Jacob's gaming journal

[7Wannabe5]

Do you know if that still holds in societies with lowest gender inequality?

It seems to be a mix of cultural influence and hard-wiring. There is evidence of some change in regions such as Scandanavia, but this may be more in alignment with more women switching from their hard-wired long-term mating strategy to their hard-wired short-term mating strategy. The female short-term mating strategy tips the balance more towards "masculinity" and "physical appearance." This is why both the post-modern advice created by men and the neo-trad advice created by men often fails. As Galloway notes, the post-modern advice often conveys is that men should be able to attract women by exhibiting more feminine qualities. What the post-modern advice should communicate is that men should attract more male friends by exhibiting more feminine qualities and then find the strength in these relationships that will better allow them to exhibit more masculine qualities in their sexual relationships with heterosexual women. And vice-versa for heterosexual females. And add one level of abstraction for all of us within co-ed and/or virtual settings in which we freely and overtly choose to exhibit more of one energy or another (I disagree with Galloway's take that the workplace is great setting for finding sexual/romantic partners, because this puts women (or men who prefer to be in their feminine energy in relationship)in their feminine energy in setting where they usually need more masculine energy to flourish.)

The 20% of disagreement I have with Galloway (which also falls into the 60% disagreement I have with the Neo-Trads) also has to do with the limitations of "provide and protect" as descriptor of masculinity and/or "that which women find attractive", because (1) it is also often the case that women find "provide and protect" behaviors suffocating, confining, or condescending, and (2) the concept needs to be expanded more towards "purpose, plan, push, and project" to also encompass the free-spirited and vigorous directed qualities which women associate with masculinity and find attractive even when they are unlikely to directly benefit from their exhibition/fulfillment. For example, it may be frustrating and problematic to be in relationship with a broke-azz man who is driven to express himself through his art or compelled to his purpose as migrant worker advocate or deep-diving on primitive technology, but it is not an inherent sexual turn-off. OTOH, unemployed partner who is sullenly moping in the basement, eating Fritos and watching porn, is usually going to be an inherent turn-off, a status killer for a woman in relationship to her female peers and her own self-esteem, and almost certainly a relationship killer with median survival length of relationship = less than 12 months, give or take for developmental maturity of female, third party involvement, and previous performance of male.

Obviously, the relevance to this thread is that even in situations in which the male has already sequestered adequate financial resources, spending a great deal of time on activities which might be deemed as "purposeless" may constitute a "turn-off" depending on context and manner of engagement. For example, "riding a motorcycle" is a purposeless, fun activity which is generally positively associated with masculinity. I've been in relationship with men who are so energetic that I encourage them to do purposeless, fun activities on top of their purposeful activities, because otherwise it's like having a big dog underfoot knocking stuff about in the parlor. Since INTJs seem to be long-cyclers, this might play out more like 7 years of purposeful activity followed by 1 year of purposeless activity rather than the 7 hours to 1 hour per day exhibited my other types in their masculine energy, but it still might be the case that a less purposeful "off-year" might not be the best time to form heterosexual relationship, whether the INTJ is core masculien or core feminine. Dunno. This might correspond to how it is bad practice for a core feminine eNTP female such as myself to enter into long-term relationship during one of my more enthusiastic upswings when I might be mistaken for somebody with leadership potential and thereby attract a male with "follower" energy who will find himself sorely disappointed when I lapse back down to my absent-minded, independent-generalist puttering-about energy. As in, "What are we going to do today?", "Uh, I'm reading a book. Maybe I'll make some soup this afternoon." ...(notices still in room) "Why don't you go play PubG or dig some holes in the yard or something."

