[HN Gopher] The game designer playing through his own psyche
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The game designer playing through his own psyche
Author : FinnLobsien
Score : 122 points
Date : 2025-03-24 10:39 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| pvg wrote:
| https://archive.is/NuEsS
| amiga386 wrote:
| That chap is a marketing genius. Articles ostensibly about him
| are effectively a promotional tour for his new game (available in
| all good stores prices $xx.xx)
|
| If you're thinking of buying the game, though, read its reviews:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1299460/Wanderstop/
|
| And remember... it _is_ a cosy game. That 's what you'll be
| playing. If you like cosy games, then it's a good cosy game with
| an interesting Wredenesque storyline running through it. If you
| don't like cosy games, you won't like this game. It's not a
| deconstruction of cosy games. It _is_ a cosy game.
| qoez wrote:
| The new yorker wasn't tricked into marketing his game, they
| make marketing articles like this all the time. I feel like 9
| times out of 10 when I see an article on HN it's some barely
| disguised ad for a book masked as a human interest story. (PG
| has a blog post about this.)
| Centigonal wrote:
| https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
| damnitpeter wrote:
| It's fascinating to see how far the pendulum has swung
| since those days. Maybe there is no place for honest
| writing anymore, as he described it, in the blogs of that
| era, which suffered the same issues of PR and monetization.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| > At the other extreme are publications like the New York
| Times and the Wall Street Journal. Their reporters do go
| out and find their own stories, at least some of the time.
| They'll listen to PR firms, but briefly and skeptically. We
| managed to get press hits in almost every publication we
| wanted, but we never managed to crack the print edition of
| the Times.
|
| I wonder if this holds true.
| astrange wrote:
| It is true, but sometimes in an evil way; the NYT
| literally has a policy that all stories about tech
| companies must be negative, and the politics section
| presents everything as the fault of whoever the editors
| are personally mad at that day. But the details are
| correct.
| malectro wrote:
| Most of the book criticism they do summarizes to the point
| where I don't feel the need to buy anything so I'm not sure
| it's personally working as an ad for me.
| fragmede wrote:
| Some people want the gory details. Every non-fiction book
| can be summarized as (wo)man v something, but in doing so,
| you lose the plot. So while you may be satisfied with the
| summary (and you're not alone!), knowing that it's out
| there is more important for people to buy than the
| summarization.
| Animats wrote:
| It's so New Yorker. They're partial to angst-heavy stories.
|
| If "retired fighter with a tea shop" interests you, try the
| "Legends and Lattes" stories.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Betting it's not him but his publisher. There is a massive
| industry dedicated to this sort of guerrilla marketing these
| days. If a company of a certain size is putting out a press
| release they will coordinate to have seemingly-unrelated
| articles show up in various news sources (think New Yorker but
| also, like, ArsTechnica, or even the HN frontpage.) Even though
| the articles aren't technically ads, they get the name out
| there so it's on people's minds, making them more susceptible
| to hearing about/engaging with the news.
|
| I've seen this happen internally at my last employer, but have
| the impression that it's standard operating procedure in
| corporate marketing these days. It is quite gross and I'd like
| to see it banned wholesale (or at least the relationship should
| be mandatorily disclosed). But... we would need to believe as a
| country in regulating ourselves to do that.
| edavison1 wrote:
| The idea that arts criticism is somehow 'guerilla marketing'
| is such a deeply cynical, HN brain take. Of course the people
| who make things want to get the word out about what they're
| doing. But The New Yorker doesn't collude with PR agencies to
| promote things. It's news when people make new things; that's
| literally the whole idea in coverage of the arts. Is it
| really your position that when a movie, game or book is
| reviewed in The New Yorker it's because some PR person told
| them to? Chris Bryd is a well-respected games journalist, not
| some industry shill. He's probably wanted to write about this
| topic for years, and the forthcoming game is part of what
| makes the profile newsworthy right now.
|
| Anyway if you believe arts criticism is 'quite gross' and
| want it banned, what does that world look like? Should people
| who make things not be allowed to tell publications about it?
| Will there be a cone of silence around new games?
| bongodongobob wrote:
| That's just how the news works dude. You can just call them
| and say "hey I have something for you to write about". If
| it's interesting and/or you already have a relationship,
| which their publisher likely does, it's pretty easy to get an
| article written.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I recognize that I have been pretty fortunate in life, but I've
| never been "overnight success, will never actually need to work
| again" fortunate. I struggle to sympathize with "I got everything
| I ever wanted, and now I'm depressed". That framing for the
| article does not exactly have me chomping at the bit to play his
| newest game.
