Death to the Self-Playing Game

jareklupinski•about 2 hours ago

if Vampire Survivors is a dopamine shortcut, then

> This post is for paying subscribers only

is a cortisol hack. thanks author :( i'm going back to actually having fun!

kwoff•37 minutes ago

I play a self-playing game with sites that do that. I click the Block Site (Firefox extension) button, and the site never appears again. Talk about easy mode! :)

tptacek•about 2 hours ago

Paywalled articles with no workaround are actually off topic on HN, for whatever that's worth to you.

moririri•about 2 hours ago

Thanks for the warning, would rather not waste my time reading an article only to get half way through it and find a paywall -_-

bigyabai•about 3 hours ago

> If somebody automated Devil Daggers, I would stab them in the hands with a barbeque fork.

If you stab them in the hands with a fork, then they need to automate Devil Daggers to play it. Not an easy game to enjoy missing half a hand, it or Hyper Demon.

I didn't read past the paywall fold, but this seems like a pretty silly hill to die on. Many of the best games - Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Starcraft, Simcity - all automate their background tedium to let players focus on more interesting skill expression. If you took away the macro focus and forced people to micromanage every gameplay element, it feels fair to say that all of them would become worse games with very little added to the experience.

Even the author's ironic ideas, like "automate Street Fighter" echoes a real-world genre of turn based fighting games that end up being awesome spectator sports. YOMI Hustle has a pretty dedicated community that ekes out frame-perfect skill expression that other fighting games dream of: https://youtu.be/fZVsO62e4Aw

snapcaster•about 2 hours ago

I agree with your take (as someone with 3k hours in factorio). I think there is different categories of automated though. In one case you're still solving problems just at a higher level, in the other case you're no longer solving any problems. Like, getting logistics drones in factorio does automate some aspects of the game but then you just increase your scope and scale and still have the same core problem of "grow the factory"

Death to the Self-Playing Game

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Discussion (3 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews