Death to the Self-Playing Game

Death to the Self-Playing Game(jank.cool)

6 points by speckx 6 hours ago | 13 comments

thih9 4 hours ago |

These games are not self playing, you lose if you don’t make the correct choices. This is just a different type of game.

> In a May 2026 update, Valve named the genre Bullet Heaven on their Steam tagging system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_Survivors%E2%80%93like

ozlikethewizard 1 hour ago | |

Never played these games, but from reading the wiki, are the right choices pre determined? I could be misreading it but it does sound like vampire survivors is functionally an auto clicker

HeavyStorm 4 hours ago | |

Exactly

jareklupinski 5 hours ago |

if Vampire Survivors is a dopamine shortcut, then

> This post is for paying subscribers only

is a cortisol hack. thanks author :( i'm going back to actually having fun!

kwoff 3 hours ago | |

I play a self-playing game with sites that do that. I click the Block Site (Firefox extension) button, and the site never appears again. Talk about easy mode! :)

tptacek 4 hours ago | |

Paywalled articles with no workaround are actually off topic on HN, for whatever that's worth to you.

moririri 4 hours ago | |

Thanks for the warning, would rather not waste my time reading an article only to get half way through it and find a paywall -_-

scirob 4 hours ago |

Vampire survivor is an amazing game. If you can't accept the value of entertainment then the rest of your life is probably to easy.

But fair enough everyone can have their take.

furyofantares 4 hours ago |

It's a silly take. When one mechanic is removed or automated it should be seen as being in service of focusing on another. I can see an extremely nitpicky complaint that this can make it so a game looks like it's a genre you like but then in reality it's a genre that you don't. That's OK though, you can adapt to new information, and not every game needs to be for you.

InsideOutSanta 4 hours ago | |

Yeah, the article's premise is false. If Vampire Survivors plays itself, then how come I suck at it?

thih9 3 hours ago | | |

For me it clicked after I explored more of the options available in the game.

For a long while I didn’t notice that the character can be upgraded. I thought it was some paid consumables UI, while this is a roguelite game mechanic.

paleotrope 4 hours ago |

Well that's an opinion.

bigyabai 5 hours ago |

> If somebody automated Devil Daggers, I would stab them in the hands with a barbeque fork.

If you stab them in the hands with a fork, then they need to automate Devil Daggers to play it. Not an easy game to enjoy missing half a hand, it or Hyper Demon.

I didn't read past the paywall fold, but this seems like a pretty silly hill to die on. Many of the best games - Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Starcraft, Simcity - all automate their background tedium to let players focus on more interesting skill expression. If you took away the macro focus and forced people to micromanage every gameplay element, it feels fair to say that all of them would become worse games with very little added to the experience.

Even the author's ironic ideas, like "automate Street Fighter" echoes a real-world genre of turn based fighting games that end up being awesome spectator sports. YOMI Hustle has a pretty dedicated community that ekes out frame-perfect skill expression that other fighting games dream of: https://youtu.be/fZVsO62e4Aw

snapcaster 5 hours ago | |

I agree with your take (as someone with 3k hours in factorio). I think there is different categories of automated though. In one case you're still solving problems just at a higher level, in the other case you're no longer solving any problems. Like, getting logistics drones in factorio does automate some aspects of the game but then you just increase your scope and scale and still have the same core problem of "grow the factory"