[Discuss] The Design of Clicker Games!

The Design Elements of Clicker Games!

Ian Bogost was mad at the game industry! He felt modern games were making a mockery of everything he loved. So, he made a spoof called Cow Clicker with only one mechanic - click a cow, once every six hours. He released it to Facebook and began to write about it, hoping to change the industry. And, overtime, people took notice. Some came to look and said, 'Yeah! You show 'em!' and some came ... and played. More came, and more, until it became so popular he was compelled to remove it entirely!

Whether Bogost deserves the credit or not, there's no question that clicker games, aka "Incremental Games", have become their own genre. Today, there are hundreds of clicker games, on all sorts of devices! Of course, the most famous is Cookie Clicker and arguably, one of most beautiful is Clicker Heroes.

The question is ... what can we learn about game design from clicker games?

Gigi

 

I'm addicted to clickers. (AKA incremental games.) I know they're stupid and pointless, but I just can't help but play them.

So of course, I've looked at designing them. And what did I find? They're just as uninspiring to design as to play. There's an addictive quality to them that defies reason, though.

I've found that there is a sense of satisfaction in getting numbers to increase. In managing resources so as to promote further growth in the best way possible.

I recall a gamedev talk that discusses "social" games and the ways that they trick the player into player, and the detrimental effect on people's lives because of it. In particular, the speaker mentioned that it tricks you into feeling like you've been productive, even though you haven't, and this can lead to letter other parts of your life suffer in consequence. This is something I worry about as I design games. Unfortunately, I don't think clickers would be compelling without it.

Depth. For me, the best clicker games don't just add numbers. They present challenges to the player that prevent them from just blindly clicking to maximize efficiency. The least of these is having multiple tiers of things to buy that go up in price as you buy more, but scale linearly in output. This causes you to consider whether you'll buy the cheaper or the more expensive item, and which would increase your numbers faster.

Speed. I recently played a slow incrementer and it was not fun. I ended up writing cheats to get to the end, rather than waiting. It was stupid. So I think a clicker has to give a frequent increase in the number of things you're thinking about and dealing with, and not just once in a while.

Plot. The really good ones also have some kind of plot or story. They get you to care about the things that are incrementing, or the people depending on those numbers, instead of just wanting numbers to increase. This could be as simple as a linear story that happens automatically, or a situation where mismanagement leads to "deaths" in the community. Or even something more complex, which threatens to come close to being a regular game.

Waiting. The best clickers give you something to do when you start, and then encourage you to wait a bit. Then encourage you to click, then wait... And repeat. If there isn't something you can do to speed things up in a meaningful way, then you lose the player.

Prestige. The best clickers also give a way to start over with bonuses, promising that you'll get to later parts of the gameplay faster than if you just kept going.

Saving. Saving locally is a must. Saving remotely is a god-send. Exporting a save for safe-keeping is a serious relief to the player.

Hacking. If possible, the game should prevent hacking. At least casual hacking, anyhow. Due to the "wait a while" nature of clickers, it's very tempting to just hack the numbers you need, but that absolutely destroys the draw of the game. Simple hack prevention is enough to prevent people from ruining the game for themselves.

 

I couldn't explain why I liked them. At first, I thought they were stupid, until I found myself coming back again and again. Then, I figured it was just the Skinner Box/dopemine connection. And now, I'm not so sure. I like the mystery box too! Finding what the developer has to say through his simple game - cookies, pizzas, dogecoins, each is unique. It wasn't until I made my own, that I realized the design was more sophisticated than I thought. And it turned out to be my funnest solo project thus far!

^ This! I was designing a new clicker game and was planning to simplify away the levels. Except, I then realized that without the VAST number of upgrades, incrementals aren't nearly as fun! I think clickers are what we love about 'Upgrading' our characters in an RPG, without the RPG. Which ... is a weird design concept.

Gigi

 

Before reading this thread, I'd never tried a clicker game. So I checked out Clicker Heroes, and after playing for a bit I can say that I don't really get it, but...

I don't think that's such a weird concept. My favorite part of RPGs is always the battle system, which is really just reward through repetition. What I was missing in Clicker Heroes though was any sort of challenge, but I guess that's the point?