[jacob]

Obviously, the relevance to this thread is that even in situations in which the male has already sequestered adequate financial resources, spending a great deal of time on activities which might be deemed as "purposeless" may constitute a "turn-off" depending on context and manner of engagement. For example, "riding a motorcycle" is a purposeless, fun activity which is generally positively associated with masculinity. I've been in relationship with men who are so energetic that I encourage them to do purposeless, fun activities on top of their purposeful activities, because otherwise it's like having a big dog underfoot knocking stuff about in the parlor. Since INTJs seem to be long-cyclers, this might play out more like 7 years of purposeful activity followed by 1 year of purposeless activity rather than the 7 hours to 1 hour per day exhibited my other types in their masculine energy, but it still might be the case that a less purposeful "off-year" might not be the best time to form heterosexual relationship, whether the INTJ is core masculien or core feminine. Dunno. This might correspond to how it is bad practice for a core feminine eNTP female such as myself to enter into long-term relationship during one of my more enthusiastic upswings when I might be mistaken for somebody with leadership potential and thereby attract a male with "follower" energy who will find himself sorely disappointed when I lapse back down to my absent-minded, independent-generalist puttering-about energy. As in, "What are we going to do today?", "Uh, I'm reading a book. Maybe I'll make some soup this afternoon." ...(notices still in room) "Why don't you go play PubG or dig some holes in the yard or something."

Ha! I was really wondering what the relevance of all this [dating and gender-ratio talk] was to this thread because it wasn't entirely obvious to me

A few things.

Most societies have evolved to a point where women don't "need a man" to protect them physically. I realize the trope still exists in SD:red and blue cultures, but those cultures are dying out both in numbers and cultural impact. Yes, there's also hardwiring involved, but human idiosyncrasies or volition often override hardwiring. I'm hardwired to stuff my face with donuts and yet I choose not to.

Some societies have likewise evolved to a point where women don't "need a man" to support them economically. This is more recent and still a thing in SD:red, SD:blue, and SD:orange, but it's pretty much gone by SD:green with present generations of high education/advanced jobs going to the female majority. Since there's no longer a need to date/mate/marry for reasons of economy or security in these societies, it comes down to whether individuals want to and once freed from cultural and hardwired impositions and given other options, some simply choose not to... or at least not obsess about it.

This is already seen in the choice (since SD:orange) of having fewer children which was already underway in high income/high education/high culture a hundred years ago. If culture rewards quality of people (advanced economic productivity) over quantity (how many children substitutes for a horse in front of the plow), then children becomes a cost rather than a benefit. As such, the smart ones choose not to have children or to have fewer. For the rich, children turn into a status symbol demonstrating surplus wealth/alternatively becoming some kind of personal project or mini-me. Cultural baggage aside, it is only the bottom of society in terms of wealth who still sees their children as their own retirement/social security plan.

And this is where cats or games or porn or romantic novels may prove adequate substitutes or even provide a better cost/benefit calculus than dating and mating for some when the choice is made deliberately. (I realize that many still don't make these choices deliberately.)

Where amassing not just adequate but status-relevant resources comes in is that it allows the person to reject the default choice much to the consternation of those still forced to engage in it. Choosing not to work because already a millionaire. Choosing not to date because not desperate for sex. Choosing not to mate because working in an office in the city where children are not helpful unlike on a farm. And so on. This is just a thumb in the eye of those who are still stuck chasing.

Obviously (ha!) there are still "legacy"-attitudes. Old values and habits conflicting with new values and habits. The older generations don't understand the younger generations and vice versa.

In terms of status relevance, I still find it amusing (because I can afford to---otherwise I'd be rather bitter about it) how arbitrary status is. Once one graduates from high-schoolism (lord of the flies) and careerism (lord of the flies II), it seems rather silly what exactly people put value in. For example, putting on face paint and going to a startrek convention to act out is low status. Putting on face paint and going to a football game to act out is high-status. Video games featuring female warriors is low status. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_League_ ... _football) is ... I don't know. Personally I think sports fans are ridiculous, but that's only because I'm not one.

