If you're looking for examples of "idle games," here's just a few: Progress Quest: bit.ly/1Balbn9 Cookie Clicker: bit.ly/1CCtQAo AdVenture Capitalist: bit.ly/1wlDML9 Feel free to suggest your own favorite idle games in comments!
Interesting. I am not much of a multitasker. However I do enjoy listening to UA-cam videos while I do digital painting. As much I love Extra Credits videos, they are a bit too short for that. I go for the videos that are about 15-60 minutes long. I don't know. Maybe an Extra Credits playlist would work.
I'm also a big fan of the sense of humor that idle games have. I open up the tab, get a good chuckle from whatever happened while I was away, click some buttons, and move on. AdCap's over the top Cold War Capitalist vibe and Cookie Clicker's eldritch horror undertones always have something new to be amused by as the game progresses.
"I think many idle game designers will start naturally move their games towards the unfolding games we talked about earlier this year" This prediction was spot on, and it has become so much of the genre that even the idle game subreddit is a merge of idle games and unfolding/unboxing games (r/incremental_games)
pianoguy222 I had to self-impose a single idle game limit on myself, otherwise I was having like ten tabs of idle games open because 'hey i don't even have to pay attention so why not' So I've been banging my head solely against Wall Destroyer for the past while.
At my worst point I had 5. Right now I'm pretty much done with one, so time to look for a new one... The best so far I've played is Sandcastle Clicker.
Thanks for really looking at these things positively, rather than mocking them. These games DO fill a void, and they aren't particularly hurtful. When I made my new channel to stop my real name from being left everywhere, you were the first channel I subscribed to.
I'm one of those who can't work without a podcast or someone talking in the background. Thanks to that I have "heard" all of your episodes at least 100 times each (maybe more)... Some more than others. I mean... I know every single line of my favorite ones...
Fun fact: sometimes you can make a strategy game into an idle game. You will lose, but still works. My incredible hoi4 run using this technique was incredibly realistic, if not successful.
Progress quest is and always will be my favorite idle game. It's a really clever and really funny breakdown of MMOs with a lot of attention to detail, I.E. getting tons of spells, but only upgrading a small handful of them, because those are the actually useful ones.
Fun to see how this has changed. More and more idle games are available for download and are being played. I see idle game callouts pop up all the time in the corner of my screen when my friends start playing them on steam.
The best idle games are smartphone games which require the game to be open on your smartphone to play. This is helpful when you have a big project you need to get done. Because this game needs to be open to play, but you can't do anything while it's playing, it prevents you from being distracted by your phone.
Eve Online is my favorite Idle game. Between passive skill queues, and the glacially paced industry gameplay I can be an active player contributing to the change in the work while still keeping up with work. It's wonderful.
As someone who never really got praised or rewarded or gifted much of anything as a kid (And even up till now as an adult) by my family, it was nice to play a game where you just get rewarded for playing or just sitting there paying attention to it. Things like Cookie Clicker give you "achievements" or "trophies" when you complete a certain task....or if you just sit there and let the game mix up enough cookies for you. It feels good to be praised and rewarded even if it's for absolutely nothing. Everyone in life wants to feel important or good at something, even if that something is as simple as giving your attention to a screen for a few minutes. It can actually make you a happier person. I know it sounds weird. It sounded weird to me too until I actually sat here and thought about it for a minute. Then I realized why I actually played the game. It made me happy because it felt like I was doing something right or worthwhile, even though I really wasnt. Games are about the experience as much as they are the graphics/music/characters. =)
Huh, Idle games are addicting to me. I don't know if it's because they've changed to be so over the years but the ones I play now definitely keep me hooked doing minimal stuff
You know, it's funny. This episode helped me break the need to keep playing the excessive amount of Idle Games I was playing. Helping to understand what they were doing helped me recognise where I could meet the needs elsewhere in life in more productive ways.
I'm curious though; you posit the idle game as a sort of cure or solution for feeling 'weird' when you have to sit through a whole lecture not doing anything else. But don't you think it might actually be the *cause* ? That exactly because we're constantly playing something on our phone during dinner, or during a toilet visit, that that in itself is causing you to feel 'uneasy' if you can't or don't? It's commonly known that the Skinner box works because it's literally addictive. And feeling 'weird' if you don't get your fix is a common feeling for someone with an addiction. Obviously getting that fix solves the weird feeling, but that doesn't seem like a cure or at least not a proper solution.
I still remember about far back as 2001 the IRC channel #idle. You were actually punished for chatting in the channel, but you were fighting monsters, encountering other players. It was compelling.
my first game I made since I started game designer college, was a IDLE game, the reason for making such a game is the ease you have to master codes and variables that need a Mathematical notion is simple but I highly recommend it to any inexperienced developer like me to try something because it is fast (depending on context) and is fun to do, I received a lot of criticism for the game to be a copy of "coockie clicker", even though I warned several times that this was a game made for educational purposes. anyway I'll post a link to the game you guys give a look www.kongregate.com/games/sollinxp/bacon-generator
DAMN IT! I literally started work on a game similar to this about 2 months ago with the same intentions - to get experience in developing/releasing a game Oh well, playing it now haha
Taking an airliner flight in X-plane is like this. Once I'm at altitude and the autopilot is set, the game plays itself for several hours until I approach the other airport. A lot of artwork is done during that time while the plane drones on.
Can I just say, I love your use of multiple shades of green in your graphics and endslates and such? It's just so easy on the eyes, and green is, at least in my culture, a very suiting colour for the kinds of topics covered in these videos. Whoever it was that came up with the idea and/or design of these graphics, good job! :)
I think if you're looking for what gave them that boost off the ground - laying the foundations for candy box, cookie clicker et. al. - you shouldn't miss Kongregate's chat system. You could only chat while playing a game, so people made 'games' that were just blank screens, or flashing lights. The first wave of idle games grew there.
idle games and multitasking gives a really good feeling. but people need to learn to simply stop sometimes, even if its stressful in the beginning, they need to go against they need to do something. so you can avoid it becoming a compulsion... some people say that "do nothing" (not even sleeping our thinking about your problems, simply... stopping) is a really good way to alleviate stress
That's also a reason why a lot of people do not believe me about Kongregate being a fun flash game site considering that they've haven't experienced real good ones like Epic Battle Fantasy 5. Yes, I recall using some of my free time to sharpen my life skills with the Touhou Project mainline games and Super Mario Odyssey including Celeste.
