given nearly every country has some form of gambling regulation, someone certainly thinks their values, with regards to gambling, should be imposed on the masses, yes.
Given that Zynga has hired skinnerian behaviorists, and that they optimize their games by the effect on their bottom line (not entertainment value), I expect more than a few single mothers to spend their money on empty facebook thrills to the detriment of family life and the UK in general.
Most everything you do in life is chasing highs and reinforcing biological addictions or psychological habits. Going for a run? Chasing that runner's high, scratching that addiction itch. Having sex? Getting that orgasm high, scratching that addiction itch. Eating food you love? Getting that sugar high, scratching that addiction itch.
Utilitarian gamblers, in essence, are looking for something to do. Many are seniors, who are looking to kill time, reduce boredom, or simply get out of the house – and they are less motivated by financial rewards or excitement. Some enjoy people-watching as much as the actual slot play.
Excitement gamblers are looking for a buzz – the thrill of winning a jackpot, relaxing and having a good time. This group doesn’t like progressive machines with bigger payouts because they don’t pay off frequently enough to provide the excitement.
Multipurpose gamblers tend to be younger, less educated, have lower household income, and are less likely to be married and own a home. Their motivation is to have fun and win money, and they are attracted to themed games and other machines they consider “lucky” or fun to play.
Relaxation gamblers were the most educated and well-to-do, and played slot machines for the socialization and fun. However, they also like to stay within their denomination – usually 25-cent machines or $1 machines, and often look at slot play as a way to relieve day-to-day stress.
It's exploitative; the graphics appeal to small children. Encouraging those that aren't capable of understanding gambling is generally frowned upon, in the UK at least.
Firstly, gambling is illegal for minors. Secondly, have you ever seen slot machines? Players like to pick machines they feel comfortable with. This is Zynga using their own branding to diversify into another product.
The one thing to be said of online casinos is that they offer good protection against underage gamblers. Unlike a fruit machine in a pub, you can't just wander by and anonymously put money in. The payment systems generally prevent registering/depositing by under-18s. And even the Gibraltar gambling commission (of which Zynga falls under) is very strict about preventing minors from playing.
In Las Vegas, there are slot machines with all sorts of cartoons (Disney characters, etc). But if you look under 18, and you walk up and touch them, security is going to appear out of nowhere and ask you to leave.
There are PopCap themed slot machines already. Their characters are just as "kid friendly" in the sense that they are simple and stylized, but again PopCap's products are for adults and not kids.
Simplified shapes? Must be appealing to all small children! I remember being a kid and I liked cooler, detailed things. Likewise as an adult I really appreciate simplified designs. It may appeal to some kids but not all.
UK being a nanny state is not a good thing. It is the job of the parent to give and take access to things. Let's ban all graphics because they could appeal to some kid out there whose parents are irresponsible.
I shouldn't have to say this, but you know it's not the same thing.
UK being a nanny state is not a good thing.
I agree, and it is all too easy to say "BUT WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE KIDS!"
It is the job of the parent to give and take access to things.
But how far do you go with this? Should parents keep their children in a virtual home prison? Basically, where do you draw the line between "Parents, stop your children doing X!" and "Parents, your surveillance is evil!"
It's not easy. One thing we should be able to agree on, though, is that using childrens-book cartoon characters in gambling products does no-one any favours.
>One thing we should be able to agree on, though, is that using childrens-book cartoon characters in gambling products does no-one any favours.
FarmVille was never made for kids or to appeal to kids. Children are not the only ones who like cartoon characters. None of this is marketed to kids. If they marketed on the same channels or sites kids go to then I'd agree with you but as is aesthetics alone is not enough.
Just because it does not appeal to you does not mean it doesn't appeal to other adults. It does not mean it automatically appeals to kids either.
>Should parents keep their children in a virtual home prison?
I'm not about to tell parents what to do, but if I were a parent I would want my kids to be as wordly as possible and to understand the way things work as soon as possible. Understanding that gambling is not a way to make money (unless you own the machines) is a good thing to know. It's not about being a hawk and watching every action, and banning things so there is no chance of anyone being exposed. It's about building up key knowledge, allowing them to make mistakes, and having a positive enough environment where they can safely learn from their mistakes.
YMMV. Not everyone wants kids, plenty of people are already having kids, many people who do have kids regret it entirely, and many people correctly recognize that you can't live your dreams and raise your kids right. It's not just a financial lens for many people it's a time lens too.
Having kids whose lives you very probably won't even be allowed to be a part of is a reality for many guys too. Even if you have kids in marriage the reality is you will probably get a divorce, the kids will go to the mother, and you will pay.
Why risk it if you know you can avoid it? Having kids it's a guarantee of joy or satisfaction. Writing books, creating epic things can give just as much joy and satisfaction.
This is why India is ultimately destined to overtake the western world. Either directly or from within.
Having had occasion to debate about this on /r/childfree, I feel like a lot of their arguments are based on one of the following fallacies:
1) That there are "too many people." That may be true in parts of Africa, but in the developed world, the positive economic contribution of each additional person still vastly outweights the cost of their incremental strain on natural resources.
2) That depopulation in the future doesn't affect people in the present. If you're thinking of investing in a startup, what does it do to your calculus if you know that your customer base won't be any bigger in 20 years than it is today, and will be older?
