Hey man, first off I wanted to thank you for doing a very level-headed response in a respectful way, as well as presenting my original thoughts accurately and not out of context. My short answer is that for the most part I agree with you - turns out there are a TON of newer incremental games I had never heard of after I made my video, and I played some of them and definitely agree that they are more in-depth than the ones I had experienced in the last several years. I'm shocked I didn't find them when researching, probably because I went looking for clickers instead of idlers which are pretty different honestly. Happy to know the genres evolving, I do think you did it justice. Just a few more quick points: my video came from my perspective and experience on the genre, definitely not a quick buck cash in. In fact it's been on my mind to make for years now and I'll admit it would've been more relevant back then. I said many times that I got hooked on them too, and don't think poorly of anyone that enjoys them, just more of less wanted to talk about my time with them and how it basically felt like going cold turkey from a drug habit lol, having to quit them altogether because I felt like I was wasting my life. Again, that's my view but I know others totally love them. Also, you're right than any game can manipulate players with microtransactions (and I would argue any of those games that DO are just as bad lol), as with the reasons I found the genre poorly designed (real time/no end) - but my point was that it was the COMBINATION of the lack of real gameplay with these other elements that really made them toxic to me; they're not inherently bad on their own. Obviously with the examples you gave that isn't necessarily true. So I suppose take my video with a grain of salt saying those older examples are the bad apples. Keep doing what you're doing bro, I realized I'd seen some of your other vids on the endslate, you make good content. Peace
Glad you seem to be taking this with levity! I was honestly a little worried making a response video like this at all, hah. Based on your comment it sounds like your take was part poor timing, part narrow search of "clicker". You're right, clicker/idle/incremental are all technically different, but as far as I can see it's all lumped under the same genre with the pure clickers being the ones that don't really get much long-term attention (people actually hate clicking beyond the beginning of these games!). I can relate to the drug habit comment too. When I first got into the genre it was with Clicker Heroes. Late game (at least when I played), the fastest way to progress was to do half-hour prestige loops. I was at this point for a couple weeks, I think, when I realized that this was literally eating away at my free time and that this wasn't what I signed up for, and turned it off forever. Some people legitimately love that, but for me it was problematic. Since then, I've changed the way I digest these games; if it begins to require too much directly active play (focus) from me (and it's not one of the shorter, "beatable" games), I tend to turn it off. Thanks for commenting, it means a lot!
if the game is more complex than just clicking on a sprite... it should not be called "Idle Game" because you can't be idle, you need to take decisions even if there are some numbers incrementing automatically on screen... You could say, that it has "idle game"'s mechanics
Snoman, just make sure you play Spaceplan(the best), Loot Box Quest(this one is literally a dollar on steam and can be beaten in a day, with a hilarious story and ending, trust me it's worth it!), and the eternally beloved with good reason, Universal Paperclips.
Creator of Pixels Filling Squares 3.0 here, thanks for the shoutout and sticking out for the genre! There is a lot of stigma around incremental games, but I feel over the years it started reaching broader audiences and more of the core gamers started seeing their value beyond being time-wasters/skinner boxes, it's nice to see somebody explain that in a concise manner.
@@LucyTheBox The trend for the past couple of years is to go away with the clicking mechanics, most if not all recent good games in the genre don't use 'click on screen to get resource' mechanic which ironically makes open-world survival sims or Minecraft and it's clones more Clicker than the games that are called that :P There are also incremental games without Idle components at all (Disgaea series being one of the best high profile examples). Those that do include idle mechanics are usually just a resource management sims without lose condition and their vast popularity could be easily explained by the fact that people just like chill casual games to procrastinate to.
@@MrMoczan Hello game creator. Keep up the passionate work! If anything, you could say clicker games are more open about their addictive mechanics than say Minecraft; games which have their addictive components buried in another activity wasting time IN a game. I see the clicker genre as a deconstruction.
Man, after watching this, I really feel bad for the small devs who created actual games with the clicker mechanic but get drowned out by the companies squeezing some money out of it’s playerbase.
I've made clicker games because as a beginner / only dev, the mechanics are simple to implement they let you do a lot in the way of flavor text/ depth , and require relatively little art to work But it's inherently tied to the predatory tactics a lot of games use
This is one of the reasons cookie clicker is one of my favourite idle games. It was one of first idle games and it was made entirely by two people, and it has no microtransactions whatsoever
IKR, does this guy seriously believe that people with differing opinions coming from unique views on a subject can treat each other as anything better than trash? What is this, the real world? I thought I was on the internet!
Cookie Clicker was entertaining just for the bizarre, surreal narrative that slowly unveils itself as you get into the most expensive upgrades. Kittens Game is the most mechanically complex one I've played thus far, though, and I really enjoyed it. I bought the Kittens app. Thanks for making this video. I feel we now have a summary of both the good and the bad that came out of "clicker" games.
I mean I played cookie clicker for the insane strats in the late game, but I realised there are other games with even more insane setups that I moved on to.
Been playing Cookie Clicker since 2013. Just finished Galaxia in a couple of hours. Really fun! Thanks for the essay, and the recommendations. I had never looked for another idle game before.
Great video, but if I may disagree in the fact that cookie clicker is not vanilla. I believe it to be quite clever due to it's synergistic elements that it imposes on players. It sort of forces them to think, and that's a big part of the fun: Finding out the best combination is extremely rewarding, more then saying, "Haha, number go up! Yay, yay!" It's prestige elements to me, golden cookies, and the many variables add so much to it, and not only that but it's constantly being updated. I can't wait for dungeons, as I'm sure it will add so much more to the game, just as the garden did when it was added. Otherwise, good video.
I would also consider Factorio an example of a much deeper and fleshed out version of theses games. In essence, it's very similar to Mine Defense. The fun in these games for me is to figure out how to optimize the progression. From this perspective, they are really puzzle games.
sandship is basically better factorio. Im one of the pre beta testers and sandship is not open to community as of now, but its so good even in pre beta. I wonder how good will it be in 1.0 if its so good in pre beta :)
I wouldnt lump factorio with incremental games. Factorio has a lose mechanic. Your buildings could get destroyed. Progress lost. Incremental games dont have a lose mechanic.
Watched both videos. I think the idle genre is more a distillation of what games inherently are. Some find it compelling, I personally prefer more bells and whistles, but the point is this: underneath the hood of (almost) every video game is the core concept of the idle game, raw progression. I play a lot of Borderlands 2, and that game can be broken down into an idle game very easily. You break it out into an experience bar, a story progress bar, a DPS bar, I mean the core loop of that game is clicking on bandit heads to get new guns to increase damage to further click on more bandit heads, and the bandit heads require more clicks to blow up with increased progress. Just because some games are shinier or have a more active model doesn't mean they are fundamentally not similar in terms of end goal. While I don't find idle games fun myself due to the inactivity vector, I still appreciate their value in the space as pure distillation. tl;dr Idle games are the moonshine to the game industry's wine and whiskey. Same in essence, distilled stronger, and requiring a certain taste for it.
Here's my attempt at a counter-argument. STATEMENT: A lot of people, including myself, don't play games for the sake of raw progression. I blitzed the shit out of Yakuza Kiwami over a week last December, and the main draw of most of it wasn't progress for progress' sake, but to experience what the game had to offer, from the intense main story to the wacky sidequests and cool minigames. I'll admit that I did some of these for the sake of gaining completion points and clearing out the completion list, but in the end, I only completed the main quest to completion and 99% of the substories. I even attempted to 100% the game, but quickly realized that between the gambling minigames (fuck those they can go to hell), Shogi (essentially japanese chess. I am bad at chess) and Mahjhong (OH GOD WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING), I quickly gave up because... well, frankly? FUCK THAT NOISE. Not to mention the climax battles, Haruka's requests post-game, and some other things. I simply couldn't stomach the grind, and without any significant reward for completing them, I gave up on the game. I got what I came for and was satisfied. How does this apply to most idle/clicker/incremental games, you may ask? My answer would be that I couldn't justify investing inordinate amounts of time into these games for little to no reward. Inevitable, the rate of progress stalls, and I decide that _screw this, there's more fun things I could be doing than watching numbers go up._ Yeah, that's all I got. Sorry for the lame ending. TL;DR: I don't play games to just watch numbers go up. Yakuza had the main story and substories, but most idle games don't have anything to offer beyond waiting for numbers going up. And note the _just_ there, if you showed me an idle game had more to offer, I'll gladly give it a shot.
@@gamemaniac2013 I get what you're saying, but what I was pointing to was the underlying system of progression seen across video games as a medium. Nearly every game has progression in some fashion, even if it's not what you're playing for, and it is the ultimate goal of the game even if it is not the core source of enjoyment. You played through Yakuza Kiwami's story, and you played it to see the story, but that story had to progress, hence the underlying core concept of progression. Not all progression is in the form of numbers going up, but it can always be *represented* in that fashion. I'm a programmer, I think in numbers a lot. That said, the systems in place to attain that progression are different based on things like genre. For idle/clicker games, it's a pure progression. It aims to distill down video games into JUST progression. For some people, this is compelling to engage in. I'm more in your camp where I dislike it and don't have the patience for it (which I actually said in the OP, the "bells and whistles" comment). I'm simply trying to explain the perceived appeal for many people who enjoy these games. I think it's a valid thing to enjoy, if you like the underlying concept and are willing to bear the issues associated with the genre, like all genres. I play Monster Hunter, and a lot of people think it's not worth their time on a very similar basis as to why idle games are often dismissed. Hunting Action games, in general, require a lot of patient analysis and repetitive tasks, but Monster Hunter is just something I've always enjoyed because of the experience of the struggle. That's my core reason for playing games, I enjoy the struggle against the system and overcoming it to be victorious. Gaming is very personal in that sense, everyone has their own reasons for playing. The tl;dr is: even if you aren't playing for progression, it's happening. It's what drives the experience, progress from point A to B to C, whether that be in story beats or rising numbers.
The comparison to borderlands 2 is really apt actually. Especially because grinding a boss for a specific unique drop is basically the same as grinding a ton of currency for a big productivity upgrade. You spend a long time doing inane things for a big change. Both can't really be 'rushed' due to the reliance on exponential growth. And both frequently have specific 'builds' that differentiate between people who know what they are doing and casual players.
With Stardew Valley, I had to use cheats to stop playing. I got so addicted, so fast, that I literally played 36 hours straight from minute 1. I started playing on Sunday afternoon, my girlfriend went home in the evening, I kept playing through monday (was between jobs), and when tuesday morning came around, I told myself "This is not going to be good for you... You need to quit fast". I decided to do exactly the thing you mention in the video. I looked up a hack, spent 2-3 hours exploring everything the game had to offer by giving myself large incremental boosts, to the point where I had unlocked pretty much everything, and was content with "knowing the game". After I felt I was done, I gave myself unlimited resources and time, and spent around half an hour finding "optimal" farming strats for cash, and then I passed out from exhaustion. When I woke up, my save-game was ruined because of my hacking, and I was able to move on. I don't think I would've been able to without doing that. TL;DR - I committed suicide by inflation because I got so addicted.
Hands down, my favourite story based idle game ever is candy box 2. I love that game. The original was good, but candybox 2 blew its predecessor out of the water.
Just kill me. And Just Kill Me 3 on mobile. Story-based, intriguing, edge-of-the-seat cliffhanger story scenes before you have to kill more enemies to trigger the next story sequence.
Zhon Cinema no. Everyone has a bad stigma about it. If you want. There’s a great discord community full of great people. Search up the cookie clicker discorde
Yeah, this was insulting to me. Both Snoman and Ingeniousclown act like Cookie Clicker is a primitive cave man game when they've been adding shit even just last year and the end game is ridiculously deep. You continue to gain entirely new mechanics months after starting a file.
Amazing video. I've had this discussion with some of my friends and I usually end up distilling my argument down to this single sentence: "clicker games are more or less just the same as any other game, stripped down to it's most basic form, action and reward. that is why we play games instead of watching movies, or reading a book." once again, great video and count me as a new subscriber!
that argument would also apply for reading the alphabet over and over and over instead of reading a book, or watching a rainbow mandelbrot zoom instead of watching a film. there is no value in the thing at its most base, chaotic form (only potential) - the value comes from the experiences we carve out of that formless pulp.
Honestly, I really like Cookie Clicker, and find it very entertaining, one of the big things that make it better is the garden, and the other couple minigames. Plus, there's a lot to it and a lot of achievements, which I really like.
yes, I feel like lumping cookie clicker into those other "incrementals of the past" is wrong. Its unique, scales well, has lots of shifts in strategy from focusing buildings, to upgrades, to prestige, to combos, to the garden and grimoire, and theres much to explore. Still one of the best, if not THE best, clicker/incremental game out there. I've always loved this genre and can say pretty confidently that you won't find anything much better.
@@cheerio662 what's funny is when the creator made the first classic version(which really was just a vanilla clicker) he made it in a couple of hours and made it to parody modern game mechanic systems by just highlighting you can really make a game about anything as long as it's just about a number going up.
IdleOn, Tap Ninja, and Armory & Machine are some of my all time favorites. The first beta of A&M2 I played was awesome, but each update got worse until it was unplayable, so it gets a special mention. All of these are Indie btw. IdleOn has a lot of resemblance to MapleStory. You have a group of chatacters, whom are all always working when offline (unless you leave them somewhere where they can't). Many quests and several classes with subclasses. Bonus if you have DID or something similar, I find letting each alter play their own character isba great teambuilding and bonding experience. Tap Ninja has an awesome discord community on top of the game. It's the type of game I always have running on my computer. Has ads, but they're optional, and ONLY on mobile versions. You can't watch them on the steam version. You have a ninja who's always running, and for the most part is a basic incremental, but I really like it. Even got one hidden achievement, and know of another. Plus the pets have animations when you click them!(this has no mechanical benefit) Armory & Machine is extremely basic, but has good game feel imo. No art, all greyscale ui with exception of progress bars, but a solid game. As you play, you start to find lore, and even new mechanics unlock. It's a good time, and the only ad is locked behind a progress wall and out of the way to watch it. Spoiler Alert, the rest of this comment is a spoiler. You will eventually unlock combat, and this will take over a lot of your gameplay, as focus shifts from restoring the tower to improving your combat abilities seamlessly. Fuel can get annoying to wait on, but it's a resource you make and is limited by your own setup. Plus there's a thing you can fight for infinite fuel that costs barely anything.
