Video Games in the Future!

[PowerGod]

I know people will spend huge amounts on those click-counter games - but why?!

Curiosity to see what happens next ? That's the art in the games, to keep you interested

(If you are referring to Cookie Clicker types of things... else if there's just a plain counter I don't know...)

 

[waGL]

Even the most boring game in the world can be exciting and addictive if you manage to make it competitive among peers.

 

[levi]

If we're in the business of making unverifiable claims, might I draw your attention to a certain undetectable teapot in orbit around the sun.

Ob: https://xkcd.com/1866/

 

[ElPoco]

Slightly more on topic, I'm always puzzled by the idea of gamification. It seems to be a way of replacing meaningful goals with hollow, artificial ones. I know people will spend huge amounts on those click-counter games - but why‽

It's an abuse of the rewards mechanism of the brain.
Your brain is happy when you achieve something, but the trick is that it doesn't really consider how meaningful that achievement is (it is even prone to making things feel more meaningful than they truly are to make you feel good about yourself and keep going forward even if you can't achieve much). Idle/Clicker games abuse this by giving you the impression that you achieved something. This is further reinforced by the unlocking of new stuff and discovery of what lies beyond, which is also something that stimulates the brain.

Hopefully, the brain will tend to lower the reward for the same achievement/discovery, leading to boredom, which is why these clicker games often get stale after a while. Unless you add some competitive aspect to it, and also use the fallacy of sunk cost to convince the players that stopping means losing everything they achieved so far. Which explains why people will stop playing cookie clicker after a while but kept playing Farmville for much longer.