Tiny Tower is probably my favourite Idle game, you just check it occasionally, to set up timers and forget about it for a while, then set up new timers, buy new "timers", and so on (you just have to disable its notifications tough...)
nice that you mentioned the unfolding games in the end because it's exactly how I played 'a dark room'. I had it open as a tap and did other stuff in between, the recources would fill up while I did other things, I wasn't punished for not playing the whole time, but rather rewarded with many many recources which I then could use to make actualy progress in the game! Though that became harder in later progress of the game when you had to do more then occasionally click something, still it was always possible to just stay AFK and come back to see your recources increased which was nice. ^^
i feel like these games would be better if the're progress was attached to another game as well. the progress you make in these idle games that you play while you can be transferred over to some other game that you actually sit down and play.
0:47 There actually is a game called Watch Grass Grow. It was released in 2006 for RPG Maker on the PS1. The gist of it is that you would be looking at a screenfull of grass and keep choosing to wait, and after a while, the grass will have grown. The game ends when the screen becomes a field of flowers, and you get a trophy for each phase of growing completed. In case you're wondering, you have to choose to wait around 8,765 times, which is the amount of hours in a year. (No, you're not waiting an hour in real time.)
There's also a Flash game on Kongregate (and probably Newgrounds) that is actually named Watch Paint Dry. I don't know what you can get in-game (pretty sure there's stuff you can do) but I didn't care enough about the game to get past the Litterally look at a blank screen as it gains colour part of the game (read, the beginning)
I love how Im literaly re-watching (Or more like re-listening to) Extra Credits episodes because I want to have something engaging while I do a bunch of other stuff and I ran into a video that talks about that need to multitask xD
I actively play a few idle games. I leave em running while I watch videos or have in depth conversations with my husband. I'd say Idle games are more akin to lo-fi hip hop, always in the background and generally pleasant to have around. yes I am subbed to ChilledCow, why do you ask?
I asked a few people in kongregate chat about idle game, and many of the! told me that they come to kongregate to chat, but since you only get to the chat rooms when a game was open, the idle game was an easy way to get there, and being amd being able to achieve with minimal effort while chatting is a huge bonus.
I have to admit I don't understand people having the compulsion to always be doing something and multitasking. If I tried listening to a podcast while working, I would get hardly any work done. And having something going on a device while in a lecture would just feel wrong to me. Of course, I also don't understand the people who can't live without their smart phones and have to be checking Facebook and all that every ten minutes.
What happens is that a person asks their brain to multitask so much for so long that they get used to it and it becomes the 'normal' to them. Because of this, they feel wrong when they are not multitasking. It's all about what they are requiring their brain to do on a daily basis. Consider yourself fortunate you can calm your mind to focus on one thing at a time. Some people have a really hard time doing that.
It depends on the work your doing, but if it doesn't really require a lot of brainpower, by which I mean if you already know what your going to do, then it can seem a bit boring to just do it, because your not really using your brain. So why not do something in that time, like listen to a new soundtrack or documentary while your doing it? The fact that your getting something done for your brain, while also getting something mundane done at the same time can both make the task more interesting and fulfilling, and you wont have time to notice how boring it it.
ltflak Yeah but, I don't know about other people, but the quallity of the information I recieve from the documentary/podcast is way lower than what it would be if I just focused on them in the first place. Maybe it's just me though, dunno.
Quiet Fox Yeah, but the alternative is doing something boring, and unfulfilling, in which you get nothing out of. If I get stuck with a lot of tasks that I don't need to think about, that means I have a lot of time to fill, so re-listening to a podcast or documentary isn't out of the ordinary. I usually do miss things the first time.
Pokemon has some elements of Idle games like it breeding system and the more advance combat areas where it doesn't require me to do much character movement. I'll be doing projects on my computer while hatching pokemon eggs or getting farther in the Battle Maison.
I wouldn't say Pokemon breeding is an idle activity. (Unless of course, you have a quarter slid under your analog pad while in the center of Lumious City)
1kenny30 It's not unlike it, though, psychologically. I can say from experience that there are times when I start playing Pokemon because I get the sense that I could breed out a shiny while doing something else without really losing focus on that something else. I agree with metalsnakezero.
I like this idea. I post this while at work, monitoring Danishes, and playing Bravely Default idly. While I haven my been able to play much of the main game, after 2 weeks of idle play, my Norende Village is nearly maxed out. Can't wait to play the main game again to use all of those new tools.
Wasn't there a game that started with chopping wood, slowly added more mechanics like an explorable map, and then ended with building a spaceship or something. I swear it was on EC and they called it an unpacking or unboxing game or something.
It's funny, because I used to do this with Metal Marines as a kid. I would make my base as impenetrable as I could possibly imagine, then simply go outside or do something else for the rest of the day. I'd love coming back to vast amounts of wealth and resources, knowing that all the missiles and ships that were launched against me never made it through. I'm honestly surprised that these games haven't come about sooner.
i recently installed "endless frontier" on my phone. its probably the best game i have installed on my phone ever. Far from true idle but when you have set it up it can go for hours before actual input is needed.
Well if you like idle game go play idle space endless cliker you upgrade your ship change the wings that make your mg 10% stronger you reach sector 25 you can well it's not really a reset all you lose is your ship level like your missiles are level 37 then it go back to 1 but you get dark matter for doing that dark matter is for things like 50% more damage of missiles the best ting is permanent
Bahaha! I've just recently started to learn programming and decided to make an Idle game the first game I'd try programming, and planning to start it in a week. What a nice surprise to see Extra Credits talk about it now~
Great episode, this is something that I've been thinking about a lot lately myself. "Clicker Heroes" on Kongregate is an unusally good-looking and polished example of the genre. Apparently Playsaurus, makers of a web RPG (Cloudstone) decided to re-use a bunch of their game assets in an idle game - and based on Kong's numbers, CH now has about twice the player base as Cloudstone! Tangentially, another forerunner of the genre might be games like the X series, where the further you get into the empire-building aspects of the game, the less you actually have to play it yourself. A lot of people would let X3 run constantly to allow their automated traders and space stations to accumulate capital, only checking in for a few hours of live play-time every day.
