The stories from Eve certainly are awesome. I always feel I want to be part of that, but at the same time I'm also sad that this amount of energy is not put into something more meaningful. The main part is building a huge community right? That you fly around in space ships is secondary at some point. Then why don't people exchange that secondary part with something like organizing free food for homeless people, or building shelters instead of space stations, or making computer cheaper so every school can afford to put one on every desk?
*edit: That nobody has to become defensive here: All time spent on that kind of activity is time lost for humanity at all, in my books. It does not mean someone else need to have the same priorities. I can be sad about it without wanting to tell anyone that they need to change their ways. Keep your ways. But allow me to be sad about it.
It's a good question, but I guess the answer is - people just don't work that way. You can't separate the form (community) from the content (space ships). These are not substitute goods, you can't just replace Eve with World of Warcraft or with helping Red Cross.
And the reasons people choose games instead of life? I guess it's complicated. I am guilty of that too; I could be building real rockets and learning real aeronautics instead of wasting 400 hours in Kerbal Space Program and I'd be probably much more qualified than I am now. But I know that I wouldn't find the strength and willpower to pursue "the real deal" instead of a fun game that approximates it.
I sometimes am sad too, just like I am sad about the world's focus in general. Most people waste even more time on even more useless things that Eve players do on Eve. It took 12 years from first artificial satellite to putting a man on the Moon. If people could maintain that kind of focus and channel it to the right goals - ending poverty, illness and death itself, we'd live in a paradise before the end of this century.
(IMO it's actually a huge mistake that a lot of people in the field of educational games make - they try to make education apps pretending to be games, instead of making games that educate as a side effect)
> * I could be building real rockets and learning real aeronautics instead of wasting 400 hours in Kerbal Space Program and I'd be probably much more qualified than I am now.*
I think part of it, as well as EVE vs. feeding the homeless, is the ability to walk away when it's not fun.
If you walk away from three years in college studying aeronautics, you're throwing away everything you sunk into it. If you're walking away from a homeless shelter, a family might go hungry.
If you're walking away from Eve or Kerbal, well, some bits don't get exchanged, and I guess maybe someone might lose a fake spaceship. No guilt.
True. You approach the game out of interest, stick to it as long as it's fun, and take a break with no guilt if you don't feel like playing or are busy doing something else, only to maybe return to it later. The lack of real responsibility can be (and in my own case, very often is) really motivating.
Just this morning I've been reading yet another book on US railroad history, and collecting copies of historical documents about railroad corporations. With an eye toward eventually (someday (tm)) writing a book about it myself.
All because of an interest created by Railroad Tycoon many years ago.
The main reason is that Play is really, really important to making us better humans, so humans really, really like to engage in the form of Play no matter what the content. One of the cultural challenges that humanity faces is making Play align with bigger goals -- for example, if you love carpentry, you might volunteer with a shelter building program for all the "wrong" reasons, but yet... houses get built and (probably most important) carpentry skill gets developed in humans.
I would agree that Eve might be a complete waste of time, along with soccer and chess and (my favorite) Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, but I think the instinct to Play is very real and very productive, it should just be channeled intelligently.
Many people have expressed here that EVE takes up an inordinate chunk of your life, to the point where you ignore other things you should be doing. Perhaps OP is assuming we know that, and is making the point that some of the excess should be directed toward something more meaningful? That's my charitable reading of his post, but I could be wrong.
To be fair, you can replace EVE with HN in that sentence, and it still works for many people (myself included at various times, for both EVE and HN)
I like the charitable view, but I can feel for the sentiment in the parent comment as well. It's unlikely everyone is going to devote every minute of their life to charity. I can give plenty of money and time to charity, and still have time to play games sometimes.
Lots of people quite easily spend as much time watching tv as people like us play video games. I'd argue playing games is at the very least slightly less bad. We are engaging with other people (most of the time), working reflexes, strategy, hand eye coordination, etc. Everyone needs some relaxation and play time, and I suspect video games are a better use of time than a lot of competing alternatives.
Sounds a little like harsh criticism, but it's actually a really good question! Yes, it's not so different if you have meta talks about life or if you discuss how to kill the CEO of a virtual space corp.
EVE can be played while you do other things, for short intervals during the day and spending $15 or less per month.
How would one organize free food for homeless people during one's commute, for example? Or build shelters in the 1h lunch break? Or make computers cheaper by expending less than $15/m?
My mother is a member of Refood (a org that redistributes surplus food from restaurants to people that need it), but she could never do it if she had a regular 9-6 job plus commute.
I can see your point and agree with it. But at the same time I feel motivated through your questions. Why should it not be possible to do something for the real community in 15 minutes in a bus if you can do something in that 15 minutes for your virtual community? If a world as big as Eve and a company of 300 game developers of all kinds can be financed by $15/m, why could we not find a way to bring food to 3000 homeless?
