Why Idle games make good satire, and how it was ruined.

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[unidentifiedkiwi]

The fact that Cookie Clicker is STILL being actively worked on and regularly updated accentuates the in-game feeling of infinite growth and progression in a weirdly meta way.

[HumanisticJones]

When I worked in the game industry I was literally in a business meeting where an investor wanted to discuss our “compulsion loop” and how we monetized it. The money people in the industry literally understand games as an addiction pathway.

[laurenbastin]

I think cookie clicker has achieved a more biting and apparent satire of capitalism with cookies and grandmas than most far more overt attempts do

[drmathochist]

Level 1: realize that video game "progress" is meaningless. Quit playing.
Level 2: realize that real-world hobby "progress" is meaningless. Quit doing them.
Level 3: realize that all "progress" is meaningless. Despair.
Level 4: realize that all "meaning" is entirely constructed, not inherent. Realize that you do, in fact, find meaning in video games. Go back to playing them.

[toastwell]

“Oops, all the matter in the universe is cookies now (you are two-thirds of the way through the tech tree).” Is such a terrifying statement and I love it.

[pairodox]

There's an Idle flash game called "Progress Knight", about life in middle ages and different jobs you could have.
The thing about this game is it has a countdown until the main character's death of old age. I haven't tried dying in it yet, because at a certain age the character always finds an amulet, which allows to restart his life later, in a few years before death, which of course makes everything faster. Then, by restarting many times and studying magic you can extend your life span to 200, after which the amulet reveals itself to be demonic and unlocks evil upgrades. The important part being: The only way to reach any notoriety in a medieval society after starting as a peasant, even to become the titular knight, in one lifetime, was dark magic reincarnation.

[Patricia_Taxxon]

Any discussion of satirical idle games *must* mention universal paperclips, it's got similar goals to cookie clicker but does a lot more to illustrate the sobering existential horror of the numbers it's playing with, and u can complete it within a day.

[AgentHeroic]

"Isn't it fucked up for games to manipulate you to spend money like that?"

I'll take "every 2k Sports game relased in the past decade" for 500, Alex

[zenaku]

"All matter in the universe is now cookies..."
"You are now 2/3'rds of the way through the tech tree"

Great delivery lol.

[jeffmillett]

Adventure Capitalist intentionally sets itself up so that it plateaus hard a good way into the game once the sunken cost fallacy has a strong hold on the player. Your options are spend a couple bucks on this free game to continue or legit spend years crawling through the last quarter of the upgrades.

My friends gave up on it while I finally managed to beat it without spending a dime out of pure spite. I started it in 9th grade and finished it my sophomore year of college. That'll show 'em who's boss, right?

[liampoulton-king]

My favourite “idle” game is another explicitly anti-capitalist one: Little Inferno, a game where you buy items from a catalogue, wait for them to arrive, then immediately burn them for warmth. Burning gets you more money, which you use to buy more items to burn. It’s one of my favourite game experiences I’ve ever had.

It’s not quite an idle game in the same way as the games mentioned in here, because progress doesn’t happen automatically over time, but the primary mode of play is through waiting, with minimal interaction, so I think the term fits.

[ardentdrops]

ProgressQuest is also a parody of the gaming community's reliance on macros to play the game for them. In other words, it pokes fun at how gamers optimize the fun out of their own games by creating a game where the macro literally IS the game, as though that's how gamers think of MMOs nowadays.

[Thelacker]

The only clicker game I’ve ever seen that ACTUALLY successfully handles the inherent contradiction of infinite growth under capitalism is Universal Paperclips, because it ISN’T infinite. It can’t be. Infinity doesn’t make any sense in the real world, and UP shows that with the simple edition of having an ending.

[basicmountaingriff]

I once made a microblog thread about how, bizarrely, I discovered that when I refused to buy microtransactions in some mobile games and stuck to 'fairly earning' premium currency whenever I was allowed to I'd slowly end up in a very nice loop of 'saving' and accumulating a whole bunch of premium fake money and always having too much of stuff instead of not enough, as long as I just defined the minimum amount of 'expenses' I needed to be happy. it's funny how videogames literally mimic capitalism so much you can follow the rules everyone tells you in real life but which in fact only work in an imaginary world where you don't die or suffer if you spend nothing

[naomistarlight]

I started playing Cookie Clicker and love how the ticker says, " "Indentured servitude" - grandma "

[reaganbartels]

I'm glad more and more people are discussing the addictive and predatory aspects of many videogames without playing into the stereotypes of games as simply lazy or useless people.

[Squalidarity]

Two other idle games worth noting: Universal Paperclips and A Dark Room. The former being specifically about the productivist nightmare of an AI superintelligence, the latter (on the mobile version) being probably the most explicitly condemnatory of the player character in any idle game I’ve seen.

Also SPACEPLAN.

[stampede]

Re: MMOs, Yoshi-P was once asked what a player should do once they've reached the endgame in FFXIV. He responded "Go play another game." Since taking over he has designed FFXIV so that while players can grind for the absolute best stuff forever, there's actually very little incentive to do so. He designs under the assumption that after finishing the main story, most players will just go play something else until the next major story patch drops.

[atomicfault]

Another great idle game that takes this satirical approach is Universal Paperclips. Unlike most other idle games, Universal Paperclips has an ending, in which you turn the entire universe into paperclips, and while you can restart in a new universe, the true ending is when you dismantle all your paperclip making methods and float in space alone with your 30 septendecillion paperclips. It's a fun game, great social commentary hidden in powerups and such, and it's not too long, only about 6 hours to complete, so you don't need to waste weeks on this little game. Also, it isn't really a true idle game, there's pretty much always stuff for you to do while watching the numbers go up, and there's three stages that are very different from each other gameplay wise, so it never gets stale or boring. Highly recommend playing it.

[BrowncoatFairy]

This video is awesome! Anecdote: i showed Cookie Clicker to my mom back in 2013 or so, basically just trying to annoy and exasperate her -- see, she used to always make fun of me for wasting my time on pointless video games, and i thought this was the ULTIMATE pointless video game (although i had also "played" Progress Quest, which is definitely even more pointless). Anyway, plot twist, she started playing it and became completely addicted to it, even downloading special software for her Mac to keep it from shutting down at night, so she could make more cookies. She still has it running TO. THIS. DAY. When I visit, she always shows me her ... progress. At least it's something for us to talk about!