People really like crafting in games, with a lot of games adding crafting mechanics (like Mount & Blade II where not only can you play the part of a mercenary like the original game, but you can also become a blacksmith), and of course lots of games where crafting is the entire point (like every survival game out there). But how does this popularity relate to what people do IRL?

How many of you like crafting in games because you like working with your hands in real life? Maybe it's the opposite, and you like crafting in games because it lets you do something that you can't/won't do otherwise? Or maybe one led to the other, like you thought to yourself "if I can make a table in this game by hitting some bits of wood with a hammer, then maybe I can make a real table", and you went and learned how to do it for real?

Very much this, I remember someone asking why they can make money in real life as easily as they do in games. Its a mechanism designed to be fun and offer a in game challenge. I don't think many people would play a game that accurately simulated crafting. Unfortunately this is how our autistic son thinks, need to constantly tell him that video game mechanics don't apply to the real world.

I am an amateur blacksmith. I work on electronics in my personal everyday life. Crafting in games is a means to an end.

Totally agree with you.

I hate both. Have two left hands IRL and in games haven't seen crafting system that wouldn't be annoying waste of time.

For the grins, built a garden and crafted using leather. Was successful in both. Mostly wanted to see if I could succeed and got bored after learning how easy it was.

Real life? I wish I could gather materials and simply press a craft button.

Although I do enjoy low level cooking. Nothing fancy, just whatever I can throw on a griddle and microwave to put together. I've had people enjoy my fajitas.

Crafting, in real life, often comes from necessity.

I can't manufacture things, at home, but sometimes you need something like a retainer, or bushing, so you look around for what you can modify, to fit your need.

Have stopped floods this way, plumbing ones, and faucet leaks, internal and external. File, sand, bend, whatever you need to do. Have also fixed a neutral safety switch in my car, by opening it, and using cigarette tinfoil to replace a broken circuit.

When your ass is in a bind, you'll figure out a way (if there is one), especially if others are depending on you for it.

I don't really like either. But I think the reason crafting is popular in games is just that it's based on similar mechanics as leveling up. You are rewarded for collecting stuff and combining it and the rewards get better and better. Has little to do with the actual process of crafting, just with how our brains work. I guess, it appeals to the "gatherer" in us maybe, that's the best connection to RL I can come up with.

I mean, if you're MacGuiver you can probably do it : P

But yeah, crafting in games is greatly simplified.

It takes, what, 1 seconds and a few whacks of a hammer to make a sword in a game? Well in real life it takes hours and a lot of skill and training. You have to get the temperature just right, quench at the right time and strike at the right place. Then you have to sharpen and polish.

Anyway, crafting to me has become a bit of a fad. A lot of it seems like busy work these days to pad out the game. You have to run around the map finding bits of junk to MacGuiver into something useful, and it gets pretty boring after a while.

Not really. Crafting is OK when it's done well and is meaningful to the plot (eg, I enjoyed building up a farm in Stardew Valley). The problem is it's become widespread "cheap padding" that's tacked onto genres that don't really need it. You could remove low-level item crafting from most FPS's (eg, "U-Invents" from Bioshock) but leave in the parts where you have to craft something major for the main plot, (eg, The Lazurus Vector) and absolutely nothing would have been lost. Most FPS's where you craft ammo often have so much ammo anyway, I hardly use it. And if crafting weren't there then the same quantity of craftable ammo could be made via rewarding the player anyway, eg, I find discovering Doom 1-2 style hidden secret stashes or hacking safe's in Deus Ex far more of a reward than carrying around an over-bloated inventory filled with junk hoping to make something useful out of it in 15 hours time.

As much as I'd like to get the guy in Factorio and be able to construct and install a Steam engine (and more) with all the piping using my bare hands, it is fantasy abstracting away months of work by SEVERAL experts in order for me to focus on the end result.

Games are not meant to be excessively realistic, that's the whole point. They are thought experiments that bend/break the rules of reality in order to put the emphasis on whatever the game is about (any game worth it salts will always make that tradeoff in order to achieve a desired experience).

Crafting in games is just an additional layer of experimentation and puzzle solving with a touch of creativity sometimes. It is not meant to realistically portrait the hurdle of building somethings with your bare hands (or in the case of Factorio, specialized factories really, there are limits to the precision and reliability you can get without assistance from machines). That would be a game in itself and frankly, I think the standard gaming apparatus would lack the finesse to convey the real experience even if it was attempted. Human hands are wonderful and complex.

I wouldn't want to be the Factorio guy;
but maybe that's because maybe I'm just not in the right mindset for this kinda game anymore.

Subtext over: I'm not Roy Underhill, and crafting is an abstraction of resource gathering. Merely the haunting of the RTS floating over many a genre. After all, spending 200 meat & 100 stone to advance to the Bronze age is largely the same as crafting an iron pick in many ways.

I was referring to the character. Who wouldn't like to be able to craft their next laptop with their bare hands and some raw material in a few seconds?

Beyond the fact that he made a good game, I don't have a strong opinion about the developer. Kind of nice that he made his pile of money actually creating value as opposed to buying things low and selling high or otherwise sitting on some value generating asset he purchased as is fashionable nowadays. Most people want to get rich, but too few people want to work and generate actual value in return for their wealth.

Otherwise, that he said some questionable things on the internet... I tend to give more famous people a pass for the small stuff, because everything they say or do online (and sometimes offline) is put under a microscope. Everyone is an *sshole at some point. Regular people just don't have it highlighted online for others to comment and analyze, unless it happens to be a REALLY entertaining kind of *ssholery (at which point they might become infamous for it, but that is uncommon).