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"On the topic of treatmills"

Killing time, one "addiction" after another. Or, "I love idle games and you should play them too."

posted on 2024-08-07 by: kirby | 16 min read

Preface

I highly recommend you read this blog post (archive) by Melos Han-Tani about the concept of “treatmills” and the effect of these games (ie. roguelikes, idlers, gachas, “endless” games) on what we consider “fun” in video games.

Treatmills

Seriously, read that blog post. The author lists the following game design aspects as being that of a “treatmill”. I’ve left the relevant ones for this post in this blockquote, go read the original post.

“Let’s describe a game in this way:

Let’s also say it might follow these ideas, too:

What kind of game does it sound like I’m describing?”

And my God, they are fucking right. This “feeling” they describe further in the post of going through the motions for a quick dopamine rush. This addictive feeling has permeated through a lot of our technology, as I’m sure you’ve heard over and over again for the past 20 years. Sifting through post after post, level after level, event after event. Roguelites (and not so much traditional roguelikes) have eased their way into all kinds of games and settings more than ever. Are you an aspiring indie developer with a game concept? What if it was a roguelite with meta progression and dungeon crawling elements with future DLC expansions? Consistent content and balance updates with an early access model to gauge player interest? Can you smell the money?

On the topic of roguelites

It’s no secret that roguelites are the indie darling genre, ever since The Binding of Isaac (2011) dropped and changed the indie landscape as we know it. I love the idea of Isaac and its gameplay loop was because it was so arcadey — quick play sessions, high scores, tough levels, you might be familiar. When games felt like a quick break instead of a long, 40-hour movie that has some sections of “gameplay” sprinkled between. You didn’t have to worry about the implications of failing now, or failing later. You usually begin on a clean slate. I used to put Isaac, Wrath of the Lamb, and SpiderMod to play on school computers off a USB. That game is and will always be awesome.

Roguelikes

Roguelikes such as Tales of Maj’Eyal (2012), Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (2013), Caves of Qud (EA 2015), Zorbus (2022), and to an extent Project Zomboid (EA 2013) lean more into the traditional roguelike style, where you are creating a character, or selecting a solid preset of stat spreads, traits, and modifiers, and just diving into the game with no expectation of continuing past losing — you are starting from yet another clean slate instead. These are the roguelikes I tend to enjoy more than roguelite games; they feel less committal than roguelites, pressuring me to continue playing to unlock something else. What if I just want to play a roguelike because it has interesting synergies and emergent events from the depth of the system? You can absolutely still do this with roguelite games, but to me, it’s not really the same. Which leads to us now to the distinction between these two subgenres.

Meta progression, or, Roguelites

The main meta progression of Isaac is unlocking the items as you continue further into the game’s stages. Defeating certain bosses, etc. Now, enter The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (2014), a remake that has several expansions and even more unlockables and achievements to acquire. Late game areas unlocked by defeating bosses X amount of times. What I originally loved as an arcadey style Zelda dungeon crawler with stupid looking enemies and items became an endless hole of depth and synergy through the sheer amount of possibilities through the massive pool of items. “100% completion” in Isaac is a multi-layered process, with stages of 100%-ing the game (Golden God? Platinum God? Dead God? On all three save files?). I am absolutely not saying that makes the game shit — it’s my favourite roguelike/roguelite game by a long shot. It’s still played by a ton of people with its mod support, and the mechanics are so perfectly refined 10 years on.

Now, another roguelike/roguelite I really liked was Dead Cells (2018). This game, much like its contemporaries, adds slightly more emphasis on “meta progression”. The author of the original blog post on treatmills mentions this regarding Hades (2020):

“What’s frightening about Treatmills is that, in Hades’ case, the incremental mechanics (Darkness, Gems, etc, used to permanently improve your power, which maybe originated in Rogue Legacy? Idk), I would wager were a way to make the game more accessible to different skill levels via grinding. However, the result is that now Hades has these additional addiction loops built in, just like gacha games!”

(Disclaimer: Personally, I have only ever played the first two hours of Hades. I really wasn’t into the story, the voice acting, or its visual presentation of pseudo-2.5D/3D. If I wanted that style of isometric/top-down hack-and-slash/souls-esque combat in a game, I wouldn’t be looking for a roguelite. Hyper Light Drifter (2016) and Tunic (2022) come to mind instead. Sorry!)

The effect of meta progression, in my opinion, kind of spoils the whole point of roguelikes, and, I guess in Hades, Rogue Legacy (2013), Dead Cells,1 etc.’s case, roguelites.2 That’s where the distinction begins, if you’re not already in the know. Roguelite games want you to continue exploring its content, but in a more “predatory” or “coercive” fashion than something like The Binding of Isaac, where you are playing the game not expecting any guaranteed progress. Isaac doesn’t really reward you for losing. Maybe you’ll get an item or two, added to the already large pool of hundreds of items. It’s more like an old-school game in terms of “learning by losing”. You just gotta keep playing until you win, minus putting in a quarter for each try like you would have if it was an arcade game. It feels like it’s merely chance to win, much like everything else in the game; I feel more okay with that, feeling less predatory than dangling all of what you’re missing in front of you like in Dead Cells. Sometimes you’ll get an insane synergy or lucky floor in Isaac and it’s all the more rewarding when you get to pull it off. No other roguelite nails this variety in synergies quite as well as Isaac, in my opinion.