In general, status is but a sorting mechanism of in-group and out-group, first, and intra-group second. In an era (SD:green+) where individuals can belong to more than one group, that is, they can have multiple different identities depending on the situation (Kegan4+). For example, HS student by day---dragon slayer by night, accountant by day---disco queen by night, and so on. Mostly people dismiss [the values of] out-groups because they have no clue what's going on "over there".

[7Wannabe5]

I was really wondering what the relevance...

Well, also obviously towards a wrap-up cover for typical eNTP meander.

Since there's no longer a need to date/mate/marry for reasons of economy or security in these societies, it comes down to whether individuals want to and once freed from cultural and hardwired impositions and given other options, some simply choose not to... or at least not obsess about it.

Absolutely, but overcoming "hardwiring" may be more difficult for some than others. As a post-menopausal*, formerly high-sex drive female who is still interested in the topic, I have a lot of visceral empathy for the plight of those who due to an innate mix of testosterone and/or testosterone sensitivity experience the desire to sexually interact more towards a need than a want. I also less viscerally empathize with those who have a high desire for romance or pair-bonding even though I am fairly moderate for a female along that spectrum. It seems to be the case that a great many young men are currently quite unhappy about their personal and generationally low level of sexual access and activity or speakers on these topics would not be so frequently featured on popular videocasts.

And this is where cats or games or porn or romantic novels may prove adequate substitutes or even provide a better cost/benefit calculus than dating and mating for some when the choice is made deliberately. (I realize that many still don't make these choices deliberately.)

Yes, being deliberative and aware of the choice is key, whichever way the cost/benefit calculus works out for the individual. Nobody likes a whiner or the pompous/self-righteous.

This is just a thumb in the eye of those who are still stuck chasing.

Yes, very much towards, "Let them eat cake." or "Let them take a testosterone reducing drug or engage in depressive or repressive behaviors that will make their level of desire more like that of a post-menopausal female."

In terms of status relevance, I still find it amusing (because I can afford to---otherwise I'd be rather bitter about it) how arbitrary status is.

Yeah, me too. You can afford to play video games for the same reason I can afford to be chubby, polyamorous, and lounge about reading novels, and the same reason Steven Tyler can be cool wearing face paint. Okay, not the same reason. More like some conglomeration of collection of possible similar reasons.

In general, status is but a sorting mechanism of in-group and out-group, first, and intra-group second. In an era (SD:green+) where individuals can belong to more than one group, that is, they can have multiple different identities depending on the situation (Kegan4+). For example, HS student by day---dragon slayer by night, accountant by day---disco queen by night, and so on. Mostly people dismiss [the values of] out-groups because they have no clue what's going on "over there".

Absolutely, and this is just one aspect of the meta-status model. Other aspects being knowing or choosing one's level within any given realm of competition, BigFish/SmallPond etc., playing counter to the in-group using known-other-group symbols, and the relaxed art of simply not giving a fuck (which gets much easier with age/experience and/or maturation towards holistic perspective.)

I guess I just question whether it is appropriate to offer young people the same advice I offer to myself or model in my lifestyle. I tend towards not recommending polyamory to 20 year olds for similar reason I don't feel compelled to inform a 3 year old that there is no Santa Claus or suggest to 12 year old that it's wimpy to cry over the tragedy of not being invited to the popular girl's slumber party. OTOH, sometimes you will just randomly encounter a 3 year old who is clearly thinking "Flying sleigh. That's bullshit. Hopefully, my parents can afford all the lab materials I listed." And sometimes particular notions such as Santa or Video Game Warrior Princess simply go out of cultural fashion.


*As a formerly high drive female now sucked dry of hormones post-menopause, it's kind of like people describe being on Ozempic relative to food. I just forget about sex more often and for longer periods. Whereas prior to menopause, two weeks was pretty much my hard limit before being willing to take some kind of action towards getting laid, outside of some brief periods of depression, illness, isolation, extreme busyness, or hard-core conscious experiment in not initiating. I am still debating hormone replacement towards feeling more like my old self. It's kind of interesting how "wanting to want" and "not wanting to want" can both be readily fashioned into wide variety of consumer products. Go Ask Alice, I guess.

