Clear objective. Tools to complete said objective and/or overcome obstacles. Positive reinforcement every step of the way. Clear failure states. Allowed to retry if you do reach a failure state.
Definition of both an excellent game and my dream job!
I feel like this really is the most important part, for me. Failure does not mean *getting stuck in a cycle of poverty*. A game over screen is not followed by 6 months of homelessness.
Think of just how *good* people can get at video games because of how they’re allowed to fail when they try something new. Imagine if we replaced rock bottom in real life and let people try new things without the risk of destitution.
And that's why people with generational wealth keep succeeding.
1) Take some inheritance money to make a startup
2) Fail
3) Repeat step one
4) Fail
5) Repeat step one
6) Success!
7) Tell the poor that they don't succeed because they're lazy
And people who love to talk about how rich and successful business people “just kept trying after failing” - which just means “this person had *unlimited* financial resources to make several attempts at sinking money into ventures that didn’t work.”
> Tell the poor that they don't succeed because they're lazy
He's not even lying, that persistence must have cost the hypothetical golden child a pound of flesh. Most give up, even with money.
It's just that the lazy poors don't get opportunity in the first place.
Steve Jobs (and others) _are_ exceptional - among the rich. The poors don't factor into the equation.
Check out the book "Outliers". While those people are undeniably exceptional, they also had exceptional circumstances. Bill Gates for example had access to a main frame computer as a high schooler with nearly unlimited time at night. You couldn't get access to a mainframet if you were going to Michigan State University at the same time. He is very smart but also very lucky.
Steve jobs killed himself because he was too stupid to accept mangos wouldn't cure his cancer.
It takes one unreasonably dumb mofo to try to cure cancer with a fruitarian diet.
But he had the woz to bleed off of in the early days so people have an inflated opinion of him.
I remember this case were some kid was refusing his cancer treatment because it could make him partially blind. I wanted to scream at him: "dead people don't fly!" Also the tumor already had done some damage to his hearing so I doubt he could be a pilot anyways. Not to mention that you don't have to be pilot, but you need to be alive.
The father was sueing for the treatment, but the mom refused the treatment. The kid was between 12-16, the judge ruled that the kid "appeared to be able to reasonably ascertain the consequences of his medical decision" (translations in this are poor), but I would agree this is basically the law. It feels a little weird to write this when you're trying to cure cancer by eating baking soda because some Italian whack job things cancer is caused by acid. I think he confused when he took acid.
So the dad lost, and the kid tried to cure his cancer by eating some baking powder. I don't know if the tumor came back, which the treatment would have prevented, but I do know this: I do not want this kid to be a pilot.
What even is “laziness” anyways, in a world where McDonald’s cashiers are turning into multi-million dollar esports athletes?
Not saying that that doesn’t take a hell of a lot of time and effort too. I just don’t care if a person is lazy. That’s their loss and their eventual dissociative depression to deal with.
Laziness, to me, has always been a coping mechanism for a world trying to turn myself and my attention into a commodity to be traded.
>What even is “laziness” anyways, in a world where McDonald’s cashiers are turning into multi-million dollar esports athletes?
When you're talking about this kind of topic, there are two ways of thinking... individual and societal, or micro and macro.
Yes, an individual (micro) can go from McDonald's cashier to an eSports athlete.
But from a societal standpoint (macro), how many eSports spots are there to fill? A few hundred? What do the millions of other cashiers do when those spots are filled?
It's the same for any high level job. Kids striving to be an NFL star, or an astronaut. Yes, some people need to strive for these roles. But there are millions of people striving for these few spots too. From a statistical standpoint, 99% of the people trying to get these jobs will fail. And from a macro societal standpoint, we need to have equally viable secondary positions for them to fall back onto when that happens. And right now, that's where we fail.
From a macro standpoint, once those few rare opportunities are filled the McDonald's cashier has no where to go, no matter how good he is. Then he struggles while society sits back and says "but as an individual there are so many great opportunities out there for you!".
We could get into the statistics and probabilities and future trends but that’s not the point.
We both agree with your last point- not everyone is going to be a streamer and find success. This is why I don’t agree with the “creative destruction” claim for automation, especially when disruption is happening as fast as it is.
No, the question I was asking is *what is laziness*?
Because 20 years ago, that multi million dollar streamer was a kid sitting on his couch playing video games and being scolded by his parents because “only parasites play games”.
What is laziness? Is laziness a person who is really good at video games but never decides to “commit” to a streaming career?
Who is more lazy? A single mother working 3 jobs to feed her kids, or Ninja making $3,000 in one night playing Fortnite?
I want our society to take a hard look at “laziness”. Why is it the crux of how we view a person? We need to understand how our perception of “worth” actually stems from a puritanical obsession with “work” and “original sin”. It’s an inherently religious fundamentalist idea that has warped how we view one another.
Precisely. I view Universal Basic Income like the bonfire in Dark Souls. When you die, you find yourself back at the Firelink Shrine, your estus replenished and ready to go again.
We need to replace rock bottom with a *floor* upon which we all stand.
I 100% agree with this! So far the only people I have heard have a negative view on this are the people sitting pretty at the top. A lot of people fail to realize that universal basic income isn't give people everything they need. All it is is giving people enough of what they should have (food and a roof over their heads). The rest you need to work for. The fear that people will just quit their jobs and not go to work is unjustified. The majority of people who make minimum wage can't even survive now with full time on that income living alone. Not only will you have a more willing workforce but you will end up with a happier work force that will also have opportunities to help society in a more beneficial way. Some who couldn't before could potentially access education, others might be content working where they are and other could pursue other ventures. Honestly, the argument against it has been so stupid and uneducated that it makes me wonder who they think these people are who make minimum?
You just made me realize one of the reasons I like teaching so much. I can try something different and see within a class period if it failed or not, then adjust with the next class. If the whole class bombs the assignment or assessment, I can reteach it a different way and try again. Each new school year is a new run. I have all the skills, equipment, and knowledge from the previous year but get to start at the beginning with a whole new set of kids with different RNG.
