What's a common feature of video games we could really use in real life?

Trollivier@sh.itjust.works to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 168 points –
210

Choose an amount of time to sleep, sleep right away the whole time, wake up immediately after and actually rested

I would love this so much right now...

I did hear about some odd sleeping pill, not sure if it existed or if it was just a concept someone thought about...

The pill was a normal sleeping pill, but with a core of cafffine, it would be designed so that it would take X hours to dissolve and once it got to the core, the caffine would wake you up on time.

The more I think about it, the less I believe it would ever work.

I like the idea to counteract the grogginess of the sleeping tablet, but I lack the knowledge to know if that would work.

I'm guessing it would have been digested by then, right?

Yeah, the point of it was that it would only keep you sleeping for X time and then wake you up.

I do this the manual way. Set alarm half-an-hour early for coffee, drink it and go back to sleep. Wake up moderately more awake 45 minutes later. Doesnt always work. 4/10

Save points

I feel like, unless they were monthly (or longer), I'd risk turning into a complete psychopath.

I’d play the stock market, set myself up for life, then live like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

oh yay this'll defeat the evil enshittifying stock market!

The monkey paw here is that you are loading the world state and that includes you and your memories. You would never remember using this ability. Maybe you already have it!

Being able to select dialogue from a few options, instead of having to actually be skilled socially.

Of all the stuff I've seen in the comments, this is actually feasible today.

You mean by pausing before you speak?

People who take time to formulate a sentence before speaking are actually infuriating on some level. Like I've got this friend, son of a diplomat, NEVER puts his foot in his mouth. Can you imagine trying to have a fast argument with someone who considers everything they say!

I can say from experience that it is discomfiting, and maddening if you're actually passionate about the topic.

That is a virtue. Sure, it's good to speak up, but it'd be worse to speak without considering your words.

I never think before I speak. For you, I would make an exception.

ROFL you sound like a fellow retail worker, or at least someone with experience toying with shit customers

I mostly meant like, if you really wanted, you could have an LLM generate responses for most day to day conversations. This feature already exists for text and email.

Ohhh I hadn't thought of it that way. Yes, that does sound somewhat plausible

I would a million times more enjoy talking to someone that thinks before their speech than someone who doesn't

Wish granted, but now people skip your dialogue and only pick the first option that shows up.

Seems I’ve been dealing with that aspect my whole life.

Statistically better than the choices I've made thus far I suppose.

I despise Fast Travel in video games, to me it's a feature that appears necessary because no thoughts were given about making the environment interesting to traverse

But in real life ? I crave the time saving it offers

After all, large portions of IRL show no thoughts were given about making the environment interesting to traverse.

It’s a lot easier to build in the uninteresting areas, though.

Even if the environment is interesting, it won’t be after 200 hours of walking.

I heard somewhere that the reason people want flying cars is the same reason they wanted flying horses.

I imagine every time someone says "flying car" an air traffic controller somewhere has a nervous breakdown.

You're allowed to fast travel, but only after walking there first.

If there's enough offer to avoid overcrowding, public transport feels like that. You get into a special room, you have a loading screen where you can listen to some music, read a book, or even just have a small nap, and then you get out in your destination.

Anything to avoid the absolutely atrocious experience of flying I'm all for.

As a counterpoint, I like it in video games for the same irl reason: it saves time.

I do love games where it feels alive when traveling on foot/horse/etc. but I would rather fast travel if I've already explored it, generally speaking.

In Rimworld you can click on a pawn and see all of its health stats, stuff like heart blockages, leg and arm injuries, immunity progress of diseases and other things like that. It would make things so much easier. I'd look at my health panel and see "Common Cold (87% immunity)"

Being able to buy a house by selling bugs and rocks would be cool.

No one has said a HUD yet? Being able to instantly recall information about objects in your environment, how to use them, red outline for nearby dangers, etc? Wouldn't even have to be Terminator T800 level for it to be immensely useful. Google Glass didn't get there, but maybe Apple Vision Pro can help pave the way.

A floating arrow pointing the direction to my keys would be handy.

A floating arrow telling me where my "next mission" is would be super annoying.