[jacob]

On playing with intent (<- youtube vid with surprisingly non-youtube like comments)

The question of intent seems particularly relevant for sandbox style games which resemble a hobby more than a traditional game. Sandboxes typically don't come with goals or levels (or finish lines). If they do, the goals are kinda just meant to get you started doing something rather than nothing as they have no particular aim. Otherwise, the sandbox just give you the tools and the rules but leave people to define their own goals within a large number of possible activities. This can be a real struggle for those of us who have spent a lifetime taking orders from the school and work-systems.

However, I think the problem is that in order to set a goal within a system, one has to somehow be outside the system of the goal. In other words, a goal is for the system and not in[side] the system. This in turn requires a good and fairly complete understanding of the system as a whole and this is what makes it difficult for beginners who have yet to transcend the system. Same applies to subsystems, e.g. knowing how to use the weapons, or supersystems. There can be layers of these games within each other.

For example, the video talks about the goal of buying a certain ship. I used to have goals like that but now I'm rich enough to buy any ship I want except a fleet carrier, so that [buying a shiny ship] goal is kinda meh for me now. I'm aware of people who fly around simply to experience an awesome view and take a screenshot of it much like people do in the real world (a flat monitor doesn't really lend much justice to the vastness of space as experienced in VR). Team mining is apparently also a popular activity. Here the goal is to socialize while doing something mindless---and no activity in space is more mindless than shooting at space rocks that don't shoot back No offense to space miners, but ... whyyyyyyyy?

Frankly, my own goals of achieving ranks and badges also seem a bit simplistic or at least I know they will feel like that eventually. I suspect that's my old overachiever student habits being projected onto the game. For this type of goals, the enjoyment is really in the process and the anticipation of reaching the achievement. This is why there's such an anticlimax after passing a test or reaching that previously all important milestone. For example, I just achieved my first no-assist kill of an elite ranked NPC (a vipermk3 in a lowSec hiRES zone). This felt awesome because going up against one such used to either result in my death or a disorderly retreat into hyperspace with a cracked cockpit. However, I'm sure it will soon become routine.

So now what? I'm fixing to transition into more complex multi-variable goals for this particular sandbox. All these sandbox/sim type games seem to have a group of players focused on something bigger than increasing or hitting a personal number. I've joined one.

Not without irony, my current ranks are Competent/Broker/Imperial Navy Knight/Federal Navy Recruit/PP2 rank 11.

[Jean]

In elite dangerous, my goal was to compose a fleet where every available ship add a meaningfull role, and then engineer them to be the best possible at this role. Every ship had to have a different role. Before that, my goal had been to reach Sagitarius A*, and the rim of the galaxy. Rigth now, I'm busy refiting all my fleet with new roles, and the new FSD.

If you are getting good a fighting, maybe we can try to fight again.

In prosperous universe, i ran some simulation, and started over as a farmer, it seems to be very profitable as a single planet can make 100k per day with only pioneers.

[sky]

Was smelting difficult?

I am filling a ship with grain, which is somewhat tedious, but a full ship should buy the materials I need for a second farmstead and rig. I have heard that carbon is very profitable, I may add an incinerator.

[jacob]

@Jean @sky

Someone from Benten wrote this https://docs.google.com/document/d/10qd ... Wcibk4/pub which is also useful/good to know for people in other regions. Planning and calculating profitability is probably the most important thing in the game (other than avoiding dumb stuff like running out of fuel or forgetting to repair one's buildings or ships.)