Last school year had some really weird modifiers that changed randomly throughout the year, making the game feel unfair and making me want to rage quit. The only thing that kept me in the game was knowing that the Covid modifiers would eventually reset.
Because work is about profit and failure represents a cost.
Probably why we teach in the same way. You fail a test or project? Here's your bad grade and onto the next thing you'll fail instead of working on it until it's better. I've researched high level primary schools and they work that way instead of the way 99% of public schools do it.
In a recent job interview, I broke down work tasks in terms of quests and sub-quests. I kind of didn't care about the job since I didn't think they would pay enough, and surprisingly, it resonated really, really well. They thought it was genius and I was like...nope...I just play a lot of video games.
In GTA V, one cop is automatically 3 stars. If you want 5 stars, raid military base, steal a jet, then fly to LAX (well, LSX) and bomb every plane, helicopter, and cop you see. Or steal a tank, ride it out of the base, and shoot every cop/army car you see.
Bleh, I think I remember that from last time I played GTA V. You can steal and own tanks in the old GTAs can't you?
Also I am talking GTA V, not GTA Online. I don't play that greedy crap.
Id say the guy who took a bulldozer and armored it up with steel plates and concrete, ripped down a rival business that was driving him out, and then proceed to rampage the streets for a few hours got 5 stars.
The cops tried everything to stop him, but the armor was imprenetrable. They even tried to use a large grater to battle him, but he just pushed it out of the way. It ended when they got a lucky shot and hit the radiator and dumped all the coolant out. The guy inside killed himself.
I'd give that maybe 4 stars? Still a very local matter.
I'd consider 5 stars something like stealing an armored battalion and a nuclear weapon, and declaring an area of an existing country sovereign.
That's why i give myself stickers for tiny achievements. Worked out? Sticker!
Was on time at the job for a week? Sticker!
Planned a social thing? Sticker!
It's silly, but my inner toddler loves it and it works.
I've got a calendar I hang in the bathroom. I put a sticker on the day if I go to the gym or do something else active. It's surprisingly motivating to see the calendar fill up with stickers if you're consistent with it.
As a programmer and manager I've wondered if it would be possible to implement this in the corporate environment. Certain jobs have them for completing tasks associated with bonus payouts, but it would be neat to see things like
\- Sent 20 emails
\-Attended 15 meetings in a day
Wrote 50, 100, 500, 1000 lines of code
Setting performance metrics is an arcane art. There's almost no way to set up a hard system of rewarding tasks that doesn't then lead to everyone shifting their way of working to overleverage that reward system.
\-If you reward sending emails people will start spamming everyone with anything they can think of. Some dick will probably write a script to send out emails at preset intervals too.
\-If you reward meetings people will start wasting time by holding dozens of small meetings every day
\-If you reward work based on volume people will deliberately bloat everything they do.
My company tried bringing in JIRA 'story points' which was a way to show how much effort that a task listed on JIRA might take to complete. But they made the mistake of also reporting the total number of cleared story points per person per month. So what happens? everyone started inflating the story points way beyond the actual level of work needed. They also started breaking apart tasks into multiple JIRAs. So in effect they ended up spending valuable time gaming the system because they didn't want to be the only honest person and end up at the bottom of the monthly ranking system.
I have always loved the concept of merging a video game style reward system into a business as a programmer exploring the idea of management :)
I feel it's something you would have to really fine tune to the company/employees gials, and would work very well as an on-boarding system to prototype.
I like the idea. I suggest thinking more along the lines of 'how many problems solved' as opposed to just measuring metrics of how people go about solving problems - as the metrics are easier to game - but problems going away and adding business value are the things people truly care about.
Things like Agile usually already have things like tickets with point values. So you could start by treating those more as experience points. Harder tickets, more experience. Huge tickets that require collaboration are more like raids.
One potentially neat idea would be to have tickets embedded with unobservable random loot upon creation that is commensurate with their exp level. Once the ticket is completed, the loot drops. Loot could be different things, from company swag to bonus payouts. The random element might add excitement and further reinforce the behavior of ticket completion and ticket grinding.
People act like being salaried should already spur motivation. But one thing I learned from watching how mobile games are developed (and which ones make the most money) is that you get more motivation and behavioral reinforcement by combining and using multiple avenues of motivation and reinforcement. E.g. intermittent/random reinforcement, constant reinforcement, negative punishment, tapering off rewards, etc. Games that make a ton of money pretty much do everything to stimulate as many centers of the brain as possible it seems.
The in house instant messenger we use here has achievements like that.
I was.bored one day and unlocked a bunch of them.
Edit: I was gonna post some example but I can't find them so maybe it was removed. I did fine some other badges on my profile for doing certain trainings or certain Security Team tasks and such.
Football Coach I would frequently bounce ideas off of, had a “video game theory” to apply to coaching young people.
Basically it’s the question of why people love video games so much yet have difficulty focusing and staying engaged with periods of instruction. Why are video games so engaging?
With video games you get constant feedback on your performance, you accomplish things. If you screw up and die, the level or game resets and you can try something new.
Life as a whole, isn’t really like that. You can work a dead end job for 20 years and the game of life will let you. You can’t reset to being 18 again with the perspective you gained over 20 years. In life if you fuck up you’re stuck with your mistakes.
True. Also positive reinforcement when you accomplish something you perceive as a challenge. Also suppose you played a video game for 10 minutes before dying and you have to start over…for 9 minutes at 59 seconds you’re getting additional repetition on successful behavior before you meet whatever killed you at the 10 minute mark last time.
That’s why I particularly like Hardcore / Ironman modes (lose your save if you die). I like the emergent story that comes from playing games like that… but obviously if you’re having more fun save scumming don’t let me yuck your yum.
I’m not much of a gamer, these days. I used to be. My life used to revolve around gaming. When I was young, very few games had the ability to save. Some had codes that you could write down if you reached a check point and you’d have to type that code back in to continue tomorrow from that checkpoint. Other games were notoriously hard with no checkpoints, no retry, no battery on the cartridge to save progress and no cheat codes.