 

I think what clicker games have really optimized is the development curve. By that I mean, how much more bigger/better/faster/stronger can you get your in-game personality to be, compared to where it started?

In a venerable game like D&D, you start off with maybe 5 hit points, and after literal years of building your character up to level 30, you've got maybe 50-100 hit points. You started out able to deal 1d8 damage, and after all that development and quest-reward magic swords and so on, you now deal 2d8+2. And, as you get tougher, it gets harder and harder to get any tougher than that.

Other games have little to no development at all. Mario? You can collect powerups, which are handy when you need them, but then they're used up. You basically can't make your character fundamentally stronger, faster, or better than he was when he started (at least, not permanently).

Now along comes Cookie Clicker and its ilk. You start off able to generate something like 1 point per second, and this requires manual clicking. But you quickly upgrade, and upgrade, and upgrade some more, until you are literally generating thousands of points per second. There is always a "just one more" upgrade that makes you not just a little better, but a lot better than you are now, so it feels entirely worth the time/effort to get it. And then, of course, there's another one after that.

To me, that is the key insight of these games: development is a very powerful motivator, so much so, that you can make a game based on nothing else. And people will play it in droves.

 

First off, that is not by Raph Koster, he had nothing to do with it. In fact at the time it came out I was working with Raph on a social fantasy RPG attempting to bridge the gap and make a social game that would appeal to core and lapsed gamers. He is certainly experimental, but cow clicker isn't the type of thing he does, he tends to be more grandiose. (in every detail, which can be a challenge). He certainly commented on it, but had nothing to do with its creation.

Second, cow clicker was a satire game. It was a parody of the current state of social games (about 5 years ago). It was not an effort to change the industry, it was a joke, done for fun. It got ret-conned into an "experiment", and gained some notoriety. It didn't really impact game design, primarily because it was just a reflection of current games. But most of the buzz it generated at the time was either as humorous, or from those in the industry (or industry "journalism"). Clicker satire games have been around since the 90s when they shipped on CDs with game magazines. While amusing, no real impact. Definitely not a genre, though they popup from time to time, they are short lived.

I wouldn't say there are any real lesson here, at least not for serious game design. It didn't illustrate any new concepts or knowledge, and it didn't illustrate that the a satire game or single mechanic can be successful. Cow clicker gained some viral interest, but it wasn't a "success" (most the interest was from devs, not gamers) More to the point, there are much more valuable insights from a variety of sources. While amusing as it was back in social web explosion, taking anything more away from it than a few giggles misses the point completely.

 

How did I make that mistake? OMG - so right! Koster and Bogost are .... completely different! If Koster had invented it, it would have been called 'Ludite Clicker' . Thanks for the catch!

Gigi

 

Related to my post in 'Some People will download ANYTHING'...

The point of Clickers to me has always been the same as many mobile games fill: to find some way to allow a person to waste a small amount of time (e.g. the 'Toilet Gaming' theory.)

The most recent resurgence of Clickers happened while I was still in college, and I turned off to it pretty quickly. Sure, a girl I knew played FarmVille. Sure, I would have short bits of down time between some classes. The reason is more or less everything @wccrawford alluded to - the games weren't carefully paced, the games wanted to hoist a one-sided time, money, and social investment onto the player, the games didn't have varied mechanics, and most egregiously, a way to wait out the waiting.

If I've planted an Orange Tree that takes 5 minutes to grow, that's a short enough time that leaving the game isn't really productive if I'm into it. Yet, I can't do anything for 5 minutes. Having a secondary objective, even one that does not directly contribute to the game itself, would have helped bridge the gap and allowed me to play more.

As it is, the games were rather transparent about what they wanted: to feed and reproduce. The clicker genre, especially married with microtransactions, was the least genuine gaming experience I've ever encountered, and is the reason why I'm happy that that genre has slid back into obscurity.

I'd readily liken success yielded from an Iterative Clicker to winning in Chess via a Fool's Mate. Good for you if you do, I guess.

 

A clicker with microtransactions? Ugh. That's disgusting. I think microtransactions are a horrible game-ruining idea most of the time anyhow, but there's literally nothing to clickers except getting the next upgrade. Buying your way out of it means that the "game" was horribly designed in the first place.