I originally agreed with snoman's video because his experience with the genre mirrored my own. However, after watching this video I feel like trying out some of these games you mentioned in the video. These newer games look like major improvements on the (frankly crap) idle games of the past. Thank you.
I actually just watched the other video an hour before this came out, thought my sub box broke lol Edit: I have to agree with you, clicker games are not all just copy/paste, sure there's a lot of them like that but developers have been getting creative with their own and you can really see the passion behind them
realm grinder is my all time favourite game. The strategy involved in theory crafting new builds with each new paradigm shift is the best build crafting I've ever experienced out of every rpg game I've ever played. The achievements are so fun and create unique playthroughs with huge variations in approach. I've played a lot of RPGs and realm grinder is still my favourite. clicker games are good.
The Mafia Wars example is really baffling to me. You illustrate why very well via Stardew Valley, but even in games that aren't similar to clickers at all a glitch that gives you progress would always be a way of losing out on enjoyment. Say I got a glitch in Half-Life 2 that warps me straight from the train at the start of the game to the final battle. That's most definitely not a good glitch, I'm not happy it happened. The entire point of any game is to *play* the game. A glitch that forces you to skip the process of playing the game by definition makes the game worse.
I counter that a glitch that *allows* you to skip the process of playing the game makes the game better, but not because it skips the fun of the game. I think it adds replay value, at least if the glitch is complicated to pull off. If you're going through a glitched route, I think you should absolutely have played the game through, maybe even several times. But a glitch with sequence break or timesaving potential does not inherently make the game worse - in the case of sequence breaking, it can make a fun challenge to play through the game in the "wrong order" or with no in-game buffs; with timesaves, you can speedrun the game and try to get that glitch as fast as possible. Any glitch that forces people to do something like skip to the end of a game is a sign of lazy (or, in a less Fundamental Attribution Error way, understaffed) devs who didn't sufficiently quality-control their code. Glitches should pretty much only show up if you're looking for them or happen to do an unlikely sequence of events.
The one thing I will say: after watching Snoman's video and going back to check in on Cookie Clicker, I must admit that despite the faults in the game, *Cookie Clicker is one of the most well-polished idle games on the market.* When I compared it with all the games that you showcased at the end, none of them could really compare with just how good Cookie Clicker looks. Mine Defense, Kittens Game, Wizards and Minions Idle, and NGU Idle might have good gameplay, but their core design is simply lacking. Universal Paperclips and Trimps have understandably minimalistic designs, which is fine (also I'm biased because I've played both). Even the best of the best looking idle games you listed, Pixels filling Squares and Spaceplan, cannot compete visually with Cookie Clicker. Cookie Clicker is just an outstandingly designed/stylized game. It may have shallow gameplay, but it still deserves its props. Probably the most appealing thing about Cookie Clicker is the ironic, punny, and sarcastic remarks that are used as the flavor texts for the upgrades and achievements; Cookie Clicker acknowledges it's simplicity with numerous meta-jokes and self-reflectances. In the end, the numbers still go up, and that's still your goal, but that doesn't help a game from being as beautiful of an idle game as we are going to get (and also the EASTER EGG REFERENCES) Pretty much what I'm getting at is that Cookie Clicker is the true, vanilla clicker game. It does exactly what you expect for a clicker game, (and I'd argue that it does what you expect and more; the four minigames that can now be unlocked really spice up what one would consider typical gameplay, as well as the Ascension, which is a unique spin on prestiging), and does it flawlessly. Because it's been around so long, Ortiel has had plenty of time to perfect the craft (it's still being updated after 5.5 years...) to deliver an all-around enjoyable experience, regardless if you're just clicking a stinking cookie.
Anyone who has played games for a while knows that design and graphics are pretty meaningless when it comes to whether the game is good or not. There's many incredible looking games out there that are terrible, and many terrible looking games that are insanely fun. Some examples of games that can be considered to have sub-par graphics are factorio, minecraft, terraria, civilisation, and more. Would you consider games with such "bad design" bad? Not well-polished? For a bit of context, factorio is one of the most highly rated games on the steam store, and you probably already know by now that minecraft is the second best-selling game of all time, only beaten by tetris, a game that can also be considered to have sub-par graphics. That's not even mentioning civilisation, yet another revolutionary game that spawned a whole bunch of incredible sequels. Compare to a game with good graphics but terrible gameplay like the initial release nms, or godus, and you can see how graphics simply don't correlate with game quality. My point is, considering the quality of the game and how "well-polished" the game is by its design and art is one of the most shallow judgements possible - basically judging a book by its cover. Even then, many of the games here still look amazing, with realm grinder's pixelated graphics having a certain charm to them, idle wizard certainly having some great graphics, and more. If your comment was only meant to point out quality of graphics, I do apologise, of course :)
@@huaen8880 you disconsidered how cookie clicker has actually gotten a LOT deeper with times and updates, the game now plays nothing like it used to when the player progresses, i thought it was weird how ingenious didnt even mention cookie clicker when he was talking about the paradigm shift
@@zoinksboy3786 If I missed out something on cookie clicker, sorry about that. I was mainly addressing the point about how graphics simply don't equate to quality, not really pointing towards cookie clicker specifically. Hmm, maybe I need to look at it again...
@@huaen8880 wait wtf, i replied to the wrong comment lmfao, i'm sorry, yea i agree with almost everything you said, i was meaning to reply to a guy that was saying how he was using the word paradigm without it actually meaning anything, idfk sorry lol
Clicker games are a fantastic example of what game design is and how people tend to interpret the term completely wrong. "Game design" was invented to make games more fun. All "rules" in the game design book are guidelines and tips, which help the designer to create something that is more enjoyable for players. However, you can purposefully neglect such a "rule" to make the game more interesting and perhaps even more fun, given the correct context. When people look at this strictly, they may say to themselves: "Ugh, it's bad game design" (you didn't follow the rules), even though this may significantly increase the joy of the game for the designated target group. As people all have different interests, there will never be a game that statisfies everyone, even if it follows all these game design guidelines. They are simply handhelds for a designer to have a bit of grip to increase the amount of fun for players. No matter how "badly designed" a game might be, there is at least someone out there having fun with it. Perhaps it's a niche group of people, or maybe it's just 2 people in total, but true "bad game design" doesn't really exist: The people are just less likely to enjoy the game. Again, clicker games are a great example for this, since the fun in the clickers is purely based on the character of the player (whether you like exploration or not). People who don't like exploration will inheritely turn against these games and thus have less fun, which results in them calling it "bad game design", when in reality, they're not part of the target group. P.S.: Game design should really, like music theory, be called 'Game Theory' or 'Game Design Theory'. It's just some theory which helps you in designing games, much like music theory helps you to design musical pieces. You can move away from your music theory and still create a fantastic piece (the best composers do this all the time)! Game design (theory) is exactly the same in that regard.
Thats an interest way to see it, and i have to admit that while idle genre is not for everyone and doesnt follow the same rules as a normal videogame, i dont think that would excuse all types of flaws. Despite not consider myself a fan of the genre, there are a few games that i genuinely enjoyed, but Cookie Clicker (that is often regarded as the best one), sorry, but i dont believe is that good, in fact, i think is a very bad game, even for the standards of the genre. You can enjoy games with not good design, i also do it, but that is not objectively good for a game. Objective and enjoyment are two different things. You can enjoy "bad design" but you have to admit is not objectively good.
Candybox !! PLAY CANDYBOX IT'S SO GOOOOOOD I don't understand how no video about clicker games don't talk about it. How is it not one of the most know ones ? It's so unique and fun and creative...
I've been playing a few idle games over the years, namely Cookie Clicker, Clicker Heroes, Spaceplan and IdleAnt, among others, but I just spent the last few months on Kittens Game. Just as you said, this one is loaded with paradigm shifts and you constantly want to prioritize something over the rest. All the previous games I played relied on a pretty straight forward mechanic that didn't really evolve much. I liked IdleAnt because of the way you could produce things that produce things and end up with an exponentially increasing rate of production but that's pretty much all the game has to offer (before I got bored of it, that is). Kittens Game, on the other hand, has so many different resources, varied upgrades, an experience system for your kittens, a semi-hidden unicorn related mechanic, time manipulation, etc. I even think that the total lack of graphics in the game is a rather good thing as it would only be a distraction. I love your channel and I hope you make a bunch of videos on the upcoming Hollow Knight: Silksong when it comes out :)
I love that your example of a paradigm shift heavy game was Mine Defense. That's also always my go to example for the best implementation of paradigm shifts in incremental games. I've never seen an incremental game keep throwing them at you so frequently as Mine Defense does. I must have played through that game at least a dozen times over the years.
I remember player a clicker game called “Almost Hero’s” game was super fun and interactive, almost an full rpg. good hours were spent in that game. Good times
I gotta admit, I had my prejudice with this genre (Well before Snoman's vid). Probably still not for me, but I'll acknowledge that it has good games pushing the envelope.
The most irritating thing about people who bash on idle games is how reductive their core argument is. Almost all critics boil the whole genre down to nothing more than "watching numbers go up is so stupid and simple it is simply boring and you all are morons for falling for it." Okay. So fps games aren't about increasing kill count for no other reason than it makes you ego feel good. Rpgs where you level up and improve gear for no other reason than beating a tougher mob makes you feel better. Platformers are manipulative because people feel good when they reach a goal. Sure when you break down the core game design of anything its simple manipulation of human psychology, but that is why we enjoy games. The fact that even simple idle games can be satisfying to people should be applauded for a minimalist approach to game design, but no, instead those games get roasted and the genre as a whole is written off as lazy.
Personally, I dislike idle games because they have no other mechanics, and you have to wait longer and longer to get to "play" the game, which is just upgrading your money making thing, whatever it is.
@@happyburgerman9724 try distance incrmental you can beat it in a week or less it's not that grindy also ever heard of prestige layers machines challenges ? Well I can't say distance incrmental is an clicker game
I despise idle games, but that’s because I’m impatient and often play games that reach and ending quickly. After seeing this video, I now have an appreciation for it. While it’s still not my cup of tea, I see why there so popular now.
I came into this video expecting the argument to be that Snoman is wrong because idle Skinner Box games are actually very very good game design used for evil. I've played a few idle and clicker games, especially Cookie Clicker, and that's all most people really think of in the genre. I walked away from Cookie Clicker and games designed to be idle sooner or later for the reasons that Snoman and other critics say, but I've also played A Dark Room. Since you brought it up, I remember that it starts out almost entirely with clicker mechanics, and I almost walked away from it in the early stages because I've learned to quit clicker/idle games before I get addicted. But the reason I didn't do that was because I had found it by searching for story games and also I was able to see that there might be things just out of reach that were more useful than just "Make Numbers Go Up Faster", and eventually I reached a point where the upgrades madethe exploration component actually worth trying, and suddenly I was playing a roguelike. My decisions had evolved from "I need sticks to keep the fire burning" into "I need to be able to carry more water so I can explore more of the map for better resources". And the roguelike is all I remembered of it before you brought it up here. I'm actually interested in trying Spaceplan now.
I love seeing two serious analysis channels arguing over a subject like this. I mean, I'm still with Snoman, but I enjoyed your arguments and analysis. Also, and this is something of a pet hate right now, the word you were looking for was not fallacy! A fallacy is the use of a faulty form of argument not simply being wrong. You probably mean fallacious or just, you know, wrong.
@@ingeniousclown thank you for opening up my eyes to the fact that, other than "wrong", there is pretty much no way to describe the idea of being wrong in English without somehow invoking a penis somewhere
My thought exactly. There are a lot of amazing incremental games there now, but none of them have kept me playing for years straight like Anti-Idle. Plus Tukkun could really use some love.
I never knew that the clicker game genre has been evolving so much, though I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Thanks for creating this response video to give another viewpoint on this rising game genre
But the one thing that makes these gamers clicker games is the worst part of them.. Wouldn't they be way more fun if they weren't clicker games, since the thing that's interesting about them are the paradime shifts and they could just also be in any other more fun game?
Paradigm shifts like this are incredibly difficult to pull off in a "normal" kind of game. The complexities of the mechanics of movement, jumping, shooting, running, bouncing, leveling up, etc... each one on its own could require an amount of work that is more than a fully-featured idle game. They'd also require more focused, active play on the part of the player, and because of that, if any paradigm shift doesn't "feel good" or "play well", it risks frustrating or boring the player and can cause them to quit. The risk is insanely high to put big paradigm shifts in bigger games. Look at Evoland, though. It's one of the only commercially available games I can think of that has significant paradigm shifts. It's a fun game, but it's nothing I'd consider fantastic or spectacular. Just really cool.
It's pretty similar to experimental music or post rock hipster nonsense wherein the long drawn out boring elements are what make the climactic heights so powerful. Without the boring clicking part(which I actually do enjoy, Clicker Heroes 2 wrecked a portion of my life), the paradigm shift isn't nearly as powerful or affecting. It's not exactly good design, but it does work.
@@ingeniousclown but clicking and micromanaging economies is an arbitrarily specific mechanic. plenty of games were experimental and minimalistic before idle games took off. this is just a gimmick genre for people who already wasted their time playing pointless clicker games in years past and now want to feel slightly more mature about their silly behaviour prove me wrong
@@ingeniousclown If you are up for a challenge, play Celeste; one of the greatest platformers I have ever played. It has some interesting mechanics which are introduced to you as late as during the last level of the game, the twist being that these mechanics were always usable. You just wouldn't discover them easily on your own. After learning them you can use them in earlier levels for speedrunning and such, if you want to.