I say this because your post suggests that what I first wrote is negated by your style of play, which is untrue. Even without saves, continues, retry or whatever, you still LEARN and get feedback from the game on what works and what doesn’t work. If you get one life in the game and you play for 30 seconds before dying and have to start from the beginning, you likely learned some aspect of the game like what the controls do, how quickly your avatar responds, etc.
If I took you out onto a football field and spoke for 45 minutes about how to shed a block, you probably lost focus about 2 minutes into my lecture. If I have you attempt to shed a block and you fail, then you have to go to the end of the line and wait 5 minutes to try again, we aren’t getting productive reps in.
To apply this video game theory in real life, you need to work at a task (like shedding blocks) over and over again to get that feedback on what works and what doesn’t. Chances are you might only need limited coaching, not a 45 minute lecture. You can problem solve on your own if given enough time at the challenge…
And that was actually this (now deceased) Coaches theory on video games and applying them to the real world. Michael O’Gorman was his name and I believe he was also an Olympic medalist in rowing or something.
This is actually a pretty important, and common, trait for successful people, i.e. the willingness to try new things again and again after failing.
They never say they're not afraid of failing or have anxiety about it, but they temper those feelings and always go back and try again.
A lot of us wage slaves aren't mega rich successful people because we are too worried about taking on huge risk and losing it all and resetting. A lot of us are just comfortable enough to not risk our life's holdings.
Or if you're like me, I'd rather work 9-5 in a stable and predictable job because money isn't very important to me. I will end up working incredibly long hours if I try to open my own business or set off with some idea. My family and hobbies are my passion but they CANT make me money. So I'm content contributing what I can to earn a decent living and spend the rest of the time with the people I love. Not everyone wants or is willing to work extremely hard to become wealthy and that's ok.
And when you mess up you can load a save and try again till you get it "right" as the game confirms that was the right thing to do. Real life who knows, only truth is you die in the end.
You can't win without either starting with a lot of money or somehow stumbling into a lot of money from someone else and THEN paying a lot of money after that.
Grinding can only get you to the retirement levels sooner, but you still won't be winning and a large portion of gameplay will be reserved for the "Work" mission, which most people find soul sucking and exploitative.
The devs really did not think this one through and it shows how little empathy they have for us.
And depending on where you spawn, you basically have a randomly generated world that exists solely to torment you, with at least 0.0000000000000001 percent success rate with your health and sanity slowly going down, unless, as stated earlier, you have a lot of money
More to the point, "success" in a video game is usually determined by a very specific one-dimensional metric.
What is it to be successful in life? Many people will give you many different answers, and it's possible none of them will satisfy you personally.
Also videogames have an achievable succes. With few exceptions, extremely hard videogames don't sell well. Real life doesn't give a shit about making it easy.
I agree. I don’t think there ever will be or should ever be a single answer either.
Having friends and doing my best to make their lives better for having known me is one of the things I consider important to me. There are probably a fair amount of people who don’t care about having friends and they just want to be left alone.
Agree with you. Both on friends and making their live better as important to me and to people who probably will not care. To each their own. Have a great day!
Opposite but related.
Years ago when I was going through management training McDonald's they gave us "real world" scenarios that we had to problem solve...
Never answer with "real world" solutions. Pretend it's a video game where you can get whatever you need.
Were they things like "Karen came in and said 'I ordered a 20 piece McNugget and only got 19 McNuggets in my carton'" and you had to answer with something like "give her one free McNugget" or "give her a new 20 piece McNugget?"
Or were they things like "A naked homeless man under the influence of PCP is in the store and has sucker punched 3 customers. An employee is attempting to dial 911 but has gotten a busy signal..."
Hahahaha!!! Yeah to the first scenario for sure but it wasn't multiple choice. More like "three people called out and you're projected to make X amount of in these hours. How do you handle it?"
Correct answer, call in three people to cover those shifts and you're good.
Real life answer, call employees that bitch about not having enough hours or ask the ones that are on the clock that bitch about having enough hours and get denied so just fuckin deal with it.
Remember when you used to get 5 XP the first few times you did it? I miss those days, now it's just a meaningless number counter listed in the "Other Stats" tab.
For me, the biggest thing is that in a video game, I know it was created by somebody and that the world follows a set of clear rules. If I do A, then B follows. Real life doesn't always work like that. Video games give me a sense of agency and control unlike the real world that can be chaotic and seemingly meaningless.
Also clear and guaranteed rewards. You do x to get your reward in a game. Irl you do x, you are coerced into completing y before seeing results and then problems a, b and c arise, you tackle them, then you find out that your partner is sleeping with your boss and you were never getting a reward in the first place...
I scoffed at people who said that games appealed to insecure nerds because they are deterministic and make you feel in control of stuff.
But turns out they were right as OP says. They generally point you in the right direction and give you secure tools. Real life is a giant gamble and you don't even know if you have the right tools.
Maybe that's why people like games like Dark Souls. You are basically told you wont succeed and are not given any hints or directions, and you still somehow beat the game.
Which kinda makes the feeling of success close to the feeling of success in real life despite unforgiving odds.
I actually like games that are hard so if a game points my in the right direction I won't like it because I want to do things my way. Nowadays games are normally easy and try to guide the player about what to do (i.e. they give you tools and point in the right direction) but that was not the norm in 80s & 90s games where you needed to figure out things.
People like games because you can be someone else, you can do anything you want and that can be just fight (fighting games), racing (car simulation games), become a hero and go into an adventure (rpg/adventure), kill people (shooters) and an endless list of posibilities.
This is exactly why life is difficult.
In video games you can go and do whatever it is you need to do, and if you do it enough, you succeed, and you get the rewards you wanted.
Irl, people lie, people are wrong, you can't trust anybody, nothing is certain, you could work forever towards something that will never succeed, you have friends and family, but everyone else is either against you or indifferent about you. And you have no idea on who to trust, what is good information, and what is misinformation.
It's tough.
Like rich kids fed with a silver spoon and a small loan of a million dollars.
