started taking it in college. It made it so easy to oranize my schedule, I just worked/studied from 8-6 every day. No late nights, no procrastination.

Personally, I have no feeling of withdrawal when I go off of it for weeks at a time. Though I have developed a bit of a psychological dependency around work, where I kind of tell myself I won’t work well without it, which becomes self-fulfilling.

It’s not all good, not all bad. Hopefully this helps!

Yes, that was a really helpful shared experience, thank you!

Basically, it enforced my point of view to only try it out, if I really think it is neccecary.

I never done cocaine, but weed.

With the right time and settings it can help me get into a flow lasting for 10+ hours. But weed really does not help mid or long term, my productivity goes into steady decline after couple of days.

And coffeine I never liked, so I prefer the natural rhythm, with varying success.

I most definitely have mixed feelings about it. Granted, I wasn't diagnosed until my mid-30s, and I like to think I accumulated a respectable pile of life accomplishments beforehand (along with some dramatic failures) so I have a pretty thorough understanding of my own performance baseline. By the time I had a career and family, my problem was no longer failing to be productive, but rather failing to be productive at the right things at the right times. The modern world is built around consistency, planning and schedules and these things cause major problems for me, as for most of us with ADHD.

Stimulants (Vyvanse in my case) are blunt instruments; they alleviate the specific behavioral problems that plague those of us with ADHD but also enhance performance in general. The biggest danger that I see in my own behavior is the tendency to forget about all the self-management practices I learned before my diagnosis. With stimulants, you can do irresponsible things like stay up late for no good reason, get four hours of sleep, and still be fairly productive once the medication kicks in. I have to be really honest with myself on a daily basis about whether I'm using it to overcome a deficit caused by ADHD, or a deficit caused by bad behavior.

The second biggest danger is developing unrealistic expectations about what I am capable of accomplishing. For example, I am currently pursuing a PhD in computer science, and the decision to do so was made by the medicated version of myself. I don't regret the decision one iota, and it's a goal I've had for many years, but I already had a long list of projects and goals when I signed up for this and I definitely deluded myself about just how many of those other commitments I'd have to set aside for a while (or forever) in order to get a PhD.

"my problem was no longer failing to be productive, but rather failing to be productive at the right things at the right times. "

That is my problem right now, too. I am just scared, that medication really does not help me long term, for all the reasons you mentioned.

Thank you, for sharing.

I see comments like this and seriously start to wonder if I'm an almost 40 year old man with undiagnosed ADHD.

If only my insurance covered mental health...

There are online tests you can take. If you score high enough, its worth the few hundred dollars to get an official diagnoses. This is coming from someone who was diagnosed ADHD as an adult.

I feel the same way!

Seeing this comment makes me think that I should consider talking to a doctor about ADHD. I can't even focus on playing a video game for more than 30 minutes most of the time.

Sometimes referred to as Spoon Theory

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

We've been calling it mana among my group.

What is it?

I'd tell you all about it, but I'm currently all out of it ;)

Look into Ego Depletion. There's academic disagreement over just how "consumable" willpower is. My assessment of SOTA is:

- ego/willpower is finite/depletable

- Most people have more or less the same amount of it as the average. People with "more willpower" typically are more efficient with it

- non-neurotypicals and those that "don't fit in society" (ADHD, ASD, bipolar, trans, nonbinary, anxiety, OCD) often spend much willpower on "passing"

- it's linked to everything from blood sugar levels, insulin levels, brain blood flow, dopamine levels, D1/D2 activation ratios, and probably gut microbiome

maybe replenish "brain juice" by drinking it from another brain?

If you're into that kind of metaphors, you may like the game 'Carrion'; warning, lots of pixel blood. It launched not long ago and does a great job in creating an 80s horror atmosphere. At the same time it's a relatively easy metroidvania platformer, so I find it a genuinely good activity to recover "brain juice" after coding.

Thank you for recommending this. I just bought the game and I’m most certainly going to be spending a few weekends on this : )

It helps to balance out the stress on different faculties. If you write code for 14 hours a day you're gonna burnout but if you balance a variety of activities it is possible to be very productive while not feeling exhausted.

Emotional, mental and physical energy are all limited resources.

I found with "Opus Magnum" that, yeah, it was programming of a sort, but since it was all these wacky physical devices, that it was enough unlike coding that it switched back to being a fun puzzle.