I see a good incremental game in much the same way as an RPG or RTS, with the difference that the mechanical execution is done for you, so you can instead focus entirely on making strategic decisions. The problem with bad incremental games is that they don't have deep strategic decisions either, so you're left with nothing but a game where progression is made for progression's sake, rather than to overcome obstacles or to reward good decisions. Now I will agree with Snoman here and say that this type of bad game design is actually harmful, it's an addictive time sink that doesn't develop your skills or your character in any way. A good idle game is all about making clever resource management challenging and rewarding, and providing plenty of new experiences and novel challenges along the way, perhaps even ways to lose progress. The gameplay itself should not be a chore, nor should it virtually play itself. Personally I also like when they have an ending, it's really unsatisfying to reach a "final boss" and then the game just resets itself and starts over with you getting a prestige point or something. That more than anything feels like I'm just being baited into playing the game for ad revenue or whatever. Also I despise games with active clicking rather than idling. Clicking rapidly isn't fun, it's just a fast way to carpal tunnel. Most people I know who got into those games ended up using an autoclicker anyway, cheating became more fun than actually playing the game as intended. Finally, one of the best things about these types of games is that you can play them on the side. Even if you just have a minute to spare, that can be plenty of time to switch to the game and get some management work done. Very few types of games have this flexibility. Edit: I didn't watch the video before writing this. I realize that he brought up most of the same points.
I hope you enjoyed the video! Here's a bunch of links for you in case you missed them in the description. Watch Snoman's video here: th-cam.com/video/C-9ASzBErjo/w-d-xo.html Check out the Incremental Games subreddit: www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/ Links to games mentioned at the end of the video: Mine Defense ► www.scholtek.com/minedefense Realm Grinder ► store.steampowered.com/app/61... Kittens Game ► bloodrizer.ru/games/kittens/ A Dark Room ► adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/ Spaceplan ► store.steampowered.com/app/61... Wizard and Minion Idle ► store.steampowered.com/app/10... Pixels Filling Squares 3.0 ► www.kongregate.com/games/mocz... Idle Wizard ► store.steampowered.com/app/99... NGU Idle ► www.kongregate.com/games/some... Trimps ► trimps.github.io/ Universal Paperclips ► www.decisionproblem.com/paperc... Antimatter Dimensions ► ivark.github.io/ Links to games in the video, but not mentioned: Candy Box ► candybox2.github.io/candybox/ Candy Box 2 ► candybox2.github.io/ Galaxia ► www.templegatesgames.com/galax... Fragment Hunters ► www.kongregate.com/games/mmx9... Clicker Heroes ► store.steampowered.com/app/36... Cookie Clicker ► orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/ Leave a comment if I forgot one and I'll try my best to add it!
I first got into Candybox and a Dark Room several years back, they are still lovely games I go back and play. I've played most of these Idle games, and sure it gets boring after a set of time, when the progression gets too stale, some like Spaceplan are therefore really fun and as they are moderately short, a really pleasant change compared to the massive clicker/inc games such as Idle Wizard or Realm Grinder.
I love cookie clicker, it’s right up my alley, I love how it goes from baking cookies to popping eldritch beings for cookies and awakening grandmatriarchs is what makes it sooo good
If you enjoy the idea of idle games, watching numbers rise and the like, I would highly recommend factorio. Granted, it’s not quite a clicker game, but is more of a evolution of the genre. You manage resources, starting with nothing, automate your mining, research and building, then you build more, you *click* more. The auto miners and automation factories remind a lot of buying grandmas in cookie clicker or other upgrades in idle games. Also, the enjoyment received around working out logistical problems to get everything working automatically and properly is extremely addicting and extremely satisfying. Seriously, go check it out.
true, but the really good ones arent clickers or idles, incrementals or an incremental and idle and the incremental and clickers, one is reactor incremental (not reactor idle) with some major breakthroughs in the game while incrementally increasing the speed
I used to play a merge game in the early 2010's that I loved so much, it was something about being a god and you started of, I think, with just the 4 elements and went on from there. I loved that game so much, I can never forget how funny I thought it was when I managed to create "petrol" by merging "dinosaurs" with "mountain"... But I've never found it again. All merge games I've seen since are on the idea of "make x ever 10 seconds; merge 2 x's to make y. After 40 seconds, merge 2y to make z! Then you can wait a minute and 20 seconds to turn 2z into a! and MY GOD does it get old, boring and soul sucking fast!
@@nickandrews5465 from his discord: "alright i'm quitting my two main channels and my job and i'm going to go full time into a new idea that i call "Clown Covers" where i dress up like a clown and cover music first project is the smash ultimate theme second project is devil went down to georgia but its a ukulele"
The mafia wars anecdote brings to mind an experience of my own in a MUCH more active game, Payday 2. I was the direct target along with three other people of a 'charitable' hacker. He turned in far more parts on a mission, from an entirely different mission, which were worth an amount that left me totaling in the billion dollar range at the end of the mission. We didn't know he was doing it of course until we were already ending the mission, and it was to late to abort. This...spoiled my enjoyment of the game for a VERY long time until I basically prestiged to lose all the money, effectively being forced to start over before i really wanted to because of a 'favorable' action in a game. A wise friend once said, "If a game is fun, why would you want to rush it? Enjoy the game, and everything else will come along with that." and it's instances like this that prove that.
Thanks for this. I found A Dark Room and Candies a few years back, and they were so different to any other game I'd ever played (I had never played another idle/clicker game), that I started taking notes on what they did and still remember them fondly even though I never made it all that far.
I do think each of your arguments have merits and problems, so I want to tackle my issues with clicker games in a different method. You mentioned how a lot of newer clicker games are similar to management games with how you need to interact with intersecting mechanics for optimization and I want to discuss that. As someone who grew up on platformers and RPGs, games usually need to provide two main things for me, a sense of progression and obstacles that are overcome by skill. If you take away obstacles, I'll still be able to enjoy the game if it has a great story. If there's no progression, then I can enjoy the raw gameplay with the interaction of mechanics. Most people are referring to simple cookie clicker type games where the only progress is numbers and the only mechanics are exponential modifiers, and I feel in that core those two aspects of gaming are betrayed. The progression is a shallow escalator and the obstacles are non-existent. You mentioned there's little difference between the core gameplay loop of other games right? All games progression & obstacles are inherently repetitive, from roguelites to BRs to managment games to walking experiences. But in other games that progress is either blocked until your interaction (even if its as little as grinding wild Pokemon battles) and they provide progress (even if it's as simple as a new environment or bigger numbers on your loot). I believe all good games do one of this well, and great games do both. The difference depends on the definition of the genre. To me a *clicker* is a game with a UI-based interface based around exponential numbers. In a clicker you always have progression with the exponential growth being a soft obstacle. A tower defense game is similar, but has mechanical interaction & decision making that prevents progress. Now do optimization/efficiency mechanics change that? They do make progression harder using mechanics, but are they management games now instead of clickers? Maybe, I think *paradigm shifts* are similar to interacting with a new mechanic in a management sim where the goal is growing your population/resources. To me, clicker games started as the simplest abstraction of what a management game is, and your explanation of evolution is pushing them back to management sims with a bit of mechanical depth. I think clickers hinge on the fact that people just like numbers increasing, and I respect everyone has their preferences, but I think they rely on a psychological loophole which is like selling bottled water. Yes its bottled, but you didn't provide anything but a wrapper to a base aspect of human beings and it feels manipulative.
I've played most of the games featured in this video and have been playing at least one or two clickers at a time continuously for the past few years. That being said, while I agree with some of your points, I find myself agreeing with more of Snoman's points. Especially about the predatory design of the idle games that involve micro transactions. "Watch this ad to get 1 hour free", "pay $2.99 to get 1000 gold" are generally combined with free games that have deliberately bad gameplay that can only be improved by paying to make it suck less. This kind of monetization sucks in all game types, but it very common in idle games. That's why most of the best idle games have terrible graphics and are made by one guy doing it for fun / the love of the game, rather than a polished title made for $$. I would love to see a day when we can get quality idle games on Steam for $5 without the shitty pay-to-not-suck mechanics. Great videos from both of you guys though.
I just left a big comment on Snoman's video with my thoughts, and you said highlighted all my points, except with even more good defensive points, and said them way better than I worded them! I'm really pleased to see someone enjoys clicker games as much as me. I've only played Cookie Clicker, Realm Grinder, and Kittens Game, but now I have so many more to try out, thanks to your recommendations!
So, I may be wrong, but it sounds like you are mostly defending idlers on the grounds that idlers are becoming more like management or tycoon games, which makes them deeper and more interesting. At that point though, it isn't really the idle or clicker part of the game that is interesting, its the strategy. So you end up not defending idlers, but defending management or tycoon mechanics that can be used in both idlers or regular management games.
Paperclips might have been a better example than Mine Defense on what a 'paradigm' shift would be. Some of the cases minimize what the term paradigm means. Kittens was a FIRE choice tho! And Idle Wizard is DOPE AF!
I've watched a good number of both your and Snoman's videos, and I just wanted to say thanks for making this one. I'd played a couple simple incrementals in the past and found them to be a fun distraction. Now, I'm 22 days into Mine Defense, started Kittens Game a few days ago, and have played through several of the shorter games you featured.
Clicker games are exactly the same as any other game, except sparse enough that you can play while you do other things. Like. How are RPG stats or killstreaks or any other element of other types of games not "just watching numbers go up"? The only difference is the level of engagement, if I want to play something but can't muster the attention span, I'll open a clicker and keep my mind occupied with a game that doesn't require much of my attention span. Tbh it helps me think when my brain is scattered, the small accomplishments kinda "reset" my thinking and are almost meditative.
I feel like the problem that Snoman’s Bad game design subseries is that he personally doesn’t see the appeal in that type of design. I usually try not to call anything good or bad, even outrage worthy games like pre-update No Man’s Sky have the perfect player to enjoy it. I was going to compare game taste to physical taste in an attempt to show how ridiculous it would be if people got upset in the same way over food they dislike, but then I remembered how much people irrationally hate pineapple on pizza.
No offense but there are so many better clickers than the ones in this video like the ones on mobile. Tap titans 2, tap tycoon, doomsday clicker, ragnarok clicker etc. Tap titans consistently upgrades the level cap has tournaments and so on. I feel like this video was made in 2010 and just uploaded. Again I don't want to sound offensive but the suggestions on how to keep the genre fresh are thriving and constantly improving on mobile platforms.
What I find interesting is that virtually all the core components of idle games date back to Candy Box. They might get more complex, they might take those ideas in exciting new directions. I mean, when you started talking about having a story and an end, I thought you were going to mention it there. :)
While I appreciate your love and dedication to this genre, your analysis feels bloated with fancier ways of describing the same exact thing. The "paradigm shift," as you call it, is just additional things to click, additional numbers to rise. It's not a change in gameplay, it's not additional mechanics. It's just more of the same. The games you mention that DO change up the formula wind up being completely different genres altogether. Resource Management games are their own genre and aren't a defense to Clickers and Idles, just because you can also click and idle in those games. The rest of your video is just saying Snoman is wrong for being right while making up scenarios in Stardew Valley that don't actually exist, which drives home his point in the first place. These scenarios DO exist in Clickers, and that's the problem. I get it, man. Some people just really, really love Surstromming. But you're not going to convince the rest of the world because it's your own personal taste. In the end, you really are just clicking buttons to see numbers rise. And that's okay.
the mechanics do change. in cookie clicker for example, it gets to a point where upgrades are not worth buying anymore or you literally bought them all, then the best way of progressing is by the minigames you unlock, like the farm, pantheon or grimoire, which are ALL minigames based on the player's choice instead of just mindlessly clicking, after you bought all the upgrades, in cookie clicker, you'll pratically ignore the amount of cookies you'll have, and just focus on sugar lumps (which is better to get from farms) or prestiege levels, its not about the cookies number you have anymore. and thats what he's talking about when he reffers to the paradigm shift
also, yea there are some shitty clickers out there just like there's some shitty rpgs out there, but saying all clickers are doomed to be bad because they're clickers is just being close-minded
I agree I thought that. As soon as we;re given different things to click and choose, we move away from the simple clicker. But then the original video also did this by moving on to waiting games, and the strategy aspects in the games describe here are more an extension of those kind of games. Games can just be great whatever amount of interactivity they require to play. You get well made ones and less enjoyable ones. I played My Name Is Mayo on PS4 and it is pure clicking, not even levelling up! The goals were watching only one number go up; the number of clicks. The goal posts were unlocking various skin variations and the trophies. It didn't exactly end but there was a point where nothing new happened, so it wasn't an endless game, but enjoyed it for what it did!
Candy Box is my favorite clicker game. Dat ASCII art. I think you'd be interested in watching some of Edmund McMillen's (developer of The Binding of Isaac) interviews where he talks about his disdain for clicker games and how he made one of his own to prove a point nearly a decade ago.
Excellent video. One thing I would like to add would be to add to your rebuttal against No End Game is a bad thing. I think that all comes down to a journey vs. destination argument, but that many games have no set ending. MMOs, for example, or Adventure Mode in Diablo 3. If what you're doing during the journey, then there is no need for a destination.
Kongregate was so nice to play idle wizard on waiting in between spell cooldowns chatting with the community of others much love to that community. For reference I suggested the interrgator pet
Just published my first game on Steam "Dead Profit" so I got a little offended by snowman so appreciate you explaining exactly how I feel, cant wait to see where the genre goes!
That was an amazing video! You made very good points about clickers, especially about how they are inspiring people to become game developers because of their simplicity to make, even me, and now after seeing tons of examples of other games, I can definitely see the flaws in my original and explore what could be done with it! :)
Wow! I love idle and clicker games, but I hadn't heard of all the ones you mentioned, and now I'm playing two of them! I didn't even know there was a subreddit for it either. Great video!
I agree with both sides, really. Clicker games can be fun, but they have the potential to be predatory. They take advantage of the "sunken cost" principle where if they make it easy to make progress early on, you'll stick with it later down the line because you've already spent so much time invested in it. I'd say a game that does this poorly is Hooked Inc (an iOS game where a vast majority is to prestige over and over for tiny boosts), and a game that does it amazingly is Egg Inc, which combines dozens of upgrades and nearly 100 research pools to fill before you prestige and start over. Egg also does what few games like it do, and give you regular access to premium loot for free. A lot of time the different between a bad and a good clicker/idle game is how elusive the most premium currency is. Egg Inc is actually so well made in its introduction of paid boosts that they demand you play the game before cashing in becomes worthwhile. The easy option of paying for premium only gives you 1500 for $5.00 irl, but you can spend $3 instead on a pool of this currency that stacks infinitely as you research. Play for a few weeks legit and spend the equivalent of $20 premium for only $3. Clearly it incentivized you to play rather than spend, which I think more free clicker/idle games should do.