Vision Pro lacks the sensors for that. They skimped out on direction finding capabilities, despite already having the tech in their phones (for their tags)

In their infinite wisdom they built it as a standalone single user sandbox instead of as an environmentally aware terminal

Give me a Linux solution not backed by billion dollar corporations looking to consume as much data on you as possible, and I'll listen lol

Can you explain to me, a layman, why it should be Linux based and why that is a good thing?

The alternatives are:

  • Windows based solution: will be super bloated, locked down preventing customizability, and will try to obtain as much data on you as possible to sell to advertisers, I'm sure among other reasons others here will gladly point out.
  • MacOS based solution: Even more locked down than a Windows based solution, hardware may even be more proprietary so good luck swapping out components yourself to fix it, and will try to obtain as much data on you as possible to sell to advertisers.
  • iOS: same reasons as MacOS, with the exception of it not being as locked down.
  • Android based solution: is controlled by Google and therefore will try to obtain as much data on you as possible to sell to advertisers.

Alternatives to Linux like other Unix based systems, FreeBSD, etc. I don't know enough about, so whether or not it would be better on this kind of a product I don't know.

The one from CP2077 that slows down time !

Saves, especially save states/quicksave. Some kind of way to tell you what is actually the correct answer, not just what someone thinks is, or wants to be, the correct answer. Enough predictability to give you a reasonable shot at things.

But would we remember between quicksaves? Would other people? If my boss quicksaves before our meetings and then I quicksave and honestly tell him what I think about this job, whose quicksave would take precedence?

The oldest quicksave point takes precedence. Nobody actually experiences anything until the player with the earliest quicksave establishes a new save point, or otherwise becomes permanently incapable of restoring that earliest point. Whatever was experienced between the oldest and second oldest quicksave then becomes the unalterable historic record. Everything else is an aborted timeline that never actually exists.

I just thought "hur hur, Nazeem" and save scumming skill checks, dice rolls and tricky input in mostly singleplayer games, without any nasty precedence or concurrency issues. Extending it to multiplayer and also being inside the game seems, uh, complicated. I'll give it an undercaffeinated try:

Each player gets an individual "marker" they can place at their current time, and a function to restore the entire universe state to that point.
"Whose marker is when" seems like it needs to be part of that state. Otherwise, reverting and then having someone else reload a formerly earlier, now future/orphaned state... just sounds like a clusterfuck. Or it's unproblematic and just weird, I'm not sure.

Keeping memories across reloads would at least not happen "naturally", since everyone has their exact brain state reverted. You could just say it does for the purposes of the experiment, but it seems like it makes things more complicated.
At least, remembering stuff through someone else's reload is right out: everyone on the planet quickly ends up with a bunch of memories that have no longer happened, and no way to tell what's what. Psych horror time!

Whoever saves first does get to revert everything since then, but assuming no memory retention, you could still safely shit talk your boss all day long, at least. If their checkpoint reverts yours, they will forget the rant, you can still revert. It would be further back than you intended then, but you would be blissfully unaware of that fact. Of course, you also wouldn't remember the rant, so it doesn't sound very cathartic either.

But, if memories are retained, Boss could reload on you - they now remember the rant and you don't, which sounds like a bad Christmas Party. While reloading would still be a win for you, you wouldn't know to actually do it, and could risk saving at a position where you've screwed yourself. Common risk of save scumming.

I would assume there is an order of operations to the madness. And quicksaves are stored globally, so whoever quicksaves first is able to undo the later quicksaves. In this scenario, if your boss quickloads before you do, then they would retain their memories and go back to before the meeting knowing you were going to insult them in it before you even did the first quicksave.

Medkits. Just grab one off the wall and you're back to 100%.

Going to the gym and getting fit in like 10 minutes like in San Andreas

To be fit and healthy no matter what you do or eat and super fast healing from injuries

To my mind pop:

  • Save states (quicksave, load, stuff like that)
  • New Game Plus
  • Short range teleport, because why not.

Item duplication glitch, infinite gold, infinite health potions etc. Post scarcity world, here we come!

We already have infinite money glitch. Fiat currency just prints more whenever it suits the gov

Also high frequency trading generating money from dips/spikes in stocks' values that are too short lived to affect anything on a human scale. And banks lending money (and thus generating interests from it) they don't actually have yet but I think it's related to the fiat currency thing ?