But, yeah, with "TIS-1000" it was just programming, and sort of unnecessarily (and unpleasantly) difficult programming at that.

I really enjoyed TIS-1000, possibly because of the constraints the machine and assembly language posed. Finding clever ways to work within those constraints was fun. Same sort of fun I get when writing 6502 ASM for ROM hacks on my Atari 2600.

In my day job at the time the game came out I was doing node.js microservices. So it was refreshing to work at the bit level again.

Wow never saw SpaceChem before. Thanks for the unintended recommendation :)

I hope I didn't sound too negative, it's a good game and can be quite a bit of fun.

Kind of how all games are.

I could sit here and get virtual levels and virtual money... or go raise my actual human fitness level, or go work on my actual business for actual money.

Games are an easy win to feed you nuggets of feeling like you did stuff, but a poor substitute for real life.

Nonsensical argument unless you generally spend time you should be working gaming or spend time you could be relaxing working.

If you want to be a workaholic and spend your free time working, go right ahead.

But you will end up like my father, mid 70s with no real relationships with your family, obsessed with "completing your legacy" and a general inability to enjoy anything that isn't "work".

If that sound like fun to you, go right ahead.

Me, I'll continue to work at work and spend my free time on relaxation.

You only get one life, spending it chasing dollars and dimes is a poor life plan

I work on programming projects I find fun. What makes it recreation is that it's something I want to work on, I don't have others imposing deadlines or requirements.

A mechanic can enjoy working on his own project car in the off time.

Both of these things are productive in a way that playing games isn't, but they're still recreational. It's not spending your life chasing dimes. It's looking at the different recreational things you could be doing, and choosing the ones that also intersect with being productive and have a side-effect of helping you professionally.

Games and play -- of the "unproductive" kind -- are a fundamental and valuable human activity. Not everything has to produce something beyond mental well-being. Plus, of course, children learn by playing.

We can keep learning by playing as we get older, we just change the scope. You have to tend to your curiosity to keep it fit and capable.

Sure. You don't have to convince me of this! I'm already a believer :)

Nobody said your hobbies must be productive. But some people prefer it to be, and I don't think it's right to shame those people as if they're just chasing dimes or denying part of what it is to be human.

Productive is all relative anyway. Children learning by playing is productive, the productive part is the learning that is a byproduct. Working on a project car is fun in itself. It doesn't become less fun if the person doing it is a professional mechanic. Would you tell a person who plays games professionally in an e-sports league that they must do something else for fun?

I think it is a sign of good life when you find a way to get paid for doing what you enjoy. And if you enjoy it, then it is still fun when you do it outside of work. The productive benefits of it do not make it less fun.

I agree with both of you, to a degree. Playing a single player video game is unlikely to help you build relationships with others. And yet never stopping to enjoy life in all its variation leads to a pretty empty life, too.

> Playing a single player video game is unlikely to help you build relationships with others

I disagree. I have fond memories of discussing Zelda on the playground as a kid. Similarly, online communities are formed around basically every notable single player game. It's still a shared experience, even if it's not shared at the same moment.

Your father got a child, so he's clearly not obsessing enough about work.

Recreation is important and one form is not more "real" than another. Notwithstanding the fact that some games feel like work (and therefore suck, in my view), for those that are enjoyable, that provides value, whether it be chess, team sports or a video game.

Maybe there's something to be said for opting to lead a more creative rather than consumptive lifestyle. Ultimately though, something only matters if you think it does. My work is largely bullshit, and I can't think of a business I'd want to get into that also wouldn't feel like bullshit. I think the value I'd extract would precisely be in the connections made and the problem-solving itself. How important is another piece of enterprise software to extract money from people that no one thought they wanted until it exists?

Have you considered changing your line of work, and perhaps seeing if you can use your existing skills to help you in a new career?

I'm eyeing off a few avenues, I wouldn't mind not writing software for money anymore but it would also be cool to use my hard earned experience to my advantage. One avenue I thought of was music composition, because there are ways to automate some of it with code that I could use to provide some extra value, but it's also enough of a leap from my current career that it would be a wildly new endeavor.

What about a B2C app that solves a real problem for real users in a new or better way than existing apps? That seems like an easy way you can deliver real value. That's what's gotten me moving on all my personal projects so far—though granted, I haven't published/monetized them yet, just shared them with friends and family. But I get value from them and my friends and family get value from them, and that makes me feel good.