You see mate...the thing is with videos...you do not have to interact with them...you can...do other things like chores...pay bills...workout or anything else while they play in the background. do you think you can do these or other things while you are clicking a mouse or other button? you laughed at me,but you should be laughing at your own ignorance. the irony is great
@@shayoko6 You're literally talking about a genre called *IDLE* games. The whole point of the genre is that you only have to interact with them once every few hours. It's no skin off my back if you play or don't play them, it's just hilarious to me that you responded in such a moronic manner.
I remember taking a small interest in Cookie Clicker after hearing my friend play it. While I didn’t play it too much in the beginning as I saw the game as basic, once I learned that there was more underneath I began to sink more and more time into it. Always having it in the background to gather more cookies and heavenly cookies Universal Paperclips also became a favorite of mine after a highschool teacher let us play it for their lesson. Since I had some Cookie Clicker experience at the time, I definitely had fun showing the class how it was done.
I respect you and I think you make good content, but I found this video to be utterly unconvincing. I see your points about newer more intersting games (that don't seem to interessting to me), but that is not what a genre is. A genre is defined by the big games. What you are doing here is as if I were too say that fps are not reptitive and uncreative just because super hot was cool.
Good point. I too felt the games discussed are on different planes, but I can understand why a fan of the genre felt the desire to challenge blanket statements made about it... But you're right, as well as defending the genre by showing better games, we could start by defending the games targeted. What's wrong with getting enjoyment from clicking and experiencing progress without doing acrobatics with an avatar? What about the good to be found in waiting games? Utilisation of in between time, delayed reward despite busy schedules, real life time management as part of strategy...
Honestly there's not much separating cookie clicker from the loot based exponential grind of something like Diablo 3, and I can see how more complex titles could offer the same enjoyment that many find in learning how to exploit combat systems to their fullest potential in JRPGs, hell some of those examples looked like straight up management sims. And while there's a lot of mechanical cross over with some of the worst and most predatory shit on the mobile market isn't it a good thing that there are all these games that explore and exploit those mechanics in a safe space where players can become aware of exactly how they work without being charged out the nose for the experience? However there a ton of real bad idle games that do use predatory microtransactions and they should be avoided, but that's sadly true of a lot of genres especially in the mobile/browser game space.
Okay some criticisms. 1: Just because YOU and YOUR friends don't remember games you haven't completed and forget about them mid play, DOESN'T mean that is the case for the MAJORITY. Please do research into this instead of using a small case sample as evidence. 2: As someone who has PLAYED clicker games and gone away from them for long periods of time, the money goes decently far, even WITH the increase in prices. There's really no point in playing many of them if it's all about accumulating resources and you can do that with no risks passively. 3: You are essentially restating his point about taking the real time element out of the game and it shows just how shallow the game is. Real time CAN be a good thing in video games BUT as things are now, it has been used as a predatory practice. My examples are practically every war game ever, most every Facebook game and the majority of mobile games. 4: Your Stardew Valley comparison is actually weaker than his and really doesn't make any sense as a counter argument, it really just reinforces his. As for everything else, I don't feel like picking them apart right now but if you reply, I will. I do sort of agree with some of your points but most of them aren't that great. And BTW, I have been playing whatever I could get my hands on for fifteen years, including idle games so it's not like I don't know what I am talking about.
I love A Dark Room and would honestly place it in among my top gaming experiences. But incremental clickers are, inherently, shitty and damaging to the medium. There are games within the genre that fight against or overcome that inherent shittiness, but it's always going to be what most of the genre is. Especially considering how cheap they are to make and how microtransactions offer potentially infinite profit. "Devs making a bit of extra money" Pff give me a break how naive can you get. These games are just trying to hook whales
I have one game to suggest: Aurora Dusk. It's one of those ones that goes in a bizarre direction compared to what people normally think of as "idle/clicker" games. It's more of an... incremental/RPG/RTS/sandbox hybrid. And one where you have the option of playing in a very active way, or you can go very idle... you have that choice. There's alot of strategy and complexity to it, and various modes to do, so there's alot of freedom. A bit of a learning curve, but the "campaign" does a great job of teaching you all you need to know. I'm seriously not sure how to describe it in a way that actually does it justice. It's quite the unique thing. You'd have to check it out, and when you see the screenshots and video, it sure wont look like a game with idle/incremental elements. I strongly recommend giving it a shot though. Just beware, like alot of traditional incremental games it has "programmer art". Though it's kinda subjective... I actually quite like the way it looks overall.
I find more fun in these games than a lot of games with active gameplay. Because NGU Idle REALLY got me into the incremental genre. Showing me how deep these can get. And I fell in love with it and have been playing it for about 2 years and have seen the end game evolve even more. Altho I'm really bad at any game so I've never really hit the "end" game..
Love this counter argument. Good job :D It's amusing you point out the bad graphics of some XD I've found that the idle games with the worst graphics tend to have some of the most interesting mechanics and gameplay. I'll definitely be trying out some of the games recommended here. To suggest one of my own, I've been playing Idling To Rule The Gods for over 2000 hours now, and I STILL haven't used every mechanic available to me yet and only done a scant fraction of the challenge missions.
Great video. I thoroughly enjoyed it! If I had to say one thing, I wish you'd have mentioned how Cookie Clicker has evolved over the years, with additions like the Garden providing new and unique paradigm shifts. It's not as simplistic as most people think!
The incremental game that caught my the most is Armory & Machine, on the google play store. It stats off so simple, and it hooks you with a mysterious log that give you pasionately written snippets and hints as to what is happening in the world around you, and with extremely simple mechanics, it delivers beautiful paradigm shifts.
Thank you very much for the amazing response, clicker games and idle games get too much of a bad rap for, what I believe to be, unjust reasons. I do believe Snoman dissected correctly what technically goes into the gamification techniques of what ammounts to Clicker and Idle games, but all throughout the video I disagreed with him wholeheartedly that it might be considered bad game design, and I found his conclusion of it being "A money waster at worst, a time waster at least" [sic] to be wholly cynical and unrealistic in several different ways. I even commented that on his video (And a lot of this comment is kind of me restructuring my old comment since it's a reignited discussion), but you went ahead and put most of what I thought to video. Thank you once again! But I think I can add a lot more as to why I believe Clicker Games (And this time, yes, including Cookie Clicker, Clicker Heroes and all the "bad apples"!) actually do harbor genuinely good game design. The first of which: as a game designer with 4-year experience (and counting!~), I don't just see Black Box tactics (as popularized by the Octalysis Framework of gamification - basically, the skinner boxing and the motivation-by-anxiety), I see something much more interesting: Game Feel. Have you wondered what needs to get into these type of games? It's not as simple as it looks. Not by a damn longshot. And the most impressive aspect is how well it makes you feel good with every click - every number rising and every levelup isn't just a counter going from X to x+y, the numbers POP, they turn a different number, stars fly out, it grows on your screen, something happens - that while not exactly directly affecting the mechanical and practical gameplay, they DO affect the experience - and any game designer worth their salt would tell you that NO game dependant on UI (Hello, clicker games, BUT ALSO RTSes for one) can get by without good, evocative game feel - GOOD game design. But for me, the biggest reason: It is necessary. You heard me right: These games are necessary to exist. Firstly, there is demand. There is clearcut demand, or else people wouldn't keep making them. An audience exists for these games, and therefore they enable something other games do not. And that something is exactly what you argued in favour of and Snoman argued they wasted of him: Time. My argument is that Idle Games and Clicker Games aren't time waster - they allow you to focus on what's important in your life while maintaining a psychological drive to keep gojng. ....Life, and work, often becomes unfulfilling. At times, a burden to muster through just one more day. You'd rather be playing Resi2 or maybe Apex - but you cannot pull your focus away. Clicker games offer you a compromise - a way to activate your cool enzymes in your brain that makes you feel better, for low effort - AND - low time cost. They have no pretension of being any more than that. And if we are to believe that game design, fundamentally, is to incur an experience onto a player [As per Jesse Schell writes in "Art of Game Design"] - and the game realizes that experience exactly as intended, with no predatory execution - then by all accounts, I believe it to be actual, honest and sincere good game design. Also, just as an aside, even though it is something that's much more subjective (sidenote, game design by itself isn't objective so all of this is already subjective): I don't think there IS such thing as "bad game design". Rather, perhaps, "bad game design" I'd wager is the misproper use of perfectly fine tools that can be used correctly - vis a vis "skinner boxing" techniques and loot boxes. Even microtransactions are important - ESPECIALLY when you consider how cost-inefficient the market demands are, and ESPECIALLY considering that, as you said, most of those games are free-to-play and need to make money in some way. Achievements and clickers aren't inherently bad game design - but I understand calling the bad application of them as such.
That's a great vid. Reminds me of that idle rpg that I played but cannot for the love of it find again. It had only sprites as graphics and you could play a hero and unlocked other races/species/classes to play as from the beginning again.
I disagree with the argument that all games demand real-time in an equal manner. I spent hundreds of hours to complete the No-death achievements on the Super Meat Boy, but when I finished them, I felt an enormous satisfaction! Which didn't dissipate after I stopped playing. Those achievement had real value: it required a lot of raw skill, resilience and patience and that makes me proud of myself. But pure idle games like Cookie Clicker or Adventure Capitalist both demand real-time and the achievements have no real value. I've got absolutely no satisfaction by reaching 10^100 money on Adventure Capitalist or gathering an absurd amount of cookies. I just clicked and logged off. I felt bad. It's similar to cigarette addicts hahaha. The problem is not to demand real-time, but to not reward this invested time with real valued achievements.
the problems i see here are 1) he spoke about real-time as an all around mechanic and not used equally between genres, and 2) the examples you provide of meaningful (or non-so-meaningful) achievements are entirely subjective. I play old school runescape, and the sense of accomplishment I got in creating my max infernal cape (this took me about 3000 hours overall) is something I'll never forget. but for a lot of the people that play osrs and *dont* find the max grind enjoyable may also not see my accomplishment as anything more than just a "this dude sits at his pc way too much" flag. the sujective value I felt in achieving my max infernal cape is something I will forever be fond of, yet to others is subjectively worthless beyond a waste of a significant portion of my time. it isn't really fair to use subjective positions as objective facts in determining whether a game or its genre are inherently "bad" unless you have an overwhelming majority of people providing the same feedback.
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Hey man, first off I wanted to thank you for doing a very level-headed response in a respectful way, as well as presenting my original thoughts accurately and not out of context. My short answer is that for the most part I agree with you - turns out there are a TON of newer incremental games I had never heard of after I made my video, and I played some of them and definitely agree that they are more in-depth than the ones I had experienced in the last several years. I'm shocked I didn't find them when researching, probably because I went looking for clickers instead of idlers which are pretty different honestly. Happy to know the genres evolving, I do think you did it justice.
Just a few more quick points: my video came from my perspective and experience on the genre, definitely not a quick buck cash in. In fact it's been on my mind to make for years now and I'll admit it would've been more relevant back then. I said many times that I got hooked on them too, and don't think poorly of anyone that enjoys them, just more of less wanted to talk about my time with them and how it basically felt like going cold turkey from a drug habit lol, having to quit them altogether because I felt like I was wasting my life. Again, that's my view but I know others totally love them.
Also, you're right than any game can manipulate players with microtransactions (and I would argue any of those games that DO are just as bad lol), as with the reasons I found the genre poorly designed (real time/no end) - but my point was that it was the COMBINATION of the lack of real gameplay with these other elements that really made them toxic to me; they're not inherently bad on their own. Obviously with the examples you gave that isn't necessarily true. So I suppose take my video with a grain of salt saying those older examples are the bad apples.
Keep doing what you're doing bro, I realized I'd seen some of your other vids on the endslate, you make good content. Peace
Glad you seem to be taking this with levity! I was honestly a little worried making a response video like this at all, hah.
Based on your comment it sounds like your take was part poor timing, part narrow search of "clicker". You're right, clicker/idle/incremental are all technically different, but as far as I can see it's all lumped under the same genre with the pure clickers being the ones that don't really get much long-term attention (people actually hate clicking beyond the beginning of these games!).
I can relate to the drug habit comment too. When I first got into the genre it was with Clicker Heroes. Late game (at least when I played), the fastest way to progress was to do half-hour prestige loops. I was at this point for a couple weeks, I think, when I realized that this was literally eating away at my free time and that this wasn't what I signed up for, and turned it off forever. Some people legitimately love that, but for me it was problematic. Since then, I've changed the way I digest these games; if it begins to require too much directly active play (focus) from me (and it's not one of the shorter, "beatable" games), I tend to turn it off.
Thanks for commenting, it means a lot!
Aww I love seeing people be actually respectful on TH-cam. It's such a rare and great sight
if the game is more complex than just clicking on a sprite... it should not be called "Idle Game" because you can't be idle, you need to take decisions even if there are some numbers incrementing automatically on screen... You could say, that it has "idle game"'s mechanics
Woah is this a respectful response on a video critiquing one's work?
This is why I love both of these channels, man.
Snoman, just make sure you play Spaceplan(the best), Loot Box Quest(this one is literally a dollar on steam and can be beaten in a day, with a hilarious story and ending, trust me it's worth it!), and the eternally beloved with good reason, Universal Paperclips.
Creator of Pixels Filling Squares 3.0 here, thanks for the shoutout and sticking out for the genre! There is a lot of stigma around incremental games, but I feel over the years it started reaching broader audiences and more of the core gamers started seeing their value beyond being time-wasters/skinner boxes, it's nice to see somebody explain that in a concise manner.
I think it's great that clicker games implement extra features, but I think they would be more fun if they were... you know... not idle clicker games.
@@LucyTheBox The trend for the past couple of years is to go away with the clicking mechanics, most if not all recent good games in the genre don't use 'click on screen to get resource' mechanic which ironically makes open-world survival sims or Minecraft and it's clones more Clicker than the games that are called that :P There are also incremental games without Idle components at all (Disgaea series being one of the best high profile examples). Those that do include idle mechanics are usually just a resource management sims without lose condition and their vast popularity could be easily explained by the fact that people just like chill casual games to procrastinate to.