| mckirk wrote:
| I think depending on what you've built your identity around,
| suddenly being free of having to strive for anything can be
| pretty daunting. "Having everything we need, indefinitely" is
| certainly not something we were prepared for by evolution, and
| the questions that arise when you are at that point and still
| need to structure your life around something don't really have
| easy answers, I believe.
|
| So it might actually be a pretty good sign that you struggle to
| sympathize with this, because the alternative might be that you
| understand it all too well.
| pferde wrote:
| I can't imagine how anyone could even achieve such state.
| There will always be that skill I do not yet have, that book
| I haven't read yet, that hobby I haven't tried yet, that
| place I haven't yet traveled to, etc. etc.
|
| Maybe if I get to have an active life of 300 years, I could
| maybe imagine starting to get closer to "having everything I
| need".
| kdfjgbdfkjgb wrote:
| wants vs needs
| Swizec wrote:
| > I can't imagine how anyone could even achieve such state.
| There will always be that skill I do not yet have, that
| book I haven't read yet, that hobby I haven't tried yet,
| that place I haven't yet traveled to, etc. etc.
|
| I can imagine it. After sidehustling and grinding hard for
| ~10 years, I realized one day that my savings make more in
| annual interest than my sidehustle brings in revenue. Not
| profit, revenue.
|
| After a bit of math I realized that if I just do nothing
| unusual - go to work, keep my savings rate - I'll have the
| option to retire in 3 to 4 years.
|
| The big thing I was pouring my heart, soul, and mind into
| for so long suddenly feels small and meaningless. Like what
| is even the point? The sidehustle became more of a hobby.
| It's enjoyable but the drive isn't quite there. The things
| that used to feel like a big deal make me yawn.
|
| So I try to work on bigger more impactful things. But these
| take longer and so there's less of that regular dopamine
| hit of overcoming challenges. And even if ultimately they
| don't succeed, oh well not too big a deal. So they just
| feel less of a pressing issue.
|
| The ultimate feeling is one of aimless ambition. I want to
| do and achieve, but wherefore all the effort when chilling
| brings almost the same result?
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| > The ultimate feeling is one of aimless ambition. I want
| to do and achieve, but wherefore all the effort when
| chilling brings almost the same result?
|
| Surely you have more you want to do and achieve than just
| that one side hustle? Have you never wanted to write a
| novel? Learn a musical instrument? A language? How to
| speedrun your favorite video game? Contribute to open
| source? Plant a vegetable garden?
|
| There is so, so much to do, and instead I spend all my
| time working to keep a roof over my head.
| Swizec wrote:
| Yes there is lots to do! And I'm working on it all.
|
| But it doesn't hit the same as when success felt like
| life or death. My actual needs are met. The rest is
| gravy.
|
| It helps that my dayjob feels like the most effective
| vehicle for big ambitions. This was a specific thing I
| optimized for when looking. It doesn't feel like a
| necessity or distraction, it's the thing I want to be
| doing.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| I mean, I'll gladly take most of your savings, to the
| point you're back to struggling and feeling like every
| small win is life or death.. :-)
| wnolens wrote:
| Purely selfish pursuits lose their allure when you have
| the ability to just do them (once the initial rush of
| being able to do them runs out). At least they did for
| me.
| mckirk wrote:
| Of course, there is always something to do. But once you
| have reached the point where 'participation in anything is
| voluntary' and you don't have the necessity of work to show
| you the value of leisure time, I guess you need to come up
| with new reasons that make existence worthwhile purely for
| the sake of existing itself. (Which is not to say that you
| weren't facing the same existential questions before, but
| 'the grind' is a very good way to keep yourself occupied
| and not ponder these things too closely, I suppose.)
|
| And there definitely are good reasons that make existence
| worthwhile for its own sake, like using your freedom for
| discovery and mastery as you said, but unfortunately
| depression has the nasty side-effect of robbing you of the
| joy you could find in those causes, and the energy to
| pursue them.
| rachofsunshine wrote:
| Depression is not about the world. It's about your own internal
| state - the way your own brain is wired up. To a first
| approximation, "I am depressed" is a statement about a
| particular neuron not getting stimulated, which is only related
| to how your life is going in indirect ways that - like all
| proxies - leak a lot.
|
| If tomorrow the greatest dream of AI was achieved, and we had a
| perfect benevolent AI that would shepherd humanity to comfort
| and safety forever, that would be just about the best outcome
| imaginable in material terms. But I think I'd be unhappy with
| it, because I derive a lot of my personal sense of worth from
| what I do - from what I build and for what I contribute to
| other people. I don't know what I would do in a world where
| that was no longer needed. I'm great at being helpful! I suck
| at being _fun_.
