After spending over 3 months stuck in my house with almost nothing to do, I went on a quest to find the most entertaining and most addictive game on the internet.  Spending time on some of the different games that encapsulated my childhood brought an insane amount of nostalgia that nearly transported me back into time. Games like; Club Penguin, Webkinz, and Poptropica all reminded me of a simpler time when life was easier but no game brought the amount of addiction and excitement that came with playing cookie clicker.

When asking several DHS students if they remembered Cookie Clicker, almost all were overcome with an insane amount of nostalgia. Senior Owen Sheed described to me how he once spent over 3 weeks on one run where he amassed over 4 quadrillion cookies.

It’s no surprise that so many people remember this classic game as it was the 2nd most-searched-for video game in all of 2013.  Written in a single evening, the game was posted in a link on 4chan, and garnered 50,000 players within hours. A month after the game’s initial release, it had over 200,000 players per day. Freshman Liam McBride also commented on how he thinks it might be the greatest video game that he’s ever played.

The game has continued to stay so strong through the years due to the intensity and how strong the community is.   with thousands of forums and thousands of comments, the discussions there are amazing: people make threats to the creator of the game, engage in flame wars, discuss their motivations for doing it. It’s a little bit funny, a little bit creepy, and almost bizarre if you think about it. Junior Dougie Brown who has been playing since 2015 told me how he much loves the game because cookies are also his favorite food.

It matters a lot is that the game doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. A game like Cookie Clicker could never have been created by a “professional” company that had a huge budget with grand plans for world domination. Instead, it was created as a fun side-project, for laughs which makes the game more appealing for the thousands of fans over the years.