 

For some reason I started reading that like Christopher Walken and now it won't stop.


The only one I've played was A Dark Room, which was enough for me. It was more than just OCD taken to extremes. Every new mechanic resulted in a shift in the underlying premise and ended up with that gave it a story.

because it's relevant.

 

I love that genre. I can remember as a child I played with my calculator. Just entering something like 1+= and hitting the "=" all the time to increase the numbers linear just to see how far I can get.

Maybe you can help me on this, guys. I sometimes read about things like "prestige" in incremental games. How's that working? As far as I see you just "reset" everything you made just to get some ... what? Bonus?

 

A Dark Room is definitely an awesome incremental game. They really knocked it out of the park.

Prestige is just as you say. You start from scratch to get a bonus on your next playthrough. The good ones give a good enough bonus that you can get quite a bit further in the same amount of time, and you'll have to restart several times to reach the highest levels.

 

So yeah, I think I'll definitely create one! Maybe it's a good idea to combine severall game mechanics. Pure clicking is a bit odd. I like this game for instance: http://gzgreg.github.io/DerivativeClicker/

Maybe it's even good to combine different genres, just brainstorm!

edit:

(1) Raw idea: You just click into a bucket to fill it with your clicks. As soon as it's full it spills over into neighbor ones. Well even my Paint&Conquer game uses that kind of mechanic. You could buy larger puckets or play against a friend with a different color...

 

Mixing genres is definitely good. Adding the clicker design to other game types can really make the game feel more interactive.

 

In its way, Bravely Default does something similar with the rebuilding of Norende. Pretty much you place a building every interval of time, which allows you to get useful items for the main game, but it also opens up special boss fights (for instance, the Mega Ultra Waifu Chicken.)

I've got a question: since the hard mechanics of a clicker are to press a button to interact with something across set intervals of time, would it be possible to consider, say, the first Sim City an Iterative Clicker, as well as a City Sim?

 

SimCity definitely has some of the same mechanics as clickers, and while it's possible to fail at SimCity, it's *really* hard to do that. Clickers generally have no fail conditions. So yeah, some might consider it a clicker.

But it's got enough complexity that I think it separates itself from the clicker genre. Even "A Dark Room" is headed more towards Visual Novel territory, and might have been widely considered to be a VN if it didn't start out so strongly like a clicker.

 

Sorry for this maybe stupid question, but what is a "VN"?

 

Are upgrades only an OCD thing? Most RPG's have upgrading stats as a core part of the mechanic. Typically, it looks like this:

* Level 1 Magic Missiles
* Level 5 Fireblast
* Level 10 Fireball
* Level 15 Fire Rain

Strip away the graphics, and what you have is a treadmill where the player is racing forward, to access new content, which is the same as the old content except with bigger numbers. Repeat until the player quits. This design is called the 'Treadmill.' Of course, RPG's and MMO's have many other mechanics too, and yet, under all the glitz, special abilities, and group play, sits this core treadmill of upgrades. Clickers have just found that some players enjoy this single mechanic enough to build entire games around them.

I wonder if other bits of games could stand on their own...

Gigi

 

I think the main point is to keep it really simple in the beginning, it can become complex later on.

Having just a simple one click interface makes it easy to grasp for everyone. I'm not that a fan of just stupid clickers but I'm a fan of incremental games and surprises. So you obviously should the player keep clicking by just give him some surprising results, achievements and whatever from time to time.

For me just tapping forever to count something up like I did with the calculator as a child is not compelling enough anymore. I will think heavily about this and maybe I find some ideas to share here.

I can think of stuff like combos for instance where you click as fast as you can as long as you can. As soon as your click rate goes below let's say 3 clicks per second your combo is finished. That again could be combined with some crafting, so the crafting result becomes better the better your combo is. Again that could be combined with for instance two different areas the player has to click in a deterministic manner like the games where you always have to click on the lighter of two colors...