I was hoping you guys would eventually do a topic on idle games since last year. So glad you guys finally did it. It's funny you mention how humans now have this innate nature to always be doing something while having something else run in the background. I personally agree with this statement since I'm guilty of this myself, whenever I'm playing a game with sections that have heavy gameplay or exploration, I always have a video or something going on my laptop right next to me. Weird... well thanks again guys and keep it up!
Ya know, the Wii U could potentially pull this off; if there was a button on the gamepad to switch quickly to a small idle game while waiting for loading times it could keep the interest going while I wait to join a race in Mario Kart 8, or while I'm waiting for Hyrule Warriors to load it's map. It'd have to be simultaneously running, so it's probably not possible, but the gamepad screen switching to the idle game with the main game on the big screen so you can watch for loading would be pretty cool.
Wii U pulls something interesting with Super Smash Bros Amiibo on Amiibo action. You just sit and watch your toons fight and gain levels and skills. PS cute SSBros reference in the video
there is this game called idle civ (something like that) on kongregate- and it was prolly the best idle game back then (like a year or two ago) but suddenly out of nowhere its like "u can only use safari and internet explorer not even firefox so hahahah u have to use shit browsers to play our great game now" which sucks.
One reason the Kongregate idle games do so well: Chat rooms. A few years back, there was a pretty cool group of people I'd hang out with in the Sloth chatroom. Some badge hunters - I was definitely one of those - but by and large it was just your standard internet chatroom, minus the trolling crap (for the most part) because we had a couple of regulars who'd actually found ways to shame trolls for trolling. (No idea what they were doing; if I knew, I'd spread the word). And honestly, most of the times I logged in and found myself randomly assigned to another chat room, I'd see much the same kind of thing. Different group of people, different social dynamics, but still a group of net-friends enjoying each other's company. Thing is, most of the flash games that actually have any value are ones that demand a high degree of interactivity - ones that make conversing via text difficult because your mouse and keyboard are busy playing the game. But you can only log in to the chatroom by loading up a game. Thus: idle games, loading up the chat without drawing attention away from it. Of course, even the idle games get people hacking them for leaderboard status. All of the top 10 in the one I used had uptimes that worked out to longer than the game had actually been online.
i'm listening to this while playing 3 idle games. On my computer is clicker heroes and cookie clicker, and on my phone i'm also playing clicker heroes.
I have a really low key job, where I basically just have to sit around and wait for a cue to push a button every fifteen minutes or so. The most difficult thing about this job (especially for someone with ADHD) is simply sitting in one place and trying to not get bored. Idle games are just enough to keep me awake and help the time pass without being so distracting that I miss my cues. I always kick myself for not doing something more productive, like writing, drawing, reading... but some days I just need to tune out.
basicly, idle games respect more the time of the player - irony - and design around the exist-game factor to make going back increasily more interessing
I feel the same way about distributed computing programs as you described about these games. I know in the back of my mind that the amount of computing power I'm contributing won't cute cancer a day earlier than if i didn't, but seeing the points continue to accumulate is for some reason satisfying.
I like idle games because they get at least fill a void I have while waiting for a certain kind of game to pop up. You know those mega modded minecraft adventures you automate the creation of whatever you want, or going into vanilla games and pushing the limits of automation to try and achieve this self sustainability? Thats the kind of feeling I strive for
I'd like to see a productivity study into this. Compare two groups completing some kind of repetitive task on a computer where one has access to Facebook and the other has an idle game up.
I think your analysis is spot on, even 3.5 years later! I could sort of understand these kind of games as a "side activity" while you are doing something else, just like listening to music in the background. But crappy stuff like Clicker Heroes? The success of these titles that promote brainless activities makes me lose faith in humanity.
TheDarkever But is clicker heroes crappy? No. It’s very engaging from personal experience and the experience only rappers off during end game. I highly recommend it and clicker heroes 2 is also a great choice
I played it for exactly 50 seconds on browser before I became bored and stopped. That's the amount of "engagement" I get from this kind of games. Fifty seconds.
I find it funny that this episode exists. Because I before I started the task of watching the whole series (at least this part of the Extra Credits channel), I've been "playing" an idle game called Clicker Heroes.
This video is quite good. I am somewhat a bit of a fan of idle games, and this video did a lot to help explain why I started to like idle games. Though I'm surprised that this video did not touch on the balancing of idle games, as idle games inherently need to be very well balanced or they can end up having several sections where the gameplay can get far too drawn out.
This is like an April Fool's Joke... These are a thing? Doesn't anyone think teens admitting that they cannot focus on a lecture in school without staring at increasing numbers is disturbing?
I don't. I can understand exactly what he means when he says that. sitting in a lecture while doing absolutely nothing else can be an uncomfortable experience for many people.
I find the trend in general to be disturbing. Studies have shown time and time again that as people multitask more, their efficiency at each task *tanks*. Tons of people claim that they can multitask well or - worse - that multitasking improves their work flow but everything research has shown proves otherwise. The fact that people think they have to multitask to focus is completely backwards. Their brains are just so used to the overstimulation that they lose the capacity to focus intently on a single task at hand because they get too bored. This is actually becoming a serious problem in today's media driven world.
2.916 quadrillion cookies, oh look my wrinklers are giving me 100 trillion when I pop them. 3.4 quadrillion cookies hopefully I can get to 3.75 in 20 minutes.
It's more that you cannot just sit in a lecture and do NOTHING but listen to it. For me, that's the result of elementary school and highschool - I was always REQUIRED to write something down while listening to the lecture. Now, in college, I don't need to do that, and even if I did do it, it would be pointless. So, just sitting and listening is kinda uncomfortable. I don't know what to do with my bloody hands. I solve the problem by doodling, most of the time, as I did in highschool sometimes, but I can see some people using idle games for the same purpose.
Metatronflaren At least doodling is creating something. Improving on a skill with idle time. Even playing a normal video game is a better use of time than these idle games, because you learn reflexes, problem solving etc... These idle games seem like the definition of wasted time.
Interesting that you can see this 'Idle games' concept popping up in popular games like World of Warcraft as well(Garrisons and follower missions), and while I doubt that there will be games entirely designed around idle games in the future, it seems like a useful tool to bringing your users back to your door time and time again.