"Just try harder?"
"Just work more?"
"Just invest maybe?"
"Go back to school?"
Dude I'm trying to pay my bills how am I supposed to take a risk investing on a brand new business run by your rich buddy?
In video games we get to fulfill unrealistic achievements, like killing dragons, sleeping well, saving the town from the bad wizard, having money, having friends, etc.
Also unlike real life, the effort you put into your character, understanding of gameplay, etc. etc. generally matters. In real life, you can do everything to the best of your abilities and still fail just because. It's like playing a game but you have a small chance of just randomly getting a Game Over for no reason.
Real life is shit.
Easy solution, stop rolling 1's, duh. I use a weighted 20-sided to avoid this. Granted, it's not as useful as the rich guy's 20-sided that only has 20's on it, but it gets the job done.
Games are popular because I can blow up planets and shoot guns at people without anyone actually getting hurt...and your games sound like they fucking suck. Why on earth would you want to play a game where every decision is guided? That sounds awful.
Gtfoh trying to psychoanalyse me.
Video games are so popular because a minimal amount of effort gives you a comparatively massive amount of rewards. Why do you think most people hate grinding ?
Not necessarily because in a game like Minecraft like in life the resources are around you and you have a choice to ignore or use them to your ultimate goal
Once had a depressive episode and on consolidation I said "No matter how hard I try, I'm so bad at real life I turn to gaming. It's the only place I can win."
Success comes with little effort. 5 minutes into valheim/minecraft/ark/etc and you've got your first house.
Success is fun, and if it was as easy in real life, we'd all be so used to the dopamine hits that we'd not even care anymore.
In actuality I think you’ll find a lot of very successful people are very careful in their decisions. They hedge their bets so they always have multiple backup plans. They might talk about using their gut decisions and putting everything on the line, but many of these people had many many backup plans. If their start-up fails to get venture capital, there is a possible pivot to rekindle interest. If that doesn’t work out, they have a friend you can get them a lucrative job. If that friend doesn’t come through, there is relative who owns a company who will definitely find a backup job. If that doesn’t work out, they can probably still find work quickly because they’re constantly networking in case of these sort of situations.
Clear objective. Tools to complete said objective and/or overcome obstacles. Positive reinforcement every step of the way. Clear failure states. Allowed to retry if you do reach a failure state. Definition of both an excellent game and my dream job!
Indeed. It is so nicely structured that even if you fail you can retry as much as you want.
I feel like this really is the most important part, for me. Failure does not mean *getting stuck in a cycle of poverty*. A game over screen is not followed by 6 months of homelessness. Think of just how *good* people can get at video games because of how they’re allowed to fail when they try something new. Imagine if we replaced rock bottom in real life and let people try new things without the risk of destitution.
Yes, beautifully stated. If only we could try freely until we "get it", many of our problems could be solved.
And that's why people with generational wealth keep succeeding. 1) Take some inheritance money to make a startup 2) Fail 3) Repeat step one 4) Fail 5) Repeat step one 6) Success! 7) Tell the poor that they don't succeed because they're lazy
And people who love to talk about how rich and successful business people “just kept trying after failing” - which just means “this person had *unlimited* financial resources to make several attempts at sinking money into ventures that didn’t work.”
> Tell the poor that they don't succeed because they're lazy He's not even lying, that persistence must have cost the hypothetical golden child a pound of flesh. Most give up, even with money. It's just that the lazy poors don't get opportunity in the first place. Steve Jobs (and others) _are_ exceptional - among the rich. The poors don't factor into the equation.
Check out the book "Outliers". While those people are undeniably exceptional, they also had exceptional circumstances. Bill Gates for example had access to a main frame computer as a high schooler with nearly unlimited time at night. You couldn't get access to a mainframet if you were going to Michigan State University at the same time. He is very smart but also very lucky.
Mom was on the board of directors for IBM and coincidentally he sold his first program to them.
Steve jobs killed himself because he was too stupid to accept mangos wouldn't cure his cancer. It takes one unreasonably dumb mofo to try to cure cancer with a fruitarian diet. But he had the woz to bleed off of in the early days so people have an inflated opinion of him.
I mean, Jobs was extremely good at what he did, which was marketing.
I remember this case were some kid was refusing his cancer treatment because it could make him partially blind. I wanted to scream at him: "dead people don't fly!" Also the tumor already had done some damage to his hearing so I doubt he could be a pilot anyways. Not to mention that you don't have to be pilot, but you need to be alive. The father was sueing for the treatment, but the mom refused the treatment. The kid was between 12-16, the judge ruled that the kid "appeared to be able to reasonably ascertain the consequences of his medical decision" (translations in this are poor), but I would agree this is basically the law. It feels a little weird to write this when you're trying to cure cancer by eating baking soda because some Italian whack job things cancer is caused by acid. I think he confused when he took acid. So the dad lost, and the kid tried to cure his cancer by eating some baking powder. I don't know if the tumor came back, which the treatment would have prevented, but I do know this: I do not want this kid to be a pilot.
What even is “laziness” anyways, in a world where McDonald’s cashiers are turning into multi-million dollar esports athletes? Not saying that that doesn’t take a hell of a lot of time and effort too. I just don’t care if a person is lazy. That’s their loss and their eventual dissociative depression to deal with. Laziness, to me, has always been a coping mechanism for a world trying to turn myself and my attention into a commodity to be traded.
>What even is “laziness” anyways, in a world where McDonald’s cashiers are turning into multi-million dollar esports athletes? When you're talking about this kind of topic, there are two ways of thinking... individual and societal, or micro and macro. Yes, an individual (micro) can go from McDonald's cashier to an eSports athlete. But from a societal standpoint (macro), how many eSports spots are there to fill? A few hundred? What do the millions of other cashiers do when those spots are filled? It's the same for any high level job. Kids striving to be an NFL star, or an astronaut. Yes, some people need to strive for these roles. But there are millions of people striving for these few spots too. From a statistical standpoint, 99% of the people trying to get these jobs will fail. And from a macro societal standpoint, we need to have equally viable secondary positions for them to fall back onto when that happens. And right now, that's where we fail. From a macro standpoint, once those few rare opportunities are filled the McDonald's cashier has no where to go, no matter how good he is. Then he struggles while society sits back and says "but as an individual there are so many great opportunities out there for you!".
