incremental games. And it makes perfect sense

The video game is an interactive medium. Even genres like walking simulators have some of the best mechanics in the industry (there are moments of ‘What Remains of Edith Finch‘ either ‘Mixtape‘ which are impressive), but there are a type of games that are made so that we play as little as possible.

They are the ‘idle games‘, games designed to be played alone or with as little attention as possible from the player. Within the same genre there is a twist: incremental games in which there is a certain strategy to achieve that objective of jplay less and less and get bigger rewards.

They have a lot of pull. And also all the sense in the world.

The psychology of games made so you don’t play

First of all, we must make some concepts clear. Incremental games are titles designed so that the numbers within the game do not stop growing. Progressively, we get larger numbers, more resources or more power. At the beginning, we must pay some attention, but the goal is to achieve optimize the game so that we don’t even have to look at the screen.

‘Idle Slayer’ is an example of this type of game: the character advances alone and we only have to pay attention at certain moments to optimize the achievement of those resources, but the doll advances whether we look or not. If we pay attention, resources will increase faster, but it is not totally necessary either.

Then there are the incremental games. These are already more active and require us to pay attention by clicking on the screen or making frequent decisions. The goal is the same: to reach a point where there are even systems that click for us, prioritizing automation.

The most normal thing is that genres intersect because, really, they are not separated. ‘Idle Slayer’, ‘Cookie Clicker‘ (which may be the most famous) or ‘AdVenture Capitalist’ are clickers at first and end up becoming ‘idle’ games in which the goal is the same: automation of everything.

Are they big sellers? Well, they are not at the level of large productions or the most played games at all times on Steam, but they do tend to have communities of around 500 or 1,000 people at any time. They are good ‘distractions’ to have there on a second monitor while we do other things, with the satisfaction of seeing how the numbers on the screen go up little by little.

In short: we invest, we make decisions with what we earn and the idea is to automate. And the most interesting thing about incremental games is, precisely, the psychology behind them.

In some studies that have been made about this type of games (two very good ones are “Play to wait” and “Busy doing nothing? What players do in idle games“) details what tools they have to hook us and encourage us to “play”. The keys that stand out are:

• Continuous progress: Even though the actions are simple, we see rewards and have a constant sense of progress.
• Reinforcement and anticipation: Waiting is not empty, since when we get a reward, we are already planning the next one.
• Motivation cycle: we wait, we collect the prize, we reinvest to achieve improvements.
• Planning: The fun is not in the immediate reward, but in what we will get in the future when those investments bear fruit.
• And the low cognitive load: we can resume them at any time and they are suitable for short sessions.

Those are the main characteristics why these games are liked, but then there are the psychological levers that they activate, those “brain tickles” that make us want to continue playing.

What comes into play here is the reward system with that feeling of “the next improvement is coming, so I’m going to take five more minutes”, but also elements such as the accumulation effect that comes into play when we see multipliers that give the feeling of personal effectiveness and, above all, that we don’t have to pay attention.

Known as “delegation of action”, the player outsources that work to the system and the pleasure when playing comes precisely because the numbers get bigger and bigger without us having to make an effort, so we have a certain satisfaction in feeling that the world moves forward without our surveillance, but that it is generating rewards for us.

You may think that it is empty dopamine, but the satisfaction and attraction of the genre is also marked because there is a certain planning on our part. With what we have achieved, we buy some improvements and not others because this way we will get the rewards we are looking for. In turn, that satisfaction does not come only from the rewardbut rather that we feel that we have made the right decision to obtain said reward.

Although I have sometimes had times of being “hooked” on some of these games, they are not really my type. As a curiosity, yes, they are fine, but in the end those mechanisms and the dopamine they generate do not make much of an impact. I like the reward of a ‘type game’ better.Devil‘ either ‘Destiny‘ which, in the end, is based on the same thing, but with a much clearer and more direct interaction on my part. Except ‘Rusty’s Retirement’, that game is spectacular and I really liked it,

Now, I completely understand why these incremental games are so successful.

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