this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
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The analogy makes a lot of sense to me. Once you have an "easy button", it's hard to not use it. It's sort of like when you're at work and see the "quick workaround" effectively become the standard process.

I remember burning out on games because the cheats made them really fun in the short term, but afterward playing normally felt like agony.

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[–] python@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I've recently been obsessed with a streamer called AboutOliver. He played Minecraft for the first time about a year and a half ago, played his entire first season with no wiki or external knowledge, got a little tour of the community server (which he 99% forgot at the time Season 2 rolled around) and is now on Episode 75-ish of season 2. Still no wiki, no guides. He has figured out some crazy things about the game (which I won't spoil), but is also completely clueless about some super basic features.

It's been incredibly inspiring to just watch him figure things out, because he is exceptionally inquisitive and methodical by default (I think he's a phd candidate in Astrophysics irl?). Made me realize the point of a game shouldn't be to produce the optimal output, but that struggling and finding things out is exactly the point. Incidentally, that mindset also noticeably boosted my performance at work because I'm now one of the few people who will happily continue to tackle a programming problem over and over again, even if there are no helpful guides on it.

Long story short, here's a link to watch the supercut of Olivers Season 1 Playthrough: https://youtu.be/ljemxyWvg8E
The total season 1 supercut is about 6 hours iirc

OR, if you are insane, here's the link to the full-episode playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL68V5Cxs_CvTpTY9o7KJ75nLPqlCRxze0
It's 50 Episodes á 3-5h, great as background noise when doing something else.

[–] saimen@feddit.org 4 points 1 day ago

Ha! I watched him play Outer Wilds and it was perfect. It is the ideal game for someone like him because this game is all about exploring. But please play the game before you watch him play and don't research anything beforehand or during playing.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago

Well...
But considering in modern Minecraft you already have a crafting book that says how to craft any item it's not as needed anymore as before.
In the early times I believe it was to either know the recipe or to look iz up on the web.

[–] RymrgandsDaughter@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Me and Dk 64 but that game had so many little secrets that I got annoyed with trying to find them all. 😒

[–] Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 2 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

I hereby retroactively grant you a permission for committing the following action:

  • Searching for secrets in a video game with an exceptionally large heaplet of secrets and then, after having shown general skill and interest in committing to said action, seeking appropriate help for completing your task, including in the form of perusing a walkthrough.

I commend you for your engangement in achieving the best possible result in the process of donkeying the kong.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 27 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If you want to speedrun Idiocracy, an overreliance on AI seems a good way to get there.

Brawndo has what plants crave.

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[–] Zink@programming.dev 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

At first I was going to disagree and say "hey at least they are still looking up information, unlike most people" but then I did a 540° on that idea when I realized that I myself was a great example of how the OP is right.

I have been building things in my back yard like crazy this summer. I am currently working on a purpose-built little lego/craft tray for my wife to use in the house. I have gotten to plan out every detail in my head and sketching on paper, including convenient geometry knowledge like multiplying by the square root of 2 to find lengths for 45° supports or the good old 3-4-5 triangle for getting a right angle in a pinch. I have been able to discuss the table's use with my wife to figure out the perfect features. It will be a little wooden table that's ~2'/60cm wide like a TV tray but it will be held up by cantilever legs that are long enough and tall enough to hover the table over her lap with the footrest up. And it will have other features like little segmented bins for pieces/parts, and an instruction holder.

It's a great activity for numerous reasons. It gets me outside, it gets me physical, it gets me interacting with my wife and excited to give her the finished product, it gives me opportunities to practice new skills/tools, and it engages the senses as well as the mind while I spend hours in a calm almost meditative state and not seeing anything that's happening on my phone (though it will read texts to me through my earbuds).

It's a pretty funny look. I'm wearing a big round brimmed sun/fishing hat that looks almost like Gandalf's but without the pointy top. From the outside the sound of the scene is 95% the sound of falling water and birds chirping, interrupted by the 5% of the time spent actively cutting or planing some wood. But if my earbuds are in my ears, they are blasting my playlist of various high-tempo Thrash and Industrial Metal songs! (at 45-50% volume. I'm responsible here, lol)

So if I take all that and compare it to some schmuck who pulls up ChatGPT and types something like "design me a sturdy two foot wide table, create a list of the pieces I need and the cuts to make them, and generate detailed assembly instructions with pictures." Yeah you might still get a functional table but your life has missed out on the vast majority of the potential benefit of the activity!

This is the way I started looking at these tasks once I really internalized the whole "life is about the journey, not the destination" thing.

[–] BangCrash@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I need chat gpt to summarise this post

[–] fishy@lemmy.today 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I read the whole thing, it's basically "sometimes the journey is the reward."

A bit long winded but correct.

[–] Zink@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago

This summary is approved by the completely normal human author.

[–] mugthol@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'd love to see a picture of the tray once you're done with it!

[–] Zink@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago

sure thing!

busy weekend for us but there's no way I don't finish it tomorrow. (right?)

The stuff I'm making right now is all just pine, with flat surfaces and 90 degree corners like you might get from ikea. But with visible wood grain and built so that you can dance on it or use it to hold the biggest aquarium you can find.

[–] DrElementary@lemmy.zip 21 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Except game walkthroughs provide correct information, whereas LLMs can just make things up. So it's more like looking at a walkthrough where each step is from an entirely different game.

[–] catgames@retrolemmy.com 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Y'all - For nearly a quarter of a century Nintendo published Nintendo Power, a magazine that was a combination of self-hype and how to beat their own games. In the 90s, it was indispensable for any game worth its salt.

Nintendo used to run a 1-900 number for tips on games. You'd call a real human who would walk you through where you were.

Looking it up online is only "cheating" in the sense that it's immediate and free. This stuff used to cost money.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, LLMs are like if you called the Nintendo hint line, and the person on the other end just made shit up.

[–] Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

The person on the other end might be making somewhat educated guesses, based on what they have heard people around talk.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago

Plus with games never explaining how some of their mechanics work and not giving you any realistic way to experimentally determine it, why wouldn't I look it up online?

A big one that comes to mind is stuff like attacks, armor, and HP. Games handle them differently and very rarely tell you exactly how they work.

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[–] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

except walkthroughs are much more accurate...

[–] RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 59 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I have to force myself to not fall into the trap of trying to play a "perfect" game and instead to just let happen, what happens. Blundering through content and accepting temporary setbacks is more fun than following guides or save scumming.

But it also depends on game design:
With bg3 I missed a one of a kind item in act 1, a staple dnd item (ring of protection) that I was locked out off because I did quests in the "wrong" order. that gave me some anxiety, after which I started checking the wiki page before starting a new zone, which eventually sucked the fun out of the game, after which I abandoned my first playthrough.

And then I found a mod that randomizes all loot, so I can just let happen again what happens, without that anxiety of losing access to unique loot because of game design.

[–] Djehngo@lemmy.world 20 points 2 days ago

I also fall into this trap semi regularly, a happy medium I have found is a missable items guide that doesn't tell you how to play or where to go but it does tell you "make sure you get item X before going to place Y as that's your last chance"

It means I can be happy to play sub optimally knowing that if I really want I can go back and collect anything I missed later.

This has been quite good for Clair obscur

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