People calculate profitability in different ways leading to sometimes different decisions about what is profitable and what is not. I don't think there's any one best way. However, COGM is a very good starting point. This should (eventually/ASAP) include cost of labor and building depreciation. If you don't include it, you'll eventually begin to wonder where all the money went

Also consider the allocation of "Experts". When someone in the chat says something is profitable, they may have 5 experts and 10 HQ bonuses and a finger on the CoGC button. These numbers would be quite different with 0 experts and no bonuses and an irrelevant CoGC program.

I have a FRM+FP planet that's exclusively PIO based. It's definitely not 700k per week in net profit, but perhaps you meant revenue or gross profit?

Carbon can be profitable but it depends on the price of the inputs (like with everything else). With the new batch of xmas players, demand for RAT is higher than usual, so ag inputs are in high demand to feed the growing population of labor. This in turn makes the incinerator inputs expensive and lowers profit. OTOH, making RAT is currently a good business. This will probably change in a month or so.

One nice thing about ag planets is that they're pretty low-maintenance. All you need to supply is the occasional shipment of OVE, Bfabs, and MCG. For the past several weeks, DW (drinking water) has been a reliable source of income for me, but this really depends on whether you ship in H20 for processing. I'm paying someone else for my water---I think he owns a lake or something.

Smelting generally involves lots of hauling of heavy stuff. Also needs C and O. So it's pretty expensive to fund. Your main problem for the first few months will be a lack of walk-around-money to buy new supplies. The whole thing about not having $400 saved for an emergency. A self-inflicted financial wound can undo a lot of progress. In general people are willing to help but for them to do that you need a PRO account to accept contracts and therein lies the rub.

If you do splurge for PRO, there are people willing to offer loans to fund entire planets which will set you up FAST. I think it takes the fun out of it a bit. However, one legendary player managed to grow to representing 1% of the entire economy within their first month.

[sky]

My current plan (which may change) is to make GRN and build farmsteads (plus HAB, RIG, processor as needed) to fill out my base. Then build up capital to buy DDT and switch to HER production.

Do you have a way to import daily commodity prices into a spreadsheet?

[Jean]

@jacob, you described the reason why i quit smelting and went into farming.
Profit were ok, i had to hand around a lot of material. Also, i had to use my cash to buy C, O and CuO, so very little cushion, but my selling price for CU was often lower than expected.
Otoh, all i'll have to supply to my farm planet are overalls, and the repair every few month. I'll just fill up my ship with my excess rat dw and h2o, and cone back with the ove and prefab to expand.
I used prunplanner (i showed it to a friend who like this kind of game and is in the police, he told me it looks like fiscal fraud planning tools he sees during his police investigations) I think it icludes everything besides fuel. Number seemed close enough to my calculations.
They say player will always optimize the fun out of a game, this game solve it by puting all the fun in the optimizing part instead of the playing part.

[jacob]

@both

Prunplanner is widely recommended and very popular. It's my understanding that it uses 30-day average prices to estimate profitability but I may be completely wrong here. I don't use it, because I think half/most of the fun is doing my own analysis.

I use some of the tools from FIO to import CX prices into a googlesheet where I roll my own COGM for different production lines as well as scan for arbitrage opportunities in terms of where to sell. You can find instructions here https://pct.fnar.net/fio/index.html All I use is the public CX data, so only the first line of code is needed. The private data is if you want to include info from your own bases... maybe in the future.

There's also a PRUN app available somewhere in case you're away on vacation and need to "feed" a production line.

Some hot tips: Buildings should generally be repaired at day 60 (around the 96% level) and no later than day 90 (or production really suffers). Ships should be repaired at the 80% level or they get REALLY slow.

[sky]

Here is the method I use:

GRN.NC1;
HER.NC1;
DDT.NC1;
NS.NC1;
RCO.NC1;
ALG.NC1;
VEG.NC1;
GRN.NC1;
NUT.NC1;
MUS.NC1;
MAI.NC1;
BEA.NC1;
OVE.NC1;
PWO.NC1;
COF.NC1;
RAT.NC1;
FF.NC1;
SF.NC1;
MCG.NC1;
BSE.NC1;
BDE.NC1;
BBH.NC1;
BTA.NC1;


In the Prosperous Universe screen, in the COM window, create a new group.
Paste the above text into the chat box.
A list of commodities and pricing will appear.
Swipe the text and hit Control C. You may have to hold down the mouse button to keep the text highlighted.