Like a contractor to their customers

“Okay, so I didn’t like Hades that much, BUT, I still felt really compelled to keep playing after putting it down. This is where I noticed the similarities to gacha games: I felt EXACTLY the same putting down Hades as I do when I put down a gacha game or idle game like Kittensgame or Melvor Idle. I have anxiety for a few hours after quitting where I consider re-downloading and leveling up more, doing one more run, etc… going back for another short high.”

Games are a truly expressive art form with how a developer or player can find “fun” in a game’s primary and secondary loops. That being said, I believe there is a place for these games. Idle games, yes, gacha games, no, they’re the fucking poison of this industry. Roguelites can stay, the indie boat has to continue floating somehow. Idle games, especially, are a way for us to explore really weird settings unthinkable in other genres of games. The huge numbers add to the silliness of it. To me, it’s a charming genre with all kinds of unique games that make unlikely scenarios. And it’s funny when you talk about these games out of context, like Kittens Game (2015): what do you mean the game features sacrificing unicorns, establishing embassies with the zebras, and trading blackcoin? When you talk about mechanics in a gacha game, with tropes like stamina and other arbitrary cooldown timers, they always tend to come with some sort of complaint or grievance. Think about a discussion about an idle game: the discussion usually becomes one about the myriad of ways to reach X number or Y prestiges in Z amount of time, and sometimes the methods are laughably “broken” or “overpowered”. And yet, it’s something incremental game developers tend to encourage. I’m going to now shift the focus of this post from roguelike/roguelites to idle games.

“The gacha model of games evolved from smartphones inserting themselves into peoples’ every day lives, and designers exploiting that fact. Retention techniques evolved out of competition and the relatively low game design skill needed to make the ‘game’ part of gacha games.”

Idle games embrace these “low skill” or low effort “games”, typically subgames or “minigames” (or “features” in NGU) tend to feel like small puzzles on navigating dizzying and confusing UI with massive help boxes and text walls all over the screen. Players are generally expected to simply mess around the mechanics until they hit a decent amount of efficiency. If you’re someone like me, you’ll just look up the wiki or the help menu and go from there. You’re lucky if you do not have to join a Discord and ask a question.

TBS
The Baal Slayer (TBS) in Idling to Rule the Gods (2014): a really barebones timing minigame unlocked upon “completing the tutorial”3 that grants bonuses on how accurate you are. In the grand scheme of things, it’s ultimately not anything, and you don’t have to do it, but it’s there. As you can see, I have not used it at all this run.

Aren’t you developing an idle game?

Well, yeah. Of course I am. Who wouldn’t want to make a game that is a genre they enjoy?4 Idle games are, in the grand scheme of things, a niche genre with a small following of dedicated players who update wikis and help out on forums and Discords.5

“Now let me talk about business for a bit. As much as indie developers might say they want to make games ‘for players to enjoy and have fun’, that is 100% ALWAYS compromised, even a little bit, by needing, or wanting money. I have met developers who, with a cold and precise logic, tell me they are going to keep working on a famous roguelite series with the intention of adding new content to keep the ‘money fountain’ going. Even if someone says they’re making something ‘to maximize fun!’, their decisions are also driven by selling enough copies to keep their team afloat. I would argue that the bigger the team, the more they might use marketing speak to hide this fact, but that’s just speculation.”

At one point in planning out Idlenet’s core game design was considering if I was going to make the game free-to-play or $5. Ultimately, I decided to have the source open on GitHub, but Han-Tani’s take on financial incentives on making this kind of game sums up my feelings accurately. If you’re selling an idle game, I’d be more compelled to pay for it if it was on a mobile app store (albeit ad-free/IAP-free, obviously) simply because of the shitty commissions and developer fees you face on there. Personally, I’ve spent money on Melvor Idle (2021) and Kittens Game for their clean no-BS ports to mobile, and to support the developers of course. Cloud saves are also a plus.

There are also games like Cookie Clicker (2013), Orb of Creation (EA 2021), and Magic Research (2023) that are just sold at something like $5 (usually only on Steam and free everywhere else, thanks Valve!). I wholly understand it, but depending on how the developer approaches the game (where it is a complete game, or one with continued updates) the financial incentive can seep into the design eventually.

