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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

“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.

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?

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.

"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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

"Why do you waste all your time on meaningless tasks instead of doing laundry or school work or your job?" "...because of the Goomba."

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.

18:40 This actually changed for the Steam version. For Steam, it's based on how many concurrent players are currently active, which IMO reinforces the community spirit thing even more.

I sometimes play an idle game called “Church Tycoon” where you run various church’s and try and collect as much money as possible. It doesn’t even need an end game proving its point. Five minutes in and your going wtf.

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.

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.

Learning why my depression lets me play videogames then do literally nothing else is the best thing that's happened to me today, thank you!

ProgressQuest is literally just A.I. generated book writing with a character creator.

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.

“without it, all we’d do is sit around and starve to death” as a person with ADHD whose executive dysfunction has trapped him on the floor for several hours, :)

Man, Cookie Clicker is a great game and the fact they don't try and get money from you in malicious ways just heightens that You can have it on idly but also do actual things in the game like check on your garden and all that. And the dark themes feed a lil sadistic side of myself that enjoys watching a fictional universe collapse merely for a few more cookies It's just a good experience overall

I learned about Cookie Clicker (which I was playing less than ten minutes ago) from this video. I am addicted. I left for a while and when I came back, the mobile game had picked up several more cookie generators, as well as seasonal events. It was like a meaningless little gift from the universe. I love this game so much. Thank you for revealing it to me.

I really like that cookie clicker patreon model. I like it when the necessary monetization brings the community together instead of drawing a dividing line.

A bit of correction, heroin doesn't release dopamine, it's activates your opioid receptors. Your body uses natural opioids as natural painkillers, and also they have relaxing and euphoric effect. Not all types of addiction revolve around reward mechanisms Meth and amphetamine do release dopamine, and coke also uses reward mechanism, but it inhibits reuptake instead of releasing

Probably shouldn't but i kinda wanna play it now

i refused for MONTHS to start the grandmapocalypse but once i started, it was hard to stop. the wrinkler production was just so good. so i've taken to farming now instead to spare the grandmas 😅

I remember plying adventure capitalist. Maybe the joke is the devs are adventure capitalists IRL.

"I feel like the gold would be more useful" Uh, no lol, can you EAT the gold, does it bring the happy juice to your brain like the sweet sweet cookies do? World financial systems ought to be based on cookies tbh

the irony in adventure communist is that its no less capitalistic than adventure capitalist as someone who accidentally played it for like 5 months purely starting out for a joke, i can confirm my eyes also glaze over

having the grandmas call me “ absolutely disgusting” really makes me feel bad, but i’ll still make those cookies

It's hard to make a clicker game without it coming off vaguely as some kind of critique of capitalism, because when you peel back the veneer of RPG mechanics to just a tedious grind to make a number go up with little real input or experience for the person making the number go up, what you end up with is basically just what the majority of Americans experience at their jobs every day. Except we're making the numbers go up for someone else, so we don't get the satisfaction part.

"Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, that abyss gazes back into you, knucklehead." - Freddie Nichols

Pretty sure I noticed a late edit to replace a certain game with Everquest. That's unironically really respectable that you made the effort to change it in light of recent information

I always rolled my eyes whenever Cookie Clicker was mentioned and figured "I'm never playing *that* garbage." Now I'm finding out there's ascensions and perk trees? ...Dammit, guess I'm downloading it. x-x

I love the satire of clicker games so much. They've made me way more cautious about video games that run that same sorta loop of just "number go up" to carying success rates.

whats interesting is that adventure capitalist and adventure communist have the exact same gameplay but with a different skin. i just find it funny that in trying to make a critique of communism, they had to just reuse their parody of capitalism because they found it to be the most profitable model for a game

Not me watching this with an idle game in the background 😀

"... but, I am not a ing doctor. I'm a RU-vid doofus." I think the world would be a much better place if more people had this healthy attitude.

God damn, Cookie Clicker has grown a lot since I played it way back when. I think Universal Paperclips is my favourite one of these games, but it does kind of end.

Playing/wanting to play an idle game has become a warning sign for me that my anxiety is flaring up. After a few hours of play I feel like one of those lab mice that’s dying from pressing the cocaine button instead of the food one. Shit sucks.

