I was working at a big serious game company when this debuted. One day I looked around and every dev on our serious game engine team was alt-tabbing to it while they worked. They were pretending to play it ironically, and I thought it was the dumbest thing I’d ever seen, until I tried it.
I remember “clicker heroes” one. People calculated charts of most effective and fastest upgrades to grow the number. Without that the game seemed pointless to me, you click or wait, so what.
That’s partly why I like games like Borderlands or Fallout series. I spend most of the time searching for and testing guns and gear, because it gives you control over situations and alerts when you’re not ready for it.
I remember I heard Elon Musk criticize this game in an interview once, ~"my kids aren't allowed to play computer games anymore; they play a game called cookies or something, you literally just click on a cookie, it's the dumbest thing ever" and thought it was hilarious. I obviously had to try it, and got hooked straight away.
