With idle games, active withdrawal from the game comprises an essential part of gameplay as players wait for the game state to change over time. This mode of interaction is paradigmatic for the change of roles technologies have in our lives. However, the design elements of idle games are less well understood, particularly from the perspectives of developers. We interviewed six designers of six different popular idle games and inquired into their individual approaches. Via thematic analysis, we refine and expand on existing definitions of idle games as a genre, shed light on ethically charged practices of care in their design, and identify shared core characteristics between the games and processes. We then generate intermediate-level knowledge on the design of idle games. Our work contributes designers' perspectives on idle games and their design to a growing body of literature on the genre.
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Playing to Wait: A Taxonomy of Idle Games
Idle games are a recent minimalist gaming phenomenon in which the game is left running with little player interaction. We deepen understanding of idle games and their characteristics by developing a taxonomy and identifying game features. This paper examines 66 idle games using a grounded theory approach to analyze play, game mechanics, rewards, interactivity, progress rate, and user interface. To establish a clearly bounded definition of idle games, we analyzed 10 non-idle games with the same approach. We discuss how idle games move players from playing to planning, how they question dominant assumptions about gameplay, and their unusual use of resources such as player attention and computer cycles. Our work illuminates opportunities for the design of idle games, suggests design implications, and provides a framework for researchers to clearly articulate questions about this genre.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1651532
- PAR ID:
- 10061230
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM Digital Library
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 15
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174195