3) There is no positive externality to having kids. Your average person is going to contribute millions of dollars in labor and social value (how much would you pay to save the life of a loved one?) over his or her lifetime.
4) Failure to look at the value of alternatives in incremental terms. The question isn't: what is the value of having kids versus doing a startup, it's: how much does having kids reduce my probability of doing a startup, and what is the weighted value of that relative to having kids.
5) Failure to account for the correlation between parent-child incomes. I'd say 90% of the kids from my high-income suburban middle school are now making median or above incomes. Maybe 7-10% are in the top 1% of income for their age bracket. High income people create a larger positive externality when they have kids.
6) Failure to weight the value of alternatives by probabilities. Your average person has very few alternative courses of action that is going to generate as much economic value as raising kids. Your high income person has has a greater probability of doing these things, but writing a best-selling book or founding a successful startup is far from guaranteed. So the relevant question is not: what has higher external social value, doing a startup or having a kid, but rather which of those has higher social value weighted by the probabilities that your startup will have any real success (low), or by the probability that your kid will achieve at least median economic success (quite high).
This is of course not to argue with anyone who chooses not to have kids. Nobody needs to justify personal decisions like that. But to the extent that they do try to justify it (and that's largely what /r/childfree is--people who feel the need to justify their decision), it's useful not to rely on fallacious reasoning to do so.
/r/childfree is still a useful place for people to gain some perspective - that there are actually people who never want kids and have mostly good, personal reasons for this. Not everyone cares about the fact that other countries will likely dominate in the future. Hey, good for them.
For individuals who weigh the risks and rewards in our society it is easy to make the judgement having kids does not make sense. A lot of things we do in modern society is that individuals value their own welfare more than the welfare of the group, and are unwilling to sacrifice in exchange for the group's future prosperity. I refuse to be a disposable slave. I value my time and my life, and I am worth more long term by not taking what seems to me as stupid risks.
You make an important point, which is that the value of kids is a positive externality that is not easily captured for yourself. And that's certainly true with regards to kids: you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars raising them, but it's their employers and society at large that capture their millions of dollars in productive labor. If you care more about yourself than your tribe (and there's nothing wrong with that), it does indeed make sense not to have kids.
My objection, again, isn't to people who choose not to have kids. My objection is to the people (and I think they make up the bulk of /r/childfree) who rely on specious arguments to justify their decision, and act like they're doing society a big favor in not having kids so they can focus on their music career.
Given 1-4, and the fact that the investment in raising a child is almost entirely borne by the parents while the returns (financial, emotional, social, etc) are distributed more widely, sperm or egg donation programs seem like a logical alternative. It's probably the only circumstance in which you can actually make money (instead of spending it) in the process of creating a human. Genetic factors could also capture some of the correlation that would otherwise be present due to #5 in a nuclear family kind of environment.
Since the value of children vis-a-vis retirement planning is no longer as significant as it once was several centuries ago, it seems to me that there are few good material reasons to have children for most middle and upper-middle class people. Very high income people can reap benefits via inheritance, but most people don't have enough wealth for that benefit to outweight the costs (both actual and opportunity) involved in raising children.
This isn't to say that the non-material benefits of raising children cannot be significant. But these benefits are highly individual and should average out over a sufficiently large sample, so I'd expect large scale societal trends in childbearing to closely follow the financial cost/benefit analysis inherent in the decision.
> Since the value of children vis-a-vis retirement planning is no longer as significant as it once was several centuries ago
It's just as significant as it always has been--we have just decoupled the relationship and created a free-rider problem in the process.
Every scheme of retirement depends on the existence of successive generations. That is true whether you're talking about traditional societies where children take care of their parents, or modern societies where the childrens' generation makes payments to the parents' generation through either social security taxes, or dividend payouts from equity ownership.
The free rider problem we've created is that everyone is eligible to take social security, even if they haven't produced offspring that will labor in the economy while the retired generation lives off their production.
Indeed, we've also created a free-rider problem along another dimension: we have lots of people in the present who benefit from the governments' taking out debt to fund services and infrastructure, but who won't create any offspring that will pay the taxes that will pay that debt.
> even if they haven't produced offspring that will labor in the economy while the retired generation lives off their production.
This is the unfortunate fallacy that most make when looking to social security and its apparent dwindling in funding. You are insinuating that social services must come from taxation of individual labor, whereas our economy has successfully and continuously been moving towards a more capital based economy.
In short, where will the money come to fund future social services? More from capital, less from the individual labor of your children.
"But America as a whole won’t have gotten poorer: the money is still there to support the programs, it’s just coming in the form of capital rather than labor income. There would be no problem, at least in economic terms, in continuing the programs by adding revenue from general taxation, maybe even from dedicated taxes on capital income." - Paul Krugman
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/policy-implicati...
Krugman is using the term "income from labor" and "income from capital" in a tax sense, in the context of payroll taxes, because in the tax code we distinguish between "income from labor" and "income from capital gains." But of course we still live in a world where all income ultimately derives from labor applied to capital. E.g. when Google throws off a fat dividend, that's counted as "income from capital" for tax purposes, and Krugman is saying we should tax that to fund the retirement system. But Google, of course, makes it's money from engineers. If Google didn't have engineers, it wouldn't have any money. If they don't have enough engineers, they make less money than if they do.