@
ingeniousclown Gaming
pin this please
@@MrMoczan Hello game creator. Keep up the passionate work! If anything, you could say clicker games are more open about their addictive mechanics than say Minecraft; games which have their addictive components buried in another activity wasting time IN a game. I see the clicker genre as a deconstruction.
Hello fellow kongregatians!
Man, after watching this, I really feel bad for the small devs who created actual games with the clicker mechanic but get drowned out by the companies squeezing some money out of it’s playerbase.
Coding. XD In a nutshell
Like clickertale3
I've made clicker games because as a beginner / only dev, the mechanics are simple to implement they let you do a lot in the way of flavor text/ depth , and require relatively little art to work
But it's inherently tied to the predatory tactics a lot of games use
This is one of the reasons cookie clicker is one of my favourite idle games. It was one of first idle games and it was made entirely by two people, and it has no microtransactions whatsoever
What?! A video criticizing somebody but respectfully and not trying to start beef?!
IKR, does this guy seriously believe that people with differing opinions coming from unique views on a subject can treat each other as anything better than trash? What is this, the real world? I thought I was on the internet!
This is insanity!
But then how peoples who like eating Beef are going to be able to eat???
This is the Internet, reason isn't allowed!!!! I'm so offended!!!!
Can i get my pizza?
Pro tip: If you suck at art use minimalism or really small pixel art.
minimalism preferred
@@owaloid9995 Not too sure about that tho. Pixel art can sometimes really add to your game if you do it right
@@redfireddragon8584 I know, but if you've never done art before even small pixel art can be challenging
And that's why 80% of lesser known indie games have the 8bit style.
Minimalism is prettier than that
Cookie Clicker was entertaining just for the bizarre, surreal narrative that slowly unveils itself as you get into the most expensive upgrades. Kittens Game is the most mechanically complex one I've played thus far, though, and I really enjoyed it. I bought the Kittens app. Thanks for making this video. I feel we now have a summary of both the good and the bad that came out of "clicker" games.
I mean I played cookie clicker for the insane strats in the late game, but I realised there are other games with even more insane setups that I moved on to.
Runescape is the ultimate cookie clicker.
And idle game.
Got 99 fishing last year. No regrets.
runescape had an idle/clicker game on steam for a while, it got removed tho
Sure, if you play old school only lol
Playing right now, killing Giants in Edgeville Dungeon
Been playing Cookie Clicker since 2013. Just finished Galaxia in a couple of hours. Really fun! Thanks for the essay, and the recommendations. I had never looked for another idle game before.
Great video, but if I may disagree in the fact that cookie clicker is not vanilla. I believe it to be quite clever due to it's synergistic elements that it imposes on players. It sort of forces them to think, and that's a big part of the fun: Finding out the best combination is extremely rewarding, more then saying, "Haha, number go up! Yay, yay!" It's prestige elements to me, golden cookies, and the many variables add so much to it, and not only that but it's constantly being updated. I can't wait for dungeons, as I'm sure it will add so much more to the game, just as the garden did when it was added. Otherwise, good video.
I would also consider Factorio an example of a much deeper and fleshed out version of theses games. In essence, it's very similar to Mine Defense.
The fun in these games for me is to figure out how to optimize the progression. From this perspective, they are really puzzle games.
I remember my factory less factory run. God that was awful.
factorio seems super good and i want super try it :D
Laimis Kleinauskas it is, and you should. Even if you don’t have a super good PC, I definitely recommend it
sandship is basically better factorio. Im one of the pre beta testers and sandship is not open to community as of now, but its so good even in pre beta. I wonder how good will it be in 1.0 if its so good in pre beta :)
I wouldnt lump factorio with incremental games. Factorio has a lose mechanic. Your buildings could get destroyed. Progress lost. Incremental games dont have a lose mechanic.
- video starts: *opens up description
- *sees list of clicker games
- "welp, time to waste a few years of my life" *cracks knuckles
I mean yeah, the clicker games with purchasable advancements are totally a scam and should be shunned as hard as the Golden horse armor DLC.
Watched both videos. I think the idle genre is more a distillation of what games inherently are. Some find it compelling, I personally prefer more bells and whistles, but the point is this: underneath the hood of (almost) every video game is the core concept of the idle game, raw progression. I play a lot of Borderlands 2, and that game can be broken down into an idle game very easily. You break it out into an experience bar, a story progress bar, a DPS bar, I mean the core loop of that game is clicking on bandit heads to get new guns to increase damage to further click on more bandit heads, and the bandit heads require more clicks to blow up with increased progress. Just because some games are shinier or have a more active model doesn't mean they are fundamentally not similar in terms of end goal. While I don't find idle games fun myself due to the inactivity vector, I still appreciate their value in the space as pure distillation.
tl;dr Idle games are the moonshine to the game industry's wine and whiskey. Same in essence, distilled stronger, and requiring a certain taste for it.
If idle games are the moonshine, does that make me a drunk if I consume too many of them?
@@ingeniousclown no. It makes you an addict
Here's my attempt at a counter-argument.
STATEMENT: A lot of people, including myself, don't play games for the sake of raw progression.
I blitzed the shit out of Yakuza Kiwami over a week last December, and the main draw of most of it wasn't progress for progress' sake, but to experience what the game had to offer, from the intense main story to the wacky sidequests and cool minigames.
I'll admit that I did some of these for the sake of gaining completion points and clearing out the completion list, but in the end, I only completed the main quest to completion and 99% of the substories.
I even attempted to 100% the game, but quickly realized that between the gambling minigames (fuck those they can go to hell), Shogi (essentially japanese chess. I am bad at chess) and Mahjhong (OH GOD WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING), I quickly gave up because... well, frankly?
FUCK THAT NOISE.
Not to mention the climax battles, Haruka's requests post-game, and some other things.
I simply couldn't stomach the grind, and without any significant reward for completing them, I gave up on the game.
I got what I came for and was satisfied.
How does this apply to most idle/clicker/incremental games, you may ask?
My answer would be that I couldn't justify investing inordinate amounts of time into these games for little to no reward. Inevitable, the rate of progress stalls, and I decide that _screw this, there's more fun things I could be doing than watching numbers go up._
Yeah, that's all I got. Sorry for the lame ending.
TL;DR: I don't play games to just watch numbers go up. Yakuza had the main story and substories, but most idle games don't have anything to offer beyond waiting for numbers going up.
And note the _just_ there, if you showed me an idle game had more to offer, I'll gladly give it a shot.
@@gamemaniac2013 I get what you're saying, but what I was pointing to was the underlying system of progression seen across video games as a medium. Nearly every game has progression in some fashion, even if it's not what you're playing for, and it is the ultimate goal of the game even if it is not the core source of enjoyment. You played through Yakuza Kiwami's story, and you played it to see the story, but that story had to progress, hence the underlying core concept of progression.
Not all progression is in the form of numbers going up, but it can always be *represented* in that fashion. I'm a programmer, I think in numbers a lot. That said, the systems in place to attain that progression are different based on things like genre. For idle/clicker games, it's a pure progression. It aims to distill down video games into JUST progression. For some people, this is compelling to engage in. I'm more in your camp where I dislike it and don't have the patience for it (which I actually said in the OP, the "bells and whistles" comment). I'm simply trying to explain the perceived appeal for many people who enjoy these games.
I think it's a valid thing to enjoy, if you like the underlying concept and are willing to bear the issues associated with the genre, like all genres. I play Monster Hunter, and a lot of people think it's not worth their time on a very similar basis as to why idle games are often dismissed. Hunting Action games, in general, require a lot of patient analysis and repetitive tasks, but Monster Hunter is just something I've always enjoyed because of the experience of the struggle. That's my core reason for playing games, I enjoy the struggle against the system and overcoming it to be victorious. Gaming is very personal in that sense, everyone has their own reasons for playing.
The tl;dr is: even if you aren't playing for progression, it's happening. It's what drives the experience, progress from point A to B to C, whether that be in story beats or rising numbers.
The comparison to borderlands 2 is really apt actually. Especially because grinding a boss for a specific unique drop is basically the same as grinding a ton of currency for a big productivity upgrade. You spend a long time doing inane things for a big change. Both can't really be 'rushed' due to the reliance on exponential growth. And both frequently have specific 'builds' that differentiate between people who know what they are doing and casual players.
A dark room is so so good... Definitely my favorite idle game. You all should try it
Yeah, and it has interesting story twists I didn't expect.
I played it every day for 8 hours. I still do. Hell, I can even play it with my eyes closed.
If you're looking for something similar I highly recommend candy box
Thanks for the tip, giving it a try today :)
I love A Dark Room, I have to say I like Candy Box better though
With Stardew Valley, I had to use cheats to stop playing. I got so addicted, so fast, that I literally played 36 hours straight from minute 1. I started playing on Sunday afternoon, my girlfriend went home in the evening, I kept playing through monday (was between jobs), and when tuesday morning came around, I told myself "This is not going to be good for you... You need to quit fast".
I decided to do exactly the thing you mention in the video. I looked up a hack, spent 2-3 hours exploring everything the game had to offer by giving myself large incremental boosts, to the point where I had unlocked pretty much everything, and was content with "knowing the game". After I felt I was done, I gave myself unlimited resources and time, and spent around half an hour finding "optimal" farming strats for cash, and then I passed out from exhaustion. When I woke up, my save-game was ruined because of my hacking, and I was able to move on. I don't think I would've been able to without doing that.
TL;DR - I committed suicide by inflation because I got so addicted.
Hands down, my favourite story based idle game ever is candy box 2. I love that game. The original was good, but candybox 2 blew its predecessor out of the water.
Just kill me. And Just Kill Me 3 on mobile. Story-based, intriguing, edge-of-the-seat cliffhanger story scenes before you have to kill more enemies to trigger the next story sequence.
@@ryanbutlergaming1291 i like them too but they're filled with gacha elements and p2w items
Is nobody gonna talk about the mutated grandmas and a corupt company unfolds in cookie clicker.
Zhon Cinema no. Everyone has a bad stigma about it. If you want. There’s a great discord community full of great people. Search up the cookie clicker discorde
Yeah, this was insulting to me. Both Snoman and Ingeniousclown act like Cookie Clicker is a primitive cave man game when they've been adding shit even just last year and the end game is ridiculously deep. You continue to gain entirely new mechanics months after starting a file.
@@WeeklyMusicalShitposts ik that game is like wow who knew cookies could defeat a army of demon grandmas
I know. He didn’t take consideration of the grandmapocalypse, mini games,as all the good things about cookie clicker
Amazing video. I've had this discussion with some of my friends and I usually end up distilling my argument down to this single sentence: "clicker games are more or less just the same as any other game, stripped down to it's most basic form, action and reward. that is why we play games instead of watching movies, or reading a book."
once again, great video and count me as a new subscriber!
that argument would also apply for reading the alphabet over and over and over instead of reading a book, or watching a rainbow mandelbrot zoom instead of watching a film. there is no value in the thing at its most base, chaotic form (only potential) - the value comes from the experiences we carve out of that formless pulp.
Lou Nowell that is the most poetic thing I have ever read on idle games
Honestly, I really like Cookie Clicker, and find it very entertaining, one of the big things that make it better is the garden, and the other couple minigames. Plus, there's a lot to it and a lot of achievements, which I really like.
Yeah completing it takes years
yes, I feel like lumping cookie clicker into those other "incrementals of the past" is wrong. Its unique, scales well, has lots of shifts in strategy from focusing buildings, to upgrades, to prestige, to combos, to the garden and grimoire, and theres much to explore. Still one of the best, if not THE best, clicker/incremental game out there. I've always loved this genre and can say pretty confidently that you won't find anything much better.
@@cheerio662 Honestly. There are still a lot of players today
@@ok472 I'm on mobile which is way behind on updates, and I still am forever away of finishing everything.
@@cheerio662 what's funny is when the creator made the first classic version(which really was just a vanilla clicker) he made it in a couple of hours and made it to parody modern game mechanic systems by just highlighting you can really make a game about anything as long as it's just about a number going up.
IdleOn, Tap Ninja, and Armory & Machine are some of my all time favorites. The first beta of A&M2 I played was awesome, but each update got worse until it was unplayable, so it gets a special mention. All of these are Indie btw.
IdleOn has a lot of resemblance to MapleStory. You have a group of chatacters, whom are all always working when offline (unless you leave them somewhere where they can't). Many quests and several classes with subclasses. Bonus if you have DID or something similar, I find letting each alter play their own character isba great teambuilding and bonding experience.
Tap Ninja has an awesome discord community on top of the game. It's the type of game I always have running on my computer. Has ads, but they're optional, and ONLY on mobile versions. You can't watch them on the steam version. You have a ninja who's always running, and for the most part is a basic incremental, but I really like it. Even got one hidden achievement, and know of another. Plus the pets have animations when you click them!(this has no mechanical benefit)
Armory & Machine is extremely basic, but has good game feel imo. No art, all greyscale ui with exception of progress bars, but a solid game. As you play, you start to find lore, and even new mechanics unlock. It's a good time, and the only ad is locked behind a progress wall and out of the way to watch it. Spoiler Alert, the rest of this comment is a spoiler. You will eventually unlock combat, and this will take over a lot of your gameplay, as focus shifts from restoring the tower to improving your combat abilities seamlessly. Fuel can get annoying to wait on, but it's a resource you make and is limited by your own setup. Plus there's a thing you can fight for infinite fuel that costs barely anything.
I originally agreed with snoman's video because his experience with the genre mirrored my own. However, after watching this video I feel like trying out some of these games you mentioned in the video. These newer games look like major improvements on the (frankly crap) idle games of the past. Thank you.
If you want a good start in the genre try cookie clicker, simple to understand but takes months to complete.
Honestly this is why I think reviewing entire genres is a bad idea
I actually just watched the other video an hour before this came out, thought my sub box broke lol
Edit: I have to agree with you, clicker games are not all just copy/paste, sure there's a lot of them like that but developers have been getting creative with their own and you can really see the passion behind them
realm grinder is my all time favourite game.
The strategy involved in theory crafting new builds with each new paradigm shift is the best build crafting I've ever experienced out of every rpg game I've ever played.