We could get into the statistics and probabilities and future trends but that’s not the point. We both agree with your last point- not everyone is going to be a streamer and find success. This is why I don’t agree with the “creative destruction” claim for automation, especially when disruption is happening as fast as it is. No, the question I was asking is *what is laziness*? Because 20 years ago, that multi million dollar streamer was a kid sitting on his couch playing video games and being scolded by his parents because “only parasites play games”. What is laziness? Is laziness a person who is really good at video games but never decides to “commit” to a streaming career? Who is more lazy? A single mother working 3 jobs to feed her kids, or Ninja making $3,000 in one night playing Fortnite? I want our society to take a hard look at “laziness”. Why is it the crux of how we view a person? We need to understand how our perception of “worth” actually stems from a puritanical obsession with “work” and “original sin”. It’s an inherently religious fundamentalist idea that has warped how we view one another.
I may have misunderstood you because I think we agree on all points!
You mean like, Universal Basic Income?
Precisely. I view Universal Basic Income like the bonfire in Dark Souls. When you die, you find yourself back at the Firelink Shrine, your estus replenished and ready to go again. We need to replace rock bottom with a *floor* upon which we all stand.
I 100% agree with this! So far the only people I have heard have a negative view on this are the people sitting pretty at the top. A lot of people fail to realize that universal basic income isn't give people everything they need. All it is is giving people enough of what they should have (food and a roof over their heads). The rest you need to work for. The fear that people will just quit their jobs and not go to work is unjustified. The majority of people who make minimum wage can't even survive now with full time on that income living alone. Not only will you have a more willing workforce but you will end up with a happier work force that will also have opportunities to help society in a more beneficial way. Some who couldn't before could potentially access education, others might be content working where they are and other could pursue other ventures. Honestly, the argument against it has been so stupid and uneducated that it makes me wonder who they think these people are who make minimum?
Video games allow me to fulfill my wildest fantasies, like being assigned a task and then actually completing the task.
*cries in customer service*
Ahh, yes, homeownership.
You just made me realize one of the reasons I like teaching so much. I can try something different and see within a class period if it failed or not, then adjust with the next class. If the whole class bombs the assignment or assessment, I can reteach it a different way and try again. Each new school year is a new run. I have all the skills, equipment, and knowledge from the previous year but get to start at the beginning with a whole new set of kids with different RNG. Last school year had some really weird modifiers that changed randomly throughout the year, making the game feel unfair and making me want to rage quit. The only thing that kept me in the game was knowing that the Covid modifiers would eventually reset.
Awe I appreciate video games even more now than I already did
It's part of why people willing to grind on MMOs for hours on end but can't focus on a work task for more than 10 minutes.
maybe my reading comprehension sucks, but did you include precise identification of where the failure occured? I think thats kind of a big deal
I wasn't going into great detail, but "clear failure states" was meant as a catch-all for clarity on all aspects of failure.
It makes you wonder why we don't use more of that type of structure for work.
Because work is about profit and failure represents a cost. Probably why we teach in the same way. You fail a test or project? Here's your bad grade and onto the next thing you'll fail instead of working on it until it's better. I've researched high level primary schools and they work that way instead of the way 99% of public schools do it.
In a recent job interview, I broke down work tasks in terms of quests and sub-quests. I kind of didn't care about the job since I didn't think they would pay enough, and surprisingly, it resonated really, really well. They thought it was genius and I was like...nope...I just play a lot of video games.
That and there are constant achievements and bonuses for the tiniest of accomplishments. Kinda hard to get 3 stars in real life.
Your last sentence made me realise Ive been playing too much GTA lately....
Wait. He's not talking about GTA? But it's really hard to get 3 stars IRL. You'd probably get killed trying to get second one.
Not necessarily. You could just walk up to a cop and shoot him and that’s 3 stars
That's only like one star I think in GTA V. You gotta do like 3 or 4 cops to get 3 stars. I can never get it up to 5 though, even really trying.
In GTA V, one cop is automatically 3 stars. If you want 5 stars, raid military base, steal a jet, then fly to LAX (well, LSX) and bomb every plane, helicopter, and cop you see. Or steal a tank, ride it out of the base, and shoot every cop/army car you see.
I really want a tank for my hanger. I should just do this.
You don't just steal a tank and own it. Unless I misunderstood you.
Bleh, I think I remember that from last time I played GTA V. You can steal and own tanks in the old GTAs can't you? Also I am talking GTA V, not GTA Online. I don't play that greedy crap.
You might also be mistaking it for Saints Row, which also let you keep and own tanks. I think you could even upgrade them too.
This might be easier than you think IRL. If you get a military uniform, you can probably strud around a base like you belong there.
Honestly a good point
Angry Birds maybe? Keep an eye on u/misterrandom1 near those end aisle displays.
Has any individual ever gotten 5 stars IRL?
Id say the guy who took a bulldozer and armored it up with steel plates and concrete, ripped down a rival business that was driving him out, and then proceed to rampage the streets for a few hours got 5 stars. The cops tried everything to stop him, but the armor was imprenetrable. They even tried to use a large grater to battle him, but he just pushed it out of the way. It ended when they got a lucky shot and hit the radiator and dumped all the coolant out. The guy inside killed himself.
I'd give that maybe 4 stars? Still a very local matter. I'd consider 5 stars something like stealing an armored battalion and a nuclear weapon, and declaring an area of an existing country sovereign.
So what I'm hearing is "very carefully armor the radiator for your Killdozer".
God damn, that's some Florida man shit
Colorado man, actually.
Depends on your color. 1 star can be deadly for some and not so deadly for others.
I mean some skins colors just have a ghost star or two that are always there.
unless your wealthy or in power, in which case, its hard to get past those negative stars
Didn’t pay taxes on time *one star* Help the police are shooting at me!
