The clicker genre is one that reduces games to the worst parts of modern game design, turning them into addictive, manipulative Skinner boxes. Whilst I don't think it's impossible for entries in the genre to transcend this in some manner, I have such a dislike for and distrust of the mechanisms that sit at the core of these games that I think it would be safest to avoid the genre altogether.

Cookie Clicker, as the most well-known example of this, becomes the poster-child for this.