Now, we could have a future where capital really does generate production by itself (everything is automated by robots). We're not anywhere near that point yet. For the foreseeable future, even to the extent that profits from Google, Facebook, etc, are counted as "income from capital" for tax purposes, it still depends fundamentally on human labor.
Every scheme of retirement depends on the existence of successive generations. That is true whether you're talking about traditional societies where children take care of their parents, or modern societies where the childrens' generation makes payments to the parents' generation through either social security taxes, or dividend payouts from equity ownership.
I was referring to individual-level retirement planning. That is, does it make sense for me to invest in one or more children based on the expectation that those children will directly help me (financially and otherwise) during retirement?
Social security originated in a time when, barring catastrophic wars, it was inconceivable that the U.S. population could ever decrease. It has worked thus far because a productive younger generation has always been able to pay for a retired older generation. However, as far as I know, it was always a program whose ethical justification was that you get back what you put in, plus some return. Whether or not you have children is irrelevant.
Furthermore, if we presume that the ethical justification for social security is that one's children are going to be productive members of society, how can we adjust for unproductive children? Should parents whose children die before entering the workforce be denied social security? What if their children live, but are unemployed for many years? These are serious questions that would have to be addressed, but doing so would simply not be possible in many cases since parents tend to die before the productive output of their children over the course of their working life is known.
This is also true even when applied to future generations as a whole. A future generation can be less productive than the present one, just as one's future child can be less productive than you. If social security is an intergenerational contract that involves a transfer of wealth from the young to the old, then it's an unjust Ponzi scheme that will collapse as soon as demographic trends are no longer able to sustain it.
Ideally, the benefits received from any retirement program, whether public or private, would be dependent upon an individual's productivity over the course of their life. Any other system inevitably involves some centrally managed authority attempting to equitably transfer wealth from one set of people to another, which is a prescription for corruption.
> I was referring to individual-level retirement planning. That is, does it make sense for me to invest in one or more children based on the expectation that those children will directly help me (financially and otherwise) during retirement?
I understand. I was pointing out what impact our national retirement policies had on individual incentives and how that translated into group incentives.
> However, as far as I know, it was always a program whose ethical justification was that you get back what you put in, plus some return. Whether or not you have children is irrelevant.
That's an abstraction. It doesn't matter if you only "take out" what you "put in." At the end of that day, somebody's kids are producing what you take out. Any retired generation inherently depends on the production of the working generation, and for a generation to retire, there has to be a working generation to take their place, which means having kids. Social security versus investing versus whatever is just a way of accounting for that basic transaction.
> Furthermore, if we presume that the ethical justification for social security is that one's children are going to be productive members of society, how can we adjust for unproductive children?
I'm speak at the group level. It's fairly irrelevant whether one person does or does not have kids, so it's useless to try and account for that at the level of Social Security. However, Social Security as an institution reduces the incentive for everyone to have kids, because they can just depend on the production of the kids of people who did. It's a free-rider problem.
> If social security is an intergenerational contract that involves a transfer of wealth from the young to the old, then it's an unjust Ponzi scheme that will collapse as soon as demographic trends are no longer able to sustain it.
It's a Ponzi scheme, but what makes it unjust? It's the circle of life, man. Your parents took care of you, and at the other end of the cycle you take care of them. The really useful insight is that it's a Ponzi scheme that's unavoidable, at least with existing technology. By and large, the human life is bookended by periods in which people are not self-sufficient and not able to produce. No matter how you abstract the underlying intergenerational transaction, you can't get away from it. We're engaging in the same intergenerational transaction people did tens of thousands of years ago--we just have a different, fancier way of accounting.
It's a Ponzi scheme, but what makes it unjust? It's the circle of life, man. Your parents took care of you, and at the other end of the cycle you take care of them.
This describes retirement in general, which I have no issue with, not social security.
The unjust aspect is that you have no control over the future productivity of younger generations, which provides for your retirement. As an extreme example, how do you think China's population is going to deal with retirement once the full effect of the one-child takes effect on Chinese retirees? They didn't set that policy, but their retirement will suffer from it.
My contention is that a person's retirement should be proportional to their own life's productivity, which it is if you have built sufficient invesments and assets by your old age. I'd just prefer that governments not make promises to entire generations they can't ultimately keep.
Should people be ineligible if they are born infertile?
We could say that we probably won't have enough younger people to take care of the older people as birth rates decrease, but I think robots and AI will be more developed by then that either more people will be available to take care of the elderly and or the robots will do it along with all other service and manual labor jobs.
Arguably not true. Population growth rates have been decreasing in a variety of countries[1] and economists have found connections between economic growth and population growth[2].
"Plenty" is not a fact that can be disproven, it's a value judgement, and that growth rates have been decreasing does not mean the world is running out of people. Also: economic growth based on an ever-increasing number of customers is not a sustainable policy.
Friends are the family you choose. I would rather go out and make good friends than hope my kids would become good friends.
I do not have kids and I do not plan to. If I had kids I would want to raise them right, and I know that I really wouldn't be able to do what I want to do in life and that.