Switch to your spreadsheet. These instructions work in LibreOffice Calc.
In a new sheet, select cell A1.
Right click on the cell, select Paste Special.
Select Paste Special again
Use text import dialog
OK
Separator Options
Check Semicolon and Space
Enter
The data should appear in a row.

In order to make the data easier to use, list each commodity in a column, and use =(cell id) to put the price next to the commodity name.

Paste in the same cell every time, and it should be repeatable.

[jacob]

I use the importdata statement as it is in the link for page 1 (should result in a giant table of numbers). I use vlookup everywhere else. This will automagically update my analysis as prices change on the exchange.

As an example, here's how to calculate what it costs to buy the ingredients for DDT on the BEN CX. (In googlesheets, I renamed page1 as prices)

Code: Select all

=1*vlookup("C",prices!$A$2:$AS$344,13,"False")+1*vlookup("H",prices!$A$2:$AS$344,13,"False")+1*vlookup("CL",prices!$A$2:$AS$344,13,"False")

To calculate other prices, all I have to change are the ticker symbols. The numbers stay the same since they just cover the lookup block in imported table.

If I had to do it again, I wouldn't hardcode the number (13) in since that it now locked into the ask-price for BEN, which is the 13th column in the imported table. Instead, I'd make a page 2, where e.g. buy=13 and then I could switch my calculations to different exchanges.

[sky]

Wow, some people really take this game seriously. I enjoy the spreadsheet building challenge, thats what I like about this game.

[jacob]

Wow, some people really take this game seriously.

One thing that's become clear to me after picking up "gaming" after a ~20 year hiatus is that some of these "games" aren't really [video games] in the sense of how the term was commonly understood 20-30-40 years ago. The paradigm has changed.

Old time video games were "finite" (in the James Carse sense of the definition) single-player (perhaps double player if you had a friend physically come over) games that typically had a finite number of levels or challenges as set by the game designers that eventually led to a big final challenge at which point one would have won the game. Players could take the game seriously in terms of competing for high scores or maybe find easter eggs (a tradition that goes back as long) but that was about it. Developers would release a video game in its final version. Players would pay $20-30 and spend 30-50 hours defeating it. Perhaps the developers would release a version II with similar characters/style but it would be independent of the previous game and cost another $20. In this sense, classic video games were very similar to board games except on a computer. An electronic analogy to the card game Solitaire.

Modern multi-user online games are more like hobbies or sports. They are "infinite" in the Carse sense. The developer focus is mostly on maintaining an environment (for years and years going over a decade and in a few cases two decades) for players to practice their hobby or sport. IOW, modern video games rather resemble (very big) clubs complete with entry or membership fees (sometimes free to try it out). A club may hold events. It may hold tournaments. The players themselves may invent new tools or ways behavior---something that was pretty much impossible with the set piece finite games of the 20th century. The developers may indirectly support this by including player-induced events in the game lore. The wildest example of that would be the developers of Eve Online creating a real-world statue to commemorate something that happened in the virtual world. Those who were not in that virtual world, where it happened, would have no clue. That's another way of saying that there are virtual worlds out there now to explore as well.

Since much gaming is now more like hobbies or sports, it's less surprising that some people take them very seriously indeed. When I bought the gaming computer to enter this world, I sort of had the expectation that since I was retired and could dedicate something like a full time effort into "getting gud", I could and would eventually rise to being a top level player. Ha! No, that's like expecting that all you need to do to start competing nationally in Ironman competitions or to become a chess master is to retire. Like with anything else that involves thousands of participants in a multi-year institution, 30-60 hours per week => becoming an average to above average performer, but not anything near the top. Getting to the top requires both talent and probably also more along the lines of 10,000 hours with an ongoing 100hr/week commitment to the exclusion of everything else in life. (I don't have that.)