The achievements are so fun and create unique playthroughs with huge variations in approach.
I've played a lot of RPGs and realm grinder is still my favourite.
clicker games are good.
The Mafia Wars example is really baffling to me. You illustrate why very well via Stardew Valley, but even in games that aren't similar to clickers at all a glitch that gives you progress would always be a way of losing out on enjoyment. Say I got a glitch in Half-Life 2 that warps me straight from the train at the start of the game to the final battle. That's most definitely not a good glitch, I'm not happy it happened. The entire point of any game is to *play* the game. A glitch that forces you to skip the process of playing the game by definition makes the game worse.
I counter that a glitch that *allows* you to skip the process of playing the game makes the game better, but not because it skips the fun of the game. I think it adds replay value, at least if the glitch is complicated to pull off. If you're going through a glitched route, I think you should absolutely have played the game through, maybe even several times. But a glitch with sequence break or timesaving potential does not inherently make the game worse - in the case of sequence breaking, it can make a fun challenge to play through the game in the "wrong order" or with no in-game buffs; with timesaves, you can speedrun the game and try to get that glitch as fast as possible.
Any glitch that forces people to do something like skip to the end of a game is a sign of lazy (or, in a less Fundamental Attribution Error way, understaffed) devs who didn't sufficiently quality-control their code. Glitches should pretty much only show up if you're looking for them or happen to do an unlikely sequence of events.
Well cookie clicker gives you achievements that are only obtainable by cheating
@@pr9101 only one actually, and you can also get it by changing your name temporarily (open sesame lol)
The one thing I will say: after watching Snoman's video and going back to check in on Cookie Clicker, I must admit that despite the faults in the game, *Cookie Clicker is one of the most well-polished idle games on the market.* When I compared it with all the games that you showcased at the end, none of them could really compare with just how good Cookie Clicker looks. Mine Defense, Kittens Game, Wizards and Minions Idle, and NGU Idle might have good gameplay, but their core design is simply lacking. Universal Paperclips and Trimps have understandably minimalistic designs, which is fine (also I'm biased because I've played both). Even the best of the best looking idle games you listed, Pixels filling Squares and Spaceplan, cannot compete visually with Cookie Clicker. Cookie Clicker is just an outstandingly designed/stylized game. It may have shallow gameplay, but it still deserves its props. Probably the most appealing thing about Cookie Clicker is the ironic, punny, and sarcastic remarks that are used as the flavor texts for the upgrades and achievements; Cookie Clicker acknowledges it's simplicity with numerous meta-jokes and self-reflectances. In the end, the numbers still go up, and that's still your goal, but that doesn't help a game from being as beautiful of an idle game as we are going to get (and also the EASTER EGG REFERENCES)
Pretty much what I'm getting at is that Cookie Clicker is the true, vanilla clicker game. It does exactly what you expect for a clicker game, (and I'd argue that it does what you expect and more; the four minigames that can now be unlocked really spice up what one would consider typical gameplay, as well as the Ascension, which is a unique spin on prestiging), and does it flawlessly. Because it's been around so long, Ortiel has had plenty of time to perfect the craft (it's still being updated after 5.5 years...) to deliver an all-around enjoyable experience, regardless if you're just clicking a stinking cookie.
Anyone who has played games for a while knows that design and graphics are pretty meaningless when it comes to whether the game is good or not. There's many incredible looking games out there that are terrible, and many terrible looking games that are insanely fun. Some examples of games that can be considered to have sub-par graphics are factorio, minecraft, terraria, civilisation, and more. Would you consider games with such "bad design" bad? Not well-polished? For a bit of context, factorio is one of the most highly rated games on the steam store, and you probably already know by now that minecraft is the second best-selling game of all time, only beaten by tetris, a game that can also be considered to have sub-par graphics. That's not even mentioning civilisation, yet another revolutionary game that spawned a whole bunch of incredible sequels. Compare to a game with good graphics but terrible gameplay like the initial release nms, or godus, and you can see how graphics simply don't correlate with game quality.
My point is, considering the quality of the game and how "well-polished" the game is by its design and art is one of the most shallow judgements possible - basically judging a book by its cover. Even then, many of the games here still look amazing, with realm grinder's pixelated graphics having a certain charm to them, idle wizard certainly having some great graphics, and more.
If your comment was only meant to point out quality of graphics, I do apologise, of course :)
"egg"
@@huaen8880 you disconsidered how cookie clicker has actually gotten a LOT deeper with times and updates, the game now plays nothing like it used to when the player progresses, i thought it was weird how ingenious didnt even mention cookie clicker when he was talking about the paradigm shift
@@zoinksboy3786 If I missed out something on cookie clicker, sorry about that. I was mainly addressing the point about how graphics simply don't equate to quality, not really pointing towards cookie clicker specifically. Hmm, maybe I need to look at it again...
@@huaen8880 wait wtf, i replied to the wrong comment lmfao, i'm sorry, yea i agree with almost everything you said, i was meaning to reply to a guy that was saying how he was using the word paradigm without it actually meaning anything, idfk sorry lol
Clicker games are a fantastic example of what game design is and how people tend to interpret the term completely wrong.
"Game design" was invented to make games more fun. All "rules" in the game design book are guidelines and tips, which help the designer to create something that is more enjoyable for players. However, you can purposefully neglect such a "rule" to make the game more interesting and perhaps even more fun, given the correct context. When people look at this strictly, they may say to themselves: "Ugh, it's bad game design" (you didn't follow the rules), even though this may significantly increase the joy of the game for the designated target group.
As people all have different interests, there will never be a game that statisfies everyone, even if it follows all these game design guidelines. They are simply handhelds for a designer to have a bit of grip to increase the amount of fun for players. No matter how "badly designed" a game might be, there is at least someone out there having fun with it. Perhaps it's a niche group of people, or maybe it's just 2 people in total, but true "bad game design" doesn't really exist: The people are just less likely to enjoy the game.
Again, clicker games are a great example for this, since the fun in the clickers is purely based on the character of the player (whether you like exploration or not). People who don't like exploration will inheritely turn against these games and thus have less fun, which results in them calling it "bad game design", when in reality, they're not part of the target group.
P.S.: Game design should really, like music theory, be called 'Game Theory' or 'Game Design Theory'. It's just some theory which helps you in designing games, much like music theory helps you to design musical pieces. You can move away from your music theory and still create a fantastic piece (the best composers do this all the time)! Game design (theory) is exactly the same in that regard.
Yes.
Thats an interest way to see it, and i have to admit that while idle genre is not for everyone and doesnt follow the same rules as a normal videogame, i dont think that would excuse all types of flaws. Despite not consider myself a fan of the genre, there are a few games that i genuinely enjoyed, but Cookie Clicker (that is often regarded as the best one), sorry, but i dont believe is that good, in fact, i think is a very bad game, even for the standards of the genre.
You can enjoy games with not good design, i also do it, but that is not objectively good for a game. Objective and enjoyment are two different things. You can enjoy "bad design" but you have to admit is not objectively good.
Candybox !! PLAY CANDYBOX IT'S SO GOOOOOOD
I don't understand how no video about clicker games don't talk about it. How is it not one of the most know ones ? It's so unique and fun and creative...
Mathis 18:09 But I had the same idea
Candy box 2 is an incredible game
Funny you mention that - Candy Box inspired Cookie Clicker, from memory. :)
It's one of the earliest idle games that revolutionized the genre.
I wanted to make that comment
I've been playing a few idle games over the years, namely Cookie Clicker, Clicker Heroes, Spaceplan and IdleAnt, among others, but I just spent the last few months on Kittens Game. Just as you said, this one is loaded with paradigm shifts and you constantly want to prioritize something over the rest.
All the previous games I played relied on a pretty straight forward mechanic that didn't really evolve much. I liked IdleAnt because of the way you could produce things that produce things and end up with an exponentially increasing rate of production but that's pretty much all the game has to offer (before I got bored of it, that is). Kittens Game, on the other hand, has so many different resources, varied upgrades, an experience system for your kittens, a semi-hidden unicorn related mechanic, time manipulation, etc. I even think that the total lack of graphics in the game is a rather good thing as it would only be a distraction.
I love your channel and I hope you make a bunch of videos on the upcoming Hollow Knight: Silksong when it comes out :)
I love that your example of a paradigm shift heavy game was Mine Defense. That's also always my go to example for the best implementation of paradigm shifts in incremental games. I've never seen an incremental game keep throwing them at you so frequently as Mine Defense does. I must have played through that game at least a dozen times over the years.
I remember player a clicker game called “Almost Hero’s” game was super fun and interactive, almost an full rpg. good hours were spent in that game. Good times
I gotta admit, I had my prejudice with this genre (Well before Snoman's vid). Probably still not for me, but I'll acknowledge that it has good games pushing the envelope.
The most irritating thing about people who bash on idle games is how reductive their core argument is. Almost all critics boil the whole genre down to nothing more than "watching numbers go up is so stupid and simple it is simply boring and you all are morons for falling for it." Okay. So fps games aren't about increasing kill count for no other reason than it makes you ego feel good. Rpgs where you level up and improve gear for no other reason than beating a tougher mob makes you feel better. Platformers are manipulative because people feel good when they reach a goal. Sure when you break down the core game design of anything its simple manipulation of human psychology, but that is why we enjoy games. The fact that even simple idle games can be satisfying to people should be applauded for a minimalist approach to game design, but no, instead those games get roasted and the genre as a whole is written off as lazy.
Personally, I dislike idle games because they have no other mechanics, and you have to wait longer and longer to get to "play" the game, which is just upgrading your money making thing, whatever it is.
@@happyburgerman9724 Gross oversimplification.
@@retf8977 how so? Can you provide some examples? (not being rhetorical here, I’m genuinely curious.)
@@happyburgerman9724 try distance incrmental you can beat it in a week or less it's not that grindy also ever heard of prestige layers machines challenges ? Well I can't say distance incrmental is an clicker game
It's worth noting that "NGU Idle" (Numbers Gong Up) is my favorite idle game so far.
I despise idle games, but that’s because I’m impatient and often play games that reach and ending quickly. After seeing this video, I now have an appreciation for it. While it’s still not my cup of tea, I see why there so popular now.
Distance incremental would be good
I came into this video expecting the argument to be that Snoman is wrong because idle Skinner Box games are actually very very good game design used for evil. I've played a few idle and clicker games, especially Cookie Clicker, and that's all most people really think of in the genre. I walked away from Cookie Clicker and games designed to be idle sooner or later for the reasons that Snoman and other critics say, but I've also played A Dark Room. Since you brought it up, I remember that it starts out almost entirely with clicker mechanics, and I almost walked away from it in the early stages because I've learned to quit clicker/idle games before I get addicted. But the reason I didn't do that was because I had found it by searching for story games and also I was able to see that there might be things just out of reach that were more useful than just "Make Numbers Go Up Faster", and eventually I reached a point where the upgrades madethe exploration component actually worth trying, and suddenly I was playing a roguelike. My decisions had evolved from "I need sticks to keep the fire burning" into "I need to be able to carry more water so I can explore more of the map for better resources". And the roguelike is all I remembered of it before you brought it up here. I'm actually interested in trying Spaceplan now.
Wait...you are not the real Clown.
You haven't mentioned Hollow Knight!
Oh crap I need to delete this video now...
@@ingeniousclown oh hornet dlc turned to the whole game btw(if you haven't seen the trailer already).
we found you out anddd. Error ejejjejdjdjsjdjjddjr
Hollow Knight is my favorite idle game!
I love seeing two serious analysis channels arguing over a subject like this. I mean, I'm still with Snoman, but I enjoyed your arguments and analysis.
Also, and this is something of a pet hate right now, the word you were looking for was not fallacy! A fallacy is the use of a faulty form of argument not simply being wrong. You probably mean fallacious or just, you know, wrong.
Fellatios?
@@ingeniousclown Nailed it.
@@jbaidley it is a false equivalence
@@ingeniousclown thank you for opening up my eyes to the fact that, other than "wrong", there is pretty much no way to describe the idea of being wrong in English without somehow invoking a penis somewhere
@@mordirit8727 Incorrect? I actually want to know how to relate that word to penis
Thank you so much for this video. I was really frustrated with Snomans arguments and someone managed to put my thoughts into words
one of the best examples for me are candy box and candy box 2
its just... surreal
Anyone play anti-idle? really suprised he could be on kongregate and not show it.
oh yeah , anti iddle, the only iddle game where you can play all the time on a card game.
My thought exactly. There are a lot of amazing incremental games there now, but none of them have kept me playing for years straight like Anti-Idle. Plus Tukkun could really use some love.
“..managing your allocation of resources.”
Mobile game I found a while ago called “Crafting Idle Clicker” fits that description pretty well.
If I don’t see an episode of bad good bad game design on snomans channel here pretty soon, I’m gonna be upset
Designception!
I never knew that the clicker game genre has been evolving so much, though I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Thanks for creating this response video to give another viewpoint on this rising game genre
But the one thing that makes these gamers clicker games is the worst part of them.. Wouldn't they be way more fun if they weren't clicker games, since the thing that's interesting about them are the paradime shifts and they could just also be in any other more fun game?
Paradigm shifts like this are incredibly difficult to pull off in a "normal" kind of game. The complexities of the mechanics of movement, jumping, shooting, running, bouncing, leveling up, etc... each one on its own could require an amount of work that is more than a fully-featured idle game.
They'd also require more focused, active play on the part of the player, and because of that, if any paradigm shift doesn't "feel good" or "play well", it risks frustrating or boring the player and can cause them to quit. The risk is insanely high to put big paradigm shifts in bigger games.
Look at Evoland, though. It's one of the only commercially available games I can think of that has significant paradigm shifts. It's a fun game, but it's nothing I'd consider fantastic or spectacular. Just really cool.
It's pretty similar to experimental music or post rock hipster nonsense wherein the long drawn out boring elements are what make the climactic heights so powerful. Without the boring clicking part(which I actually do enjoy, Clicker Heroes 2 wrecked a portion of my life), the paradigm shift isn't nearly as powerful or affecting. It's not exactly good design, but it does work.
@@ingeniousclown factorio ?
oh right you said it was a dangerous game.