Friends are nothing like kids. I wouldn't trade my life without even thinking about it for my friends.
It's all hormonal response, sure, but ultimately anything that gives you satisfaction is ultimately just ways of manipulating your neurotransmitter levels. Having kids just happens to be one for which your body has a built-in response that gets you seriously drugged up.
It is our biological imperative to reproduce, but with humanity we can rise above our animal imperatives and impulses. I choose to avoid many things which push the biological buttons.
How old are your kids? Even with the special bond parents can have with their children that's not a guarantee things will be good. I know awesome parents who have raised horrible people. I know awesome kids who turned into horrible people after they left the nest. Most people seem to eject their aging parents into nursing homes when they are too old, because people would rather live their lives than take care of their parents. Good friendships last forever and don't require you to change diapers in the early years while convincing yourself its all worth it for the few golden moments if you don't happen to be forced to miss them because of work or just chaos.
Convincing me to want to have kids would first require me being convinced that I should want to ever get married. :)
"It is our biological imperative to reproduce, but with humanity we can rise above our animal imperatives and impulses."
This is true. However, if the causes for this attitude (biological or cultural) are in some way heritable, we can expect that over several centuries the attitude should disappear, or at least be significantly curtailed. (It is not clear exactly to what extent this is actually the case.)
No opinion is offered on the moral import of these matters. However, any future anthropologists will have something fun to study, surely.
There are genetic qualities which are passed on silently and only expressed after certain situations occur. If this were not the case there would be only heterosexual people.
Most people who seem stupid are only stupid because they lack what equally capable, but perceived as gifted or intelligent, people have. Most people have much the same genetic wetware capabilities - brain damaged people an exception - the biggest biological differences between most people are in hormones, and changes in hormones are largely a product of environment and can be changed just as knowledge can be changed. A human's potential is able to be expressed with an abundance of knowledge and the lack of enforced ideology. Allow people reference, perspective, and freedom and they will seem like smarter people than whose without. The sooner people have the best situation the better but it is never too old for someone to get smart.
I'm not trying to convince you of anything, I'm taking exception with your claim that friends and children are equivalent. If you measure someone's chemical responses to their own child versus to their friend, the former is likely to be far stronger (not necessarily better, but usually better, but definitely stronger).
>It is our biological imperative to reproduce, but with humanity we can rise above our animal imperatives and impulses. I choose to avoid many things which push the biological buttons.
Somehow, this line reminded me of Huxley's "Brave New World".
Good friendships last forever... As long you eject people from your life when they need your help. Think about that for a moment, and what it should mean if your good friends are as incredibly self-centered ad you are.
Only if you define a "good friendship" as a friendship in which neither party needs the other one at any time. This, however, runs counter to human tendencies: most deep friendships have a history of shared suffering, and helping one another through those times is one of the things that most solidifies the friendship.
What's wrong with valuing yourself? The world owes you nothing and you are the only person who is responsible for your own well being and happiness.
Be wary of friendships which are one sided. If a person doesn't value their own person and they constantly need you to help them that's not friendship it's dependency. I've never ejected people out of my life the first time they needed help, but I have given up on people when I realized I was wasting my time. Many people who need help can only change with their own effort.
Every relationship is one of opportunity. Think about that!
The reality in the US is a mother can move across the country while a father is forced to pay child support, if he moves he can likely lose his well paying job, and if he can't find a just as good job where he moves he could be put into jail for non-payment (debtor's jail!).
The reason we haven't signed the Declaration for the Rights of the Child is because the areas it addresses is a state issue. If the Federal government were to sign such a treaty it would become law. Which is a big no-no since the federal government can't intrude on state issues.
Could we have a referendum on the issue at the federal level, or would it require the states to individually ratify (through state governmental bodies or referendum) the right of an agent of the federal government to sign the treaty and allow it to become state-level law somehow?
I don't know much about law, but I am a fierce advocate of state rights based mostly on the idea that it is far more feasible to have a democratic government that involves millions or tens of millions than one that involves hundreds of millions. This issue is however one place where my ideas trip up. It is kind of embarrassing that we are 1 of 3 (assuming the grandparent comment is correct) countries not to ratify the treaty and the other two are an (essentially) failed state and a brand new one that has to sort its internal self out before working on such things as UN treaties.
In many polls when as if people would not have kids if they could do their life again they said they would not have kids.
It's the truth. Raising children without being neglectful takes a serious amount of time and money. If you don't have the money you have to go and make the money and that means paying someone else to watch your kids to take the chance of them raising them for you.
Yes, that's the reality. Statistics of divorce say so. Not only are you likely to get divorced, as there is usually more incentive to wives to ask for one, but if you live in a state which has alimony lives you could be stuck paying money.
I'm not jaded or negative. I'm an an extremely realistic (data is emotional) person who is very excited to live life well and do a lot of great things - I live in the real world, but I'm also very optimistic with what I do choose to do.
Look at table 6. You'll see a 44% base rate of divorce over 20 years. Note that couples with children (specifically have children after marriage) have a way lower divorce rate (from 48% to 22% after 15 years).