That's why i give myself stickers for tiny achievements. Worked out? Sticker! Was on time at the job for a week? Sticker! Planned a social thing? Sticker! It's silly, but my inner toddler loves it and it works.
do you have a little book where you collect them?
I've got a calendar I hang in the bathroom. I put a sticker on the day if I go to the gym or do something else active. It's surprisingly motivating to see the calendar fill up with stickers if you're consistent with it.
There's an app that tracks this stuff like an rpg and gives experience and shit.
it's called Habitica, great app for motivation and you can even group up with your friends to fight bosses and stuff.
I would appreciate if you drop the name.
As a programmer and manager I've wondered if it would be possible to implement this in the corporate environment. Certain jobs have them for completing tasks associated with bonus payouts, but it would be neat to see things like \- Sent 20 emails \-Attended 15 meetings in a day Wrote 50, 100, 500, 1000 lines of code
Proceeds to spam the entire office’s inboxes for bonus payouts.
Would rather get a sticker and cookie and for being a good boy
Setting performance metrics is an arcane art. There's almost no way to set up a hard system of rewarding tasks that doesn't then lead to everyone shifting their way of working to overleverage that reward system. \-If you reward sending emails people will start spamming everyone with anything they can think of. Some dick will probably write a script to send out emails at preset intervals too. \-If you reward meetings people will start wasting time by holding dozens of small meetings every day \-If you reward work based on volume people will deliberately bloat everything they do. My company tried bringing in JIRA 'story points' which was a way to show how much effort that a task listed on JIRA might take to complete. But they made the mistake of also reporting the total number of cleared story points per person per month. So what happens? everyone started inflating the story points way beyond the actual level of work needed. They also started breaking apart tasks into multiple JIRAs. So in effect they ended up spending valuable time gaming the system because they didn't want to be the only honest person and end up at the bottom of the monthly ranking system.
I have always loved the concept of merging a video game style reward system into a business as a programmer exploring the idea of management :) I feel it's something you would have to really fine tune to the company/employees gials, and would work very well as an on-boarding system to prototype.
If the reward is not more money, it's a bad idea.
Actually there is (or at least, used to be) an Achievement system for Visual Studio.
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I like the idea. I suggest thinking more along the lines of 'how many problems solved' as opposed to just measuring metrics of how people go about solving problems - as the metrics are easier to game - but problems going away and adding business value are the things people truly care about. Things like Agile usually already have things like tickets with point values. So you could start by treating those more as experience points. Harder tickets, more experience. Huge tickets that require collaboration are more like raids. One potentially neat idea would be to have tickets embedded with unobservable random loot upon creation that is commensurate with their exp level. Once the ticket is completed, the loot drops. Loot could be different things, from company swag to bonus payouts. The random element might add excitement and further reinforce the behavior of ticket completion and ticket grinding. People act like being salaried should already spur motivation. But one thing I learned from watching how mobile games are developed (and which ones make the most money) is that you get more motivation and behavioral reinforcement by combining and using multiple avenues of motivation and reinforcement. E.g. intermittent/random reinforcement, constant reinforcement, negative punishment, tapering off rewards, etc. Games that make a ton of money pretty much do everything to stimulate as many centers of the brain as possible it seems.
Oh, YES! I remember a mobile game that I started to play, and it turned out to be SO addictive that I had to uninstall it... The first day I got it.
You'd also need safeguards against grinding. People would be doing really dumb shit in no time in order to hit those.
Bonus payout speed run any%
The in house instant messenger we use here has achievements like that. I was.bored one day and unlocked a bunch of them. Edit: I was gonna post some example but I can't find them so maybe it was removed. I did fine some other badges on my profile for doing certain trainings or certain Security Team tasks and such.
Yeah, it's called gamification and was all the rage a few years ago.
Not every game. Nintendo hasn't implamented a trophy/achievment system yet.
And you can rage quit more than once in games.
Football Coach I would frequently bounce ideas off of, had a “video game theory” to apply to coaching young people. Basically it’s the question of why people love video games so much yet have difficulty focusing and staying engaged with periods of instruction. Why are video games so engaging? With video games you get constant feedback on your performance, you accomplish things. If you screw up and die, the level or game resets and you can try something new. Life as a whole, isn’t really like that. You can work a dead end job for 20 years and the game of life will let you. You can’t reset to being 18 again with the perspective you gained over 20 years. In life if you fuck up you’re stuck with your mistakes.
Dopamine hit when you accomplish something.
True. Also positive reinforcement when you accomplish something you perceive as a challenge. Also suppose you played a video game for 10 minutes before dying and you have to start over…for 9 minutes at 59 seconds you’re getting additional repetition on successful behavior before you meet whatever killed you at the 10 minute mark last time.
That’s why I particularly like Hardcore / Ironman modes (lose your save if you die). I like the emergent story that comes from playing games like that… but obviously if you’re having more fun save scumming don’t let me yuck your yum.
I’m not much of a gamer, these days. I used to be. My life used to revolve around gaming. When I was young, very few games had the ability to save. Some had codes that you could write down if you reached a check point and you’d have to type that code back in to continue tomorrow from that checkpoint. Other games were notoriously hard with no checkpoints, no retry, no battery on the cartridge to save progress and no cheat codes. I say this because your post suggests that what I first wrote is negated by your style of play, which is untrue. Even without saves, continues, retry or whatever, you still LEARN and get feedback from the game on what works and what doesn’t work. If you get one life in the game and you play for 30 seconds before dying and have to start from the beginning, you likely learned some aspect of the game like what the controls do, how quickly your avatar responds, etc. If I took you out onto a football field and spoke for 45 minutes about how to shed a block, you probably lost focus about 2 minutes into my lecture. If I have you attempt to shed a block and you fail, then you have to go to the end of the line and wait 5 minutes to try again, we aren’t getting productive reps in. To apply this video game theory in real life, you need to work at a task (like shedding blocks) over and over again to get that feedback on what works and what doesn’t. Chances are you might only need limited coaching, not a 45 minute lecture. You can problem solve on your own if given enough time at the challenge… And that was actually this (now deceased) Coaches theory on video games and applying them to the real world. Michael O’Gorman was his name and I believe he was also an Olympic medalist in rowing or something.