@@ingeniousclown but clicking and micromanaging economies is an arbitrarily specific mechanic. plenty of games were experimental and minimalistic before idle games took off. this is just a gimmick genre for people who already wasted their time playing pointless clicker games in years past and now want to feel slightly more mature about their silly behaviour prove me wrong
@@ingeniousclown If you are up for a challenge, play Celeste; one of the greatest platformers I have ever played. It has some interesting mechanics which are introduced to you as late as during the last level of the game, the twist being that these mechanics were always usable. You just wouldn't discover them easily on your own. After learning them you can use them in earlier levels for speedrunning and such, if you want to.
I see a good incremental game in much the same way as an RPG or RTS, with the difference that the mechanical execution is done for you, so you can instead focus entirely on making strategic decisions. The problem with bad incremental games is that they don't have deep strategic decisions either, so you're left with nothing but a game where progression is made for progression's sake, rather than to overcome obstacles or to reward good decisions. Now I will agree with Snoman here and say that this type of bad game design is actually harmful, it's an addictive time sink that doesn't develop your skills or your character in any way.
A good idle game is all about making clever resource management challenging and rewarding, and providing plenty of new experiences and novel challenges along the way, perhaps even ways to lose progress. The gameplay itself should not be a chore, nor should it virtually play itself. Personally I also like when they have an ending, it's really unsatisfying to reach a "final boss" and then the game just resets itself and starts over with you getting a prestige point or something. That more than anything feels like I'm just being baited into playing the game for ad revenue or whatever.
Also I despise games with active clicking rather than idling. Clicking rapidly isn't fun, it's just a fast way to carpal tunnel. Most people I know who got into those games ended up using an autoclicker anyway, cheating became more fun than actually playing the game as intended.
Finally, one of the best things about these types of games is that you can play them on the side. Even if you just have a minute to spare, that can be plenty of time to switch to the game and get some management work done. Very few types of games have this flexibility.
Edit: I didn't watch the video before writing this. I realize that he brought up most of the same points.
I hope you enjoyed the video! Here's a bunch of links for you in case you missed them in the description.
Watch Snoman's video here: th-cam.com/video/C-9ASzBErjo/w-d-xo.html
Check out the Incremental Games subreddit: www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/
Links to games mentioned at the end of the video:
Mine Defense ► www.scholtek.com/minedefense
Realm Grinder ► store.steampowered.com/app/61...
Kittens Game ► bloodrizer.ru/games/kittens/
A Dark Room ► adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
Spaceplan ► store.steampowered.com/app/61...
Wizard and Minion Idle ► store.steampowered.com/app/10...
Pixels Filling Squares 3.0 ► www.kongregate.com/games/mocz...
Idle Wizard ► store.steampowered.com/app/99...
NGU Idle ► www.kongregate.com/games/some...
Trimps ► trimps.github.io/
Universal Paperclips ► www.decisionproblem.com/paperc...
Antimatter Dimensions ► ivark.github.io/
Links to games in the video, but not mentioned:
Candy Box ► candybox2.github.io/candybox/
Candy Box 2 ► candybox2.github.io/
Galaxia ► www.templegatesgames.com/galax...
Fragment Hunters ► www.kongregate.com/games/mmx9...
Clicker Heroes ► store.steampowered.com/app/36...
Cookie Clicker ► orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/
Leave a comment if I forgot one and I'll try my best to add it!
The candy box games are some of my favorites. Hiding an rpg like that behind a random clicker page is genius. And I do like the actual ending.
I subscribed to you guys both
You forgot the link to the subreddit. www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/
@@henrystaples521 Thanks, added.
I first got into Candybox and a Dark Room several years back, they are still lovely games I go back and play. I've played most of these Idle games, and sure it gets boring after a set of time, when the progression gets too stale, some like Spaceplan are therefore really fun and as they are moderately short, a really pleasant change compared to the massive clicker/inc games such as Idle Wizard or Realm Grinder.
Great response. Really well explained. Great video.
I love cookie clicker, it’s right up my alley, I love how it goes from baking cookies to popping eldritch beings for cookies and awakening grandmatriarchs is what makes it sooo good
Bad idea copying the thumbnail and title pretty much since i almost didnt watch this since i thought i already saw it
Same lol
If you enjoy the idea of idle games, watching numbers rise and the like, I would highly recommend factorio. Granted, it’s not quite a clicker game, but is more of a evolution of the genre. You manage resources, starting with nothing, automate your mining, research and building, then you build more, you *click* more. The auto miners and automation factories remind a lot of buying grandmas in cookie clicker or other upgrades in idle games. Also, the enjoyment received around working out logistical problems to get everything working automatically and properly is extremely addicting and extremely satisfying.
Seriously, go check it out.
Merge "games" are worse. Trust me.
Merge games are boring, because it takes you 1 quadrillion decades to get to level 2
true, but the really good ones arent clickers or idles, incrementals or an incremental and idle and the incremental and clickers, one is reactor incremental (not reactor idle) with some major breakthroughs in the game while incrementally increasing the speed
I used to play a merge game in the early 2010's that I loved so much, it was something about being a god and you started of, I think, with just the 4 elements and went on from there. I loved that game so much, I can never forget how funny I thought it was when I managed to create "petrol" by merging "dinosaurs" with "mountain"... But I've never found it again. All merge games I've seen since are on the idea of "make x ever 10 seconds; merge 2 x's to make y. After 40 seconds, merge 2y to make z! Then you can wait a minute and 20 seconds to turn 2z into a! and MY GOD does it get old, boring and soul sucking fast!
Mordirit It’s called Doodle God, and it’s still out there.
I recommend Power Painter : Shoot & Color. It IS a merge game, but also tower defense game.
I've been subscribed to Snoman Gaming for a while - but seeing this respectful response looks like I'm subscribing to you too
okay but when are you gonna play the devil went down to georgia on ukulele like you promised
I don't know if he promised it or not, but damn I want to hear it.
@@nickandrews5465 from his discord: "alright i'm quitting my two main channels and my job and i'm going to go full time into a new idea that i call "Clown Covers" where i dress up like a clown and cover music
first project is the smash ultimate theme
second project is devil went down to georgia but its a ukulele"
Do you just have a folder full of BS I spout in discord?
Who doesnt ? @@ingeniousclown
@@ingeniousclown ctrl+f "devil went down to georgia"
The mafia wars anecdote brings to mind an experience of my own in a MUCH more active game, Payday 2. I was the direct target along with three other people of a 'charitable' hacker. He turned in far more parts on a mission, from an entirely different mission, which were worth an amount that left me totaling in the billion dollar range at the end of the mission. We didn't know he was doing it of course until we were already ending the mission, and it was to late to abort. This...spoiled my enjoyment of the game for a VERY long time until I basically prestiged to lose all the money, effectively being forced to start over before i really wanted to because of a 'favorable' action in a game.
A wise friend once said, "If a game is fun, why would you want to rush it? Enjoy the game, and everything else will come along with that." and it's instances like this that prove that.
Universal paperclips is great!
Thanks for this. I found A Dark Room and Candies a few years back, and they were so different to any other game I'd ever played (I had never played another idle/clicker game), that I started taking notes on what they did and still remember them fondly even though I never made it all that far.
I do think each of your arguments have merits and problems, so I want to tackle my issues with clicker games in a different method. You mentioned how a lot of newer clicker games are similar to management games with how you need to interact with intersecting mechanics for optimization and I want to discuss that.
As someone who grew up on platformers and RPGs, games usually need to provide two main things for me, a sense of progression and obstacles that are overcome by skill. If you take away obstacles, I'll still be able to enjoy the game if it has a great story. If there's no progression, then I can enjoy the raw gameplay with the interaction of mechanics.
Most people are referring to simple cookie clicker type games where the only progress is numbers and the only mechanics are exponential modifiers, and I feel in that core those two aspects of gaming are betrayed. The progression is a shallow escalator and the obstacles are non-existent. You mentioned there's little difference between the core gameplay loop of other games right? All games progression & obstacles are inherently repetitive, from roguelites to BRs to managment games to walking experiences. But in other games that progress is either blocked until your interaction (even if its as little as grinding wild Pokemon battles) and they provide progress (even if it's as simple as a new environment or bigger numbers on your loot). I believe all good games do one of this well, and great games do both.
The difference depends on the definition of the genre. To me a *clicker* is a game with a UI-based interface based around exponential numbers. In a clicker you always have progression with the exponential growth being a soft obstacle. A tower defense game is similar, but has mechanical interaction & decision making that prevents progress. Now do optimization/efficiency mechanics change that? They do make progression harder using mechanics, but are they management games now instead of clickers? Maybe, I think *paradigm shifts* are similar to interacting with a new mechanic in a management sim where the goal is growing your population/resources. To me, clicker games started as the simplest abstraction of what a management game is, and your explanation of evolution is pushing them back to management sims with a bit of mechanical depth. I think clickers hinge on the fact that people just like numbers increasing, and I respect everyone has their preferences, but I think they rely on a psychological loophole which is like selling bottled water. Yes its bottled, but you didn't provide anything but a wrapper to a base aspect of human beings and it feels manipulative.
I've played most of the games featured in this video and have been playing at least one or two clickers at a time continuously for the past few years. That being said, while I agree with some of your points, I find myself agreeing with more of Snoman's points. Especially about the predatory design of the idle games that involve micro transactions. "Watch this ad to get 1 hour free", "pay $2.99 to get 1000 gold" are generally combined with free games that have deliberately bad gameplay that can only be improved by paying to make it suck less. This kind of monetization sucks in all game types, but it very common in idle games. That's why most of the best idle games have terrible graphics and are made by one guy doing it for fun / the love of the game, rather than a polished title made for $$. I would love to see a day when we can get quality idle games on Steam for $5 without the shitty pay-to-not-suck mechanics.
Great videos from both of you guys though.
And then clicker becomes an RPG according to this lol.
I just left a big comment on Snoman's video with my thoughts, and you said highlighted all my points, except with even more good defensive points, and said them way better than I worded them! I'm really pleased to see someone enjoys clicker games as much as me. I've only played Cookie Clicker, Realm Grinder, and Kittens Game, but now I have so many more to try out, thanks to your recommendations!
So, I may be wrong, but it sounds like you are mostly defending idlers on the grounds that idlers are becoming more like management or tycoon games, which makes them deeper and more interesting. At that point though, it isn't really the idle or clicker part of the game that is interesting, its the strategy. So you end up not defending idlers, but defending management or tycoon mechanics that can be used in both idlers or regular management games.
bwjclego to be fair there is no idle game that truly does not have any form of strategy
Paperclips might have been a better example than Mine Defense on what a 'paradigm' shift would be. Some of the cases minimize what the term paradigm means.
Kittens was a FIRE choice tho! And Idle Wizard is DOPE AF!
Idling to Rule the Gods is also a really good one
I've watched a good number of both your and Snoman's videos, and I just wanted to say thanks for making this one. I'd played a couple simple incrementals in the past and found them to be a fun distraction. Now, I'm 22 days into Mine Defense, started Kittens Game a few days ago, and have played through several of the shorter games you featured.
Clicker games are exactly the same as any other game, except sparse enough that you can play while you do other things. Like. How are RPG stats or killstreaks or any other element of other types of games not "just watching numbers go up"? The only difference is the level of engagement, if I want to play something but can't muster the attention span, I'll open a clicker and keep my mind occupied with a game that doesn't require much of my attention span. Tbh it helps me think when my brain is scattered, the small accomplishments kinda "reset" my thinking and are almost meditative.
I sub to both you and Snoman, so I absolutely love this video. Amazing to see two in-depth looks at this topic.
I feel like the problem that Snoman’s Bad game design subseries is that he personally doesn’t see the appeal in that type of design. I usually try not to call anything good or bad, even outrage worthy games like pre-update No Man’s Sky have the perfect player to enjoy it. I was going to compare game taste to physical taste in an attempt to show how ridiculous it would be if people got upset in the same way over food they dislike, but then I remembered how much people irrationally hate pineapple on pizza.
No offense but there are so many better clickers than the ones in this video like the ones on mobile. Tap titans 2, tap tycoon, doomsday clicker, ragnarok clicker etc. Tap titans consistently upgrades the level cap has tournaments and so on. I feel like this video was made in 2010 and just uploaded. Again I don't want to sound offensive but the suggestions on how to keep the genre fresh are thriving and constantly improving on mobile platforms.
How about Magikarp Jump? Not the deepest game out there, but it takes the cake for being an official polished game by Nintendo.
What I find interesting is that virtually all the core components of idle games date back to Candy Box. They might get more complex, they might take those ideas in exciting new directions. I mean, when you started talking about having a story and an end, I thought you were going to mention it there. :)
While I appreciate your love and dedication to this genre, your analysis feels bloated with fancier ways of describing the same exact thing.
The "paradigm shift," as you call it, is just additional things to click, additional numbers to rise. It's not a change in gameplay, it's not additional mechanics. It's just more of the same.
The games you mention that DO change up the formula wind up being completely different genres altogether. Resource Management games are their own genre and aren't a defense to Clickers and Idles, just because you can also click and idle in those games.
The rest of your video is just saying Snoman is wrong for being right while making up scenarios in Stardew Valley that don't actually exist, which drives home his point in the first place. These scenarios DO exist in Clickers, and that's the problem.
I get it, man. Some people just really, really love Surstromming. But you're not going to convince the rest of the world because it's your own personal taste. In the end, you really are just clicking buttons to see numbers rise. And that's okay.
the mechanics do change. in cookie clicker for example, it gets to a point where upgrades are not worth buying anymore or you literally bought them all, then the best way of progressing is by the minigames you unlock, like the farm, pantheon or grimoire, which are ALL minigames based on the player's choice instead of just mindlessly clicking, after you bought all the upgrades, in cookie clicker, you'll pratically ignore the amount of cookies you'll have, and just focus on sugar lumps (which is better to get from farms) or prestiege levels, its not about the cookies number you have anymore.
and thats what he's talking about when he reffers to the paradigm shift
also, yea there are some shitty clickers out there just like there's some shitty rpgs out there, but saying all clickers are doomed to be bad because they're clickers is just being close-minded
I agree I thought that. As soon as we;re given different things to click and choose, we move away from the simple clicker. But then the original video also did this by moving on to waiting games, and the strategy aspects in the games describe here are more an extension of those kind of games.
