this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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elon musk's obsession with the tic tac toe of video games (awful.systems)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by sc_griffith@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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We all know Elon Musk as the funniest man alive.

tweet: I will use the power of irony to defeat villains! “Oh you call yourself “The Joker”, then why can’t you tell a joke! How ironic …” (an image of iron man with musk's face photoshopped on)

but did you know that Musk is also a lifelong gamer? for example, here he is in the chess club of his whites only apartheid prep school.

black and white photo of some kids in suits

grew out of that though.

musk tweet: Chess is a simple game. Understandable when all we had to play with were squirrels 🐿 and rocks🪨, but now we have computers 💻.

really want to highlight the phrase "understandable when all we had to play with were squirrels and rocks." what the fuck is he talking about?

in any case, he clearly has some issues around the game and I suspect his performance in the chess club. the dude loves to downplay the complexity of the game.

musk tweet: Chess is such a simple game

musk tweet: This is cool, but I am quite certain that Chess can be fully solved, like Checkers

he knows how to tune it up, though.

musk tweet: Chess has a tiny number of degrees of freedom compared to reality: only 64 squares, no fog of war, no tech tree, no terrain differences, same starting pieces & positions every time and you can’t invent new pieces during the game. All of those factors and more are present in reality. So it may seem like someone is close to checkmate in reality, but that doesn’t matter if they suddenly vaporize the opponent’s king with lasers from space that never existed before! Given that there are even winning moves in chess that seem like blunders to humans, then when it comes to understanding winning moves in reality, it is vastly harder to tell.

hmm. fog of war, tech trees, randomized starting positions. that actually sounds a little familiar. could it be...?

musk is asked if he still plays chess. in a tweet, he says "I did as a child, but found it to be too simple to be useful in real life: a mere 8 by 8 grid, no fog of war, no technology tree, no random map or spawn position, only 2 players, both sides exact same pieces, etc. Polytopia addresses these limitations."

OH YEAH BABY! you knew it had to be polytopia!

what the fuck is polytopia?

this is polytopia:

low poly computer game image. a knight, centurion, archer, etc pose under the words "BATTLE OF POLYTOPIA"

low poly computer game image. isometric view of a tiled landscape

sophisticated Gamers will notice three things here:

  1. this is clearly a mobile game first, meaning it was developed to fit into the industry's nastiest shithole: the ios and android app markets. i'll tell you right now that polytopia doesn't have gambling in its microtransactions (which instantly makes it cream of the crop), but you can expect it to be braindead and shallow.

  2. this game is for children. look the bright primary colors, the character's huge eyes, and the low poly style, which evokes minecraft.

  3. this game looks a LOT like civilization. specifically, it looks like civilization 3:

screenshot of civilization 3

For those not familiar, the civilization series is the standard bearer for the 4X genre. it's a style of slow, macromanagement focused turn based strategy focused on the "four Xes" of exploration, expansion, exploitation, and extermination. thematically, they present societies as machines for producing imperialism. the civilization games are also fearsomely complex and famously deep.

not so with polytopia:

7/10: The Battle of Polytopia plays a little bit like a “babies first 4X” game. It’s good fun and has you trying to expand your tribe across a tiny cutesy little world. It’s easy to play, easy to understand, and fairly easy to lose a few hours too as well. While it’s going to be a little too simplistic for some people, it’s a very good game if you’re looking to introduce somebody else to strategy games, then it might well be the perfect chance to do so.

Cubed3 Rating. 6/10. The simple gameplay of Battle of Polytopia is actually a pretty fun breakdown of the genre - the problem is ultimately its simplicity is its undoing. Despite what it says or looks like, every starting race is nearly the exact same, which is a huge missed opportunity to diversify them. Battles late-game are very dry. For some casual players it is a fun romp, but anyone looking for depth or longevity won't find it here.

While I like the Civilization series along with other popular 4x strategy games, they can be a little on the lengthy side. That's why the idea of The Battle Of Polytopia appeals to me. It offers a bite-sized version of the typical 4x strategy experience with an adorable art style and a simplified tech tree of upgrades. However, this game's act of dumbing down its 4x strategy gameplay adds its own complications. There are a lot of features and gameplay elements that are sorely missed. Thus, the real battle of The Battle Of Polytopia involves fighting with its clunky visuals and struggling to stay engaged with its voxel world.

so yeah, it's baby civilization. but the thing that really kills me is that musk is obsessed with this game. like... really obsessed, according to a story published on yahoo finance.

Elon Musk's Intense Obsession With A Video Game Influenced His Business Strategies, Caused Fights In His Relationship And Served As A Reminder Every Move Matters: 'You Only Get A Set Number Of Turns In Life'

This puff piece is sourced from "Benzinga," a tech finance news site that seems to mostly post about crypto, ai and tesla. context clues suggest the content is entirely ripped from walter isaacson's biography of musk. I have to emphasize that all of this is intended to be flattering - right in the middle, they take a break from the content to shill some affiliate link I won't click on:

But it's not just Musk who brings this level of intensity and passion to his pursuits. As someone who transformed his startup ventures into empires, Musk is a testament to the potential lying dormant in the world of startups. Just as he was once a lesser-known entrepreneur striving to change the world, there are countless others out there with ideas who are awaiting the right investment to catapult them into their own universe-altering trajectories. The potential to invest in the next Musk — someone with a fervor and strategic mindset capable of transforming an industry — is not just a possibility; it's a reality waiting to happen. Anyone can invest in startups with as little as $100.

that's the image of musk they want to convey. anything they include is in support of that.