Once again spot on EC. While I took a break from WoW during its long dry streak of content I was looking for ways to feel accomplished during my downtime of playing other games while for example watching series/movies etc. I started off playing RuneScape again because it gives me that feeling and to a certain point it's also an "idle" game due to it requiring very little interaction in certain aspects of the game. Before that however I was already playing Cookie Clicker which was awesome as it gave me the rewarding feeling I sought. Unfortunately it hasn't been updated for awhile up to the point where the game takes waaaay too long for very little change. Which is when I started playing ClickerHeroes, which ironically enough has implemented the feature where you don't even need to have the game open in order for it to progress, but it does the idle game rather well and it's extremely polished. I now constantly have the feeling I'm getting rewarded when I'm watching stuff due to Clicker Heroes progressing on wards.
I had never heard of these things until now, but strangely, this is EXACTLY the kind of thing I have been desperately searching for, especially the last few weeks. i've been doing a lot of crafting, jewlery, leatherwork, that sort of thing with the holidays coming up, and i'd run out of shows/movies I wanted to watch, so I tried to find some sort of game I could run while I worked, just to give me a mild distraction from the monotony of what I was doing. but everything I tried required WAY too much input and would distract me TOO much, I will have to give these idle games a try. any suggestions for good ones?
I've been a huge fan of idle games since i played "Anti Idle: The Game" on kongregate a few years ago, and I've always told people I enjoy them because i get to make numbers go up. So you guys definitely hit that right on the dot.I'd never thought about how they "play on our modern need to multitask." Fascinating idea, and a little strange. I for one love to do nothing, it gives me time to think, and the idea that some people feel "wrong" when they aren't doing anything is a little disturbing. I guess the world is changing, hopefully for the better.
Progress quest was awesome. You did nothing at all, no decisions.. nothing.. you just let it run. Even with the most simple idle games now you have to occasionally make a choice.
While I have fallen victim to some idle games in the past, I got bored of them all for the same reason. With an end goal, there really isn't a point. Progress means nothing if it doesn't actually go anywhere.
2019 and I'm still super confused by their existence. EDIT: ah shit I'm probably going to do one in the next lecture I'm in to see if those kids are right.
I like playing FPS games, & as a game developer I was asked if we can make such kinds of games, and while checking the game mechanics, I loved the game "Tap hero", I was wondering there is no actual challenge, I will still win even if I don't do anything, I loved upgrading the equipments , the damage stats, costumes. I personally think a lot of stats design goes into these kind of games.
I have to say, I question right off the bat your suggestion that human beings intrinsically love watching numbers increase. We enjoy seeing value increase, but that's a different phenomenon entirely, the numbers are just a means to quantify that increasing value, higher strength on our character so we can hit things better, more gold in our pocket so we can buy more things, the loading bar getting closer to being filled because something interesting might actually happen when it does, like being able to play the game that we bought and didn't appreciate having a day one patch for. Divorced from context, these numbers become meaningless, arbitrary measures that it's impossible to be invested in. As such, any game that bases itself entirely around the process of loading or the like, on "progress" when that progress isn't working towards some interesting gameplay but is instead the whole of the game, with or without any sort of payoff just seems bafflingly pointless to me, and the suggestion that the genre as a whole is preying on collective changes in the psychology of those in the information age, feeding an unhealthy compulsion to always be doing all the things... does not strike me as a net positive outcome.
i like a game i can play without thinking but i still need to DO something i get way too bored way to fast unless i'm multitasking i think my brain wants to be used as much as possible
This is very much like the "zen of level grinding" in an RPG. A good example for me is in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. With a good turbo button, the pistol, and a room of ever spawning zombies, it allows you to make some standard/mainstream games idle, allowing that same feeling to a degree.
3:45 "Like we're always never not doing something."
Fuck that took me a minute to process.
If you're looking for examples of "idle games," here's just a few:
Progress Quest: bit.ly/1Balbn9
Cookie Clicker: bit.ly/1CCtQAo
AdVenture Capitalist: bit.ly/1wlDML9
Feel free to suggest your own favorite idle games in comments!
Clicker Heroes: www.clickerheroes.com/
a good example is also anti-idle that can be found on kongregate(and is also an idle game although his name)
I personally like Candy Box: candies.aniwey.net/
and A Dark Room: adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
Both are of the unfolding variety.
Lucas Whot Was have that running while watching this. ^^
I going to give one the of these games a try
The feeling when you realize you were listening to this video while building a level for your game xD
Interesting. I am not much of a multitasker. However I do enjoy listening to UA-cam videos while I do digital painting. As much I love Extra Credits videos, they are a bit too short for that. I go for the videos that are about 15-60 minutes long. I don't know. Maybe an Extra Credits playlist would work.
Hahaha same 😂
I'm also a big fan of the sense of humor that idle games have. I open up the tab, get a good chuckle from whatever happened while I was away, click some buttons, and move on. AdCap's over the top Cold War Capitalist vibe and Cookie Clicker's eldritch horror undertones always have something new to be amused by as the game progresses.
"I think many idle game designers will start naturally move their games towards the unfolding games we talked about earlier this year"
This prediction was spot on, and it has become so much of the genre that even the idle game subreddit is a merge of idle games and unfolding/unboxing games (r/incremental_games)
So I guess the new question is.... how many idle games can a person play at once?
ALL OF THEM.
Limited by computer memory of course.
pianoguy222 I had to self-impose a single idle game limit on myself, otherwise I was having like ten tabs of idle games open because 'hey i don't even have to pay attention so why not'
So I've been banging my head solely against Wall Destroyer for the past while.
I have seven running right now.
At my worst point I had 5. Right now I'm pretty much done with one, so time to look for a new one...
The best so far I've played is Sandcastle Clicker.
I am currently playing 25 idle games
"Do Nothing 2015, Now with less"
OMG finally, how long have we been asking for less! Best E2 demo ever!
To put it incredibly simply. Is satisfying to get pretty colours for doing nothing
And 5 years later, going on 6, it's a goddamn epidemic...
And most are not good
@@isfren5482 Alas, Shovelware exists across all genres, but the minimalist nature of idle games means they're easy to pump out so they're everywhere.
