# Factorio and RuneScape are strong hiring signals

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/factorio-and-runescape-are-strong-hiring-signals/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Pim de Witte](https://realalpha.app/builders/pim-de-witte/) · Pim de Witte is CEO of General Intuition. · Co-founded General Intuition, a frontier AI lab for spatial-temporal reasoning, and previously co-founded gaming platform Medal.
- Host: Eric Newcomer
- Show: Newcomer Pod
- Episode: [The Startup Building World Models From a Billion Video Game Clips](https://realalpha.app/v/zsgnonEeAiQ/), Aug 3, 2026
- Moment: 5:55 to 9:09 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/factorio-and-runescape-are-strong-hiring-signals/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/zsgnonEeAiQ/?t=355

## Quote

> “i found factorio to be even **higher signal than runescape** and then probably starcraft uh is probably number three”
> — [Pim de Witte](https://realalpha.app/builders/pim-de-witte/) at [7:22](https://realalpha.app/v/zsgnonEeAiQ/?t=442) · Newcomer Pod

## Takeaways

1. Factorio and RuneScape are his strongest game-based hiring signals.
2. Open-ended goals can reward planning and delayed gratification.
3. He sees Rocket League as less transferable because it relies more on motor skills.

## About this segment

Pim de Witte ranks RuneScape, Factorio and StarCraft as hiring signals, and explains how games can reward planning and varied goals. The distinction helps separate strategic play from motor-skill practice.

From “The Startup Building World Models From a Billion Video Game Clips”, Aug 3, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/zsgnonEeAiQ/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[6:03](https://realalpha.app/v/zsgnonEeAiQ/?t=363) to being an entrepreneur like what is is there i mean you know you took a very particular set of steps yeah to get to where you are like is there anything generalizable there yeah yeah i thought about this question a lot um yes i think as long as the games that you're playing don't have the same repetitive loop every game but there is a lot of variation so like in rinscape every time you play there was new economies new people um uh you kind of created the game yourself right because you got into the game then you decided what you wanted to do that day whether you wanted to go mining or questing or whether you want to go training um or whether you wanted to go develop like a long-term skill which would help you like agility which would help you advance on like moving down the map faster later but there was a lot of sort of long-term planning and

[6:52](https://realalpha.app/v/zsgnonEeAiQ/?t=412) discipline involved because like nobody wanted to click the buttons for agility but like they would get you much further later down the road so it actually taught in a very general way some of these more long-term discipline things delayed gratification delayed gratification yeah and so So I think all of these, so I think the answer is it really depends on which game, like if my, you know, if, and also I think the community that they do it in, like within games, there's always different meta games, right?

[7:17](https://realalpha.app/v/zsgnonEeAiQ/?t=437) So like, for instance, even in Rocket League, you can build maps. And if you're building maps, it's probably really good for you. All right. So yeah, top three games that are positive hiring signals. So I would put RuneScape and Factorio number one. i found factorio to be even higher signal than runescape and then probably starcraft uh is probably number three and then uh unfortunately for me rocket league is at the lowest yeah i was gonna ask the bottom why is anything where it's just your main skills like the controller input it's it's no good or you know maybe i have purposely avoided finding out the answer to this question at risk of uh uh no i think it's just because it's mostly motor skills and there's not a lot of, there's not a ton of strategy that transfers except for a few things i imagine like candy crush has got to be pretty

[8:04](https://realalpha.app/v/zsgnonEeAiQ/?t=484) bad anything where you're rewarded for just sort of checking out yeah my guess is it's something downstream from action space the amount of actions per minute you're expected to input into the system the the variance in the frames in the game the number of states so like ringscape has like an infinite amount of states because you could you could set goals those have sub goals and then there's like a condom like they need to go assemble like the amount of coins to get there there's like um there's over um like 20 000 items like so the amount of ways that the system can interact in runescape is so high whereas in rocket league every single map is kind of the same and and so it's it's just a very i play rocket league to relax if that makes sense um but i play like runescape if i'll go like decaying into the wilderness i want to be in it right uh and so

[8:54](https://realalpha.app/v/zsgnonEeAiQ/?t=534) think people just play for different reasons so you know for kids i think the most important thing is which games are you playing um and if your kid's playing rocket league go get the adoption