|
| Is that healthy? Probably not. (It's actually something I'm
| working through at the moment, that I increasingly understand
| as a consequence of both personal and societal-level abuse.)
| But we're not all healthy creatures. We live our lives as the
| people we are in each moment, including the ways in which we're
| dumb and flawed and insecure.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| > that would shepherd humanity to comfort and safety forever
|
| If Calhoun's mouse utopia experiments are anything to go by,
| such a seemingly idyllic situation would spell out humanity's
| death in very real terms.
| soperj wrote:
| Calhoun's utopia was about overpopulation, not about
| idyllic situations.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > I derive a lot of my personal sense of worth from what I do
| - from what I build and for what I contribute to other
| people. I don't know what I would do in a world where that
| was no longer needed. Is that healthy? Probably not. (It's
| actually something I'm working through at the moment, that I
| increasingly understand as a consequence of both personal and
| societal-level abuse.)
|
| Since you are wondering about the healthiness of that
| emotion, try to read C.S. Lewis "The Four Loves": the Need
| love/Gift love opposition may have answers for you.
| boredhedgehog wrote:
| > If tomorrow the greatest dream of AI was achieved, and we
| had a perfect benevolent AI that would shepherd humanity to
| comfort and safety forever, that would be just about the best
| outcome imaginable in material terms. But I think I'd be
| unhappy with it, because I derive a lot of my personal sense
| of worth from what I do - from what I build and for what I
| contribute to other people.
|
| But surely the Shepherd would be aware of your soul's needs
| as well, and could pretend that your help is required
| somewhere in the system.
| rachofsunshine wrote:
| Perhaps so! I thought about writing a story of an AI like
| that - something that cures diseases and prevents war and
| gives you all the tools to be smarter and healthier and
| more virtuous, but otherwise says "nope, humanity, you
| gotta figure this out yourself if you want the reward".
| It'd be an interesting sci-fi setting.
| banannaise wrote:
| Framing this in terms of _The Beginner 's Guide_, I think it's
| more like:
|
| "I just completed a project into which I poured not just all of
| my time and energy, but also all of my self-worth. It was a
| massive success. Now I have nowhere to place my self-worth.
| Doing this again would be both (1) unlikely to succeed, and (2)
| extremely toxic, just as doing it the first time kind of was.
| So how do I get out of this mindset without completely
| destroying myself?"
|
| Amusingly, his response to that question was to make a game
| about it.
|
| Few people get rewards on that scale (and thus the chance to
| exit, or at least the time to think about it), but many develop
| similar relationships to their work (or art). An exploration of
| the problems in that dynamic (as in _The Beginner 's Guide_) is
| therefore relevant to a lot of people.
| npinsker wrote:
| To add to that -- one part that stuck out to me was when he
| said he "...[feels] like a guy who had gotten rich making
| jokes about video games, trying to deceive real writers into
| thinking that I'm a real writer." The article implies present
| tense, as if perhaps Wreden still feels this way.
|
| If your dream is to make a great game, and you achieve that,
| sort of -- it's great _to everyone except you_ -- I think it
| makes sense to feel more alienated and unsure of yourself
| than ever, or if your game had not been received as well.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| "Now I have nowhere to place my self-worth."
|
| Huh...I'm a bit nihilistic and have never felt a need to put
| self-worth into something. I just want to relax and play
| games.
| miunau wrote:
| It happens a lot in creative fields. I personally get
| depressive after putting an album out, and I know I'm not alone
| in that based on discussions with other musicians. Something
| about being in the mode of making something for so long, and
| then it's just... done. When you're deeply involved in
| something, it changes your personality.
| gs17 wrote:
| I think it's really more of the "like a guy who had gotten rich
| making jokes about video games, trying to deceive real writers
| into thinking that I'm a real writer." feeling he mentions in
| the article than just being successful. I can't say what
| actually was going on in his head, but I can imagine making
| what you see as a joke and then having it get huge, you receive
| massive praise for it, and people demand more and more of it
| and consider you to be "the guy who made that funny joke back
| in 2011 and should tell it again but better" would relate to
| his issues. The newest rerelease of it really felt like he
| wanted to move on for good.
| amiga386 wrote:
| If you take a look at someone like Markus "Notch" Persson, he
| was on a roll of being incredibly famous and at the head of one
| of the best-liked games in the world.
