Factorio? Like Factories?

Welcome to my blog, I think I’m doing this right. Being my first blog ever, I appreciate anyone who takes the time to at least come across it. First off, I want to say the creation of this blog was inspired by the Capstone Project course I am taking at Oregon State University. As it is early in the quarter, this blog might not be fully project related but let’s jump into a topic that might interest some of you. That topic is video games. I know video games may not be an avid hobby for a portion of you reading this, but either has it been for me too, or at least for the last year until recently. Some of my potential picks for my capstone project however involved developing video games like a tower defense game or a card trading game. I am not going to overwhelm you with my subjective experiences with video games, I don’t intend making this blog too long as it’s more of a recommendation to try one out (don’t worry I am not a paid advertiser). The game I want to talk about is Factorio, playable on PC and Nintendo Switch, because I believe the mindset required to play the game is very similar to the mindset of a programmer.

Over the prior winter break with some of the extra free time I had, I submitted to my boredom and decided to try Factorio as I remembered seeing a video about it months ago. Now it is a far cry from my glory days of playing console games like the classic shooter series Call of Duty, but from time to time I play new games just to see how the industry is evolving. Factorio was released in 2016 and in trying it out I think many programmers would find it crazily addicting, especially because of the thought process and attentiveness required to play the game. If you are not familiar with Factorio it is similar to a two-dimensional Minecraft, the game I know everyone has heard of, but is more intricate in many ways as I believe it requires much more thinking and diligence than the base version of Minecraft. As the name implies you build factories and like Minecraft you collect resources such as iron and coal, but instead of using pickaxes you extract resources with machines like mining drills. There’s many different game modes to Factorio but the goal of the primary mode is to extract resources that can be converted into materials to ultimately build a rocket ship and get the playable character back into space.

To explain the similarity of playing the game with the mindset of a programmer I have to more deeply explain how the process of extracting resources and converting them into needed materials works in Factorio. The essence of Factorio is automation and efficiency, there is a community behind the game that has probably found the most efficient way to perform every specific task in the game, but of course the fun is running into those road blocks yourself and finding your own solutions. If you do not want to take months just to complete the game, you must implement automation which is where I think most of the fun is. You start with collecting mined resources that can be placed upon transport belts that send these materials to your automation centers, or factories, to then be converted into the specific materials you need. The various materials can be combined to build other materials that can be used to research new materials or to build different machines, both are required to complete the game. I hope I haven’t lost you yet, but there is an unlimited amount of ways to set up your factories and implement these processes.

I am oversimplifying this process for the sake of readability, but the complexity amounts because you can run into resource/material bottlenecks or problems of lack of resources/materials. Personally I have spent hours just fixing a problem with my factories instead of furthering its progress, sound familiar? A problem I ran into includes the time one of my factories was not producing materials fast enough for the next factory in line that collected its converted material, altogether leading to my research facilities to stop working. Or the time I forgot what factory was making what because of my poor accounting skills, so I had to retrace my whole production line and see where I was failing. I have also ran into constraints such as not having enough space for certain functionality requiring me to refactor some of my factories placements and production. I’m sure you don’t want to keep listening to my problems, but I hope I got my point across. This game requires a lot of planning, problem solving, improved efficiencies, and overall a concentrated mind to keep track of what you’ve implemented and what to do next.

Personally from my experience it is a very fun game and I have played almost every genre of video games in my pre-college years. I’ve already put in maybe a few dozen hours in the game having owned it for just over a month. You start the game at a slow pace and then before you know it you have created some complicated factory system that can easily fail because of numerous factors such as lack of enough power, outside threats, absence of enough resources, and many more. I find this akin to programming as you get input (resources) and have to structure your program to get your intended output, hopefully without faults or errors. Like programming, you have to plan ahead and visualize potential road blocks and the countless number of outcomes before or during the process. Now I am not saying all programmers should play Factorio, I know not every one will enjoy it. After all it is a game where a majority of the players are most likely non-programmers who simply like the gameplay and the challenge. My consensus is that you should always have fun playing a game, that’s the point, but it also helps if you can learn something from it, like discovering how our thought processes in programming can translate to varying interests in our daily lives. So if you’re interested in the game Factorio, the block of text below explains where you can find it.

If Still Interested:   

If you want to play Factorio I’d recommend playing its free demo first, which can be searched for and downloaded on the gaming marketplace platform Steam. If you’re still interested in the game after the demo, to play the full version you have to purchase it for $30 on Steam. If you did not like the demo or are simply not interested by the genre of the game, then of course do not buy it. I do not want to convince anyone to buy something they do not want, it should be up to your own discretion to buy the game.

– Hope you enjoyed my first blog!!!