And this is highly education dependent. Only a high school grad? 53% chance of divorce. College degree (the vast majority of the HN crowd)? 35% percent. (even lower for masters)
Another relevant detail is age at first marriage. Getting married < 20? 54% chance of divorce within 15 years. Married >= 25? 32% chance.
44% isn't a high divorce rate? It is higher than it has been ever in our history. 6% away from flipping a coin that your marriage will fail. No thanks.
The proportion of children born outside of marriage, and more likely to not have strong father figures, is growing every year. Most mothers get custody, and most children don't have a strong father figure.
The marriage rate in the US is dropping drastically as well. Marriage doesn't make sense. Guys have nothing to gain from marriage and only things to lose. No, you don't get loyalty when you get married, and you don't get any of the other things you want. Most guys say they get less of what they want from their spouse after marriage.
Look at table 6. You'll see a 44% base rate of divorce over 20 years. Note that couples with children (specifically have children after marriage) have a way lower divorce rate (from 48% to 22% after 15 years).
While a 44% divorce rate is nothing for any society to brag about, I imagine it's even worse than these statistics indicate. This study didn't include marriages longer than a 20 year period. The probability of a marriage surviving also decreases in a relatively linear fashion. It's speculation, but from the data a best case estimate for the divorce rate at 25 years would be about 54%, and considering that kids typically get out of the house and go off to college in the 20-30 year period, a further increase seems likely since "staying together for the kids" ceases to be an excuse then.
I'm sure the longer term data exists, I just don't have time to look it up at the moment. If anyone has a link, it would be great to see it though.
> The probability of a marriage surviving also decreases in a relatively linear fashion.
How did you arrive at this conclusion? Looking at the rates, it is definitely far greater than linear, indeed the 5 year survival point from point X is constantly increasing (81% survival first 5 years; 90% years 15-20). Also bear in mind that "survival" includes not dying, which might throw inferring divorce rates off by a few percent at 20+ years.
Extrapolating to 25 years, you'd get a 49.5% divorce rate.
Again, demographics must be accounted for. Almost the entire audience here is in the higher education demographic which has radically lower divorce rates; you're looking at sub-30% divorce rates.
I should have been more specific. I didn't mean that the probability of a marriage surviving some fixed time interval decreases linearly with the duration of the marriage. Everyone knows that marriages that have lasted longer are less likely to end than newer marriages. What I meant is that the cumulative probability of a marriage surviving decreases roughly linearly from the 5 year point onward, as Tables 5 & 6 show (and Fig. 4 shows graphically).
As an unmarried person, it's the latter that is of concern to me. If I had been married for 15-20 years already, the probability you cite would be more pertinent.
Upbringing is much less important for development than genetics? No. Single mothers who raise kids in poverty with no father figure raise more daughters who have more kids without getting married or even involving a strong father figure (repeating the cycle), and more sons who become criminals or forever doing minimum wage jobs and going nowhere. Parenting > culture > genetics. Your genetic predisposition does not make you who you are. A person who is sheltered and not able to see the world is much worse off than a person who is given perspective about the world and able to expand their library of thoughts.
Which of my opinions do you want me to show are informed by data?
Most people regret their lives regardless of their choices, because dissatisfaction and bitterness is a human genetic tendency. Most people rage against their mortality and blame everything for it.
Perhaps, but I can't say the original respondent's opinions are particularly rare. I know a decent percentage of parents who love their children but given a "do over" on that portion of their life, quite a few would choose differently.
Parenting isn't for everybody, and I think that's a Good Thing. If it works for you, then you have my respect and support. But conversely, if you know it /doesn't/ work for you and you choose to not be a parent, that is also a decision I can respect and support.
To complain. He could change his life. He could code fun games. It's his own choice to code things uninspiring. Many people work in careers not right for them. Why is he doing something he doesn't enjoy when there is so much other opportunity for him to enjoy his life.
Making things come to life through code is a joyful delight. Writing an entire complex programming at once in a rush, compiling it, running it, and it actually works... first few times, hundredth, thousandth time sometimes it's still amazing. And I'm no expert programmer. I mostly paint.
Based on his writing, I believe this Smith is at risk for burnout.
As someone who quit his fancy tech job and started a video game company, I can say with certainty that games are not as fun to code as you would think =). The fun part (gameplay, game balance, story-telling, level creation) all happen near the end. In fact, they happen so close to the end that games often don't finish. They will have one third great story, two thirds great levels, and the rest is just rushed and crap.
The reason for this is the tools we made -- game engine for rendering & AI, level editors, resource packers, art post processors, etc, this is how the game really is put together. You don't make a game, you make a series of tools that help other people (game designers, artists, writers, AI scriptors) make a game. Now it is a blast making a work of collaborative art -- because writing and art are awesome -- but making a tool for a game is VERY similar to making an office suite or a complex website. It is all just data and interfaces. All the same usability/complexity tradeoffs apply.
I guess what I'm saying is the author's attitude made sense to me, and I know for sure that I'm not not at risk for burnout -- I love this shit. I love making games, but really it is because I love to program. Stories and art and gameplay are all bonuses, but if I didn't love the code it would still be terrible. That makes me wonder if coding is for everyone. I would love for it to be, but I'm really not sure.
