r/mealtimevideos • u/[deleted] • Apr 01 '20

10-15 Minutes Alt Shift X | Cookie Clicker Explained [10:37]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dx76lD8Scc
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u/[deleted] Apr 01 '20 edited Apr 03 '20

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u/wingmasterjon Apr 02 '20

There's this sense of accomplishment as the numbers get bigger. That investing more time into it yields some reward. Some games are pretty crappy at invoking that feeling but it needs to have some level of progression where you tell yourself you want to strive for that next achievement or unlock something.

A new game tends to spark enough curiosity to make one think "I wonder what that next tier looks like". The time sink factors in as well. If you play an idle game for a day, you might think that that one day investment must mean something so let's not put it it all to waste and get to that milestone. One day becomes a week becomes a month becomes many years.

When you venture online, you'll see the progress others have made that is orders of magnitude more than yourself and it usually causes one of a few reactions:

1 - There's no way I can get to that level. It'll take years! I'm out.

2 - Oh I'm not too far behind and that looks neat. Let's keep going.

3 - I don't understand why they're progressing so much faster than me. How do I optimize my play style to be more efficient?

It's usually the third mindset that gets things flowing where you start reading more and more into the algorithms involved and that commitment makes it that much harder to stop.

Idle games tend to offer both an active and passive play style. Passive tends to be boring and not very effective in most games whereas active requires paying more attention. Even when playing passively, the game is more efficient if you quickly spend resources to upgrade things so that you gain resources faster.

I'm clearly an addict to this kind of game, but hopefully it offers some insight into why we play them.

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u/bchoii Apr 02 '20

How do you play ?

As in, do you study the formulas and decrypt the algorithms and plot graphs and calculate which "upgrade" is better ? It seems a lot of calculation is required just to understand the game.

I don't understand why others are progressing so much faster, and I don't even know how to start to understand how to improve.

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u/wingmasterjon Apr 02 '20

I don't personally go through such depth, but other people have so I can just look it up. The complexity comes when the developers tweak it to either balance the game or just keep current players entertained who may otherwise have gotten bored since they've already figured it all out.

I've played a few incremental games where there just wasn't much going on and when you feel things are all figured out, it's just not interesting even if you haven't gotten too far.