Slashdot Mirror
The Right Amount of "Challenge" In IT & Gaming
boyko.at.netqos writes "In an essay entitled 'An Epiphany I Had While Playing Pac-Man,' the author talks about how smart people need to find a certain amount of intellectual challenge from day to day. If they don't find it in their workplace, they'll end up playing complex, 'smart' games, like Civilization IV or Chess — and if they do find it in their workplace, they're more likely to sit down with a nice game of Pac-Man, Katamari Damacy, or Peggle. Quoting: 'When I look back on my life, and I compare the times in my life when I was playing simple games compared to the times in my life when I was playing complex ones, a pattern emerges. The more complexity and mental stimulation I was getting from other activities — usually my day job at the time — the less I needed mental stimulation in my free time. Conversely, in times when I was working boring jobs, I'd be playing games that required a lot of thinking and mental gymnastics.' The author then goes on to speculate that some IT workers might subconsciously be giving themselves more challenges by choosing to deal with difficult problems, rather than performing simple (but boring) preventative maintenance and proactive network management."
This doesn't hold truth as much as TFA says. The reason for changing your game genre from strategy and "smarter" games for something simpler isn't really that you have to 'think' so much elsewhere. The main reason is time. You can just quickly play around in simpler games.
I loved Civilization and Settlers series and other kinds of strategy games as a kid. But I had lots of time after school. Now that I think of it, I also got a lot coding done just for fun. I coded games for fun, and this was before I had stable internet, so almost noone even saw them. I just liked doing it and I had time. It wasn't that much for challenge or so, I just liked it. I however also did like games where you had some thinking.
However after you got used to games, you saw how AI reacted and what was the best tactic, even in games you had to use lots of strategy. For example in Civ2 I always went for science and tried to stay away from wars until I had discovered everything. It was so obvious and I knew when is the best time to start fighting, that the challenge went away. But I also liked that aspect most, even while hating it.
I do still play Civ4 and other such games, but as you grow up you have great amount of other stuff to take care of. Specially in mid-20's, when work and spending time with your gf takes lots of time. This seems to change again 30+ when things get more settled.
I also have a lawyer friend that likes to play tennis and golf (yeah, so guessable!). Not really lots of thinking needed. But he also likes to play chess and some other games where you need to think. You can have it both ways - peace your mind with something you just *do* that doesn't requre thinking. Then on other times play some game that does.
Another great aspect to this for myself is physics games. I still think Civilization series etc are my favourite games, but sometimes it's just fun to mess around. Physics games are great for this. You just build something, destroy something, experience around and see what happens. Physics games also is a genre where both of these world combine; you need to think some, but you get fast fun and experience around.
The author then goes on to speculate ...
'Speculate' is far too kind. 'Strange unwarranted conclusions' was all I found. Here's the conclusion:
Considering that I thought of all of this while playing Pac-Man ... maybe sometimes our brains work most efficiently in a "lower gear."
And other great misunderstandings like:
Earlier in this blog, I noted that technology geeks gravitate towards games like D&D because they give people simple boundaries to storytelling, and straightforward challenges to overcome.
I must say I was not only confused but I was getting that feeling that I get when I see an episode of crossing over with John Edwards. You know, where a guy hits on a few truths and draws a bunch of conclusions from it that are crazy but people don't care because they want to believe it.
I don't think the things he notices hold any universal truth to them. I, personally, spent two years playing World of Warcraft while working a fairly complex job as a developer for a Fortune 500 company. And that game has the ability to be the most complex or mundane (take your pick) game you can play. And I did both things. From highly orchestrated (via vent) raids to mindless farming (hey, we needed Elemental Earths for those damned repair bots in the raids). And you know what? I enjoyed it all. And when I was doing simpler stuff in grade school and high school, I played Tetris. Tetris II, Tetris Worlds, Tetris Attack, you name it I played it. And that's mostly what I did. Pretty much the opposite of what he claims. Maybe I'm part of a different generation than he is but I could see myself playing either a complex or simple game. Right now, it's all about the entertainment factor and I'm currently looking at more complex MMOs like Darkfall Online and Mortal Online but at the same time I'm getting drunk with my friends playing Wii Sports or Rock Band.