 

Lots of games have a similar "treadmill" (what I prefer to think of as a development curve), but few take them to the extremes that the clicker games do. Your Fire Rain spell does maybe 10 or 100 times as much damage as the Magic Missiles... but in modern clicker games, you're quickly leveling up to where you produce points thousands or (literally) millions as fast as you did initially. I believe that is what makes them more compelling: the "I'm producing a million cookies per second!" realization is quite a rush for many players.

Never mind that numbers are numbers, and as you point out, it's exactly the same as it was before, but with more digits before the decimal point.

Now as for whether SimCity counts as a clicker game... this is a very important question to me, since I'm working on a city sim (in space!) now. I don't really think so, but there's certainly some design lessons to be learned from comparing various simulation games. I think I'll start a separate thread about that.

 

Visual novel. Take a book, put it on the computer with some music, voice over, and some pictures, while throwing in gratuitous sex for an 18+ rating, and voila you have a VN. They are basically the proto clicker that just fed you more story.

 

They don't always have sexual themes (you're thinking of eroge...)

Long Live the Queen is actually a great example of a visual novel.

 

Sorry, I'd just used the term Visual Novel, but forgot to capitalize it so that using VN later would be easily recognizable.

 

In addition to what I said about SC before, the original SC also had scenarios that definitely had win/lose conditions, firmly pushing it into a different genre than clickers. Since then, they're more just simulators rather than games that you can win or lose.

I know nothing about your game other than what I've quoted above (I haven't even visited the link), and I'm already dying to play it. Hurry up.

 

Let's face it though, 90% usually are. There are a handful that are recommended that don't have sexual content, but chances are if you just happen to end up with a VN, there will probably be some banging. The more story focused ones do tend to have an option to turn off/skip mature content, in case you happen to be 12 and can't handle sex.

 

I don't think it's anywhere close to 90% eroge now. Maybe it once was, but these days there are a *lot* of Visual Novels coming out.

 

I actually wrote an incremental game a couple months ago called Giant Shaft Enterprises. Keep in mind that bad clicker games just revolve around sitting there, buying more things, (maybe) prestiging, rinse and repeat. Good clicker games are the ones that will introduce paradigm shifts in the game. For example, when you prestige in my game you gain "Business Knowledge" to unlock not just new buildings and upgrades, but also an entire new section of the game (space conquest/appeasement). The section adds in new resources, space ships to buy, and planets to take over. It also adds in new upgrades in the form of research items that can only be obtained through research stations on conquered/appeased planets. Making your games totally change is a good way to keep players addicted to the game, because they will always want to see what will come next. ADR also did this well by introducing the roguelike part after you've played the game for awhile already.

But that's just my two cents. My game sucked so what the hell do I know?

 

clicker heroes
clicker games
zombocalypse 2

 

Diablo 3 had a pretty similar progression. You started out doing like 4 dps and you end up maxing out in the millions.

Speaking of RPGs - the satire aspect of Cow Clicker was done pretty well for RPGs in Progress Quest:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_Quest

You can download and play it here:
http://progressquest.com/

The surprising thing about progress quest (and i guess this is similar to cow clicker) is that progress quest despite having no interaction at all is actually fun to play. Leveling feels good, you get equipment at a good rate, you encounter bigger stronger enemies and complete quests.

You can watch someone...watch themselves playing here:

His character is seriously decked out, man he must have spent days on it.

If you're a fan of RPGs I strongly suggest you give it a shot. I guarantee you will be surprised at how much fun it is.

 

Just wanted to add a note about Progress Quest, apparently many also consider it the first idle game. It also is cited (non ironically) as a source of inspiration for Fallout Shelter by Todd Howard in an interview.

Here's a quote from a random review of Progress Quest:
But what I first took to be a well-written piece of satire on silly fantasy tropes and dull game design became something much more frightening: it was enjoyable. I'm hooked. I was really pissed off when I couldn't get rid of my measly 'handpeen' weapon. I'm very proud of my level 7 'Gyp' spell. What on earth is going on?

Although clicker games have very limited input, PQ has literally no input from the player. It really is kind of fascinating that RPG hooks and progression can still work on our psyche even if you didn't actually have to click anywhere or do anything at all.

