3 ms·

Clicker games are basically just core essential game mechanics. If you are new to game design and programming and wish to make a game I recommend making a click

by z3t4 5y ago

Clicker games are basically just core essential game mechanics. If you are new to game design and programming and wish to make a game I recommend making a clicker game. When you master game design you can basically make any "game engine" fun. There are many great programmers and artists that make advanced game engines but they do not master game design.

marginalia_nu 5y ago
As a counter-argument, I'd argue that a lot of games, especially indie games today but also bigger productions, are incredibly formulaic because they focus so much on designing the game loop first. You can coax most games into the loop model, but it's like the Hero's Journey of game design: It's a passable tool for understanding the medium, but it's toxic template for producing something that has any sort of soul. Not that it can't be done, but using that as a starting point pushes you toward a certain set of conclusions and limits the ways you think about games.
jawns 5y ago
I second this! Clicker games are a great introduction to game design! If you are trying to teach a kid how to build games, go on Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu https://scratch.mit.edu) and it should take you about 10 minutes to build the most basic form of a clicker game: place a character on the screen, set a click event, increment a score variable. And then you can add slightly more logic to make it more interesting. My kids and I put together this slightly more engaging clicker game in only an hour: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/599845292/ https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/599845292/
pjc50 5y ago
> just core essential game mechanics Controversial; I'm reminded of how Ian Bogost made Cow Clicker as a satire of how reductive clickers were as a game mechanic, only to find people playing it unironically. https://www.wired.com/2011/12/ff-cowclicker/ https://www.wired.com/2011/12/ff-cowclicker/ http://bogost.com/games/cow_clicker/ http://bogost.com/games/cow_clicker/
- wpietri 5y ago
  Has anybody seen smart breakdowns of the "core essential game mechanics" in play here? I ask because I truly despise this kind of game. Universal Paperclips was great: smart, funny, thoughtful. But even at the time I disliked how compulsive it was. And now there's a vast swamp of low-rent "idle" games that follow the same template. The moment something starts to feel like that, I close the window and never come back. I keep thinking there's something about the raw mechanics that exposes bugs in the human wetware the same way addictive substances do. Or the way gambling does. But the idle games strike me as a different class of addiction than gambling. Not about variable reinforcement, but something else. I want to know what that "something else" is.
  - howLongHowLong 5y ago
    Possibly just an innate impulse to have "a job" and optimize it? Sort of like how our predisposition towards traditionally scarce foods like sugar and fat lead to negative consequences when they're close to infinitely available.
    - wpietri 5y ago
      That's a plausible direction, but what I'm looking for is then a detailed analysis of what constitutes job-ness. Another possible line of inquiry is mastery. We're a tool-using species and we definitely have some disposition to skill acquisition and skill perfection. A third would be something related to wealth acquisition. That idle games burst through the diminishing returns curve by continually upping the game, overriding a mechanism that keeps us from over-focusing. And I'm sure there are more possibilities. Which is why I'd love to see an analysis of the game mechanisms, as I think it would narrow the hunt.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
I personally feel like there are game mechanics, and then there are game mechanics. The former is about producing fun, worthwhile, interesting experiences. The latter is about engagement and manipulation. I personally feel that clicker games are almost entirely the latter.
farias0 5y ago
I'd always had a feeling Clicker Games work as a satire of the worst side of video games, the one that prays on your dopamine system without offering anything artistically, intellectually, creatively or mechanically interesting, like a generic MMO stripped of its fancy clothing, or a stupid mobile game taken to its extreme. And then comes Universal Paperclips, whose whole appeal is that it subverts this by doing something really cool and interesting with the formula.

by z3t4 5y ago

marginalia_nu 5y ago

As a counter-argument, I'd argue that a lot of games, especially indie games today but also bigger productions, are incredibly formulaic because they focus so much on designing the game loop first. You can coax most games into the loop model, but it's like the Hero's Journey of game design: It's a passable tool for understanding the medium, but it's toxic template for producing something that has any sort of soul. Not that it can't be done, but using that as a starting point pushes you toward a certain set of conclusions and limits the ways you think about games.

jawns 5y ago

I second this! Clicker games are a great introduction to game design! If you are trying to teach a kid how to build games, go on Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu https://scratch.mit.edu) and it should take you about 10 minutes to build the most basic form of a clicker game: place a character on the screen, set a click event, increment a score variable. And then you can add slightly more logic to make it more interesting. My kids and I put together this slightly more engaging clicker game in only an hour: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/599845292/ https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/599845292/

pjc50 5y ago

> just core essential game mechanics Controversial; I'm reminded of how Ian Bogost made Cow Clicker as a satire of how reductive clickers were as a game mechanic, only to find people playing it unironically. https://www.wired.com/2011/12/ff-cowclicker/ https://www.wired.com/2011/12/ff-cowclicker/ http://bogost.com/games/cow_clicker/ http://bogost.com/games/cow_clicker/

wpietri 5y ago
Has anybody seen smart breakdowns of the "core essential game mechanics" in play here? I ask because I truly despise this kind of game. Universal Paperclips was great: smart, funny, thoughtful. But even at the time I disliked how compulsive it was. And now there's a vast swamp of low-rent "idle" games that follow the same template. The moment something starts to feel like that, I close the window and never come back. I keep thinking there's something about the raw mechanics that exposes bugs in the human wetware the same way addictive substances do. Or the way gambling does. But the idle games strike me as a different class of addiction than gambling. Not about variable reinforcement, but something else. I want to know what that "something else" is.
- howLongHowLong 5y ago
  Possibly just an innate impulse to have "a job" and optimize it? Sort of like how our predisposition towards traditionally scarce foods like sugar and fat lead to negative consequences when they're close to infinitely available.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    That's a plausible direction, but what I'm looking for is then a detailed analysis of what constitutes job-ness. Another possible line of inquiry is mastery. We're a tool-using species and we definitely have some disposition to skill acquisition and skill perfection. A third would be something related to wealth acquisition. That idle games burst through the diminishing returns curve by continually upping the game, overriding a mechanism that keeps us from over-focusing. And I'm sure there are more possibilities. Which is why I'd love to see an analysis of the game mechanisms, as I think it would narrow the hunt.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

I personally feel like there are game mechanics, and then there are game mechanics. The former is about producing fun, worthwhile, interesting experiences. The latter is about engagement and manipulation. I personally feel that clicker games are almost entirely the latter.

farias0 5y ago

I'd always had a feeling Clicker Games work as a satire of the worst side of video games, the one that prays on your dopamine system without offering anything artistically, intellectually, creatively or mechanically interesting, like a generic MMO stripped of its fancy clothing, or a stupid mobile game taken to its extreme. And then comes Universal Paperclips, whose whole appeal is that it subverts this by doing something really cool and interesting with the formula.