The reason why I lost interest in RuneScape is because the game was going from a sort of of socialist economy, where you work and get paid for your work, into a more capitalist one where you spend a bunch of up-front money to make passive income. Eventually the amount of passive income you get just dwarfs playing the actual game and it's like "why bother?" All you do is log in, collect your Kingdom, then collect your Ships, Load up your machines, harvest your animals, do your daily and that's it. No gameplay. The most fun I had playing the game was actually earning progress in the game rather than having it handed to me, not roleplaying as a fucking landlord. It's kind of insidious how the game slowly turned into a lord simulator. I'm thinking of all the features which basically boil down to "You're the boss, make these people do work for you and you'll get free money/xp while you're away." How long until the MC becomes a slave owner?
all these adventure capitalist style idle games are made so they can get you hooked on their game and you'll buy ingame items, even if you dont have much time to play the game.
I actually ran into an idle game on the app store like a week ago and it seemed neat because it actually had a story. Immediately you play the role of a white savior getting money from slave la- NOPE. Uninstall.
Bonus: Their chat filter didn't let me name my character any variation of "Cracker Musk" Like you tell me that I'm going to be owning a slave mine and then don't let me roleplay as Cracker Musk? Come the fuck on.
There's actually a cool idle game called Idle Civilization: World History where you plays through Marx's historiography, starting from primitive social group and collecting surplus value to unlock new technologies advancing through the stages of historical materialism all the way to achieving communist utopia. The original is more of a standard idle game, but the beta version is more complex and harder. For one I sucked with the beta version and never got past the stage of ancient slaveholding society lmao.
Reject monetized skinner boxes like Adventure Capitalist, embrace totally free skinner boxes like Trimps .