 

Kind of supports my thesis that it's "achievement" rather than "difficulty" that is the key ingredient in fun, doesn't it? Too many designers see overcoming difficulty as the only way to give players a sense of achievement, but this example shows that it is not necessary. As long as the player somehow identifies with those stats or virtual items, they will have a sense of achievement as they grow/develop, and (much to their apparent surprise) feel satisfaction and fun — even if the difficulty is quite literally zero.

 

I think that "difficulty" is a route to "achievement" at the least.

I've effectively stopped playing games that don't feature perma death or player vs player interaction. As a player, I just no longer feel any accomplishment at all from playing most games (especially RPGs) without perma death. I feel these games don't really have a loss state, so there isn't actually anything to accomplish.

The games where I feel most accomplished are always competitive games: Star Craft, League of Legends, Blood Bowl 2. Playing against other real people is the ultimate challenge.

I may be a bit extreme in that regard, but for a good subset of gamers difficulty level is linked to a sense of accomplishment.

 

I highly recommend Tap Titans. It's a really polished example of the clicker games and I kinda hate how addicted I am to it. It's about the only thing I play on my phone any more.

 

Yeah, @frosted, I don't doubt that there are players for whom overcoming difficulty is the primary means of generating accomplishment. You are the "hard core" players who delight in triumph over adversity (or, better yet, over other people!).

I only mean to point out that this isn't the only way to generate a sense of accomplishment. And sometimes even a game that doesn't "sound" fun, like Progress Quest, can turn out to be surprisingly fun when you actually try it. Of course not all players react that way, but clearly some do.

The reason this matters to game design is that if you think difficulty is the only way to generate fun, then you're missing a whole world of other possibilities that have led to some major hits. (And if you only design for hard-core gamers, then you're ignoring other, potentially much larger, demographics.) So it's worth digging deeper and seeing what other parts of the design space there are to explore.

 

It's achievement from immersion versus achievement from engagement. By their very natures of being passive and active respectively, engagement is always going to be easier to achieve. So achieving achievement through engagement is a substantially easier target to hit.

If you have no idea what brings about immersion, you will likely never be able to reliably immerse players (and that would be the highly susceptible ones, i.e. not the vast majority of your player base to begin with), and trying to understand immersion requires diving into the most esoteric fields known to man.

 

I'm not sure if I would call the progress quest example either immersive or engaging. Frankly I think it's neither, which is what makes it kind of interesting. It kind of takes the example to its ultimate extreme and it shows that there is something else at play in the sense of satisfaction you can get from character development and progression systems.

I think that we tend to think of games (and a lot of the more recent approach to game analysis) as revolving around dopamine and ego. That we enjoy games because they trigger our neuro chemical reward system. That sense of 'accomplishment' is the core system that reinforces behavior and is core to growth and learning. We tend to think of, and talk about games as being almost entirely ego driven.

I think that PQ by being so entirely removed from interactivity shows that there's actually more at play. I think that the enjoyment you get from this kind of game can also have quite a lot to do with instincts that developed around child rearing and tend to be less ego driven. PQ character is not an avatar, it's not an extension of you, but you still take pride in it's progress. It's more vicarious, PQ is more like taking pride in the accomplishment of a child or offspring.

I also think that this side of our brain is one of the less explored, but extremely fertile areas for game development. The few examples that come to mind, things like "The Sims" or "Tamagotchi" had some pretty tremendous success, and really didn't play along the ego driven lens we look at games through. Maybe if more women were involved in the industry (is that sexist?).

 

First, assume your notion of immersion is a thousand times grander than actual immersion. Second, symptoms of immersion are caring about something that you rationally have no reason to care the slightest about. A player doesn't need to be enveloped in a world of fantasy. All they need to do is believe there is any reason whatsoever to keep their stupid tamagochi alive.

You might just be over-analyzing it. From the sounds of it, the game is a magical fish tank where when you occasionally look over at it to see something new having shown up, and sometimes you need to redecorate it. It's a quaint curio, and nothing to obsess about.

 

Although I'm certainly over analyzing it, I disagree. I think there is quite a lot to learn about core principals from the most stripped down examples. But, I'm gonna avoid continuing argument so as not to totally hijack a thread about clicker games with esoteric nonsense

I haven't played many Clickers, so what differentiates a good Clicker from a bad one? Is it better kinds of upgrades or rewards? What do best in breed Clickers have in common?