Also there are other meaningful things one can do that a perfectly possible with these ressources. One that I spend a lot of time doing is learning another language. Clicking through a few vocabs on Memrise is certainly possible on the bus. I do that for years now. And it's also quite possible to pay for online/skype lectures with 15 bucks a month. What do you think about that? I think that's also doing something for this world. Learning a new language will make you better and will bring you closer to another culture, and by that brings both cultures a tiny step closer to understanding each other better as well, because your friends will read your FB update about that awesome book or movie you enjoyed in that other language, and you will start explaining how things work in your country to friends using that other language you've learned. What do you think about that?
Learning a new language makes you better, and is something you enjoy doing. It's certainly not helping any homeless people out. And then through that you maybe learn about another culture, and it brings cultures imperceptibly closer.
By that same token, by playing Eve you can meet people from other cultures all around the world, share social experiences, and learn about each other. Maybe then you actually go visit those people in real life and you get actually exposed to a new culture and experience how it works first hand. And now you've made the world better by playing Eve.
I'm not sure how useful it is to pass judgment over whether other people are wasting their time. If I'm doing something that's fulfilling to me, is that really a waste?
Besides, we really don't need most people to spend their time feeding the homeless or building shelters. It takes money, not work, to feed and house people. Our economy can easily sustain enough food for everyone and enough homes for everyone without anyone (including poor people) having to work any harder.
The fact that we're not feeding and housing everyone isn't really a reflection of how hard we're working.
Yes, there are people who play the game who decide to spend additional time/energy on positive things. But having a limited number of hours per day and a limited number of days per life I'd say it is either or. The time one invests in killing a CEO in Eve is time that can't be spent helping people in Nepal.
And that nobody has to become defensive here: All time spent on that kind of activity is time lost for humanity at all, in my books. It does not mean someone else need to have the same priorities. I can be sad about it without wanting to tell anyone that they need to change their ways. Keep your ways. But allow me to be sad about it.
If you expand this kind of math to the entire day of a typical person, you'd realize that we all should just donate everything we have, live as cheaply as possible and spend every minute not dedicated to sustaining our bodies on helping the poor, hungry and sick. And yes, if everyone did just that, we'd probably solve all problems within a year.
Unfortunately, humans not only just can't coordinate like this (coordination problems are a very sad thing in my book) - they can't mentally endure it. That's why I like the idea of Giving What We Can[0] - just dedicate 10% or more of your income to helping the poor and feel discharged of your basic moral obligation to them. 10% may sound like not much, but people can't handle 100% dedication, and it's better to have them all at 10% than not at all.
If everyone gave 10%, it would immediately be a solved problem. No need to spend every possible minute working. 10% would be so much more than is needed.
Can we be sad about the time you are wasting on HN lecturing us about our game playing?
Everyone needn't be helping the poor 24/7. There's plenty of room for giving of time and money to better causes and also still having some time to relax, play games, and have fun.
working 24/7 is a recipe for burnout. No reason to be sad about people resting a bit from their work.
I understand your point. There have been times when I played "too much" EVE or other games. There have also been times when I worked too much. (In fact, I'm taking a break from work to read a bit of HN, right now at 10:45 local, which is stupid, lol).
In general playing games isn't wasted time for humanity though. We could easily feed and shelter everyone with our current prosperity, without making everyone spend every second of their free time working on the problem. Just needs a bit of money.
Yes, important questions. First of all let me state again, to keep that in our heads: nobody is allowing or forbidding anybody anything. And that's also not what I meant.
The point I'm trying to make is that there are talented people who put a lot of effort into keeping that game going. Some people (about 300 according to the article) work full time on it. Others don't get paid but still spend a significant amount of energy and time to keep their corps going. I'm hugely in favour of spending five minutes here and there to just slack off. But building a 1000 people big corp and owning a huge part of the EVE space is something different, right?
Also, the task of keeping that virtual corp going is the same as keeping a club going that secretly washes other people's cars at night. As a corp leader you mostly schedule regular work, prioritize tasks, convince people to do them, discuss with people when they are unhappy about they're tasks or if they're unhappy about other corp members. That job is not so different, no matter what the actual tasks are. And it certainly is a job. It's more fun to some than to others, but even of the most enjoying people it takes energy and time.
And let's face it there aren't even many people on this planet who are able to run a community of 1000+ people.
The main part is playing games as part of a team. The community exists to support the game-playing. You might as well make the same complaint about any sports team.
*edit: That nobody has to become defensive here: All time spent on that kind of activity is time lost for humanity at all, in my books. It does not mean someone else need to have the same priorities. I can be sad about it without wanting to tell anyone that they need to change their ways. Keep your ways. But allow me to be sad about it.