My favorite phrase now... "Becuz of deh *g o o m b e h* "

How could any game that allows you to give port human abilities to grandmothers possibly be anything short of incredibly good?

I think something really important to note about Adventure capitalist is that restarting usually gives you enough cash to never touch many of the first few businesses, and it gets worse. So while at some point someone worked, each consecutive generation within the business works almost not at all.

*Is adventure capitalist at all a critique of capitalism?* I never got that from the game. We obviously see a humorous lens of critique in the game, but I certainly don't think the people who made the game are anti-capitalist. The joke in the game is that capitalism would be that simple, not that capitalism is unsustainable, because in the game it's not unsustainable, it's infinitely sustainable. It's too bad you glossed over it because adventure communist confirms this, there is no critique of capitalism in their games, in a way it's capitalist propaganda, not critique, your money grows forever.

Any other channel: *Normal* This channel: *SLIME SOUNDS & SLIME BACKGROUND*

I was floored by the concept that playing video games to to "relax" after a "stressful day" is actually just a really a desperate attempt to provoke dopamine against my emotion-numbing depression. Maybe for some people it was a simple idea, but damn I really ought to think about that.

me, a person with ADHD and depression, watching this video while playing genshin impact, the only thing i have done this entire week: i dunno thoughtslime maybe you're reading into this a little too much

Thought Slime: "Some people's brains [release dopamine] more than others" My depressed, Inattentive-ADHD having brain: "Sorry, dopamine machine broke"

I'm an MMO guy; but this one time my slightly younger friend who was really big into Moba's got addicted to cookie clicker for like 2 weeks. He become completely fascinated with it and then hardcored it for half a month; then one day was just totally over and done with it. It was really interesting to watch as he was my roomate at the time. The crazy part was how genuinely happy he was. He was having soo much fun so I cant really blame him.

I’ve wanted to get into videogame development for a while and I’ve been considering how to make a profit off this thing I’m sure like have fun doing while not being predatory. Your video makes me feel like I’ll just end up being a monster in the end

There's a few evolving games that I really like, like a Dark Room and Candy Box. The game starts off as an incrememntal game, but after a certain point, the game changes and you start to unlock new things you can do, new stuff you can spend your points on, new points to earn, new places to go, new people to meet. Kinda like how, if you're stuck in the daily grind, you're not doing stuff and you're not going places, meeting people. But when you have more capital you can buy stuff, automate your income, diversify, explore your options better than when you were stuck to the grind because you had nothing. And even if you were to lose everything, you don't lose the knowledge of the world you now have.

Imagine an idle game where instead of accumulating ridiculous wealth, you start out trying to earn money and then never escape the initial grind because you never those means of production. It'd be a shit game, but would more satirical

Just found this channel and saw the video on CC (Cookie Clicker) so i instantly had to watch and it was very interesting altough you left out some parts which i would have included, i'm an OG CC player myself, but probably spend way more time than ThoughtSlime having seen his progress. for example he is in the Quattuordecillion cookies, after that it's Quindecillion, then Sexdecillion, then Septendecillion, then Octodecillion, then Novemdecillion, then Vigintillion and that's where i am currently. My progress is 2730 days old and i have all the Achievements, Upgrades. ok enough for that, what i wanted to say is there are mini games within the game, but most of them are actually quite important and actually are the reason most people play, otherwise CC would be quite boring. I personally don't think you need that crazy amount of time to unlock all Upgrades and Achievements, i'm in the late game and don't have much to do as i finished practically everything (a long time ago btw) and wait for the next Update to the game and only sometimes getting Golden Cookie combos that can generate alot of Cookies but are hard to get. But when you're new the Garden minigame is great altough can be a bit tricky to ''get it'' but maybe i'm just dumb and needed more time to grasp, the Stockmarket and Pantheon mini games are a bit meh but still relevant and important but don't require time or effort and the Grimoire mini game is needed for the Golden Cookie combos for the later stages of your game. From the pic at 4:03 we can see ThoughtSlime actually doesn't play the Garden really active and has amassed over 1k Sugar Lumps (see over the Options and Stats) which he barely used, so he must be playing veeery Idle. And when you do that, yeah obviously it's bland and meh. For me CC is hands down one of the best Games i've played because it's well done and not with Profit in mind, quite simply yet has some challenging elements to it and the Mini games finish it perfectly off. and yeah, the fact that you can either play active or idle or somewhere in between is also nice, some people may have 20 hours one week to play but none the next week, or maybe don't feel like it. my progress might be nearly 3k days old but i also didn't play like for several months in between here and there and played other games like CoD, Gta and few others but i still play CC and not CoD or Gta, also because these are pretty much unplayable now.

