Hacker News Reader

Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

Blocks have always been a popular toy with children. What I can't understand is why kids spend hours watching minecraft videos on youtube.

View on HN

What I can't understand is why adults spend hours watching other people play sports on TV.

Some even pay for premium channels to watch it.

Some dress up in costumes to mimic the characters as well. And then listen to radio broadcasts debating it. They create songs to sing together. They believe they’re a part of the team and will refer to it as the collective “we” and they’ll sometimes cry when they lose.

In the abstract, they are totally fine but in practice sports has hundreds (thousands?) of years of tradition and culture imprinting into the fabric of society making it "normal".

In the UK football is so deeply engrained they talk of doing public holidays for when the England team finally wins a major international cup IIRC. The Olympics had/has some special subtext in international relations. So following sports has been deeply normalised in ways that probably polarises other similar practices (but for other interests) into seeming very fringe

As someone who was gaming since the 90s I didn't understand streaming or long plays in the beginning but now I really appreciate long plays as they allow me to scratch an itch without getting too engrossed in a game. I find it a lot easier to pick up and put down a long play of a RPG than invest 30+ hours of time and thought into playing it.

For mechanistically intensive games it can be enjoying to watch masters play at a high level. Watching people win 1vs3 in Elden Ring or people do high level play in Monster Hunter or Devil May Cry is satisfying for someone who knows enough to appreciate the skill without having the time/desire in mastering frame specific inputs (I prefer directing that degree of focus to learning an instrument out of personal preference)

I initially discovered game streams because I find them perfect for falling asleep to lol

Which is why though, the actual ideal type, would not be just video but video + replay, allowing you to access the game at any time, forking the story away - and upstreaming that as video in turn.

A good gaming video library, would look like a "go on your own adventure book"

I remember at one point Youtube had features for that, clickable elements in videos and someone turned that into a choose your own adventure style thing. There's a few productions on Netflix like that as well, and of course DVDs also promised that at the time.

But the interactive video thing never really took off.

But if they instead go from video right into replay at time xy - and back..

They do it because of the same reasons they do the brainrot activity?

I used to watch a lot of streams about another videogame (shooter). It is calming, no hard thinking, sometimes the streamer reads your comments which is the dopamine moment, also there is an ability to listen to some kool kid without a risk to be bullied. In my case it was a learning about how to play shooter games, what is FPV/TPV, where the danger is coming from typically, how to play while being on a low ground, or a high ground, how to use different gun parts. Sometimes donaters use to send payed challenges for the streamer like win the game having some handicap for which is always give some extra bits of entertainments because I know the streamer has a hard time.

Last but not least is the reason that my computer is a bit slow so connecting to the game takes a lot of time and there is a risk to be killed early which means at least 10 minutes of concentrated mind wasted, but seeing the streamer killed means I am in one click from another game on the culmination point.

What is not understandable by me is why Minecraft is interesting at all. Watching a proper shooter game is mostly the same as watching some military expert telling (for example) about how to clear a building, but playing blocks stopped being interested for me as soon as I have been introduced to some real-life activity like soldering some electronics - but there were no brainrot in my childhood.

Kids these days prefer dumb ol’ blocks to proper video game soldiering, smdh.

Minecraft is just a more versatile game TBH. Depending on the server you play on, you can play a F2P version of DayZ, Hunger Games (which by the way pioneered the space for battle royales like warzone), building competitions, etc. Not to mention that Minecraft is a much more technically challenging game to play in terms of inputs and complexity. When you can make a 16 bit computer AND do competitive, technical, meta based PVP in COD it might be able to measure up.

Back in MY day we'd SHOOT NAZIS for FUN but the KIDS these days just want to build a HOUSE out of BLOCKS and raise SHEEP.

Yes indeed. The best Xmas toy my parents ever bought my little brother (10+ yrs younger than me, so he's early 60s now) was a huge bag of wooden bricks. Me and my 5 yrs younger brother spent all of Xmas building things and not letting little bro get a look in. Ashamed to say I was about 20 at that point.

>Blocks have always been a popular toy with children.

Yes!!!

I've recommended to my adult friends to play minecraft for at least ~5-10 minutes before they die.

There is something amazing about being able to dig wherever, build whatever, etc... There is a sort of freedom that I never had with blocks.

I am not telling these people to kill the ender dragon, but rather, play.

If not Minecraft, there's other games that scratch the "manipulate your environment and build something" itch. Space Engineers, Satisfactory, Populous from back in the day, uuh. There's a long list.

Actually, before Minecraft, Notch worked on a game called Wurm Online, which was a tedious and buggy MMO but which allowed you and your friends to manipulate the sandbox world, dig holes, flatten the environment, build roads, etc. With teamwork, they could do some really interesting things. But like I said, it was pretty tedious and slow.

? It's basic empathy, I'm sure you've watched some TV in your lifetime that involved people doing things you could also do yourself (like, as someone else said, play sports)

Watching other people play video games (or sports) isn't my thing personally, but to each their own.

I don't watch sports. Almost everything I watch is scripted. The closest thing I can think of might be cooking shows (bake off), but even in that case I'd have to get off the couch and go to the store and buy a bunch of things I don't have (often including equipment) before I could even attempt to make those same foods for myself.

Children watching minecraft videos instead of playing minecraft don't even have to get off the couch. They just have to reach for the controller and remote, or even just for their phones, and they can do the activity they've been watching someone else doing.

Playing with blocks is fun. Watching a stranger who can't see or hear you play with blocks seems far less fun, but kids spend hundreds of hours doing exactly that.

I can understand people watching other video games that have characters and a plot, and I can understand people watching sports which have teams/players and a contest with an uncertain outcome, but watching a stranger play with blocks where there is zero story and zero stakes seems insane.

Why are soap operas popular on tv, or reality tv... Or why do people listen music on radio. I think people inherently like stimulation that requires minimum effort put into it...

Why do people watch 37 seasons of Bold and Beatiful

At least the Bold and Beautiful has a story with characters. There are popular minecraft videos that are just random kids saying "here's the house I made of blocks... here are the walls... here are some torches... here are the stairs... here are the upstairs walls..." and videos that are just random kids putting blocks on top of other blocks. Some without narration at all, but others with inane chatter.

There's no compelling narrative however, no drama, no danger/thrills, no ticking clock, no "will they or won't they", and no production value.

The same reason lots of children like watching TV, or reading a book. It’s nice to think about a fantasy world

there are lean back technologies, and lean forwards technoloo

Reply on news.ycombinator.com