Value to someone, sure. I wouldn't necessarily see the value in it.

I do have personal projects, one to do good, others out of curiosity. Mostly out of an urgency to be creative. I don't think this carries more meaning than pure leisure.

Eh. Time and place. People need downtime and even though I don't game much these days, I think fondly of all the hours of Starcraft and Starcraft 2 I played. And beating Xan on Godlike in Unreal Tournament 2004 (and totally cleaning up when we had lan parties) was just so fun.

Real life is fun too. But games are part of life.

But there is only so much time that you can be effective at running a business or running. Some people need to relax from the stress of work and tiredness of exercise by playing games for example.

But is it all that relaxing to build and run a complex virtual factory? Sometimes if the level of difficulty is too high it can become stressful.

I understand that there's satisfaction in it. That satisfaction can be hard to get at work sometimes. At work, you can be asked to work on things you don't like, that sometimes feel even more pointless than a game.

Part of the reason why I have programming side-projects at home is because they're an outlet to get the satisfaction of building software the way I want to.

The consequences of messing up a make believe factory is essentially nothing except one’s own time loss. The consequences of messing up a real factory are obviously substantial. What games or side projects let us do sometimes is to explore and enter a more diffuse mode of thought which has some tangential benefits to other activities. Spending too much time “being productive” can be counterproductive because one can get tunnel vision too busy executing tasks instead of reimagining or optimizing those tasks. Too much time questioning the work and nothing materially important gets done either.

Would you say the same thing about fictional books? They're generally regarded as being worth the time, but aren't they also "a poor substitute for real life." You could be having your own experiences instead of reading made-up ones. I don't see why games should be different. Certainly not all games are created equally, and some exist only to suck away time and money, but it's obvious when that's the intention.

There is more to games than videogames where you raise levels or virtual money (which are, in turn, a very specific class of videogames).

Eww, games trying to substitute 'real life'. Realism is boring. Games should be ART. Something you CAN'T experience in real life.

Yeah, most games should stay in a fantasy land... Like where you mostly kill your enemies.

This isn't a problem with the game. This is a problem you are having with games in general.

I have it too, and it's a consequence of growing up and/or having more responsibilities.

I can either play Factorio, or I can spend time with my kids. Factorio, which I love, loses every time.

The only games I play now are ones I can play with my kids. ... so I set my daughter up with Starcraft 2 and am teaching her about strategy while still scratching that gaming itch.

My dream is to have a multiplayer LAN based VR Elder Scrolls game to play at home with the family.

I think it's a bit of both. I have that with all games too, though generally I have it less-so with games that don't take my creative energy which I would rather use for coding or arts.

I have little to no problem getting myself to play Starcraft II or other strategy games which I love. Low-effort story-based games are also easy to get into.

Depending on how old your kids are, they might enjoy playing Factorio with you. My daughter is 3, and she is always up for playing "The Train Game". She mostly enjoys telling me what colours my trains should be and where I should drive them, so I need to use a more train-based system than I would otherwise.

There's multiplayer in Factorio.

Starcraft? Wow nice, what was the progression to that point, I assume it was not her first game

I usually bootstrap a second base, make heavy use of trains, and ship materials back to original base. At this point I generally don't tear things down

And thus was born the service-oriented architecture.

No, that's multiplayer.

Not sure why you're downvoted- that's how my friends and I would play multiplayer, with certain players taking "ownership" of specific raw material sources and shipping them to factories operated by other players.

Yeah, bootstraps all the way: 1. Bootstrap "base 1" to Automation 1 (Coal etc.) 2. Bootstrap "Base 2" for Red/Green science, automate building components 3. Main bus "Science Base" maybe up to first rocket (maybe some train in resources) and later repurpose for module construction. 4. Train Base to goal SPM factory

The game has some major transition points where refactoring makes sense, but often the correct solution is to tactically upgrade as much as possible, and get to the better point to rebuild.

Seablock playthrough once updated for 1.0.

"Build one to throw away"

Somewhat, but also build a new one while letting the old one still perform useful work, decommission when it is beneficial.

All bets are off in seablock.

Lol this is what a company I worked at did and they spent almost a year trying to get version 2 to parity with version 1 and finally gave up short of parity

In the manufacturing industry that's basically drop shipping.

More like if a manufacturer needed to make a new product so they built an entire new factory next door and ran electric and plumbing from the old building and abandoned it.