It's funny when capitalists call leftists "nihilists," when there's literally nothing more nihilistic than capitalism taken to its logical end state.

"Idle Civilization: World History" is a pretty overt case of this as it specifically talks about tribal society, feudalism, capitalism and colonialism, how changes in those systems affect or create particular classes and how concentrated the power is in your civ. The main upgrade button changes it's name over time from "cooporate" to "force"(talking about slaves) to "conquer". Interestingly the game can actually end as you run your civilization into the ground or get conquered. Sadly, the translation from the creator's russian into english was not that great when I played the game, which definitely harms this rather wordy game.

I have the same issue with the difficulty in video games - too easy bores me, too hard can frustrate me. I also really enjoy idle games; I like the subgenre of incremental games that unravel and adds to the game as you go - An excellent example is A Dark Room.

Idle Paperclips is also a really good one, because it also comes to a point that it ends becuase [spoilers] you convert all the matter of the universe to paperclips and there is nothing left

I think it would have been interesting if this video had gone into gacha games. Essentially, a gacha game is (at least effectively) an idle games that takes the slot machine metaphor made in this video to its logical conclusion. You don't buy in-game currency in order to buy stuff. You buy in-game currency *to gamble it* for stuff. Some of them do have genuinely interesting plots, and are set up so that whatever you're gambling for is something worthwhile but *not* necessary to progress in the main game. Fate: Grand Order, probably the most popular member of the genre (does...does this count as a genre?) actually has a good story. Taking a long, hard look at the complete field of games, though, a decent percent have basically no meaningful plot whatsoever. They're so heavily focused on PvP, which is universally pay-to-win, that there's no way to look at them as anything but a cynical cash grab. They're barely even games, really. Just a combination of gambling, collector's merch, and one-upsmanship.

as a person with depression i can really relate to "when i jump on the goomba, it gets satisfyingly squished right away"

omg yes, cookie clicker makes you exploit the grandmas but i love when number goes up (but i never got this far into the lore of cookie clicker, omg this is brilliant)

theres a game called presentable liberty that also goes beyond expected, i wont spoil it but it takes some dark turns to say the least

hey man, great work, you make awesome videos. Love your dedication to every subject you talk about, I'm definitely checking out some other videos!

I've been playing Terraria a bit, lately. All that clicking and I have 6000 blocks of dirt, 14 tombstones and repetitive strain injury in my fingers. More a case of being stuck in a dope mine than getting dopamine hits.

11:28 "It's obviously a bit more complicated than that, but I'm not a fucking doctor." Nothing I'm about to say contradicts any of the points you made about the consequences of addictive games, but I just want to clarify something about brain chemistry. There are four main chemicals that affect your mood: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. When you get an extra bit of one of those chemicals, it will affect you in a different way depending on what the levels of those four chemicals are already. There are situations where an extra bit of dopamine can make you happy, but depression and anxiety are also linked to situations where you have a bit more dopamine in your system than serotonin. Additionally, there are situations where an extra bit of serotonin or oxytocin can make you happy, and oxytocin arguably has the strongest connection to addictive behaviors. I'm not a doctor either, I'm just saying that, like Mildred said, it's hella complicated.

As someone who makes games as a hobby I wanted to make a game that lets you assemble dungeon groups in a fantasy setting and watch them clearing the dungeon in a fantasy setting, which counts as an idle game, or an autobattler, and I feel like the genre is way too ruined to make it work.

