̶B̶a̶d̶ Good Game Design - Clicker Games (Idle Games, Incremental Games)

Snoman Gaming recently made a video talking about how Clicker Games are "Bad Game Design". I disagree, and I take it upon myself to deconstruct his video and arguments. As a content creator who has created videos for this genre in the past, I felt it was my SWORN DUTY to defend against these travesties.

I'm not trying to stir up drama, so please be respectful in your arguments to me or Snoman.

Scroll down for links to the games!

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Links to games mentioned at the end of the video:

Links to games in the video, but not mentioned:

Leave a comment if I forgot one and I'll try my best to add it!

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Attributions:

Apex Legends footage:

Oxygen Not Included footage:

Dead Space 3 footage:

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[snomangaming]

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

[MrMoczan]

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.

[justas]

Pro tip: If you suck at art use minimalism or really small pixel art.

[keystone]

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.

[kaiofficial]

What?! A video criticizing somebody but respectfully and not trying to start beef?!

[Connorses]

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.

[superbitvideos]

Runescape is the ultimate cookie clicker.

[sgettle]

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.

[Ekitchi]

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.

[restlessfrager]

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.

[cubekcahn]

- video starts: *opens up description
- *sees list of clicker games
- "welp, time to waste a few years of my life" *cracks knuckles

[poisonoussoybean]

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.

[joelhatterini]

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.

[zhoncinema]

Is nobody gonna talk about the mutated grandmas and a corupt company unfolds in cookie clicker.

[unchpunchem]

A dark room is so so good... Definitely my favorite idle game. You all should try it

[boopbop]

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.

[OnlyForThePriceOf]

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.

[vlogergames]

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!

[-VexyRS]

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.

[masterplusmargarita]

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.