 

There are some interesting elements, perhaps inspired by "incremental games," that have landed in much bigger games like World of Warcraft Warlords of Draenor. The implementation of the garrison with followers allows the player to send followers on missions for forms of currency or items. The right combo of followers and appropriate levels allows successful completion of missions. There is very limited thought and action involved but there is a sense of progression that for some reason keeps me coming back. I also like the idea that I'm earning items while I'm not actively playing. If I'm too busy to play, I can just run my followers on missions which takes 5 minutes to assign them. It serves as a great way to draw players into a habit of logging in once or twice a day, if nothing else, to run follower missions.

 

For me there's nothing more important when playing certain game is really necessary that we sometimes use the best clicker because it efficiently gives us advantage when we play those games we want.

 

Someone could make a game that shows a forum with a list of threads. As time passes the thread titles turn bold and must be clicked to mark them as read. You could even make the threads literally open and add new posts of random gibberish to them.

 

I checked out that Cookie Clicker game on my lunch break.

There is definitely something satisfying about them even though I "know" they are pretty lame.

For me I think the initial appeal was just the silliness about clicking on a cookie. The novelty is worth 5 seconds anyway.

However, they seem to have fantastic feedback systems. In CC messages appear regarding the fame of your cookies. This provides another hook that keeps your interest for a minute or two. Then all of those clicks unlock the first upgrade... powering up your clicks. X2 then x4. Doesn't seem so tedious now to "get somewhere".

Finally automation is available. I hired a grandma. This process appealed to the entrepreneur side of me. So as in real life I quickly dumped all of my initial earnings into infrastructure in the form of many grandmas and 1 cookie farm. When I returned to work my automated cookie factory was churning out 100 cookies per second.

So there are definitely some good things in them. Showing how to make upgrades to make tedious actions seem less tedious by making them more effective. And ultimately doing away with the manual activity completely.

In fact, I ended up seeing these as a sort of example of building a game entirely from the aspects of a single part of a larger game. Much like I view TD as having focused completely on the battle aspect of RTS. I think Clicker games do the same for the building / resource gathering & generation aspects of those larger RTS games.

 

Blah necro, but I created a little idle clicker asset, not yet released probably be out in 2-3 weeks and going to cost about 20 bucks. If anyone from this thread wants grab a copy (free) send me a PM

 

Playing games you like will make your day complete!

 

Hi friends, maybe anybody have information, how to make balance in this genre ? Maybe somebody saw any good base formulas..

 

Ok my interpretaion of this is going to be radically different...

I've never played these. I tried the hero clicker one. hmm.... well, first feeling I had was that it was kind of like being able to punch someone in the face without any retaliation. Each click had no real repercussions against me and only seemed to reward me with +1's or whatever.

So I thought, psychologically this is sort of therapeutic. In a way, this allows my ego to fully express itself without any consequences and without any limitations, and to in a way be fully 'heard'. We live in a world which is so filled with everyone blabbing and broadcasting all the time, basically a 'war' of confrontation, where nobody really listens fully to anyone. Nobody can stop broadcasting and opinionating and projecting onto each other long enough to let anyone else's expression to be 'fully received' or fully expressed. We're all expert at shutting each other down and being numb to listening and not really fully paying attention. One person expresses something to someone else but then someone else shuts them down and offers up opinions and viewpoints and their own 'neediness', which stunts the expression. Even though what most people express is coming from the ego and is egotistical, typically quite attacking and vengeful, it comes from a pain deep within, and we have a need to vent and express that pain. If it's not allowed to be fully expressed and heard, the person becomes frustrated and feels un-listened to and unloved.