Elon Musk's passion for video games is far from a casual affair. It is a window into understanding the complex layers of the tech mogul's personality, his approach to business and his personal relationships. His latest biography explains his love for the strategy game "Polytopia," a multiplayer game where you strive to build an empire. Musk became so skilled at it that he bested the game's developer Felix Ekenstam. "I am just wired for war, basically," Musk said, illuminating how he perceives his proclivity for strategy and competition.

saying "I am just wired for war" because you play a lot of polytopia is classic elon cringe. beating a game's developer is nothing to brag about, by the way. most game developers are terrible at their own games.

i would argue that ragequitting to the parking lot to smack down your employee/mother of your children in a baby game is also not something to brag about:

This passion isn't just a pastime but a tool for honing skills and discovering life lessons. As Shivon Zilis, who downloaded the game to play alongside Musk, points out, "There's so many life lessons you learn, so many weird things about yourself and your opponents." Musk's games of "Polytopia" aren't casual diversions; they are intensely competitive sessions. In the wake of a heated argument with engineers, Musk retreated to a parking lot and drowned his frustrations in two back-to-back games of "Polytopia" against Zilis, winning both times. "He just absolutely crushed me both games," she said.

Elon Musk and Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis conceived twins through IVF: report

flexing on mom almost shows up more than once in the article...

Even in his personal life, the game has significant implications. Grimes, his partner at the time, was also coaxed into playing "Polytopia."

... except, twist, for some reason he beat his employee but not his partner???

and yes, he sulked like a little shitbag he when he lost. one has to suspect that if his sycophants weren't constantly throwing polytopia matches against him he'd have turned on it just like he did chess.

before you read this next bit I want to emphasize again that EVERYTHING IN THIS ARTICLE IS INTENDED TO BE FLATTERING.

The game even transcended into his professional life. On a trip to Tesla Inc.'s Berlin factory, Musk delayed important managerial meetings because he was engrossed in "Polytopia." "But it's the best game ever," he said after a mild scolding from his mother, who was on the trip with him.

his brother seems to feel the same way

Polytopia seems to be a metaphorical battlefield where Musk practices life's strategies. His brother Kimbal Musk learned the game to understand his sibling's mindset. "He said it would teach me how to be a CEO like he was," Kimbal Musk said.

(and from another benzinga sourced yahoo finance story):

Kimbal Musk told Isaacson that his brother regularly counsels him to avoid being overly empathetic in his work. “He knows that I have an empathy gene, unlike him, and it has hurt me in business,” Kimbal Musk says. “Polytopia taught me how he thinks when you remove empathy. When you’re playing a video game, there is no empathy, right?”

here's what i think: elon musk isn't learning shit from polytopia. he's a profoundly stupid and childish man who likes moving brightly colored blocks around and being told he won. he's projecting the disgusting and wretched pile of deficiencies which is his personality onto a game for babies. as someone who only fails upward and cannot stand to fail, it is impossible for him to learn from reality; doing so would require facing what is too painful to face.

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[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

Good thoughts here

doing so would require facing a reality that is too painful to face.

This ties in directly with his belief that we're all in a simulation but despite that, somehow he is the only "real" person. It's also why he hides behind plausible deniability for dumb shit like cheating at games. He thinks reality doesn't matter, which is why he dangles it in everyone's faces that he's totally cheating in games and using alts on twitter, but "nyeah nyeah you can't prove it." It also lines up with the person he visited with at Auschwitz who stated it's worse than Musk being a Nazi, he literally just does not care. He was unmoved. He just genuinely thinks he's the only thing that matters.

The comparisons to Trump are apt. All Musk knows is that as long as he can lie to people he can make money, and he can use that money to obfuscate what he is doing to the courts and make them tied up for years in court to just prove the basics. He thinks none of it matters and is all a joke. He doesn't understand that other people don't have the means (nor the desire) to live life the way he does, because he doesn't understand us as real at all.

His inability to believe anything is real probably is manifesting as some kind of public humiliation fetish where he gets off on people knowing he's doing it but not being able to prove it. The Nazi salute and jokes are another aspect of this, treating reality as a total false, and treating truth and objectivity as things to be torn down because in his mind: it's not real so nothing matters.

It's all fucking solipsism with extra steps and he hasn't even done the philosophical legwork... He's just playing Polytopia and claiming it's more rigorous than it actually is because he's too much of a dumbfuck to know any better.

I think perhaps you're right about it being too painful to face, and a psychologist might describe his descent into solipsism as an avoidance technique. He would then argue to that psychologist "bUt YoU cAnT pRoVe iTs ReAl!" because as someone who is so averse to therapy, he thinks he can philosophy his way into proving he is always right.

He is a deeply, deeply unwell man.

side note, beating a game’s developer is nothing to brag about, by the way. most game developers are terrible at their own games.

Also, didn't turn out real hot for Stevie "Killcreek" Case... I feel bad for that woman and how she was treated by Romero and men in the gaming/game development space in general. Not a single one of her relationships with other folks in the industry worked out, and it all started because she was a Quake champ and beat Romero at a deathmatch. I still remember when she was on the cover of PC Accelerator... it's a testament to how badly the industry treated and viewed women at the time, nothing but a sexist trope grossly sexualizing her.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

It’s all fucking solipsism with extra steps

or not, like when he told Grimes to her face that he thought she must be an ideal simulation for him

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