Yep
And I’ve been playing the pandemic away with some idle games
This was 5 years ago.. now im sad. We need an updated 2020 video
2018 and steam now has a host of downloadable idle games, kongregate is full of em. The time to idle is here
Thanks for really looking at these things positively, rather than mocking them. These games DO fill a void, and they aren't particularly hurtful. When I made my new channel to stop my real name from being left everywhere, you were the first channel I subscribed to.
I come from 2020 to say, there are now many idle games on the App Store.
I'm one of those who can't work without a podcast or someone talking in the background. Thanks to that I have "heard" all of your episodes at least 100 times each (maybe more)... Some more than others. I mean... I know every single line of my favorite ones...
Fun fact: sometimes you can make a strategy game into an idle game. You will lose, but still works.
My incredible hoi4 run using this technique was incredibly realistic, if not successful.
Progress quest is and always will be my favorite idle game. It's a really clever and really funny breakdown of MMOs with a lot of attention to detail, I.E. getting tons of spells, but only upgrading a small handful of them, because those are the actually useful ones.
Listening to Extra Credits' vids while I code ~
I sometimes do, although it often distracts me from what I am trying to code, so I don't do it often.
Fun to see how this has changed. More and more idle games are available for download and are being played. I see idle game callouts pop up all the time in the corner of my screen when my friends start playing them on steam.
This video helped me understand my obsession with the idle elements in oldschool Runescape, pretty interesting stuff
Absolutely spot on. I'm more amazed that you could articulate this phenomenon than just noticing it.
The best idle games are smartphone games which require the game to be open on your smartphone to play. This is helpful when you have a big project you need to get done. Because this game needs to be open to play, but you can't do anything while it's playing, it prevents you from being distracted by your phone.
accquizzer for square they put an idle game in bravely default as you can build a town while t you play the main game.
Can you give examples of idle games like this on iphone?
Eve Online is my favorite Idle game. Between passive skill queues, and the glacially paced industry gameplay I can be an active player contributing to the change in the work while still keeping up with work. It's wonderful.
you have unleashed a curse on hundreds of thousands,
the curse known as cookie clicker lives on to this day,
i am here ~4 years later
As someone who never really got praised or rewarded or gifted much of anything as a kid (And even up till now as an adult) by my family, it was nice to play a game where you just get rewarded for playing or just sitting there paying attention to it. Things like Cookie Clicker give you "achievements" or "trophies" when you complete a certain task....or if you just sit there and let the game mix up enough cookies for you. It feels good to be praised and rewarded even if it's for absolutely nothing. Everyone in life wants to feel important or good at something, even if that something is as simple as giving your attention to a screen for a few minutes. It can actually make you a happier person.
I know it sounds weird. It sounded weird to me too until I actually sat here and thought about it for a minute. Then I realized why I actually played the game. It made me happy because it felt like I was doing something right or worthwhile, even though I really wasnt. Games are about the experience as much as they are the graphics/music/characters. =)
Huh, Idle games are addicting to me. I don't know if it's because they've changed to be so over the years but the ones I play now definitely keep me hooked doing minimal stuff
You know, it's funny. This episode helped me break the need to keep playing the excessive amount of Idle Games I was playing. Helping to understand what they were doing helped me recognise where I could meet the needs elsewhere in life in more productive ways.
1:55 in February 2020 I’ve played for officially 100 days as of today.
I'm curious though; you posit the idle game as a sort of cure or solution for feeling 'weird' when you have to sit through a whole lecture not doing anything else. But don't you think it might actually be the *cause* ? That exactly because we're constantly playing something on our phone during dinner, or during a toilet visit, that that in itself is causing you to feel 'uneasy' if you can't or don't?
It's commonly known that the Skinner box works because it's literally addictive. And feeling 'weird' if you don't get your fix is a common feeling for someone with an addiction. Obviously getting that fix solves the weird feeling, but that doesn't seem like a cure or at least not a proper solution.
I'm here from 2021 and yes people still love and play these games! :)
I still remember about far back as 2001 the IRC channel #idle. You were actually punished for chatting in the channel, but you were fighting monsters, encountering other players. It was compelling.
my first game I made since I started game designer college, was a IDLE game, the reason for making such a game is the ease you have to master codes and variables that need a Mathematical notion is simple but I highly recommend it to any inexperienced developer like me to try something because it is fast (depending on context) and is fun to do, I received a lot of criticism for the game to be a copy of "coockie clicker", even though I warned several times that this was a game made for educational purposes.
anyway I'll post a link to the game you guys give a look
www.kongregate.com/games/sollinxp/bacon-generator
DAMN IT!
I literally started work on a game similar to this about 2 months ago with the same intentions - to get experience in developing/releasing a game
Oh well, playing it now haha
Taking an airliner flight in X-plane is like this. Once I'm at altitude and the autopilot is set, the game plays itself for several hours until I approach the other airport. A lot of artwork is done during that time while the plane drones on.
A Dark Room is a semi idle browser game, and a game I recommend.
+Kevin Meisenbacher Great game
Can I just say, I love your use of multiple shades of green in your graphics and endslates and such? It's just so easy on the eyes, and green is, at least in my culture, a very suiting colour for the kinds of topics covered in these videos. Whoever it was that came up with the idea and/or design of these graphics, good job! :)
I think if you're looking for what gave them that boost off the ground - laying the foundations for candy box, cookie clicker et. al. - you shouldn't miss Kongregate's chat system. You could only chat while playing a game, so people made 'games' that were just blank screens, or flashing lights. The first wave of idle games grew there.
idle games and multitasking gives a really good feeling. but people need to learn to simply stop sometimes, even if its stressful in the beginning, they need to go against they need to do something. so you can avoid it becoming a compulsion...
some people say that "do nothing" (not even sleeping our thinking about your problems, simply... stopping) is a really good way to alleviate stress
That's also a reason why a lot of people do not believe me about Kongregate being a fun flash game site considering that they've haven't experienced real good ones like Epic Battle Fantasy 5.
Yes, I recall using some of my free time to sharpen my life skills with the Touhou Project mainline games and Super Mario Odyssey including Celeste.
Tiny Tower is probably my favourite Idle game, you just check it occasionally, to set up timers and forget about it for a while, then set up new timers, buy new "timers", and so on (you just have to disable its notifications tough...)
0:30 progress bars are so cool!
nice that you mentioned the unfolding games in the end because it's exactly how I played 'a dark room'.