The PrUn "club" dates back to 2020, for example. It has 7000 members and at any one point there's 250-350 people in the "club house" playing or just hanging out. Like with any club, there are people who have been there a long time. People who have different interests in what's going on in that club. People who become "known factors": popular or even legend. People who organize stuff. People who seem to never leave---you guys might have noticed the boom-guy in the Apex globat chat? I don't think he ever leaves.

We still take about playing soccer and soccer players but we don't think of soccer as a game. There are professional soccer players getting paid and winning millions in prizes. Clubs with fans to watch the tournaments. Local clubs with trainers. People who play in a club and take it semi-seriously. People just kicking a ball in the backyard or in the part. The depth and width in computer gaming is comparable.

What seems to be happening with the gaming industry is that it's no longer in the business of creating games as much as it is in the game (pun intended) of creating networks and institutions for a given activity and in maintaining/supporting them. (It may be that my perspective is highly self-selected here.) IOW, the idea is to invent a hobby and then provide and maintain a space for that hobby for years on end. This is a very different experience from the one that used to come in a colorful box for $24.99.

[zbigi]

What seems to be happening with the gaming industry is that it's no longer in the business of creating games as much as it is in the game (pun intended) of creating networks and institutions for a given activity and in maintaining/supporting them. (It may be that my perspective is highly self-selected here.) IOW, the idea is to invent a hobby and then provide and maintain a space for that hobby for years on end. This is a very different experience from the one that used to come in a colorful box for $24.99.

It's both at the same time. Many millions of people still buy $60 AAA single player games that they expect to complete in x number of hours and never touch again. At the same time, there are companies which are exactly as you describe - they even say that their main competition are not other games, but for example Netflix or (following) NBA - i.e. ongoing recreational activities.

[Bankai]

It's a bad business to release a game for $x and end there. Nowadays, most games are 'supported' for sometimes even several years, meaning a small dedicated team of developers is constantly working on releasing expansions (DLCs) regularly, for as long as there's profit to be made. This way, the lifespan of a game is stretched to years and is likely more profitable for a company than releasing a sequel to the game, since adding another faction to Civilisation or another location/playable race to Skyrim is way cheaper than building a new world from scratch (if 'base' game costs say $60 but you get a DLC every 3 months for only $15 then over the lifespan of say 5 years you're spending $300 assuming you get the whole package at non-discounted prices). It's also a good way to keep customers happy and hooked so they don't go to competition for the new shiny thing.

And then there are player-made mods (modifications) of pretty much every aspect of each popular game, often thousands of them to choose from, including full overhauls, allowing for almost infinite customisation. One can easily spend tens of thousands of hours on a single game and never 'complete' it nowadays.

[7Wannabe5]

Start-up focused on creating infinite game featuring players and other agents utilizing AI to easily create additional features for the game.

https://www.forbes.com/video/a7fb8ae2-2 ... y-forever/

[jacob]

My eyesight has improved!

(Backstory: I've spent the majority of my adult waking hours either reading a book or staring at a screen. As such my ability to focus has gradually optimized itself for a distance of about 2 feet. Based on DIY tests, I estimate my eyesight to have degraded to around 10/20 on one eye and maybe down to 5/20 on the other. I've resisted using corrective lenses due to a perhaps wrong belief that my eyes would simply adjust again thus causing a slippery slope!)

I know what the nature boys will say: Go outside and stare at a tree.

Nah! I've worked my VR tolerance up to about 2hrs/day (might go down again once room temperature increases above 62F---having your head cooked in the summer is rather uncomfortable). Elite Dangerous has really been the killer app for me. All the "experience"-type programs (international space station, whale, deep mine, nuclear explosion, google earth, ...) were cool---mindblowing, even---the first time but once seen, I didn't return. OTOH, I can't really imagine playing ED on a flat screen now. I tried for some less intense "work" like trading and mining on the 2D screen but it just isn't the same (sound is better though).