I tend to have more faith in completely free idle games where the developer is a player of the game as much as their community is. Time is money, and making this shit can get tough once you get into dozens of systems, formulae, and intertwined mechanics to balance. Personally, game development is my hobby, I’d almost never want to work in a large game company, deal with bureaucracy, or deal with the industry at a larger scale. The indie scene is great, and I’ve always been a fan of auteur game developers or smaller teams who hone their craft to create a game of their vision, unhindered by publishing contracts, deadlines, or executives who have no clue how games are developed. As much as I didn’t enjoy Hades, Supergiant Games are still to be appreciated (as they already have with numerous awards for that game and the others in their catalog) for their approach to weaving narrative into their game design without compromise.

Idle games are the true distilled form of this style of “addiction” or “retention” loops, and they are the perfect genre for me to replace these hidden systems sprinkled in other AAA or gacha games, where they feel more like casinos. Idle games, some being called “incremental” with the emphasis on more active play, aren’t really casinos — most good ones want you to break the game and get the numbers to astronomical heights. To me, they are the perfect genre for expressing this craving. This is the true appeal of idle games. Having played them for nearly a decade now in my spare time, they make shitty incremental mechanics in these MMO, AAA, and gacha games more egregious to me, where I’d tend to want these mechanics in their own idle game, without the half-assed gameplay to mask these systems.

“To me this feels really unpleasant… it’s like going out of control while being very self-aware of it happening. I have to actively rip myself away from a game, and I don’t think games should make people feel like that… it’s something I’ve trained myself to do less of as an adult.”

Are idle games feeding into these dark pattern-esque addiction and retention loops? Absolutely — I will sound defensive, but it is an absolutely harmless “addiction”. I’d consider something an “addiction” if it’s legitimately unhealthy to keep up. For drugs. The word “addiction” and being “addicted” to a game should have a more negative connotation than it currently has in video games discussions.6 Could some games be drugs? Yeah, think of World of Warcraft (crack), or League of Legends (alcohol and cigarettes). If you are feeling how the author feels about playing these games, then maybe yes, it’s harmful, and you should play a game that is more suited to how you want to approach them. Much like how you would approach any other form of media or art. But hey! Idle games, in the end, weren’t the focus of Han-Tani’s original blog post.

If you manage to find the ideal idle game, it may not ask much of your time outside a couple of minutes every day. I kept up the habit simply to replace my doomscrolling whenever I first got on a screen. I’ll be happy seeing a few numbers go up, then move on to the rest of my day. There are plenty of complete free, many times open source, idle games where it is more something the developer creates simply because they love idle games and all of its tropes. They build their game with the community, slowly pushing the envelope of incremental game design through mechanics unimaginable in a “traditional” video game. Think Bitburner (2021), Trimps (2015), and Kittens. You know, the standard indie treatmill shit, but without all the money.7 It’s like being in a casino, finding the winning machine or table, and not getting banned for draining it of all of its money. Point being, if you enjoy idle games for the sake of breaking the systems and minmaxing efficiency, it would feel less like a dark pattern, and feel more like, you know, a game.8

Footnotes

  1. Dead Cells’ “meta progression” is blueprint unlocks for weapons or unlocking items like in Isaac, but in Isaac generally you are “progressing” by completing the game rather than just playing the game like in Hades or Dead Cells. ↩

  2. I hate having to distinguish between roguelikes and roguelites. Let that be known. ↩

  3. The “tutorial” in Idling to Rule the Gods is defeating all of the gods for the first time, the final one being Baal. This usually takes new players a week of “playing”. Once completed, the game tells you the “real game starts now!” ↩

  4. If you want to make a gacha game, don’t talk to me. ↩

  5. Idle games on mobile are a completely different story. They feel more soulless. When I’m talking about idle/incremental games in this post, they’re referring to the Flash, HTML/JS, home grown indie games like Anti-Idle, NGU, Kittens, etc. on PC. ↩

  6. To be honest, I don’t really know another good word to describe the sensation of enjoying a game so much that you can’t do anything but play that one game. Even more so, describing the difference of someone not being able to stop playing a game due to some abusive love-hate relationship with the game and/or its developers, from someone not being able to stop because the game is just that good. In an artsy, “good” way. Obsessed, maybe? That sounds more creepy, but the thought of drugs doesn’t come up immediately. Hooked? I’d maybe use the word dependent for games like gacha games, Korean MMOs, or toxic competitive team games. ↩

  7. Money still gets in the way, eventually. Some Kongregate based idle games that moved on to Steam ramped up the predatory microtransactions heavily. Jagex literally bought the rights to Melvor Idle, and now that game has paid expansions. I got into Melvor in 2019 knowing it was just some dude making the game and that Steam purchasers would get everything for free. The model was simpler back then, but money talks. As I work on Idlenet, I try to follow more in the fashion of Evolve or Kittens. This is a passion project of mine and I find that having it be influenced by how much money I could make from it just feels wrong to me. And let’s not ignore that there are plenty of passion projects that are free on sites like itch.io for games that are not idlers or overtly incremental. Same principles, the indie scene is very cool and chill. ↩

  8. This sounds like a coping mechanism, but that’s a cynical way of thinking about it. It’s a video game for God’s sake, not heroin. ↩

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