Games can just be great whatever amount of interactivity they require to play. You get well made ones and less enjoyable ones. I played My Name Is Mayo on PS4 and it is pure clicking, not even levelling up! The goals were watching only one number go up; the number of clicks. The goal posts were unlocking various skin variations and the trophies. It didn't exactly end but there was a point where nothing new happened, so it wasn't an endless game, but enjoyed it for what it did!
Candy Box is my favorite clicker game. Dat ASCII art.
I think you'd be interested in watching some of Edmund McMillen's (developer of The Binding of Isaac) interviews where he talks about his disdain for clicker games and how he made one of his own to prove a point nearly a decade ago.
So uh when we gonna play Dead Space 3 together? I'll buy you all the better guns gurlll
Excellent video. One thing I would like to add would be to add to your rebuttal against No End Game is a bad thing. I think that all comes down to a journey vs. destination argument, but that many games have no set ending. MMOs, for example, or Adventure Mode in Diablo 3. If what you're doing during the journey, then there is no need for a destination.
A "few" idle genre videos huh?
I miss Idle Corner.
@@ingeniousclown Even though I myself don't really care much for idle games, it was fun to watch those vids.
@@ingeniousclown You still get dust in that corner, even when you're away!
Kongregate was so nice to play idle wizard on waiting in between spell cooldowns chatting with the community of others much love to that community. For reference I suggested the interrgator pet
Somebody call Keemstar cause I smell some beef!
Haha no
Just published my first game on Steam "Dead Profit" so I got a little offended by snowman so appreciate you explaining exactly how I feel, cant wait to see where the genre goes!
Wana Wach Numbers Go UP ? Try NGU Idle. This game is ABOUT numbers go up.
Well played good Sir, well played.
That was an amazing video! You made very good points about clickers, especially about how they are inspiring people to become game developers because of their simplicity to make, even me, and now after seeing tons of examples of other games, I can definitely see the flaws in my original and explore what could be done with it! :)
After watching the entire video.... Still won't get it
Wow! I love idle and clicker games, but I hadn't heard of all the ones you mentioned, and now I'm playing two of them! I didn't even know there was a subreddit for it either. Great video!
damn you forget idling to rule the gods
ikr
I agree with both sides, really. Clicker games can be fun, but they have the potential to be predatory. They take advantage of the "sunken cost" principle where if they make it easy to make progress early on, you'll stick with it later down the line because you've already spent so much time invested in it. I'd say a game that does this poorly is Hooked Inc (an iOS game where a vast majority is to prestige over and over for tiny boosts), and a game that does it amazingly is Egg Inc, which combines dozens of upgrades and nearly 100 research pools to fill before you prestige and start over. Egg also does what few games like it do, and give you regular access to premium loot for free. A lot of time the different between a bad and a good clicker/idle game is how elusive the most premium currency is. Egg Inc is actually so well made in its introduction of paid boosts that they demand you play the game before cashing in becomes worthwhile. The easy option of paying for premium only gives you 1500 for $5.00 irl, but you can spend $3 instead on a pool of this currency that stacks infinitely as you research. Play for a few weeks legit and spend the equivalent of $20 premium for only $3. Clearly it incentivized you to play rather than spend, which I think more free clicker/idle games should do.
interesting video, but i still won't waste valuable time of my life on them.
The thing is you won't really have to.
lmao someone commenting on youtube about how they have better things to do with their time.. The irony is so great
You see mate...the thing is with videos...you do not have to interact with them...you can...do other things like chores...pay bills...workout or anything else while they play in the background.
do you think you can do these or other things while you are clicking a mouse or other button?
you laughed at me,but you should be laughing at your own ignorance.
the irony is great
@@shayoko6 Tbh you got me, I have been defeated
@@shayoko6 You're literally talking about a genre called *IDLE* games. The whole point of the genre is that you only have to interact with them once every few hours. It's no skin off my back if you play or don't play them, it's just hilarious to me that you responded in such a moronic manner.
I remember taking a small interest in Cookie Clicker after hearing my friend play it. While I didn’t play it too much in the beginning as I saw the game as basic, once I learned that there was more underneath I began to sink more and more time into it. Always having it in the background to gather more cookies and heavenly cookies
Universal Paperclips also became a favorite of mine after a highschool teacher let us play it for their lesson. Since I had some Cookie Clicker experience at the time, I definitely had fun showing the class how it was done.
I respect you and I think you make good content, but I found this video to be utterly unconvincing. I see your points about newer more intersting games (that don't seem to interessting to me), but that is not what a genre is. A genre is defined by the big games. What you are doing here is as if I were too say that fps are not reptitive and uncreative just because super hot was cool.
Good point. I too felt the games discussed are on different planes, but I can understand why a fan of the genre felt the desire to challenge blanket statements made about it... But you're right, as well as defending the genre by showing better games, we could start by defending the games targeted.
What's wrong with getting enjoyment from clicking and experiencing progress without doing acrobatics with an avatar? What about the good to be found in waiting games? Utilisation of in between time, delayed reward despite busy schedules, real life time management as part of strategy...
Your view is flawed too, just because the big games are flawed does not make the Genre flawed.
Honestly you sound so shallow.
Honestly there's not much separating cookie clicker from the loot based exponential grind of something like Diablo 3, and I can see how more complex titles could offer the same enjoyment that many find in learning how to exploit combat systems to their fullest potential in JRPGs, hell some of those examples looked like straight up management sims. And while there's a lot of mechanical cross over with some of the worst and most predatory shit on the mobile market isn't it a good thing that there are all these games that explore and exploit those mechanics in a safe space where players can become aware of exactly how they work without being charged out the nose for the experience?
However there a ton of real bad idle games that do use predatory microtransactions and they should be avoided, but that's sadly true of a lot of genres especially in the mobile/browser game space.
Okay some criticisms.
1: Just because YOU and YOUR friends don't remember games you haven't completed and forget about them mid play, DOESN'T mean that is the case for the MAJORITY. Please do research into this instead of using a small case sample as evidence.
2: As someone who has PLAYED clicker games and gone away from them for long periods of time, the money goes decently far, even WITH the increase in prices. There's really no point in playing many of them if it's all about accumulating resources and you can do that with no risks passively.
3: You are essentially restating his point about taking the real time element out of the game and it shows just how shallow the game is. Real time CAN be a good thing in video games BUT as things are now, it has been used as a predatory practice. My examples are practically every war game ever, most every Facebook game and the majority of mobile games.
4: Your Stardew Valley comparison is actually weaker than his and really doesn't make any sense as a counter argument, it really just reinforces his.
As for everything else, I don't feel like picking them apart right now but if you reply, I will. I do sort of agree with some of your points but most of them aren't that great. And BTW, I have been playing whatever I could get my hands on for fifteen years, including idle games so it's not like I don't know what I am talking about.
I love A Dark Room and would honestly place it in among my top gaming experiences. But incremental clickers are, inherently, shitty and damaging to the medium.
There are games within the genre that fight against or overcome that inherent shittiness, but it's always going to be what most of the genre is. Especially considering how cheap they are to make and how microtransactions offer potentially infinite profit. "Devs making a bit of extra money" Pff give me a break how naive can you get. These games are just trying to hook whales
I have one game to suggest: Aurora Dusk. It's one of those ones that goes in a bizarre direction compared to what people normally think of as "idle/clicker" games. It's more of an... incremental/RPG/RTS/sandbox hybrid. And one where you have the option of playing in a very active way, or you can go very idle... you have that choice. There's alot of strategy and complexity to it, and various modes to do, so there's alot of freedom. A bit of a learning curve, but the "campaign" does a great job of teaching you all you need to know. I'm seriously not sure how to describe it in a way that actually does it justice. It's quite the unique thing. You'd have to check it out, and when you see the screenshots and video, it sure wont look like a game with idle/incremental elements. I strongly recommend giving it a shot though. Just beware, like alot of traditional incremental games it has "programmer art". Though it's kinda subjective... I actually quite like the way it looks overall.
I have that in my library because someone mentioned it on the incremental_games subreddit but I really can't get into it for some reason.
I find more fun in these games than a lot of games with active gameplay. Because NGU Idle REALLY got me into the incremental genre. Showing me how deep these can get. And I fell in love with it and have been playing it for about 2 years and have seen the end game evolve even more. Altho I'm really bad at any game so I've never really hit the "end" game..
I quite like Time Warpers, it's interesting to have a first person shooter clicker in the making! :D
Love this counter argument. Good job :D
It's amusing you point out the bad graphics of some XD I've found that the idle games with the worst graphics tend to have some of the most interesting mechanics and gameplay.
I'll definitely be trying out some of the games recommended here. To suggest one of my own, I've been playing Idling To Rule The Gods for over 2000 hours now, and I STILL haven't used every mechanic available to me yet and only done a scant fraction of the challenge missions.
Great video. I thoroughly enjoyed it! If I had to say one thing, I wish you'd have mentioned how Cookie Clicker has evolved over the years, with additions like the Garden providing new and unique paradigm shifts. It's not as simplistic as most people think!
even as someone who played cookie clicker for "just" 2 months, I can agree
The incremental game that caught my the most is Armory & Machine, on the google play store. It stats off so simple, and it hooks you with a mysterious log that give you pasionately written snippets and hints as to what is happening in the world around you, and with extremely simple mechanics, it delivers beautiful paradigm shifts.
Thank you very much for the amazing response, clicker games and idle games get too much of a bad rap for, what I believe to be, unjust reasons. I do believe Snoman dissected correctly what technically goes into the gamification techniques of what ammounts to Clicker and Idle games, but all throughout the video I disagreed with him wholeheartedly that it might be considered bad game design, and I found his conclusion of it being "A money waster at worst, a time waster at least" [sic] to be wholly cynical and unrealistic in several different ways. I even commented that on his video (And a lot of this comment is kind of me restructuring my old comment since it's a reignited discussion), but you went ahead and put most of what I thought to video. Thank you once again!
But I think I can add a lot more as to why I believe Clicker Games (And this time, yes, including Cookie Clicker, Clicker Heroes and all the "bad apples"!) actually do harbor genuinely good game design. The first of which: as a game designer with 4-year experience (and counting!~), I don't just see Black Box tactics (as popularized by the Octalysis Framework of gamification - basically, the skinner boxing and the motivation-by-anxiety), I see something much more interesting: Game Feel. Have you wondered what needs to get into these type of games? It's not as simple as it looks. Not by a damn longshot. And the most impressive aspect is how well it makes you feel good with every click - every number rising and every levelup isn't just a counter going from X to x+y, the numbers POP, they turn a different number, stars fly out, it grows on your screen, something happens - that while not exactly directly affecting the mechanical and practical gameplay, they DO affect the experience - and any game designer worth their salt would tell you that NO game dependant on UI (Hello, clicker games, BUT ALSO RTSes for one) can get by without good, evocative game feel - GOOD game design.
But for me, the biggest reason: It is necessary. You heard me right: These games are necessary to exist.
Firstly, there is demand. There is clearcut demand, or else people wouldn't keep making them. An audience exists for these games, and therefore they enable something other games do not.
And that something is exactly what you argued in favour of and Snoman argued they wasted of him: Time. My argument is that Idle Games and Clicker Games aren't time waster - they allow you to focus on what's important in your life while maintaining a psychological drive to keep gojng.
....Life, and work, often becomes unfulfilling. At times, a burden to muster through just one more day. You'd rather be playing Resi2 or maybe Apex - but you cannot pull your focus away. Clicker games offer you a compromise - a way to activate your cool enzymes in your brain that makes you feel better, for low effort - AND - low time cost.
They have no pretension of being any more than that. And if we are to believe that game design, fundamentally, is to incur an experience onto a player [As per Jesse Schell writes in "Art of Game Design"] - and the game realizes that experience exactly as intended, with no predatory execution - then by all accounts, I believe it to be actual, honest and sincere good game design.
Also, just as an aside, even though it is something that's much more subjective (sidenote, game design by itself isn't objective so all of this is already subjective): I don't think there IS such thing as "bad game design". Rather, perhaps, "bad game design" I'd wager is the misproper use of perfectly fine tools that can be used correctly - vis a vis "skinner boxing" techniques and loot boxes. Even microtransactions are important - ESPECIALLY when you consider how cost-inefficient the market demands are, and ESPECIALLY considering that, as you said, most of those games are free-to-play and need to make money in some way. Achievements and clickers aren't inherently bad game design - but I understand calling the bad application of them as such.
That's a great vid. Reminds me of that idle rpg that I played but cannot for the love of it find again. It had only sprites as graphics and you could play a hero and unlocked other races/species/classes to play as from the beginning again.
I disagree with the argument that all games demand real-time in an equal manner. I spent hundreds of hours to complete the No-death achievements on the Super Meat Boy, but when I finished them, I felt an enormous satisfaction! Which didn't dissipate after I stopped playing.
Those achievement had real value: it required a lot of raw skill, resilience and patience and that makes me proud of myself. But pure idle games like Cookie Clicker or Adventure Capitalist both demand real-time and the achievements have no real value. I've got absolutely no satisfaction by reaching 10^100 money on Adventure Capitalist or gathering an absurd amount of cookies. I just clicked and logged off. I felt bad. It's similar to cigarette addicts hahaha.
The problem is not to demand real-time, but to not reward this invested time with real valued achievements.
the problems i see here are 1) he spoke about real-time as an all around mechanic and not used equally between genres, and 2) the examples you provide of meaningful (or non-so-meaningful) achievements are entirely subjective.
I play old school runescape, and the sense of accomplishment I got in creating my max infernal cape (this took me about 3000 hours overall) is something I'll never forget. but for a lot of the people that play osrs and *dont* find the max grind enjoyable may also not see my accomplishment as anything more than just a "this dude sits at his pc way too much" flag.
the sujective value I felt in achieving my max infernal cape is something I will forever be fond of, yet to others is subjectively worthless beyond a waste of a significant portion of my time. it isn't really fair to use subjective positions as objective facts in determining whether a game or its genre are inherently "bad" unless you have an overwhelming majority of people providing the same feedback.
@@taizer4785 You really do have point, fair enough.