I had it open as a tap and did other stuff in between, the recources would fill up while I did other things, I wasn't punished for not playing the whole time, but rather rewarded with many many recources which I then could use to make actualy progress in the game!
Though that became harder in later progress of the game when you had to do more then occasionally click something, still it was always possible to just stay AFK and come back to see your recources increased which was nice. ^^
i feel like these games would be better if the're progress was attached to another game as well. the progress you make in these idle games that you play while you can be transferred over to some other game that you actually sit down and play.
I had the exact same thought. This seems like the perfect thing to add to say... an MMORPG to make it less grindy.
Realm grinder is the perfect example of the idle/unfolder crossbreed he talks about at the end
0:47 There actually is a game called Watch Grass Grow. It was released in 2006 for RPG Maker on the PS1. The gist of it is that you would be looking at a screenfull of grass and keep choosing to wait, and after a while, the grass will have grown. The game ends when the screen becomes a field of flowers, and you get a trophy for each phase of growing completed. In case you're wondering, you have to choose to wait around 8,765 times, which is the amount of hours in a year. (No, you're not waiting an hour in real time.)
There's also a Flash game on Kongregate (and probably Newgrounds) that is actually named Watch Paint Dry. I don't know what you can get in-game (pretty sure there's stuff you can do) but I didn't care enough about the game to get past the Litterally look at a blank screen as it gains colour part of the game (read, the beginning)
Why do people I know on UA-cam watch the same videos as me?
Daniel Maia I can't imagine either of these games were meant to be good.
I love how Im literaly re-watching (Or more like re-listening to) Extra Credits episodes because I want to have something engaging while I do a bunch of other stuff and I ran into a video that talks about that need to multitask xD
I actively play a few idle games. I leave em running while I watch videos or have in depth conversations with my husband. I'd say Idle games are more akin to lo-fi hip hop, always in the background and generally pleasant to have around.
yes I am subbed to ChilledCow, why do you ask?
Couldn't agree more, and same, Lo-fi is really helpful for me as well.
I asked a few people in kongregate chat about idle game, and many of the! told me that they come to kongregate to chat, but since you only get to the chat rooms when a game was open, the idle game was an easy way to get there, and being amd being able to achieve with minimal effort while chatting is a huge bonus.
kongregate ftw
I have to admit I don't understand people having the compulsion to always be doing something and multitasking. If I tried listening to a podcast while working, I would get hardly any work done. And having something going on a device while in a lecture would just feel wrong to me. Of course, I also don't understand the people who can't live without their smart phones and have to be checking Facebook and all that every ten minutes.
What happens is that a person asks their brain to multitask so much for so long that they get used to it and it becomes the 'normal' to them. Because of this, they feel wrong when they are not multitasking. It's all about what they are requiring their brain to do on a daily basis. Consider yourself fortunate you can calm your mind to focus on one thing at a time. Some people have a really hard time doing that.
It depends on the work your doing, but if it doesn't really require a lot of brainpower, by which I mean if you already know what your going to do, then it can seem a bit boring to just do it, because your not really using your brain. So why not do something in that time, like listen to a new soundtrack or documentary while your doing it? The fact that your getting something done for your brain, while also getting something mundane done at the same time can both make the task more interesting and fulfilling, and you wont have time to notice how boring it it.
ltflak
Yeah but, I don't know about other people, but the quallity of the information I recieve from the documentary/podcast is way lower than what it would be if I just focused on them in the first place. Maybe it's just me though, dunno.
Quiet Fox Yeah, but the alternative is doing something boring, and unfulfilling, in which you get nothing out of. If I get stuck with a lot of tasks that I don't need to think about, that means I have a lot of time to fill, so re-listening to a podcast or documentary isn't out of the ordinary. I usually do miss things the first time.
ltflak
It's just sort of not worth it for me, but I guess it's personal preference, as whenever I do something it's better imo to do it properly.
I have a friend who is learning programming that designs idle games as practice. They're really simple to make, so it's easy to experiment with them!
Pokemon has some elements of Idle games like it breeding system and the more advance combat areas where it doesn't require me to do much character movement. I'll be doing projects on my computer while hatching pokemon eggs or getting farther in the Battle Maison.
I wouldn't say Pokemon breeding is an idle activity. (Unless of course, you have a quarter slid under your analog pad while in the center of Lumious City)
1kenny30 Yeah, the battle resort is also like that. Plus having it near the daycare makes it faster to get more eggs.
1kenny30 It's not unlike it, though, psychologically. I can say from experience that there are times when I start playing Pokemon because I get the sense that I could breed out a shiny while doing something else without really losing focus on that something else. I agree with metalsnakezero.
I like this idea.
I post this while at work, monitoring Danishes, and playing Bravely Default idly. While I haven my been able to play much of the main game, after 2 weeks of idle play, my Norende Village is nearly maxed out.
Can't wait to play the main game again to use all of those new tools.
Wasn't there a game that started with chopping wood, slowly added more mechanics like an explorable map, and then ended with building a spaceship or something. I swear it was on EC and they called it an unpacking or unboxing game or something.
sounds like a dark room
too much UIs confuse the players and make them not play it anymore though
@@veddy1674 what does this have to do with what I said?
It's funny, because I used to do this with Metal Marines as a kid. I would make my base as impenetrable as I could possibly imagine, then simply go outside or do something else for the rest of the day.
I'd love coming back to vast amounts of wealth and resources, knowing that all the missiles and ships that were launched against me never made it through.
I'm honestly surprised that these games haven't come about sooner.
i recently installed "endless frontier" on my phone. its probably the best game i have installed on my phone ever. Far from true idle but when you have set it up it can go for hours before actual input is needed.
Joey van de ende had that one forever. Loved it
Well if you like idle game go play idle space endless cliker you upgrade your ship change the wings that make your mg 10% stronger you reach sector 25 you can well it's not really a reset all you lose is your ship level like your missiles are level 37 then it go back to 1 but you get dark matter for doing that dark matter is for things like 50% more damage of missiles the best ting is permanent
Bahaha! I've just recently started to learn programming and decided to make an Idle game the first game I'd try programming, and planning to start it in a week. What a nice surprise to see Extra Credits talk about it now~
"If you've spent any time on Kongregate lately..."
Hold up. What year is it?