Lastly, I recently taught someone to code from the ground up and the biggest single lesson was this: You will spend most of your day not knowing the answer. You will think and think and wonder and wonder. Is there even an answer to find? Is rails just too slow or are my queries crap? Can the iOS animation engine handle what you are doing or did you just add too many quartz-level effects and that is why it is super slow? You won't know the answer, you will doubt yourself, but over time you will actually become comfortable with not knowing. And even then, you will still be surprised (and pleased) when you figure it out. It is unending and I think it takes a special someone to enjoy that sort of life.
tl;dr Changing your life isn't always the answer. Coding is hard, doubt is hard, and games aren't as fun to write as you would think.
I never had a fancy tech job, or really any fancy job. I've had jobs. I moved industrial pipe for a few years in my teens. Not my favorite thing, but it was a choice. I worked for Sears for a few years up until I was 18. Worst years of my life. Also a choice. I've been making games since I was 11 and I'm just about 25. When I was 18 I decided to take it seriously and now here I am. I choose to do this. I can do programming, but I like art more, and I work with people who are just as passionate as I am. I love programming when I do it. I have a game on Steam, games on iOS and Android. I am dead set on doing great things not just with games but with culture and the future of humanity.
>The fun part (gameplay, game balance, story-telling, level creation) all happen near the end.
Then you are doing it wrong. There are so many tools available which allow you to skip so much of the technical parts and get to the parts you like. You can choose to use them, or you can choose to build your own.
>You don't make a game, you make a series of tools
That's a choice, and a huge thing newbies to game development are cautioned against. Don't make tools - make games! The tools are already made, don't reinvent the wheel. Yet so many insist on doing just that, and I have no sympathy for them.
To be fair, whilst the poster might be able to quit and write fun games (although based on anecdotes from people I know who have worked in the games industry it's not as fun as one might imagine) by necessity not everyone in programmer can be a game developer or work at a startup.
Some % of programming jobs (probably a fairly high %) is going to be writing the boring crap. So if you want to work as a programmer you have to accept that there is a chance that this is what you end up doing for at least some or maybe all of your career.
I'm an indie game developer and the way I see it is a choice for anyone to work independently. Some people are adamant about working for others and accepting whatever boring job they can get. Making games isn't the perfect thing to do, but it is possible, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Yes, working at a AAA studio can suck, but that's a choice also.
Boring crap to you doesn't mean it's boring to everyone. Who are we to impose our value system upon others. Some people just love modeling 3d crates all day and that's their mission in life to create the perfect 3d crate. Other people walk by and wonder why he's wasting his life creating crate after crate. It's not cool to me to rationalize something someone doesn't like doing just because someone has to do it. Let someone who actually likes it do it.
> you have to accept that
Only if you are not in control of your own life. There is no rule which say what you must ultimately do. If your goal is to do x and that requires ultimately doing a lot of y, you can still change what you want to do to z and immediately go for it. So many of my friends are insistently passionate about wanting to work for AAA game companies and I know their glamorous dreams are going to put them through a lot of potential slog, but that's not the only choice. It is their choice to go in that direction and accept the outcome of that direction. There are plenty of other options.
Smith is idealizing coding games and working on programming projects which inspire him. He should go do either of those instead.
It depends on supply and demand, ultimately there is only so much demand for video games, social networks or whatever types of things people might want to work on even if they weren't being paid.
Then the rest of the demand is for jobs that people basically only do for money (think TPS report generators or whatever). So ultimately some people end up being allocated to jobs that they would not choose for themselves unless they were being paid.
So you only get a "choice" in so much as there is unsatisfied demand for the thing that you really want to do.
You would think that, but the reality is there is a whole bunch of opportunity right now that is not being seized. Smith could change his life if he made the choice to. There is not an overflow of game developers, or people writing code worth being inspired about to the point where people who do it are not able to make money enough to live. People think what you are saying and assume it applies currently, and that they have no hope so they have to do the boring work they don't like. It does not apply right now, and it may never actually apply just because of what so many people are ingrained to believe.
>think TPS report generators or whatever
Value systems are not universal. You could take the most horrifying job you could think of and someone would take pleasure in it.
> being allocated
No one is ever forcibly allocated. Everyone has a choice to do what they want to do. If the ultimate horror reality of there being too many good games being made and not enough people to buy them all to the point where no one could make a living making games happened then people could still compromise and go down the list of things they genuinely enjoy and do those instead when they find something which can make them money. I don't know enough about Smith, but if he's not doing what he is doing as a temporary stopgap and he believes he is stuck forever doing code he hates then he is absolutely doing it wrong.
You can't have an economy where everybody gets to do their first (or probably 2nd or 3rd or 4th) choice of career unless you are people's desires happen to coincide with market demand.
In fact I imagine that the majority of people employed in the workforce can think of a whole list of jobs that they would rather do.
Otherwise we would have a huge oversupply of porn stars and rock stars but nobody to collect the trash.
Yes, absolutely, and so many people lack willpower to do greater things. That's not because they are not good enough people forever unable to summon the willpower to do it, but simply because they don't know the knowledge necessary. So many people believe so many absurd things which hold them back from what is possible.