This overly analytical opinion piece started with a huge problem and that's a terribly small sample set. So small that it fails to account for diverse gamers that are often playing multiple games at once--like my own anecdote.
My work here is dung.
I like the way I feel when I'm thinking.
I like the way I feel when I'm being creative.
(In fact, I like the way I feel when I'm being procreative, but that's another story.)
I like the warm fuzzy feedback I get when some cold jagged radical slams into place in an equation.
But it all blows up if I'm drinking fine wine and doing mathematics. People are harmed.
Please, people, for the sake of the children -- don't drink and derive!
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I'd like to agree with TFA. The more I wreck my brain at work, the more likely I am to give it a break at home. On the flip side, The more bored I am from 9 to 5, the more likely I am to want to challenge myself. Just in the same way as I find myself more drawn to do carpentry or art work, when I've been fillout forms and doing repetitive, monotonous tasks at work just to get the feeling of "creating something." You've gotta flex all the "muscles" of your brain to get a good workout. Mashing buttons and using quick reflexes are just as important as creating long term strategy, or plotting which Civilization to play politics with. Life is all about finding that balance, and sometimes games vs reality is a great way to do it.
in the stupidest summer job i ever had, the other people spent their free time killing brain cells with chemicals.
when i was in one of the top math departments in the world, everyone was playing bridge and go.
i could go on, but you get the point... you really need a bigger sample size before you make up giant new theories of mind.
... anything intellectually stimulating at work, you end up posting on Slashdot.
I guess I could see the same similarities in my own life, although it is a stretch of a find. I suppose you could also consider some people's hacker/engineer need to always learn something new. I could go into a huge essay(maybe even a book), and figure out why I used to play games (because they were fun and I had time), and why now (that I actually use my computer knowledge on a daily basis) I would say that I would rather read a nice programming book. It's not really needed to put that much analysis into why you play games or what type of games you play, just play and stop thinking about it.
If any HR fucktards get a hold of this notion, they will start to poke into the gaming habits of their employees to try and gauge how productive they are. Were you overheard mentioning that you liked Civilization IV? You need more tasks! We can't have people going home at the end of a 10 hour work day with enough energy to do anything for themselves! That would be horrific!
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
The author then goes on to speculate that some IT workers might subconsciously be giving themselves more challenges by choosing to deal with difficult problems, rather than performing simple (but boring) preventative maintenance and proactive network management.
For whatever it's worth I second that. For simple tasks I tend to make it more complicated (in a way) by creating scripts or automated procedures. Solving the boring problem in that way gives me two benefits, the fun of the challenge and hopefully no more such problems due to the script or automated procedures created. (Un)Fortunately I have enough "artistic freedom" to do things that way, though I have a feeling others might have more strict "policies". Still all IT employees work in one direction, to be able to solve every problem by pushing one button, and eventually (and hopefully) doing that from home.
I am the lawn!
I play games because they're fun.
In general, I have found most games to be dull. I stopped watching TV in the 8th grade for the same reason. The most interesting of all? Write your own books.
Man, I wonder if the little dude sprained his elbow while he patted himself on the back.
Some days I play Solitaire, other days I play Risk. Neither defines /me/. At work I solve Hamiltonians, and struggle to add budgets up. Neither defines me.
not really connected just to mind, but if the day at work makes you flushed on the evening, you are unlikely to go hill climb on evenings. Brain is like muscle. Need to be trained, and rested.
God's gift to chicks
I actually find the opposite.
when I'm kind of in a lull - such as on vacation or between huge assignments - I play the "dumb" games like Zaxxon or Super Mario Bros. or Wesnoth. Right now, I'm engaged in very serious work (at work) and enjoy playing teh old infocom text-based adventure games. Right now I'm starting on Zork (which I never played) having just finished The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (I have a z-machine emulator on my Blackberry.)