The video was 5 years ago. 2015 aka before I even really used the internet
Unfolding games are the bit of the best ones, always teasing your interest into seeing just how far down the rabbit hole you can go.
remember when your download progress went down by 3%
good times
Great episode, this is something that I've been thinking about a lot lately myself. "Clicker Heroes" on Kongregate is an unusally good-looking and polished example of the genre. Apparently Playsaurus, makers of a web RPG (Cloudstone) decided to re-use a bunch of their game assets in an idle game - and based on Kong's numbers, CH now has about twice the player base as Cloudstone!
Tangentially, another forerunner of the genre might be games like the X series, where the further you get into the empire-building aspects of the game, the less you actually have to play it yourself. A lot of people would let X3 run constantly to allow their automated traders and space stations to accumulate capital, only checking in for a few hours of live play-time every day.
I absolutely love idle games right now.
Same
I use FM(football manager) for this exact reason. A thing to do in the background whilst working or similar activities. Great video!!
press F to pay respects to the thousands of planets we've turned into paperclips
I was hoping you guys would eventually do a topic on idle games since last year. So glad you guys finally did it.
It's funny you mention how humans now have this innate nature to always be doing something while having something else run in the background. I personally agree with this statement since I'm guilty of this myself, whenever I'm playing a game with sections that have heavy gameplay or exploration, I always have a video or something going on my laptop right next to me.
Weird... well thanks again guys and keep it up!
still aplicable 2.5 years later
Still applicable 5 years later...
Sam Barrett ha yeah
You guys have now made me want to play some idle game again. Now the choice is between anti-idle and battle without end.
Ya know, the Wii U could potentially pull this off; if there was a button on the gamepad to switch quickly to a small idle game while waiting for loading times it could keep the interest going while I wait to join a race in Mario Kart 8, or while I'm waiting for Hyrule Warriors to load it's map.
It'd have to be simultaneously running, so it's probably not possible, but the gamepad screen switching to the idle game with the main game on the big screen so you can watch for loading would be pretty cool.
Wii U pulls something interesting with Super Smash Bros Amiibo on Amiibo action. You just sit and watch your toons fight and gain levels and skills. PS cute SSBros reference in the video
Wii U really does open the door for the new age of gaming actually.
@3:44 SSB rocks and I'm glad you think so too!
there is this game called idle civ (something like that) on kongregate- and it was prolly the best idle game back then (like a year or two ago) but suddenly out of nowhere its like "u can only use safari and internet explorer not even firefox so hahahah u have to use shit browsers to play our great game now" which sucks.
One reason the Kongregate idle games do so well: Chat rooms. A few years back, there was a pretty cool group of people I'd hang out with in the Sloth chatroom. Some badge hunters - I was definitely one of those - but by and large it was just your standard internet chatroom, minus the trolling crap (for the most part) because we had a couple of regulars who'd actually found ways to shame trolls for trolling. (No idea what they were doing; if I knew, I'd spread the word). And honestly, most of the times I logged in and found myself randomly assigned to another chat room, I'd see much the same kind of thing. Different group of people, different social dynamics, but still a group of net-friends enjoying each other's company.
Thing is, most of the flash games that actually have any value are ones that demand a high degree of interactivity - ones that make conversing via text difficult because your mouse and keyboard are busy playing the game. But you can only log in to the chatroom by loading up a game. Thus: idle games, loading up the chat without drawing attention away from it.
Of course, even the idle games get people hacking them for leaderboard status. All of the top 10 in the one I used had uptimes that worked out to longer than the game had actually been online.
i'm listening to this while playing 3 idle games. On my computer is clicker heroes and cookie clicker, and on my phone i'm also playing clicker heroes.
I have a really low key job, where I basically just have to sit around and wait for a cue to push a button every fifteen minutes or so. The most difficult thing about this job (especially for someone with ADHD) is simply sitting in one place and trying to not get bored. Idle games are just enough to keep me awake and help the time pass without being so distracting that I miss my cues. I always kick myself for not doing something more productive, like writing, drawing, reading... but some days I just need to tune out.
basicly, idle games respect more the time of the player - irony - and design around the exist-game factor to make going back increasily more interessing
The fact that these games even exist 1) speaks volumes about the human condition in our sad little first word, and 2) scares me on a very deep level.
I recommend Black hole clicker on iOS, it's a clicker game with a original theme
Clicker on a mobile device?
I feel the same way about distributed computing programs as you described about these games. I know in the back of my mind that the amount of computing power I'm contributing won't cute cancer a day earlier than if i didn't, but seeing the points continue to accumulate is for some reason satisfying.
Guilty of opening up Cookie Clicker as soon as I started playing this video.
I can totally relate to playing cookie clicker everyday
But if you haven’t checked in, there’s a stock market minigame
I like idle games because they get at least fill a void I have while waiting for a certain kind of game to pop up. You know those mega modded minecraft adventures you automate the creation of whatever you want, or going into vanilla games and pushing the limits of automation to try and achieve this self sustainability? Thats the kind of feeling I strive for
People: play idle rpg
Me: build a stable economy in strategy/simulation game and wait.
I'd like to see a productivity study into this. Compare two groups completing some kind of repetitive task on a computer where one has access to Facebook and the other has an idle game up.
I think your analysis is spot on, even 3.5 years later! I could sort of understand these kind of games as a "side activity" while you are doing something else, just like listening to music in the background. But crappy stuff like Clicker Heroes? The success of these titles that promote brainless activities makes me lose faith in humanity.
TheDarkever But is clicker heroes crappy? No. It’s very engaging from personal experience and the experience only rappers off during end game. I highly recommend it and clicker heroes 2 is also a great choice
I played it for exactly 50 seconds on browser before I became bored and stopped. That's the amount of "engagement" I get from this kind of games. Fifty seconds.
I find it funny that this episode exists. Because I before I started the task of watching the whole series (at least this part of the Extra Credits channel), I've been "playing" an idle game called Clicker Heroes.
I am watching this while my A.I. Fighter in Injustice 2 is taking care of a Multiverse event. Does that make it an idle game?
This video is quite good. I am somewhat a bit of a fan of idle games, and this video did a lot to help explain why I started to like idle games. Though I'm surprised that this video did not touch on the balancing of idle games, as idle games inherently need to be very well balanced or they can end up having several sections where the gameplay can get far too drawn out.
