Indie Rock: Cookie Clicker

I’m not just playing Cookie Clicker. I’m playing it and trying to understand why I’m playing it.

By all traditional metrics of judging a video game, it’s not very good. I’m not sure, though. It might not even be a product of human creation which you can quantify, which means it’s probably art. It’s probably great art. It might be better than Guernica, or that Japanese one with the waves.

You click a cookie. For a bit. Initially each time you click the cookie you collect it and when you have enough, you spend them on automating the cookie gaining process. You also can increase the amount of cookies that you gain on each cookie click.

That’s it. You gain greater turnover (a pun, like a thing you’d do in an oven, in case you missed it) by buying more expensive equipment that produce more cookies per second. Each time you buy equipment the price goes up but the returns don’t, so you’ll eventually outgrow their necessity. There’s some odd forgetfulness in certain parts of this upgrade system, where you can buy increased abilities for some of the best and worst equipment but not a lot for equipment in the middle.

There comes a point where worse equipment is actually more useful than a lot of the middle-tier stuff. That’s… now that’s really it. Now the numbers are going up constantly. I’m gaining a bunch of cookies here. I can’t stop them. I probably shouldn’t try to stop them.

I like that I’ve ostensibly become useless due to my own automating of the cookie empire that I’ve built. The clicks that I do gain so little comparative return to the Cookies Per Second that I needn’t bother. In fact, time I spend clicking on cookies is time I’m not purchasing structures that increase automated revenue.

This must be how a CEO feels.

When the game started I was clicking on a cookie so that I could get enough money to start automating my cookie collection. Now I’m gaining so many cookies every second the clicks are practically useless. I gain 30,000,000 cookies every second. I’m making goddamn bank up in here. I could be listed on the fucking cookie NASDAQ. Call Sesame Street, motherfucker, they just got a new Cookie Monster. Slangin’ more cookies than fucking Maryland.

I constantly have the game open in a browser tab, one that I flick toward when I’ve spent enough time not quite coming up with better things to do. I don’t feel like I’m being deceived into enjoying something I shouldn’t. Instead I feel like I’m wilfully doing something I’ve yet to see any point in. There’s something beautiful about that. Zen, even, as if I’m raking a garden of cookies in solemn contentedness.

Except the patterns aren’t waves, they’re ever increasing numbers that keep ticking up for infinity. Instead of relaxation you’re given an increasing sense of crushing pointlessness that will continue long after you’re dead.

Cookie Clicker’s probably the greatest essay on nihilism ever written.

Oh, Also

If you are in London this week and aren’t at the Eurogamer Expo, please go to Loading Bar where a bunch of very nice indie developers will be on hand to show off their video games.

If you’re actually at Eurogamer Expo, try and find me! I’m the white male in his early 20s.