>You can't have an economy
Sure you can. How long before the majority of all manual labor, all service jobs are done by computers and robots? Jobs which humans can do, but don't have to do. All of that uninspiring, boring drudge work which doesn't require any creativity or real problem solving. When those jobs are left we trend toward more of a gift economy where the value you have is what you do for others, what you inspire in them, what you delight them with. Some people already do things which do these things, others collect the trash. People are not forced to pick up your trash, and everyone could decide to refuse to take up that job, and yet people choose to still. Eventually it won't be a choice to put anyone's trash because it will all be automated.
I doubt that we will see the total loss of all manual drudge work within our lifetimes, things change slowly and the our economy will be structured to incentivise doing work that is not enjoyed for quite some time.
It's simply a fact that the most desirable jobs are always the most competitive so you are far more likely to have to a take a job that you would not necessarily choose.
The choice is not between taking out the trash and being a rock star, the choice is usually between taking out the trash, working some other low wage job or being unemployed and unable to support yourself financially.
So, if you decide to train in some particular area, it is worth thinking about the whole spectrum of jobs that might entail. I would discourage somebody from fixating on a programming career if they were only interested in programming because they wanted to work at facebook for example.
Or doing your own thing on your own on your own terms following the rules you make up. Hey, stop waiting for people to tell you what to do and create your own opportunity!
My alternate future where robots do everything absolutely no one wants to do (I wouldn't believe for a second that there are absolutely no people who love their job picking up trash) is more likely to become reality than your future where it's impossible to make money making games because too many people are making too many amazing games so no one wants to pay for them.
>I would discourage somebody from fixating on a programming career if they were only interested in programming because they wanted to work at facebook for example.
Yeah, same with wanting to work for a random AAA game company. Unfortunately most people don't appreciate wisdom until they have already failed (reality check when someone is doing work they hate at their "dream job" - if they hate it then they made a mistake), and some people never learn from their mistakes.
That's not really how economics works. The games market (for example) isn't capped by how many amazing games people could potentially play.
It's capped by the amount of money people have available to spend on games. So that money necessarily has to come from other parts of the economy. So when other parts of the economy suffer there is less money to pay for games.
Games are going to be a fairly elastic good, in that as much as I might love video games I'm not going to spend money on them if I'm struggling to afford food and rent. So in a bad market either games have to either become cheaper, or there will be less titles on the market.
Thus the demand for game developers either goes down or they will make less money each and the wages can only go so low before they will be forced to defect to other industries because their game salary won't make the rent.
Other jobs like trash collection will have a more steady supply/demand because even in a bad economy someone needs to take the crap away. I'm sure there are people who love trash collecting, but they are probably a minority of the workforce vs people who would prefer to get a trash collection salary for watching TV or playing video games.
The problem with telling people to "create opportunity" is that starting a business (as I have learned myself) is something that requires more capital than you think it does even if you are frugal. So unless you happen to be independently wealthy you are going to need to take that capital by either working at some other job or persuading an investor that your business will generate them a return.
So you have to find something that is the best compromise between "what I like to do" and "what do I think will make money" and usually the second one becomes the dominant factor.
I think realistic management of expectations is important, the world simply doesn't work in the way you suggest it does though I agree it would be preferable if it did.
I think that Pkoed's advice is unrealistic if everyone attempted to apply it to their lives, but this of course is never going to happen. On an individual scale, for the few hundred people who read his point of view here, it strikes me as a valid and reasonable way of seeing the world.
Supply and demand? Really? There is no limit, no ceiling for things that truly inspire. If you make something with passion and skill - something that inspires others - you are probably going to do very well in life.
And many who lived extremely fulfilling lives outside of accepting money for work.
Everything is a choice. The people who refuse to not be smart about business refuse to take what they need - so they get what they get much like people who only work when a job is offered to them. Money is rarely made by accident. It is more likely to be made when you mix choice with opportunity.
There's no such thing as a smart person. Only people who are more well informed. What you do is what you become. When I say smart I mean a willingness to do what it takes based on informed decisions.
Creativity is only the body of material you have to draw from. Your visual or intellectual library of things you have already made a part of yourself through direct exposure. No invention or creation is made independently, it's all made with a clear path from one to another. Anyone can invent or create great things. Anyone can be great. All it takes is choice.
Success favors perseverance. Failure is necessary to reach what works. Those who are unwilling to fail never succeed.
There certainly are people who are smarter than others, all research into human intelligence backs this up.
Well informed is also a sticky concept, there is a lot of information out there. Much of it conflicting, it requires skill,time and a certain amount of luck to use the right information to make the right decisions.
Sadly not everyone can be great, if everyone were great then nobody would be great. Though you could argue that we are already all "great" in comparison to the bacteria that we evolved from :)
There are people who can play chess better than I can, who have higher "IQs", and yet I make more money than they do. Intelligence is not a magic number which increases in one way which allows you to do great things automatically with no effort. An average person (based on IQ points, which do NOT measure all the the ways for people to have potential for intelligence) can do far greater, meaningful things through willpower, and willpower is something we all have only still most people do not understand how to use it effectively. It's just knowledge, not innate ability. We are all very similar genetically and we all have very similar with our potential for greatness. Sure we all cannot be great in the same ways... like many of us here couldn't be NFL quarterbackers if we wanted to, but still ultimately with the things we want and the things we want to do the only thing holding us back are our beliefs.