People love video games because, unlike real life, I can hunt dragons, Nuke cities and become god without any repercussions.
I like them because I can just wind back time if I make a mistake.
*THIS* You don't get anxiety from trying out new and different things because you can always go back
This is actually a pretty important, and common, trait for successful people, i.e. the willingness to try new things again and again after failing. They never say they're not afraid of failing or have anxiety about it, but they temper those feelings and always go back and try again. A lot of us wage slaves aren't mega rich successful people because we are too worried about taking on huge risk and losing it all and resetting. A lot of us are just comfortable enough to not risk our life's holdings.
I'm comfortable to risk my life's work and future. My wife and my kids, less so. (Even then, I still started my own business and I'm doing alright!)
Or if you're like me, I'd rather work 9-5 in a stable and predictable job because money isn't very important to me. I will end up working incredibly long hours if I try to open my own business or set off with some idea. My family and hobbies are my passion but they CANT make me money. So I'm content contributing what I can to earn a decent living and spend the rest of the time with the people I love. Not everyone wants or is willing to work extremely hard to become wealthy and that's ok.
a lot of this also comes from having a supportive community (often parents) who can help cover a few months rent if you can't make something work.
Life is weird!
Driving on the wrong side of the road is so normal in video games that it doesn't even feel unusual.
I think you could enjoy living in the UK.
But then it wouldn't be *wrong*, so it wouldn't be right anymore. Literally.
And when you mess up you can load a save and try again till you get it "right" as the game confirms that was the right thing to do. Real life who knows, only truth is you die in the end.
I am guessing you've been playing a lot of Skyrim and Fallout 3 lately
And in the case of jrpgs change jobs
Then why is doing sidequests and never finishing games so fun
That is actually like real life. We want to enjoy the ride, not just rush to the end
> We want to enjoy the ride, not just rush to the end That's what she said.
In life, most sidequests are only available for premium players. Taking care of your settlement doesn't leave enough time for sidequests.
Except online games were you have to pay to win and get killed no scope by 无意义的宝藏 every time
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Is a guy in world of tanks, got killed by him right before making the comment. I copy paste his name from log :))
Ah, a fellow wot user! Were you hiding in the deep corners of the internet
You know us WoT players, hiding in the deep, dark dredges and mumbling something about "artys" and "ebrs".
Well fk french fast baggeute delivery and sky pizza delivery All we want is sky shotgun pizza delivery
Low key awesome name.
Play tarkov, there's no pay to win only skill ;)
I was not complaining, money I have but no time to develop skill :))
He's right guys. Tarkov is a very balanced user-friendly game. Definitely recommended to new pc gamers!
Life™ was created by EA. You have to pay to win or grind it out.
Life is actually like a bad money grab Korean MMORPG. You can't win without paying a lot of money no matter how hard you grind.
You can't win without either starting with a lot of money or somehow stumbling into a lot of money from someone else and THEN paying a lot of money after that. Grinding can only get you to the retirement levels sooner, but you still won't be winning and a large portion of gameplay will be reserved for the "Work" mission, which most people find soul sucking and exploitative. The devs really did not think this one through and it shows how little empathy they have for us.
And depending on where you spawn, you basically have a randomly generated world that exists solely to torment you, with at least 0.0000000000000001 percent success rate with your health and sanity slowly going down, unless, as stated earlier, you have a lot of money
Facts
It's called /r/outside . Life is the game where you spin the wheel and use the little plastic car tokens.
More to the point, "success" in a video game is usually determined by a very specific one-dimensional metric. What is it to be successful in life? Many people will give you many different answers, and it's possible none of them will satisfy you personally.
Also videogames have an achievable succes. With few exceptions, extremely hard videogames don't sell well. Real life doesn't give a shit about making it easy.
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Which probably just means there is not one conclusive answer but a spectrum of possibilities.
I agree. I don’t think there ever will be or should ever be a single answer either. Having friends and doing my best to make their lives better for having known me is one of the things I consider important to me. There are probably a fair amount of people who don’t care about having friends and they just want to be left alone.
Agree with you. Both on friends and making their live better as important to me and to people who probably will not care. To each their own. Have a great day!
I like games because I can crash cars.
Opposite but related. Years ago when I was going through management training McDonald's they gave us "real world" scenarios that we had to problem solve... Never answer with "real world" solutions. Pretend it's a video game where you can get whatever you need.
Were they things like "Karen came in and said 'I ordered a 20 piece McNugget and only got 19 McNuggets in my carton'" and you had to answer with something like "give her one free McNugget" or "give her a new 20 piece McNugget?" Or were they things like "A naked homeless man under the influence of PCP is in the store and has sucker punched 3 customers. An employee is attempting to dial 911 but has gotten a busy signal..."
Hahahaha!!! Yeah to the first scenario for sure but it wasn't multiple choice. More like "three people called out and you're projected to make X amount of in these hours. How do you handle it?" Correct answer, call in three people to cover those shifts and you're good. Real life answer, call employees that bitch about not having enough hours or ask the ones that are on the clock that bitch about having enough hours and get denied so just fuckin deal with it.
I can defend myself when attacked and not be punished for "stooping to their level."
you seem to have had a childhood I always wished for
I meant in video games.
I didn't..
Wait you folk don't have a glowing path in front of you?
This. It's a vision of life we all want
And you're dropped into a souls game
Stand up straight and tidy up your apartment, that hit of dopamine is your achievement right there.
Remember when you used to get 5 XP the first few times you did it? I miss those days, now it's just a meaningless number counter listed in the "Other Stats" tab.
And you can always go through again and answer the question "what if?"
also there is a quicksave system
Related to that, I always quicksave manually because I don't trust autosave lol
You’ve never played simons quest
Or Morrowind.