I think in a way the dynamic in these games, regardless of any story or visual theme or progression or anything, it sort of models what it's like to be allowed to fully express, to fully vent, to fully be heard, and for it to be 'safe' to do so (which in a way is loving) knowing that the game is not going to take it personally and turn around and hurt some counter-attack back at you. Essentially, what this means is... holding space. The game creates a space, a vacuum, for you to express into, to get your rage out. Kind of like how people say your pet dog never judges you and is always there for you. So it sort of becomes a best friend instead of having any 'enemy' properties. And this in a way is what people really want, to be heard and listened to and allowed to fully process and vent whatever they need to get out... which they get out through the clicking. Each time I click I feel my ego being fully satisfied, like I get a 'free shot' or am allowed to just emote or vent without any retaliation or non-acceptance. The game is very accepting and forgiving.

Also in a way, because the game doesn't actually get hurt and doesn't take offense and doesn't come back at you with a vengeance, it renders the game essentially invulnerable, and invulnerability is a property of unconditional love. Who wouldn't want to be heard, accepted, and loved unconditionally, and allowed and permitted, regardless of how you feel? Who wouldn't want to be given an opportunity to express and be all of the broken evil vengeful self that we think we are, without judgement, and to be allowed to fully vent that and be listened to without it being 'wrong' or something turning around and punishing us in return?

It's a one-way expression, a one-way relationship.

This kind of thing happens in real life which is why I'm explaining it this way. If you stop and listen deeply to someone even if they're being very egotistical and judgemental and attacky, if you stop trying to 'stop' them, stop trying to judge them and stop trying to analyze or retalite to what they're expressing, they get to vent and be heard and get it fully out of their system. It is very therapeutic and cathartic. This game is basically offering the same dynamic, in my view, in how it lets you just attack attack attack, plus instead of getting punished for that attack you get rewarded. It demonstrates that when you make mistakes, you deserve forgiveness instead of punishment. You hit the game in the face and it turns around and loves on you with rewards and asks you to do it again. Most games model the ego-social belief system that making mistakes asks for punishment and retaliation, ie if you attack the 'enemies' in the game you will get attacked back, and be in a constant war. That's what most games are about. This game is more about the opposite of that, receptivity, understanding, compassion, forgiveness, and reminding you that no matter how much you vent and rage you still deserve to receive some love.

What it kind of boils down to is simply this..... our ego's have a certain way of functioning, and that is, that they want to constantly attack others, and they want to 'get' everything that others have. If we can pull that off, if we can attack 'fully' and know that the entire force of our attack is fully effective and not at all resisted, and if we subsequently 'get' a large reward as a result of that, then this is like the ego's absolute favorite scenario. It is therapeutic at the same time but ultimately you're letting the ego go wild and get everything it wants. And that means, you will feel a sense of satisfaction, and also will feel like this game is the 'source' of unlimited acquisition, that you can just go to it and keep stealing as much reward as you like. That's quite powerful psychologically.

An even better game would be a game where you don't even need to do anything in order to get rewarded, and instead the game just showers you with constant 'stuff', wins, progress, points, whatever, without you even having to exert any energy. I hear there are some games like that where you walk away and it just keeps on accruing goodies.

 

Sorry to necro this over 7 month old thread but I was curious about the actual creation of the variables. I've seen also of tutorials on how to make these types of games and I don't understand why people use Floats and Int. Ints can only go from -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647 while a float can go from -3.402823e38 to 3.402823e38, which is -162142051655736711558.36628676024 to 162142051655736711558.36628676024 if I did that right. From what I've seen these games can count very high, higher than an int can go, which is just over 2 billion (10^9), and a float, which is over 162 quintillion (10^18). In my mind a decimel would seem to be better as it goes to over 72 octillions (10^27). Unless I'm missing something and it is very possible that I am. How are they able to display such large numbers?

 

Guess you've got a NecroClicker on your mind.

The simplest way is to cheat. Increase a thousandfold, divide the number by 1000 and just change the letters after. 1-999 = no unit, 1000 = divide by 1000 and set the unit to "k", next 1000 it's "M" and so on. You can also keep track of the multiplier and use it for a lookup table with the different units, or a function that calculates units on the fly (for nigh-infinite silly numbers), so that you can go up and down. Most of these games don't really care about the small change lost in the exchange.

 

Using a float will become increasingly inaccurate. I would just use two ints. Or an array of ints of you want to go nuts. Two ints could give you easily at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 with minmal effort. More if you want to get fancy.