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
smoking copious amounts of weed.
I'll see your hokum and raise you a boondoggle.
One of the most ridiculous jumps of illogic I've seen recently on slashdot. Not an easy bar to make...
I'm in semi-permanent crunch mode at work (thanks recession!) and I am expected to put in 60 hour weeks with no end in sight. In my down time (what's that?) I find I tend to play games that I like and that are familiar to me.
In fact I like tower defense games (Plants versus Zombies), platformers (Sonic the Hedgehog 2) and traditional Real Time Strategy (Red Alert III). I like these games because I either played them a lot before crunch time started, um, crunching me, or because they are very similary to games I played a lot in the past (Red Alert III isn't really that different from Red Alert II). So mainly, I don't want to learn a bunch of new stuff, just play the same old thing that I was used to playing before. I also don't want to play games that are work.
Of course, I have to do a lot of other things in my "free time" too, so I don't get to play video games as much as I would like. If my vacation isn't stolen away from me this year, I'll probably split it between quality time with my girlfriend, friends, family and playing video games until my eyes fall out.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
"IT workers might subconsciously be giving themselves more challenges by choosing to deal with difficult problems, rather than performing simple (but boring) preventative maintenance and proactive network management."
I consciously do this. Who wants to work on something boring anyway?
I have to agree with this one, i have noticed this very same situation where I am concerned. However, lately rain or shine, good or bad, time or no time, even hard work or no, I play WoW....I guess because WoW has both the easy and the difficult, that I would plan to run my raids on a weekend, and leave the AH buying and selling for a quick night after work, so I guess it still stands, lucky for me blizzard created the perfect game in either situation!!!
...the author talks about how smart people need to find a certain amount of intellectual challenge from day to day. If they don't find it in their workplace, they'll end up playing complex, 'smart' games, like Civilization IV or Chess
Well, I always try to find challenging games during work hours, so I don't think I classify in either category.
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
I have found there is an inverse relationship between someone's opinion of their intellect and the real thing.
That Explains why I played the most complex games when I was in High School.
I will totally spooky ball your ass into next week.
This doesn't hold truth as much as TFA says.
/. regular. Oh, wait... *lowers head in shame and runs away like a regular karma whore*
You're right, TFA is absolutely wrong, when I had a very easy job I would post on forums to discuss serious technical issues related to programming. Now I have a very challenging job and I am a
Likewise, I would expect lumberjacks to .. hang around in bars.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
... since your epiphany is basically about a concept called alienation (not to be confused with Alien Nation) and has been known as a philosophical concept since early in the industrial revolution. Not that it's a bad epiphany, it's just about 150 years late and already discussed to death.
Then again, applying well-known philosophical concepts to new areas is nice in and of itself.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
That would suggest that my job in figuring out how the human brain works is not challenging enough, leading me to seek a tougher challenge in pen-and-paper rpgs and turn-based strategy games. Also, it finally explains to me why all those stock boys and garbage pickup guys tend more towards games like go, chess, and civilization IV.
Let's put the genes back in Genesis.
Look at me! I'm so smart! I'm also a vapid hipster who plays Pac-Man for intellectual stimulation! I also think that games that are difficult to learn are only for smart people (like me!) The author goes on to speculate that there might be more people like him out there, but he's not sure, can any smart people in the audience post some confirmation in the comments?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Work has been boring lately. Lots of stuff to do but no challenge. So what game am I plyaing? Hearts of Iron 3, I must really need a mental challenge!
I play a game where the rules are fluid, the winning states hard to determine, the number of players enormous, where most players cheat, including the self-apppointed referees.
I call it "Arguing with idiots on the Internet."
Are those people who enjoy complex, mind-taxing hobbies such as strategy games, subconsciously motivated to not think too hard at their jobs, in order to conserve mental energy?