Any kind of creative person who is great is not born that way. It is not innate ability. Watch and listen to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnflBERf2zM It is the same with anyone who has "intelligence" - like I said, there is no smart people, only people who are exposed to more and work harder to learn more. Yes, people can be brain damaged with real limits, but even they can be greater than lazy people who waste their potential. Even people with extremely limiting abilities can use what brain tissue they have, expand their mind, and blow away all we thought we knew as impossible.
>Well informed is also a sticky concept, there is a lot of information out there. Much of it conflicting, it requires skill,time and a certain amount of luck to use the right information to make the right decisions.
Yes, so, be exposed to as much as possible, and think. That's what I'm saying it takes.
>Sadly not everyone can be great, if everyone were great then nobody would be great.
Yeah, no. Wow. This is like saying not everyone can be happy, because we need some unhappy people for the rest of us to have some perspective. Or that we need ugly people to feel good about how good we look. Or that we need gold stars to gloat over how others don't have gold stars. No.
People are measured relative to others, if everyone were what we currently deem as attractive then many who are currently attractive would certainly seem ugly for example.
You suggest that willpower is important, which all things being equal innate ability is still important. If 2 people dedicate their lives to running 100 metres in the fastest time then eventually one will be faster than the other due to innate genetic factors.
>People are measured relative to others, if everyone were what we currently deem as attractive then many who are currently attractive would certainly seem ugly for example.
Nope. It is not that others must suffer for you to have a good life much the same as it not be required for your neighbor to be ugly for you to be beautiful. Much of what you think as really true is not.
>If 2 people dedicate their lives to running 100 metres in the fastest time then eventually one will be faster than the other due to innate genetic factors.
This is the world you live in: I have a predisposition and I'm going to stick to it and within my natural limits.
This is the world I live in: fuck the rules.
> innate ability is still important
To be the very best that no one ever was? Sure it is, but it is largely inconsequential in the reality we live in! Like I said before: probably no one here can be a NFL quarterback as they are now... but they can still achieve nearly everything within their desires still! The reality is that the majority of people will think like you do are held back by their beliefs, while less innate people blow past them. Even if you think there are limits... they really do not matter. There will always be opportunity for you to have as much success as you choose to have. If you deny this then you will remain one of the many who choose to stay as you are.
As far as the brain goes, the differences in innate ability are so very unimportant compared to choice. A person who is born one way with a healthy brain is not any better or worse in permanence than someone with an equally healthy brain. They both can be great if they through their lives choose to be.
Your two points are not incompatible; some people are naturally a little better at things; most "things that matter to general success as perceived in America" (ignoring if that matters to you personally) have some basis in the comparison of you to others; you can achieve almost anything that you really dedicate yourself to; limits are made to be broken.
> We are all very similar genetically and we all have very
> similar with our potential for greatness.
Unfortunately, this is one of the biggest misconceptions in modern discourse. There is a whole "underground" (mostly online) current of thought called HBD (Human BioDiversity) which means to address this misconception. Google it, but with your attitude you will probably discard it right away.
Different Coloring Agents -
Paints and inks have different coloring agents. Paints are made up of tiny bits of colored minerals like clays or talc suspended in a colorless matrix such as polyester or vinyl. A chemical union of tannic acid and iron sulfate dissolved in water or alcohol forms the coloring agent of some inks. Others use such dyes as aniline.
Different Coloring Procedures -
Ink soaks into the surface that it colors, but paints do not soak in -- they cover the surface with a coating. In fact, a primer is usually applied to the surface before painting so that the paint won't soak in. For this reason, paint sometimes chips off the surface that it covers, but this never happens in the case of ink.
Surface Protection -
Paint not only colors a surface, but also provides the surface with a protective covering that will keep it from deteriorating when assailed by such agents as wind and rain. Ink offers no such protection.
Ain't necessarily so (other than the protection thing). While you've described iron gall ink nicely, india ink (lampblack suspended in dilute shellac) would be a paint under your definition, as would many printers' inks (pigments ground into an oil or polymer binder), especially those used for serigraphy. Soaking in isn't necessarily a characteristic of inks either; they are often brittle films (which is why palimpsests exist—old ink was merely scraped off of the parchment/vellum and the ground reused). By the same token, watercolours (which are pretty much universally regarded as paints) do soak into unsized papers.
This is another one of those "where do you draw the line" questions where the line is rather broad and ill-defined. It's a continuum. When it comes right down to it, the intended purpose and traditional usage in the field determine what is an ink, what is a paint and what is a stain.
BTW, note that india-ink doesn't necessarily use shellac, although some modern brands do. Traditional india-ink just uses water (which makes it less permanent than shellac-using india-inks, of course, but it has the advantage of being much easier to clean up).
Someone I know all they do is draw/paint until their hand hurts every day. It's all work related for them. Yes... some people do work for real long hours and are not wasting most of their time. I think it's more the people who are not doing work chasing rewards but doing the work because they genuinely love it.
Use https://www.rescuetime.com/ and you can track your time spent working and easily block distractions so you can focus.
"With apple's app store you buy the apps from apple. With google play you buy the apps from the developer. If you are the merchant of record you need to know the address to correctly compute sales tax.