All that to say that whereas the VR graphics initially felt a bit blurry causing some eye strain after a while, it is now perfectly clear in both eyes. I can see the individual pixels(*). It's kinda weird that my eyesight is now better in VR than it is in reality. How's that for odd physiological adaptions?

(*) IIRC, my headset is 1440p except in VR you sit so closer that the angular distance between the individual pixels is more like a 500px screen... so the perceived resolution is somewhere between 800x600 and 640x480 for those old enough to remember that.

(Apparently, the way VR works is that the lenses, which sit ~1/4" in front of each eyeball, are dialed in for a focus of some 5ft. Unlike reality, it's always 5ft no matter how far away something is. Instead depth perception is achieved by parallax with each lens presenting a slightly different perspective to each eye with your brain then merging them. Humans also use "size of objects" for longer distances and "shape of lens of eye" for closer distances (I don't know how close).

The side-effect of moving my primary focus from the previous 2ft out to about about 5ft is the IRL eyesight has improved as well. Not a lot but still noticeably!

[Anesau]

Just wanted to mention that some of the early posts (especially about online [gaming/culture] being a long-term sustainable replacement to the dwindling joy of tourism and etc.) reminded me very strongly of a blog post about the loss of children's cultures called The Last of the Monsters with the Iron Teeth (which I'd highly recommend), especially this excerpt:

As a result, children’s society has less and less to do with the land around them – land which, anyway, they are unlikely to occupy when they become adults in our hypermobile society. Children’s society exists on the internet if at all, with raids in video games and chat rooms replacing geographically colocated monster hunts. (This is increasingly the case with adult society as well, which also lacks architectural and geographic support.) It should be noted that the internet is not the cause of these problems. Rather, the internet is the precarious reservation onto which culture has been driven, bleak and uncanny, inhuman in scale. And even the internet is increasingly monitored and reshaped by the same malignant tiling system that drove culture here in the first place. What will happen to culture when even this frontier is closed?

[emphasis mine]

As someone who grew up with more modern near-infinite-replayability games — given that I grew up in the era of Minecraft and Runescape — it does feel both that online culture was in some sense unavoidable as a kid (ex. I wasn't allowed to play outside, and ~never saw friends outside school unless we were online together), and that it seems to have substituted for something that was starting to die as I was born.

[jacob]

@Anesau -

Having been born at the almost perfect time to have overlapped both the earlier times as well as the emergence of computers and the internet while growing up, I harbor somewhat less nostalgic feelings towards those earlier times than that author does. Although, some of it surely comes down to temperamental differences.

The greatest thing about the internet, which I think maybe younger generations now take for granted, is that "on the internet nobody knows you're a dog". On the internet children (and adults) aren't judged by their age but by their writing and their thoughts. You can't really tell how old someone is chronologically, only how mature they are by how they act. Interest and demonstrated capability to understand now defines access to e.g. scientists or diplomats, whereas previously it came down to who your parents knew if any.

Previously, if someone (like me) was interested in astronomy or complex numbers, the typical adult response back then was to "I don't know, go out and play with Bob" even if I knew that Bob was more interested in seeing how far he could stick a pencil up his nose than working out how to launch a rocket into space.

For most of history, children past the age of 6ish would be seen as but "smaller and less experienced" adults with the rights and responsibilities that came along with that. The anonymous and global internet restored some of that for those who were able to interact with society at that level, e.g. by coding professional quality apps at age 13 or discussing global economics by age 17.

The idea of "children's culture" is essentially a historical aberration due to modern industry and office jobs that suddenly turned children into a useless burden rather than the useful farmhands they used to be.

But then again. I know many people miss their childhood and think it was their best time of their life. I don't.