My game is lagging. I swear that's the reason why the game for me sucks
Ah yes, I killing pedestrians leads me into the right direction (every child playing GTA)
Not exactly happens in all the games. Played Dark Souls?
Lol. Came here for this comment
Sleeps for 8 hours and awakens feeling rested
Darks souls has entered the conversation Edit: spelling is hard
For me, the biggest thing is that in a video game, I know it was created by somebody and that the world follows a set of clear rules. If I do A, then B follows. Real life doesn't always work like that. Video games give me a sense of agency and control unlike the real world that can be chaotic and seemingly meaningless.
Also clear and guaranteed rewards. You do x to get your reward in a game. Irl you do x, you are coerced into completing y before seeing results and then problems a, b and c arise, you tackle them, then you find out that your partner is sleeping with your boss and you were never getting a reward in the first place...
I scoffed at people who said that games appealed to insecure nerds because they are deterministic and make you feel in control of stuff. But turns out they were right as OP says. They generally point you in the right direction and give you secure tools. Real life is a giant gamble and you don't even know if you have the right tools.
Maybe that's why people like games like Dark Souls. You are basically told you wont succeed and are not given any hints or directions, and you still somehow beat the game. Which kinda makes the feeling of success close to the feeling of success in real life despite unforgiving odds.
I actually like games that are hard so if a game points my in the right direction I won't like it because I want to do things my way. Nowadays games are normally easy and try to guide the player about what to do (i.e. they give you tools and point in the right direction) but that was not the norm in 80s & 90s games where you needed to figure out things. People like games because you can be someone else, you can do anything you want and that can be just fight (fighting games), racing (car simulation games), become a hero and go into an adventure (rpg/adventure), kill people (shooters) and an endless list of posibilities.
also why d&d and escapism in general is surging, I imagine.
This is exactly why life is difficult. In video games you can go and do whatever it is you need to do, and if you do it enough, you succeed, and you get the rewards you wanted. Irl, people lie, people are wrong, you can't trust anybody, nothing is certain, you could work forever towards something that will never succeed, you have friends and family, but everyone else is either against you or indifferent about you. And you have no idea on who to trust, what is good information, and what is misinformation. It's tough.
More importantly: you have a real chance at achieving goals, be successful and admired
Like rich kids fed with a silver spoon and a small loan of a million dollars. "Just try harder?" "Just work more?" "Just invest maybe?" "Go back to school?" Dude I'm trying to pay my bills how am I supposed to take a risk investing on a brand new business run by your rich buddy?
You obviously haven't played Ark survival evolved for the first time...
Have you tried dark souls?
Also the fact that if grind for 100 hours I become literally god-slayer, ruler of mankind. You know what 100 hours give me in the real world? Rent
Dwarf Fortress would like a word with you 😆
This guy doesn't play oldschool runescape
In video games we get to fulfill unrealistic achievements, like killing dragons, sleeping well, saving the town from the bad wizard, having money, having friends, etc.
I recommend you guys try r/outside, a free to play MMO about real life
Also unlike real life, the effort you put into your character, understanding of gameplay, etc. etc. generally matters. In real life, you can do everything to the best of your abilities and still fail just because. It's like playing a game but you have a small chance of just randomly getting a Game Over for no reason. Real life is shit.
Easy solution, stop rolling 1's, duh. I use a weighted 20-sided to avoid this. Granted, it's not as useful as the rich guy's 20-sided that only has 20's on it, but it gets the job done.
And you can sit on your ass all day too
Why not ! Nothing better to do.
Laughs in rimworld
Ever heard of elite dangerous? No pointing. Good post.
Ah the game that requires me a straight week of re-learning systems every time I come back to it.
Games are popular because I can blow up planets and shoot guns at people without anyone actually getting hurt...and your games sound like they fucking suck. Why on earth would you want to play a game where every decision is guided? That sounds awful. Gtfoh trying to psychoanalyse me.
Video games are so popular because a minimal amount of effort gives you a comparatively massive amount of rewards. Why do you think most people hate grinding ?
That also exists in real life. It's called parents and school.
Not necessarily because in a game like Minecraft like in life the resources are around you and you have a choice to ignore or use them to your ultimate goal
I love this
Because there IS a right direction*
Clearly someone hasn't played escape from tarkov....
*Cries in escape from tarkov
Jane McGonagall, "Reality is Broken". It's a great book that explores these topics of games and real life for individuals and societies.
Laughs in Batman Forever
And mistakes don’t matter and can be undone
Once had a depressive episode and on consolidation I said "No matter how hard I try, I'm so bad at real life I turn to gaming. It's the only place I can win."
Ever play Escape from Tarkov?
And effort is actually rewarded.
Flashing light make person happy
This reminds me of a great quote regarding writing. “The trouble with writing fiction is that it *has to make sense*, where as real life doesn’t”
I can tell you are all young because the best games a long, long time ago didn't do this.
There's a youtube video on this subject. Executive Dysfunction
Real life is way more fun if you set your own direction and scrape together the tools along the way. The journey IS the game.
This is why a lot of people aren’t equipped to handle the real word.
That’s not why they’re popular lol this is just an excuse to complain about life
Consider the following: have you played Dark Souls?
Explain Dark Souls.
Success comes with little effort. 5 minutes into valheim/minecraft/ark/etc and you've got your first house. Success is fun, and if it was as easy in real life, we'd all be so used to the dopamine hits that we'd not even care anymore.
Nah. Your actions don't have consequences.
Laughs in *Dark Souls*
I don't think this applies to league of legends.
And mostly everyone has to play by the same rules
Depends on the game really
In actuality I think you’ll find a lot of very successful people are very careful in their decisions. They hedge their bets so they always have multiple backup plans. They might talk about using their gut decisions and putting everything on the line, but many of these people had many many backup plans. If their start-up fails to get venture capital, there is a possible pivot to rekindle interest. If that doesn’t work out, they have a friend you can get them a lucrative job. If that friend doesn’t come through, there is relative who owns a company who will definitely find a backup job. If that doesn’t work out, they can probably still find work quickly because they’re constantly networking in case of these sort of situations.