In fact it's exactly like this because that's what the game is about.

The game has logistics drones that can transfer predetermined resources to keep a certain box at a certain level.

Most players just build a new factory and then deconstruction planner their old one en masse once the new one is up.

...which itself isn't all that different from software development.

The fun is once you have the construction bots for me you can make them destroy segments and from then on you can just ghost build everything else.

For example, I am playing on an OARC server, basically new players get their own base space, and I'm trying to get to my friend we both kinda picked 'far away' as options so we wouldnt clash with each other, so I've got blueprints I keep dropping that keep expanding my logistics network + power grid northward / westward as I make my way to him. The construction bots do all the work, my factory gets all the materials to them.

I've taken a break since, but then once I can reach out to him I will probably build train tracks going to and from his base and mine. I'm also using the robots to build a massive base. I can just ghost place whatever I want where I want it as long as the robot tower can cover that area.

I've just got to the point where i can use robots. How do you go about ghost building stuff? Do you have to use blueprints? Can the constrution robots just build anything for you if the mats are in chests?

You should have gotten a tutorial presented when you got bots, that'll go over over how it works.

You can just place ghost items by hand (press shift) but not much point. The advantage is being able to smack down whole bunches of machines in blueprints.

They can build anything if the products are in provider chests. They have the exact items, they won't build from intermediate materials.

They build from the logistics chests, and yeah by blueprints. You can also have them tear things down as well, and they wind up in logistics chests. One thing I am doing is I have two separate logistics networks, and from my main I have conveyors taking things I want to the 2nd logistics network.

You can also start a Sandbox game mode to explore everything you can do (note infinity chests are extremely useful, you pick a item in the game, and it will produce as many of them as you want perpetually, then your inserters can pull those out into conveyors simulating different parts of what you'd like your factory to look like). Definitely recommend this approach, you can explore as much as you'd like to explore.

Also note, there are a few websites with prebuilt blueprints as well.

It's possible to order bots to put out things for you without blueprints. You need a personal roboport, and some construction bots in your inventory. It's been a while since I played, so I don't really remember if you just place with left click, or some modifier and left click. It vastly increases the range you can reach when building manually and its an excellent qol upgrade. The more construction bots you have (up to the researched limit) the more faster it'll be, because they have to return to you to pick up the next piece.

I forgot to mention in my comment, if you hold shift when putting something down, it will ghost it. So you can have 1 of every item you need, no need for a personal robot port, and they will ghost it. The great thing about letting bots build is if you don't have all the materials they will drop it as it comes into the logistics network!

Edit: fixed a typo

Yeah, ghost placement is what I was thinking of, thanks for the reminder! The approach you suggest requires being in the range of a logistic network however, while carried construction bots are only limited by the range you have available from the engineer.

There are tons of designs you can do with bots, some have built completely belt-less bases using them. They're limited by their speed and range however, so you always have to balance to the constraints of the tools you use.

You can copy existing sections of your factory with Ctrl-C and paste ghosts with Ctrl-V. There's also a paste buffer that you can scroll through with the mouse wheel.

You can also cut + paste

It takes a lot of the tedium away when you made a miscalculation and need to be just a little bit closer or further from something.

Now you can cut, move over 1 and paste.

I've also found it really nice for rails. If you want a t-junction, just go away from everything and make a 90-degree rail curve. Then cut it.

Then go back to where you wanted the t-junction and paste in the curve and rotate it and paste again to get perfectly lined up sections of track.

and then you can have blueprints and upgrade planners and destruction planners.

upgrade planners let you convert say all slow belts to fast belts and leave the inserters alone.

destruction planners let you remove only walls but leave the electrical towers and rails alone.

it just goes deeper and deeper.

To me it's surprising how many games can actually be viewed like work.

I'm convinced that some games are actually Ender's games. Forklift simulator 2020? You're actually controlling a forklift somewhere in Germany and Hans is now out of work.

For those missing the reference:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forklift_Driver_Klaus_%E2%80...

The wiki page is fine, but the video is quite literally Not Safe For Work. My German boss at the chemical company showed the whole team. Kinda gorey but in the Monty Python Black Knight sort of way, and similarly hilarious. Klaus' story is made up but it's based upon thousands of tales written in blood. Definitely gave me an enhanced appreciation for safety culture.

