Incremental Games

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A community for lovers of games that feature an incremental mechanism, such as unlocking progressively more powerful upgrades, or discovering new ways to play the game. This genre is growing at a break-neck pace, be part of the revolution!

This community is hosted on Incremental Social, a slice of the fediverse by and for Incremental game enthusiasts. Consider checking it out or joining our matrix space!

Check out popular incremental games at galaxy.click!

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founded 1 year ago

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When are incremental games genuinely fun? (incremental.social)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm sure most of us are aware that a lot of the mechanics of incremental games rely on things like skinner boxes to make us want to keep playing by just promising us future positive moments, rather than just giving us positive moments.

Where do you think the line is, between genuine fun vs just being manipulated into wanting to keep playing? Or is there no difference?

Additionally, awareness of video game addiction is pretty important within the genre. The community has a lot of young people who could be harmed if playing games long enough into the night as to disrupt their sleep cycle, for example. To that end I've been considering adding a notice to my future games when the game has been actively played a lot, that mentions video games addiction along with some resources to help. When do you think it'd make sense to display this? I was thinking about showing it if the player has been active within the game during 6 of the last 8 hours.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hello, I'm one of those young people mentioned in the post and I'm partially responsible for our current topic.

My take is that the distinction between "fun" and "motivational manipulation" is blurry in a lot of forms of entertainment, and this blurriness is significantly more apparent in incremental games compared to other forms of media. As much as I don't like to admit it, I think that most modern games (especially abstract ones such as The Prestige Tree) mostly consist of "motivational manipulation".

That being said, I still think there is still fun to be had in this genre. My personal belief is that the fun in incremental games comes from the organic (or at least not tightly forced) discovery of the intricacies of the mechanical systems these games present. The problem is that very few games manage to handle this discovery well. I've also found interacting with the communities surrounding these games to be an enjoyable experience.

As to the notice, I think it's an okay idea but I don't have any strong preference on any one condition (there are a lot of factors to take into account). My primary doubt is whether the notice will work well since people may be reluctant to seek help and could easily switch to an equally manipulative entertainment outlet that doesn't contain a similar notice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

As far as the notice goes, I'm not going to kid myself and pretend it'll solve video games addiction for anyone that plays the game. I'd be happy if it just increased awareness tbh.

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