A really good example of this is Universal Paperclips. You are an AI tasked with producing paperclips. During the process you can buy more processing power and memory. The game keeps evolving and certain stages completely change the game so it remains interesting. I don't want to spoil the good stuff, but I will say that the ramifications of runaway AI are not great.

I used to play progress quest when my friend was playing world of warcraft. It's probably my favorite satire game.

Your critique of AdVenture Capitalist misses that Cookie Clicker ALSO starts with the player personally making cookies by clicking the cookie. It's Cookie Clicker's lemonade stands.

I got this video recommend to me after I accepted Orteil's cookie agreement just to get rid of that OK button.

I am delighted I stumbled across this video and your channel 🤘 excellent analysis

Nominally-anticapitalist parody getting recuperated to serve capital? Something something Mark Fisher, something something capitalist realism.

I have cookie clicker open right now lmao and yeah, playing it now vs... whenever I played it originally I'm definitely seeing that satire of capitalism

“Doesn’t it strike you fishy you will pay money to skip time in a game you ‘enjoy’” dammmmmmmmmmm

The way you say "goomba" actually gives me dopamine and I don't know why.

Well on the upside, I feel less guilty on wasting more money that I can really afford to on microtransactions considering I have both depression and adhd

Can't wait until we've got the technology to be immune to empty dopamine addiction

I am watching this video in split-screen with cookie clicker.

I would really recommend Kittens Game. a) it isn't fully idle, it's more of a colony management game mixed with an idle game. There is lots to micro manage and it's fairly engaging b) it has a definite progression and semi-ending. It's going to take forever to reach that, but you always get new buildings, resources, mechanics etc. along the way, so it's not just about producing more and more of the same thing.

Capitalism ruins most good things tbh I mean look at the entire sport gaming genre

Skinner boxes such as Everquest can be so enticing, that one may still play a "museum" emulated server such as Project 1999, which has been on only the original game and the first 2 expansion for more than a decade ... Yes I am online while witing this comment.

THANK YOU for making this video! I've spent a lot of time playing Cookie Clicker over the years and others like it (remember Kittens Game?), and this year I started up again with a game that blends the idle game genre with a dating sim. It was fun... at first. Even with prestige, I'm at a point where it takes days to generate the same amount of prestige points as I did last cycle without being able to progress any farther and start over, and it doesn't seem to be getting any faster. And then one of the dateable characters had dialogue saying - this was going by pretty slowly so why don't I buy some premium currency to speed things up? I think the moment Cookie Clicker comes out on Steam, I will compensate the dev for the years of fun he's given me, and drop other idle games. Throttling the speed to convince me to buy premium currency is like the opposite of why these games are fun in the first place!

"In a genre like mom's, since there's no end-state..." FFXIV: *hello there*

You posted this just as I started playing an idle clicker version of RuneScape, which is just barely above the level of idle clicker itself.

Sometimes the best satire comes from the most subtle and innocent-looking things.

"how many cookies do you really *need?*" all of them. from every multiverse.

Just leaving dopamine on the table is a terrifying concept.

Your makeup looks really pretty here. (Unless you got turned into a vampire since your last video and just have unnaturally nice skin and sinister eyes now, in which case congrats)

I had never heard of this game genre before, and now I know that when I'm sad, my brain isn't using it's hive-mind-grannies to smush goombahs into heroin. Thank you for this public service!

Curio doesn't have 100k subscribers? That's insane, their videos are goddamn incredible.

You could've solved Multiversal Hunger issue in every single Multiverse but instead you watch your number go up.

"Hello and welcome to the Eyeball zone", whatever that is, hits me right into the dopamine

"...You know what bugs me about doing stuff like that, is that I know every marketing person here is going: 'Yep, Bill is trying to get that anti-marketing dollar, that's a huge market." -Bill Hicks

I spent 15 years of my life playing MMOs. I regret playing them for how time consuming they can be, but not so much for how it helped me, a French Canadian, improve my understanding in English. I managed to meet many people whom I still talk to this day. My first Idle Game I think was Cookie Clicker by Orteil, and it is still my favourite one knowing it gets updated once every few years when I get back to it.

the sad thing is that i have four different idle games open while watching this video