At least it doesn't take up the whole basement like the sets previous generations played with.

I work in performance - a space where we're thinking about threading, parallelism and the like a lot - and I often say "I want to hire who play with trains". What I mean is "I want people who play Factorio", because the concepts and problems are very very similar. But fewer people know Factorio, so I say trains instead.

I think I know why it's enjoyable even though it's so close to work, too. It's the _feedback_. Factorio shows you visually where you screwed up, and what's moving slowly. In actual work the time and frustration is usually in finding it.

Versus say Call of Duty or whatever that you might lose yourself in, which is also not productive, but bears no resemblance to work.

Pilot communities probably say similar things about flight sims (or flight components of games) that aren't good enough to be useful practice?

many people feel it feels similar to coding, in the way you have to slowly refactor designs + work involves a recursive breakdown of tasks + tracing/debugging of issues

but that's the extend of it, you don't have to do heavier programming practice like algorithm, complex state management, input parsing and validation (unless sushi), or anything involving combinators until finishing the 1.0 version.

For typical gameplay, the only puzzles you run into are the ones you build yourself into. The name of game is to design your factory in a modular and extensible way so that you do not build yourself into a puzzle.

And I think that's mostly due to the lack of constraints in most programming jobs. I don't have to think about throughput or optimizing op codes or almost anything else because our machines have absurd amounts of compute and more memory than most hard drives I've had in my life, the networks are broad and fast, and there's a commercial solution for most of the hard problems.

Maybe I'd think differently if I worked on microcontrollers, but my brief foray into Arduinos and Raspberry Pies didn't feel that much different. I mean, I was using Python on the Arduino. I felt more constrained by the pins than anything else - another problem with several well explored solutions.

I’ve hated puzzle games all my life. Most likely because they’re artificial.

The analog controls in real life are heavier, more raw, somewhat imprecise, and you can feel them knocked around by the wind for example. Night and day difference. It honestly makes the most state of the art simulator feel like you’re operating a NES.

When I first started flying my instructor specifically recommended against flight sims for that very reason.

Now that I have my PPL I only use them to practice approaches for new airports that I’ve never visited before and to familiarize myself with the cockpit layout for planes I haven’t flown before. It helps build some minor muscle memory so I can focus on the harder parts of flying.

For some the latter is facotrio. I tried it myself, didn't get past the demo. I think if I'm doing something not productive in terms of not using my time towards something that actively makes me money, I would feel better doing something like learning another programming language, do some quick projects to automate parts of my life, try to write myself a game or a piece of toy software that challenges me and is also fun to implement.

I think I'd rather do those than play facotrio.

That’s why startups appeal to me, because they appeal to my nature. It’s in my nature to desire being productive.

So asking “why must you always be productive” on a site full of startup enthusiasts … well, you’re going to get a lot of the same answers

Trivia on farming: Medieval peasants worked far less than modern employees (at most 150 days a year). It was obviously harder physical work than sitting in an office all day, but they had plenty of downtime

Though, with AI looming to take this last shred of human dignity too, maybe having a bit of fun along the way isn't such a bad idea.

Scratch that - I'm using "money" as a proxy for "value". Let's talk value directly. All things being equal, if I can enjoy Activity A totally in isolation, and Activity B equally much, but B leaves something behind which other people can use and get their own value out of, then B is clearly a better or more noble use of my time. Being productive just makes you a better person on net.

Now... I do not choose the "max productivity" strat with each and every second of my being, far from it. I'll probably buy and play Factorio sometime in the next few months, and it will be Steam game #3 added to my library after FTL and Slay the Spire. But I'm not going to sit here and pretend it is somehow better for the world outside of myself to play Factorio rather than e.g. improve the FOSS software I maintain that helps people learn Finnish. Let alone something like contribute to the Linux kernel. This is a philosophical non-question to me.

When I play games, I never play competitive or intense games, I see it as a therapeutic activity.

I play relaxing single player games like Stardew Valley or Tiny Glade. Cultivate some crops, feed my chicken, pat my cat. No real end goal other than to just relax. I urge anyone to try, especially in co-op with with a friend or partner. It really is therapeutic.

I’ve wanted to play Valheim for ages. I even bought the Factorio DLC on launch day and barely played it because nobody wanted to play.

Ironically, Factorio is all about productivity. Mine more resources, produce more items, expand more land and build more factory.

Everyone has different ways of unwinding and finding meaning, and productivity doesn’t need to be the sole measure of time well spent, at least for me anymore.

Plus I'm going to die unlike when I was an immortal teenager, so I want to retire ASAP.

If I'm going to game it'll be an FPS or similar when I'm too brain dead to play when-will-i-be-a-millionaire.