|
| It was too much pressure at the top, though, and he sold the
| project to Microsoft and became a billionaire; but what that
| actually meant is that Microsoft took it over _entirely_ , and
| he was nothing. He didn't even get the position of "esteemed
| creative inventor who now only occasionally provides creative
| direction instead of being responsible for every last thing",
| that some people get when they sell their projects to faceless
| behemoths.
|
| He had a further fall from grace in that the public didn't like
| his stated values on social media, and Microsoft took the
| opportunity to _completely_ erase him from Minecraft - removed
| all mention of his name, and he 's not invited to anything.
|
| So now he sits alone in his mansion and cries himself to sleep,
| because while "never work again" money is nice to have, he'd
| rather have the kudos and recognition of being the creator of a
| much-loved game. And that's the one thing he can't have any
| more.
| yvdriess wrote:
| It is interesting to contrast Notch's arc with Zach Barth's,
| if you are familiar with the Infiniminer[1] connection. The
| latter has continued to make small idiosyncratic games with a
| small team and following his own interests.
|
| [1] https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Infiniminer
| tijtij wrote:
| The latter has also been less of a vitriolic edgelord on
| Twitter since he started working on Infiniminer.
| gs17 wrote:
| There's another part of his story, where he did try make new
| games post-Minecraft and never got very far, and eventually
| gave up on making anything on a larger scale again. Scrolls
| had a lot of issues in development. 0x10c had some
| interesting ideas, but there was no way it would ever be "the
| next Minecraft".
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > So now he sits alone in his mansion and cries himself to
| sleep, because while "never work again" money is nice to
| have, he'd rather have the kudos and recognition of being the
| creator of a much-loved game. And that's the one thing he
| can't have any more.
|
| I mean, do we actually know that? I haven't heard anything
| about Notch in years and years, but I just assumed it was
| because he was hanging out with his friends and family and
| enjoying his wealth. It's certainly what I'd do in his shoes,
| but maybe he's said he doesn't enjoy how things out and I was
| unaware.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > He had a further fall from grace in that the public didn't
| like his stated values on social media,
|
| That's a pretty disingenuous take. Here are some examples of
| his social media:
|
| "If you're against the concept of #HeterosexualPrideDay,
| you're a complete fucking cunt and deserve to be shot" [0]
|
| He believed in PizzaGate[1][2].
|
| He's tweeted in support of QAnon [3].
|
| There's an easy way to avoid a fall from grace: Don't turn
| into a right-wing nutjob. Just stay out of politics and
| social commentary in general.
|
| [0] https://fortune.com/2017/07/02/minecraft-markus-persson-
| homo...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory
|
| [2] https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/minecraft-creator-
| pizzagate...
|
| [3] https://www.newsweek.com/minecraft-notch-controversy-
| twitter...
| antiraza wrote:
| An adage that I find more true than false through my own
| experience: It's harder to manage success than to manage
| failure.
| JohnCClarke wrote:
| It does sound counter-intuitive.
|
| However "Post Adventure/Mission Depression" is very common.
|
| See e.g.
| https://worldextrememedicine.com/app/uploads/2022/07/Lukas-H...
|
| As a person in tech, I have met many millionaires and a few
| billionaires, and it is really true that huge wealth does not
| in, and of itself, bring happiness. They're basically still
| stuck with their old problems, but now also surrounded by
| sycophants and leaches.
| allenu wrote:
| The lack of sympathy is understandable, though I do think
| becoming depressed after a huge success is probably very
| common. You've spent so much of your waking life for years
| working towards a goal and then you attain it, and maybe that
| success no longer needs your hard work, so there's a massive
| vacuum in your life. Obviously there's more to life than
| business success and it'll take time to find your purpose
| again, but that come down, I think, is natural.
|
| It reminds me of the article about one of the co-founders of
| RxBar and how he was finding it hard to search for meaning
| after they sold their company for hundreds of millions. It was
| posted here years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21138106
| mouse_ wrote:
| He should go back to making half life 2 mods.
| gs17 wrote:
| I think if he could go back and figure out what made the
| original Stanley so great, he would.
| maplant wrote:
| Hey clearly _can_, the Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe was
| released in 2022 and is in effect a sequel that was just as
| good if not better than the original
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| If you haven't experienced The Beginner's Guide - I highly
| recommend. It's one of my favorite experiences. I look forward to
| playing through his new game, even if it's a bit different! I'm
| fully aligned with the goal of trying to convey your sense of
| self through artistic creations and think he's in a league of his
| own in his attempts to do so.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Would you still recommend it to someone who didn't like Stanley
| Parable? I must admit I found his prior game to be extremely
| boring and pretentious, but I'm willing to have an open mind
| about the new one if it's different.