I guarantee algorithmic traders don't make that much, relative to the amount they start with. If you want to code your own and find out, there's probably someone with an easy-to-sign-up-for API.

Sure, it's probably only worth it for huge banks that hook almost directly into transcontinental internet cables (to which my anti capitalist ass would say, that's probably why it's legal), but to me, that still basically generating some profits by exploiting a "glitch" in the implementation of stock trades while bringing absolutely no real value to the system.

So does that mean you think human-speed trades are different? Usually people that lead with anti-capitalist think it's all witchcraft.

Yes, stocks were made to finance human businesses and be traded between humans to exchange "parts" of a company easily. I'm not fond of capitalism but I can't deny that the stock market provides value under this system. But I don't see where high frequency trading actually brings any of the value it "generates" into this.

My main issues with our current brand of capitalism is that money can be very far removed from reality, with things like greenhouse gasses emissions being effectively "free" even though they affect everyone on the planet, including our economic systems. So, the way I see it, it heavily incentivizes short term profits at the cost of basically everything else. Unless we regulate the hell out of it I guess, but apparently that is a sin against the free market

Interesting. Good on you for actually looking in to how economics is supposed to work. Maybe you'd be interested in this, if you haven't heard about it already?

On climate change, in Canada, we have a carbon tax, but it's still lower than the actual social price of emissions. And the current frontrunner for next election has made scrapping it his whole platform, sadly. I don't know much about high-frequency trading, but I've kind of just assumed it's the same but faster. There are startups, I know that, so it's not a total monopoly. There was one that was using shortwave to pass along information with tiny latency.

Yeah, but it blows up if they don't print just the right amount relative to taxation, so is it really a free lunch?

3rd person view, especially when driving

The monkeys paw curls, everyone now has to drive from the perspective of a back seat passenger looking over the driver's shoulder

I've been noticing a lot of movies and TV shows now adopt a video-gamey behind the car view sometimes, mostly due to how cheap and good drone footage has gotten lately

A challenge most people fail in video games for unfair reasons will generally be considered a badly designed element of that game by fans and critics.

Meanwhile the challenge of making it ahead in modern life, which most people fail at out of no fault of their own even if they play the cards they were dealt as smartly as possible… is considered a perfectly good design element of adult life.

🫤

On a lighter note I really wish the pinging system in games like Alex legends could be combined with a simple face recognition overlay (that only pulls from your semiprivate private network of photos with friends under certain sharing conditions) that just reminded you of people’s names and maybe very succinctly their connection with you.

Instant constructions and destructions. City needs a new road? Done in a second. Wind turbines and solar panels? Plopped before you could finish blinking. Pipe network to get water in and sewage out? There, it's already flowing beneath you.

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I'm short af, so double jump would be great

oh and run and slide without the ensuing skin graft

That would also be awesome. Also just walking normally. I broke my ankle/leg severely in October while walking my puppy and my gait is going to be slightly fucked up forever from it. But I'm a cyborg now, which is dope.

You're augmented ! sorry about that, but yea, silver lining etc. 😁

Save scumming. You could get it - whatever "it" is - out of your system, and then just reload from your last save.

If it existed you'd never know. Unless you add an additional feature of preserving your characters memories across game loads. But then it's not a common game feature.

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The ability to be disconnected from the internet and still function properly.

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Fast travel (assuming nobody beat me to it)

You still have to travel to the location to unlock it. That would actually make me want to travel more.

Save games.

On the one hand, yes, but on the other I'm a real dick when I know I can save scum consequences away. I wouldn't go totally nuts in real life with real people, but you know someone would keep a save they shoot up over and over again like it's Black Mirror.

The ability to walk at 40km/h speeds.

Yes but then every time you tried to follow someone they'd walk at 37km/h

Eventually being able to defeat the most evil thing in the world.

Character creation/editor would be amazing.

A quest log would be great.

A status screen.

Skill increases/level up.

A quest log would be great.

You’re describing a to-do list.

Infinite wealth exploits that the average person can exploit without getting into trouble. I could especially use this feature.

Though, a more serious answer would probably be something like infinite resources you find in certain games. For example, infinite weapons in games like Fallout 3, NV, and 4 from enemies periodically respawning when you're gone. Or in sandbox games like minecraft, how you can easily get seemingly infinite trees and bonemeal without completely destroying the ecosystem.