Just in case you aren't at work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C37MnfXD1z8

That's a fun one, but it's about Klaus not Hans.

Forklift simulator is a game you can buy: https://store.steampowered.com/app/939450/Forklift_Simulator...

Thanks - and for 'Ender's games': https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game

And much like in Ender's Game, uncountably many are now dead by my hand.

I guess the obvious thing to point out are the multiplayer modes for Call of Duty, Battlefront, Overwatch, etc.

Short films have been made about this, and of course Ender's Game.

According to some games theorists, all games:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/10/dont-...

I was not prepared for the length of that article but I couldn’t stop reading

I tried one of the truck driving simulators. Got stuck behind a slow minivan. Where is the fun in simulating the most frustrating part of my workday?

I turned off traffic violations in the options, bought the most powerful truck I could, and now make every delivery at 90-100 mph.

Of course I'm also doing it in VR and with a steering wheel setup

The same with Train Sim. Waiting 5 minutes for a red sign is very realistic but there is no fun in it.

You can use the 40T to remove the problem which could have slight repercussions in real life.

So true! Super Mario games are basically a giant learning curve of controlling your character, where steps are well defined and cut into levels.

Roboports chained together to form large logistics networks with construction bots and blueprints (whether of your own creation or easily downloaded) my friend.

If recreating a portion of your factory "feels too much like work" to do it really sounds like you haven't availed yourself fully to the tools the game gives you to do it.

It really feels like a time waster until you get the drones to do those chores. I had a huge sprawl just because teching up to drones again in a new map felt like too much work.

Just add a quality of life mod giving you earlier access to precursor bots, e.g. Construction Drones[1] or Nanobots[2].

[1] https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Construction_Drones

[2] https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Nanobots

This mod is great, really speeds up the early game to get to the more interesting middle and late games.

Watching AntiElitz speedruns and going for No Spoon taught me how to sprint through the early game and get to bots and a large amount of production quickly.

Indeed, and to explain for the audience, in speedruns the split to get construction bots up and runnuing is around 40 minutes.

The WR time to launch a rocket and get 'space science', the final science is currently about 1hr46m.

Drones are a lot easier to get to now after they tweaked the sciences/tech tree, you're now able to pursue drone science immediately after green. Mods are always available if you need it immediately though.

I've found it actually heightens the enjoyment for me. Unlike work, I can completely refactor my base from the ground up and no one will yell at me.

When my factory has grown so big and unwieldy that I start to feel a massive refactoring is in order but that it's going to be too much work, I just start a new game and use the lessons I learned from the previous game to design a better factory next time.

"Seagull contractor" :-)

That sounds like a shitty sequel to the goose game.

Had the exact same experience with Satisfactory. When you need to scale production up it becomes like a real job. You need to plan, refactor, etc.

When I now see those videos on Youtube with huge factories I wonder how many hours that person has wasted. I'm not against enjoying a video game, but when the activity is so similar to real work... why not do that instead and get something real in return?

> I'm not against enjoying a video game, but when the activity is so similar to real work... why not do that instead and get something real in return?

Because dopamine :).

I enjoy working too :)

The “guitar hero” vs “learning guitar” paradox.

> This is actually what ruins the game for me. I get to a place where I need to recreate large chunks of the factory and it just feels too much like work.

Are you using drones and blueprints?

Once you unlock drones, you can create huge swaths of factories in seconds. You just need to come up with a design that works, and then replicate it.

Likewise, and I spotted it early on so never really got into it. Systematic games are my favourite kind of game, but when it gets as raw as factorio is I suddenly snap out of immersion and realise I'm working but in a game.

Completely agree, refactoring your layout is too expensive. What I typically do is just start-afresh with all the resources I have accrued from my current factory -- still fun!

Yeah but you can have robots do all the heavy lifting.

Wow I often feel that way when I do most things! I think you just have a passion for programming and it is your hobby in addition to profession.

I felt the same way. And then I think I want to automate it.

I heard scripting is possible? Do experienced players use it, to automate things?

Have you reached the construction robot tech? It removes the requirement to place items by hand, and the game largely turns into a "planner" game.

No, I did not. But I played it 2 years ago and maybe it was not even there back then? Anyway, I might give it a try again ..

Did you get copy/paste going?

That was when the creative:tedious ratio got rebalanced for me.

I mean, if it's too much work you didn't plan ahead well enough (and/or you need to get to the robots so they can do the work for you).