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What a stupid waste of computation.
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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It's an entropy generator that's not even entertaining.
Do you really think /c/pcgaming has a place to stand to call something a stupid waste of computation?
Yeah tbh. If you're suggesting that entertainment or videogames are inherently a waste, I disagree.
Yes, this isn't even entertaining.
We're living at the brink of the climate catastrophe.
What we do in the next decade determines whether life in the future will just suck really bad, or be impossible for 90% of humanity.
And we're burning massive amounts of fossil fuel to power computer programs playing with each other.
I've played online games before where the entire point was to write a bot to play the game for you; I don't know what the genre is called, but there've been a few of them over the years. The game is essentially just an API and the efficiency and complexity of your self-written bot determines your success or failure. It's fun.
This is functionally that, except... you... don't write the bot yourself. So... what the fuck is the point? Like, seriously. I'm not judging you - if this interests you, I would be legitimately interested to hear what the appeal is.
Watching Civilization bots play against each other was a thing for a while and it was mildly entertaining I guess. Didn't use ungodly amounts of power and hardware though.
My brother and I used to set all bots on n64 smash and bet candy or chores on the winners.
That said, I don't know why I'd need an industrial data center to do what an n64 already did.
This was fun in Smash Ultimate for the switch; if you had amiibos, you could load them in as characters and they'd (supposedly) learn from what you did when playing against them. We used to pit our amiibo characters against each other and treat it like Pokemon battles. It was a good time.
That sounds like an absolute blast!
I want an mmo where you can setup an automation so your character is still doing stuff when your offline. Also combine it with like dragons dogmas thing so other players can use your guy for help. This way to people who are busy can keep up for when they can really play.
That... Would be interesting, yeah. There's a lot of games that do one of these (less so for the offline one, mostly idle games, but Jade Dynasty had an offline levelling system), but I don't know of any that do both
Screeps
So, just to get this straight: I pay money to buy the game, probably also a subscription fee and why stop there.. also DLC , P2W items and cosmetics. And the hardware, gpu, memory and electricity. And then I watch the game while I jerk off to furry porn?
Have the executives in that company already been replaced by LLMS? If not, why not?
Is there some kind of reverse Turing test?
So it's like Screep, except worse?
I am not interested in this but this just sounds like... well observing Sports. Is something you can play as a person yet you watch someone else play. It also costs enormous amounts of money to perform. I don't watch sports either.
They keyword here is "someone" in "you watch someone else play". Watching this is like watching the little demos that play in arcade machines while "Insert Coin" flashes on the screen except it requires tens of thousands of times more energy to run.
Nah. I definitely don't plan on getting this game but there's a market for what you're describing. They're called "idle games" and there's a shitton of them.
It doesn't matter if it's humans playing, many people just like to see things progress. I liked "playing" WorldBox because it was fun to see who won given the "scenario" I put in place. And long before that, I had Progress Quest running
But even idle-games generally have some interaction. You buy buildings or upgrades or whatever. ~~This might as well just be a 3d animated series with shitty videogame graphics for all the difference it makes.~~
Edit: gotta admit i didnt read the article. Apparently the game doesnt really have graphics. So... An AI-generated piece of written fiction. And an accompanying map. I feel like amazon is full of those
I mean guess I did interact with Progress Quest to launch it the first time lol
Idle games don't require a whole data center to run, though... The question is, what advantage does this bring over already existing products that compensates for the severe downside of it existing?
I am not defending this stupid idea at all, I'm just saying there IS a market for idle games
Fair.