Cookie Clicker
Game
Documents about Cookie Clicker
How Not to Play the Game?: Disinvolvement and the Philosophical Analysis of Inaction in Computer Games
This paper, presented as an extended abstract at DiGRA 2020 by Alina Latypova and Alexander Lenkevich, proposes a philosophical framework for analyzing inaction in computer games.
- The paper argues that games increasingly foreground non-action, contemplation, and "disinvolvement" over active play, and asks whether inaction offers players critical distance or has become a mechanism of control within a market that demands constant engagement.
- The authors propose developing an "apraxeology," a theory of inaction, and ground it in philosophers including Agamben (humanity's capacity for its own inability), Arendt (labor, work, and action), Benjamin (contemplative painting vs. immersive cinema), and Bataille (ecstasy).
- Inaction-oriented games are classified into three types: reflective games that break the fourth wall (The Stanley Parable, The Beginner's Guide), contemplative games that minimize player activity (Dear Esther, Mountain), and zero-player or idle games (Game of Life, Cookie Clicker).
Non-Human Gaming: Video Games for the Post-Anthropocene
Dr Paolo Ruffino's extended abstract, presented at DiGRA 2018, argues that video games are increasingly designed to play themselves or to operate with limited human involvement, and that this trend, which he terms Non-Human Gaming, responds to anxieties about a possible mass extinction and a coming Post-Anthropocene.
- Dr Paolo Ruffino's DiGRA 2018 extended abstract argues that games designed to play themselves or run with minimal human involvement form a long-standing presence in the medium, which he terms Non-Human Gaming rather than an anomaly or passing fashion.
- The paper frames Non-Human Gaming as a response to anxieties about a possible mass extinction and a coming Post-Anthropocene, and claims existing game studies frameworks built around human agency, interactivity, and skill have largely failed to address it.
- Examples cited include idle games such as Cookie Clicker and AdVenture Capitalist that progress after minimal input, No Man's Sky's algorithmically generated environments, and Screeps, where players program AI agents that act for them while offline.
Progress Wars: Idle Games and the Demarcation of "Real" Games
This paper examines how idle games, which reduce gameplay to a single repetitive interaction or automate it entirely, have served as a site for negotiating what counts as a "real" game.
- The paper argues that the category of "real" games is not a natural given but is actively produced through contested practices of designers, players, and critics, drawing on social constructivist views of games.
- Idle games began as parody: titles like Progress Quest (2002), StatBuilder Classic (2008), Progress Wars (2010), and Godville (2010) used reductio ad absurdum on RPG grinding mechanics to argue such progress involved no real skill.
- Ian Bogost's satirical Cow Clicker (2006) unexpectedly became hugely popular, revealing an absorptive "being in the zone" appeal that its critical intent had not anticipated.
Games to Live With and Die For: Speculations on NikeFuel
This paper examines NikeFuel, a movement-quantification technology developed by Nike and embedded in wearables such as the Nike+ wristband, as an example of gamification and quantified-self technology that resembles play without requiring it.
- The paper treats NikeFuel, a movement-quantification technology built into Nike+ wearables, as an example of gamification that resembles play without requiring it, running largely on its own and needing only that the user keep it updated.
- Its central thesis is that such playful systems erase the player and the sense of agency as human and machine assimilate, with the paper arguing they transform the user as much as the user transforms them.
- The author combines Foucauldian biopolitics, which frames quantification as control over living bodies, with Roger Caillois's anthropology of play as pure waste and mimicry as a self-dissolving instinct.