| dartos wrote:
| I'd say the beginner's guide is more pretentious, but it's
| not as funny.
|
| I still really liked it, though.
| adamrezich wrote:
| The Stanley Parable, The Stanley Parable Demo, and The Beginner's
| Guide were all "merely" Source mod "walking simulators", but each
| of these games had a degree of precision in how they executed
| their vision that made them feel like very high-quality products,
| each in their own way. Yes, the nature of these games is such
| that there's very few "moving parts" that require coordination to
| provide a cohesive experience--it's mostly just the standard
| Source first-person character controller and interactable objects
| you can press +use on, with a narrator narrating the story--but
| each of these games felt solid to play, with the intentionally
| minimal "gameplay" getting out of the way of the intended
| narrative experiences these games sought to provide. I wanted to
| like Wanderstop on its own terms, but once I got out of the
| portion of the game that's accessible in the demo, I found myself
| honestly really underwhelmed by the game's presentation. The
| intended narrative gravitas of the first dialogue with the first
| NPC that comes to visit was ruined because one of those little
| penguin dudes happened to be walking by near her feet, so she
| kept glancing down at it during the dialogue sequence in a
| hilariously immersion-breaking way. The guidebook you're given is
| a series of flat textures, with no animation for turning pages or
| anything like that whatsoever. The opening "cutscene" is
| presented as a series of still images like a motion comic, and a
| couple of the "animations" within them looked amateurishly
| terrible.
|
| I'll try it out again sometime soon because I (want to believe I)
| still like Wreden's writing, but my initial experience with the
| game wasn't the best it could be by a longshot.
| exodust wrote:
| Never understood the appeal of stanley parable or beginners
| guide. After the initial fun wears off, the constant abuse and
| sarcasm from the narrator is abrasive and noisy. Not as clever as
| they're hoping. The Beginners Guide even worse. Empty test levels
| strung together with tedious narration.
|
| The developer's depressed? That's the least interesting thing to
| learn about anyone. Depressed people promoting their depression
| sounds disingenuous.
|
| Not to be all negative, for walking simulators with no
| interaction but nice dreamy atmosphere, try _Liminalcore_.
| Relaxing and calming, great on an ultrawide OLED. Lots of vast
| shadow areas. Huge scale architecture. Bump the FOV setting up a
| little from default. No cheap gimmicks, just a restrained dream
| world with subtle hint of something lurking in the shadows. In
| terms of artistic walking games, this is one of the good ones.
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/3107900/Liminalcore/
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Shout out to The Stanley Parable Deluxe Edition. Even if you
| played the original, you should play this. Without giving
| spoilers, it's basically an entire sequel, not just a Remaster.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Frankly, the demo isn't really a demo, it's a prequel. You
| might enjoy the demo if it's been awhile since you've played
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Yes! The Demo, the original game, and the Deluxe Edition
| could almost be considered a trilogy of games.
| blobbers wrote:
| Why doesn't hackernews just link directly to the archive?
|
| I'm guessing 99% of readers don't have the paywalled version.
|
| It's super annoying.
| scoofy wrote:
| I think many people, myself included, would argue that that's
| immoral. The fact that you don't want to pay for access to _The
| New Yorker_ is fine, but it doesn 't mean that we should
| facilitate your desire to not pay, and that we've effectively
| normalized ignoring even reasonable copyright rules is a real
| problem for the industry (we can argue about the merits all we
| like, but pretending we shouldn't have to pay for an article
| with little public interest, published _this week_ , is pretty
| absurd).
|
| We can look at aggregators like HN as a way to curate who you
| should be giving your money to, or we can use them to
| facilitate infringement, making publishers rely on sketchier
| and sketchier methods to stay afloat.
| sysrestartusr wrote:
| start paying for your news. you won't regret it. three decades
| of free news leave you hanging bored and annoyed and
| misunderstanding humanity.
|
| if you want to stay tethered to this reality, commit to the
| pot. it's recursive and cumulative. otherwise you are left to
| research from free sources which leave you in 'directed'
| narratives, divergent and polarizing, devouring your fallacies
| while feeding off your bias.
|
| free beer is never a better of the available choices.
| tartoran wrote:
| I agree we should pay but, I'm on the other side not paying
| because it's very hard to commit to so many subscription
| things. Back in the day I'd buy a bunch of magazines and
| would have subscription for tops 3 when I was really into the
| publication. Nowadays almost everything seems to want to be a
| subscription service and comes with some shady practices that
| really scared me away and assume I'm not a rare case either.
| SamBam wrote:
| Can either game be played on a modern Mac? Steam says it's only
| for 32-bit Macs.
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