Cow Clicker

Cow Clicker is a social network game on Facebook developed by game theorist Ian Bogost. The game is designed to be a satire of social games on the popular social networking web sites, particularly those developed by Zynga (such as FarmVille). The goal of the game is to collect "clicks" by clicking on a cow received by the player, but a cow can be clicked only once every six hours — however players can earn additional clicks and other items by spending "Mooney" on them. Players can collect more clicks by inviting friends to their pasture.^[1][2]

History

Bogost is a critic of social network games that are free of challenges and demand little more than clicking on things at regular intervals. At the 2010 Game Developers Conference, he coined the term "cow clickers" for these kinds of games. Playing a bit with this, he decided to distill the social game genre down to its essence and actually made the Cow Clicker game.

The game became quite popular; Bogost has earned an undisclosed but probably quite significant sum of money by selling mirrored cows and extra clicks, and he has also spent quite some time and effort improving the game - but without adding any actual gameplay. It is suggested^[3] that the success made him unhappy.

In late 2011 Bogost decided to create a 'Cowpocalypse' and then removed all the cows in a rapture^[4]. The game can still be played by clicking on the empty fields where there once were cows. Responding to a fan's complaint that the game was "not a fun game" after the cow rapture, Bogost responded: "It wasn't very fun before."^[5]

References

1. ^ "Poking at Cow Clicker". Edge. http://www.next-gen.biz/features/poking-cow-clicker. Retrieved 31 July 2011. 
2. ^ Tsotsis, Alexia. "Why Clicking Cows Brings Us Closer Together". TechCrunch. http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/26/cow-clicker-facebook/. Retrieved 31 July 2011. 
3. ^ Leigh Alexander on the Kotaku blog - http://kotaku.com/5846080/the-life+changing-20-rightward+facing-cow
4. ^ Cowpocalypse Now - The Cows Have Been Raptured - http://www.bogost.com/blog/cowpocalypse_now.shtml
5. ^ Cow Clicker Founder: If You Can't Ruin It, Destroy It-http://www.npr.org/2011/11/18/142518949/cow-clicker-founder-if-you-cant-ruin-it-destroy-it