Stacking items and having it only take up one inventory slot in our backpack!

Or even better, stacking literally anything and everything in a single "tile", Dwarf Fortress style

Mushrooms that make me grow tall and gives an extra life. Bonus would be the fire flower.

Best I can do are mushrooms that can give you a new lease on life, or at absolute worse psychosis.

Want some fire flower? I know a guy for that too.

A pause button

Monkey's Paw: You are also paused. You cannot move to unpause. You are trapped in your own consciousness forever, as is everyone else.

Or, like you can unpause, but also everyone else can also pause. You're just going about your day, eating some soup, and someone in India is in the middle of an exam and wants to take an extra moment to think.

So you and everyone else is frozen in time while they search their recollection for some bit of trivia they are supposed to know. Your spoon, full of yummy soup, is inches from your mouth, but you can't even smell it because the air is paused, too. Time has stopped, but not your consciousness.

Unpause, your spoon finishes its trip to your mouth. Time pauses again before you get a chance to swallow, because someone in Canada is on a date and is nervous about asking too many questions.

This is life, now. Pause, unpause, pause, unpause, nobody knowing why or when someone else will hit pause, or how long it will last.

A QUIT button

sigh

yeah… :’(

but maybe just try the pause button first? maybe that’ll be enough to get ya through it.

Detailed options so I mute background chatter or silence selected NPCs.

Subtitles for conversations not in my native language.

Difficulty setting. I play on easy mode and DGAF what anyone thinks because my time is precious and I’m playing for fun. I decide what’s fun.

Creative/cheat mode…let me just pause, build myself a fantastic 10 story house… Open inventory and spawn a wife, 3 kids, a dog and 2 billion dollars in my pocket. Oh no, does that mean I can't get achievements because I cheated? Oh well.

Steal a car, lose the cops and it’s mine now. No consequences.

Important story moments of your life play as cutscenes which you have no control over…so you can’t mess it up and know you’re exactly where you should be. This would be peaceful.

Hints & tutorials.

Play as a different character.

Choose your appearance instantly -gender, body shape, skin/eye/hair color, size of nose/ears/eyebrows, clothes, accessories

Things you buy spawn instantly wherever you are

Change tattoos instantly, including removing

Closed captioning for all dialogue and other sounds

Increase skills simply by grinding, even for things like skateboarding, singing, playing music, acrobatics etc that require raw talent and YEARS of training/practice

Important story moments of your life play as cutscenes which you have no control over…so you can’t mess it up and know you’re exactly where you should be. This would be peaceful.

This would be great, but imagine being in a cutscene and realizing you're the antagonist and that you're going to be killed by some brat with a sword.

Inventory packs that seem bigger on the inside.

Like seriously, how does Red from Pokémon carry a whole dang bike in his backpack? Imagine trying to smuggle that across toll booths.

Hey just a tip to make it a bit less of a hassle for you: you can smuggle things around toll booths, it's easier.

I'd settle for inventory sorting

Canonically they use pokeballs, that's why you find dropped items inside of them.

I play a lot of VR and I catch myself trying to use the gravity glove to pick things off the ground

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Carry as much as you can fit into your inventory and ignore the weight.

Just being able to dump hundreds of items into my backpack and have them automatically sorted and being able to find what I want instantly by typing into a search field will make my day.

Or heavy size of inventory like Fallout

Infrastructure designed for a fun game experience, not cars.

Running and jumping all the time without issue. I'm not old per se, but I'm no spring chicken. I'm only 35, in decent shape, and I have a pretty active job, but I still cringe at the thought of the sheer impact of landing from jumping as high as I can. I was not kind to my knees in my late teens and early twenties. And I'm so goddamn tired.

Free repec my self. Want to take all the work I put into my current career and relocate it somewhere else.

Private maps that show you where you've been and what missions you need to complete there.

Right now, all I have is the thermal map of photos linked to a Google account, and that is way too creepy because the location-based data is housed with a transnational corporation and is dependent on photos I feed to the machine.

A guaranteed buff from sleeping (unless werewolf)

Double jump

Health bar

It would be pretty much full at all times in the first world, but would gradually get shorter. And then when it's someone really old every damn thing would like halve their health.

It would make life easier for medical people, though.