IT workers might subconsciously be giving themselves more challenges by choosing to deal with difficult problems
Unfortunately the reality is that many IT workers choose to implement complex solutions to simple problems, rather than taking on more responsibility or approaching genuinely harder problems.
If the job is boring, routine and repetitive script it. Or hand it off to the PFY. Duh. How smart do you have to be to figure that out? Then find something more interesting to work on.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
so no wonder I have the desire to play World of Warcraft again...
What I play depends on my mood, not always because of work. Generally, during the summers I play a lot of FPS games, and newer-ish games. Generally during the winters I play RPGs and other more in-depth games. Generally in the fall and spring I pick up older titles or retrogame. I suppose the reason behind this is because in the summers there are a lot more new games, I vacation a lot in the summers and the fact that during summer I tend to have more free time and sitting down and playing an RPG for very long seems too much like a "waste" when I should be doing more productive things. And in the winter I can't physically escape as easily as I can during the summer times, so I need more escapist games like RPGs.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I did my thesis in exactly this area. My research assumed that task complexity had something to do with enjoyment, but I was wrong. Experimental evidence showed that people had more when the difficulty of the task made the outcome uncertain relative to their skill level. This jives with researcher Kevin Burns theories of enjoyment being derived from unexpected good news (the unexpected occurrence of positive information gain) - i.e. the punchline of a joke or winning against the perceived odds.
"some IT workers might subconsciously be giving themselves more challenges by choosing to deal with difficult problems, rather than performing simple (but boring) preventative maintenance and proactive network management."
Yup, definitely stealing this excuse next time I'm feeling too lazy to actually do my job.
I disagree with this assessment. I have no idea how wide spread it is, but I know in my case it is the opposite. When I had horrible brain draining jobs I tended to play more FPSs. I now have a very challenging programming job and I am playing Civ4 on the train every day.
"This doesn't hold truth as much as TFA says." -
Well - I tend to AGREE w/ this article's findings actually:
E.G.-> When I am on a job working, one that's relatively TOUGHER (usually, this means a coding/programming/software engineering, or even architecting type project(s), & with stuff I have NOT done before, vs. say, a networking job (tech/admin stuff)).
What I REALLY mean, by tougher, is not even by WHOLE, "LARGISH" PROJECTS (this applies too), but, even in various routines' requirements (not stuff I am used to like DB access for example, or API work)? Well... That's when I tend to want to come home & relax, & NOT THINK HARD, ANYMORE, that day
I.E.-> Over riddles & such, in games... lol, & this?
This means games, like IDSoftware's stuff (Wolf3d or Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Doom I/II/III, Quake I/II/III/IV etc. et al))
Sure - I like my video games: AND, imo, the simplest ones, are imo @ least, the "First Person Shooter" genre!
They MOSTLY are that: Kill, or be killed, & survive - not a lot of "mental puzzling", just pure reaction time & desire to win...
You stay alive, as long as you can, @ least & that's about it.
(And, I usually do SINGLE PLAYER too, as game AI is easier, even on "Nightmare" levels (people? REAL people in multiplayer are MUCH TOUGHER, imo @ least)).
Now, when I am out of work/out of a job (or, even between contracts)? THAT'S WHEN I LOVE TO PLAY CHESS!
APK
P.S.=> YES - I think this article's author MAY truly be "onto something"... but, per my subject-line? It probably TRULY really depends on the individual! I really sat for a second & thought about this article's premise... &, I do feel it applies (@ least to myself)... apk
maybe with games this is true, but I have found that when I am exerting myself mentally the books I read become much 'heavier'. It's just not possible to jump down that many levels fast enough, the beast needs feeding in off-time as well.
> a pattern emerges. The more complexity and mental stimulation I was getting from other
> activities -- usually my day job at the time -- the less I needed mental stimulation in
> my free time. Conversely, in times when I was working boring jobs, I'd be playing games
> that required a lot of thinking and mental gymnastics.
I hear theres a similar reverse correlation between sex and downloading porn. Anyone around here shed more light on that?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.