This is like an April Fool's Joke... These are a thing? Doesn't anyone think teens admitting that they cannot focus on a lecture in school without staring at increasing numbers is disturbing?
I don't. I can understand exactly what he means when he says that. sitting in a lecture while doing absolutely nothing else can be an uncomfortable experience for many people.
I find the trend in general to be disturbing.
Studies have shown time and time again that as people multitask more, their efficiency at each task *tanks*. Tons of people claim that they can multitask well or - worse - that multitasking improves their work flow but everything research has shown proves otherwise. The fact that people think they have to multitask to focus is completely backwards. Their brains are just so used to the overstimulation that they lose the capacity to focus intently on a single task at hand because they get too bored.
This is actually becoming a serious problem in today's media driven world.
2.916 quadrillion cookies, oh look my wrinklers are giving me 100 trillion when I pop them. 3.4 quadrillion cookies hopefully I can get to 3.75 in 20 minutes.
It's more that you cannot just sit in a lecture and do NOTHING but listen to it. For me, that's the result of elementary school and highschool - I was always REQUIRED to write something down while listening to the lecture. Now, in college, I don't need to do that, and even if I did do it, it would be pointless.
So, just sitting and listening is kinda uncomfortable. I don't know what to do with my bloody hands.
I solve the problem by doodling, most of the time, as I did in highschool sometimes, but I can see some people using idle games for the same purpose.
Metatronflaren
At least doodling is creating something. Improving on a skill with idle time. Even playing a normal video game is a better use of time than these idle games, because you learn reflexes, problem solving etc...
These idle games seem like the definition of wasted time.
Interesting that you can see this 'Idle games' concept popping up in popular games like World of Warcraft as well(Garrisons and follower missions), and while I doubt that there will be games entirely designed around idle games in the future, it seems like a useful tool to bringing your users back to your door time and time again.
playing an idle game while watching this
Same lol xD
Idle heros ftw
crusaders of the lost idols
Cool.
Once again spot on EC. While I took a break from WoW during its long dry streak of content I was looking for ways to feel accomplished during my downtime of playing other games while for example watching series/movies etc.
I started off playing RuneScape again because it gives me that feeling and to a certain point it's also an "idle" game due to it requiring very little interaction in certain aspects of the game. Before that however I was already playing Cookie Clicker which was awesome as it gave me the rewarding feeling I sought. Unfortunately it hasn't been updated for awhile up to the point where the game takes waaaay too long for very little change.
Which is when I started playing ClickerHeroes, which ironically enough has implemented the feature where you don't even need to have the game open in order for it to progress, but it does the idle game rather well and it's extremely polished. I now constantly have the feeling I'm getting rewarded when I'm watching stuff due to Clicker Heroes progressing on wards.
I had never heard of these things until now, but strangely, this is EXACTLY the kind of thing I have been desperately searching for, especially the last few weeks. i've been doing a lot of crafting, jewlery, leatherwork, that sort of thing with the holidays coming up, and i'd run out of shows/movies I wanted to watch, so I tried to find some sort of game I could run while I worked, just to give me a mild distraction from the monotony of what I was doing. but everything I tried required WAY too much input and would distract me TOO much, I will have to give these idle games a try. any suggestions for good ones?
www.kongregate.com/games/light_bringer777/learn-to-fly-idle
www.kongregate.com/games/CodeRiftStudios/idle-conquest
www.kongregate.com/games/nooze/robotpet
www.kongregate.com/games/mrcaboom/idle-blacksmith
I've been a huge fan of idle games since i played "Anti Idle: The Game" on kongregate a few years ago, and I've always told people I enjoy them because i get to make numbers go up. So you guys definitely hit that right on the dot.I'd never thought about how they "play on our modern need to multitask." Fascinating idea, and a little strange. I for one love to do nothing, it gives me time to think, and the idea that some people feel "wrong" when they aren't doing anything is a little disturbing. I guess the world is changing, hopefully for the better.
I'm playing Swarm Simulator while watching this
Progress quest was awesome. You did nothing at all, no decisions.. nothing.. you just let it run. Even with the most simple idle games now you have to occasionally make a choice.
While I have fallen victim to some idle games in the past, I got bored of them all for the same reason. With an end goal, there really isn't a point. Progress means nothing if it doesn't actually go anywhere.
I have seen so many ads for like a thousand different idle games.
2019 and I'm still super confused by their existence. EDIT: ah shit I'm probably going to do one in the next lecture I'm in to see if those kids are right.
I like playing FPS games, & as a game developer I was asked if we can make such kinds of games, and while checking the game mechanics, I loved the game "Tap hero", I was wondering there is no actual challenge, I will still win even if I don't do anything, I loved upgrading the equipments , the damage stats, costumes.
I personally think a lot of stats design goes into these kind of games.
I have to say, I question right off the bat your suggestion that human beings intrinsically love watching numbers increase.
We enjoy seeing value increase, but that's a different phenomenon entirely, the numbers are just a means to quantify that increasing value, higher strength on our character so we can hit things better, more gold in our pocket so we can buy more things, the loading bar getting closer to being filled because something interesting might actually happen when it does, like being able to play the game that we bought and didn't appreciate having a day one patch for.
Divorced from context, these numbers become meaningless, arbitrary measures that it's impossible to be invested in.
As such, any game that bases itself entirely around the process of loading or the like, on "progress" when that progress isn't working towards some interesting gameplay but is instead the whole of the game, with or without any sort of payoff just seems bafflingly pointless to me, and the suggestion that the genre as a whole is preying on collective changes in the psychology of those in the information age, feeding an unhealthy compulsion to always be doing all the things... does not strike me as a net positive outcome.
I feel the delicious irony of watching this video while using the Taxi Trick on GTA Online to grind out my research.
i like a game i can play without thinking but i still need to DO something
i get way too bored way to fast unless i'm multitasking
i think my brain wants to be used as much as possible
"Human beings like seeing numbers go up."
Guys, I just realized, this is the exact same reason why people love the Katamari games so much.
i had an ad for an idle game in this vid
This is very much like the "zen of level grinding" in an RPG. A good example for me is in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. With a good turbo button, the pistol, and a room of ever spawning zombies, it allows you to make some standard/mainstream games idle, allowing that same feeling to a degree.