Slashdot Mirror
Cow Clicker Boils Down Facebook Games
mjn writes "Game designer and academic Ian Bogost announces Cow Clicker, a Facebook game implementing the mechanics of the Facebook-games genre stripped to their core. You get a cow, which you can click on every six hours. You earn additional clicks if your friends in your pasture also click. You can buy premium cows with 'mooney,' and also use your mooney to buy more clicks. You can buy mooney with real dollars, or earn some free bonus mooney if you spam up your feed with Cow Clicker activity. A satire of Facebook games, but actually as genuine a game as the non-satirical games are. And people actually play it, perhaps confirming Bogost's view that the genre of games is largely just 'brain hacks that exploit human psychology in order to make money,' which continue to work even when the users are openly told what's going on."
I'd be concerned if this game didn't make a load of money. The people who play those games should be filtered out of life by having their money taken away from them until they don't have enough to pay for the basics of life. Facebook games are pretty much just a hopped up version of those retarded viral text based games that you need to sign your friends up for so you can go up the ranks. Internet text based games turned into lame graphics based ones. There will always be morons out there willing to pay real money for fake things that can and will disappear without warning as soon as the creators decide to sell the business (or quit because they've made enough money) or move on to other things (other interests or legal issues).
And people actually play it, perhaps confirming Bogost's view that the genre of games is largely just 'brain hacks that exploit human psychology in order to make money,' which continue to work even when the users are openly told what's going on."
Meh. Slashdot's been doing this for years.
We know it's pointless, but we keep clicking that reply button. And when they deliberately make the stories misleading and poorly edited, they get even more clicks.
... and then they built the supercollider.
genre of games is largely just 'brain hacks that exploit human psychology in order to make money,' which continue to work even when the users are openly told what's going on.
Of course they are, but so is everything else. Slashdot exploits human psychology (why exactly am I posting this? I am spending my time and energy and not getting anything tangible in return) in order to make money. Ever felt pressured by your better half to buy a small piece of metal (jewelery) for $1000 dollars or a tiny bottle of water (perfume) for $100? Those also continue to work even after the users are told what's going on.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
it's a minimalist presentation of the same ultimate waste of time typical RPGs are. the joke is YOU.
(side note: "RPG game"... really? did you use your PIN number on an ATM machine to buy that typical RPG game?)
I've never actually played a Facebook game, but I've had friends try to draw me in by demonstrating the games at length. So I know the mechanics of a few popular ones.
Facebook games have, from what I've seen, three goals:
1. Keep you in the game regularly by setting events up so you have to visit frequently.
2. Send messages in your name to all of your friends to "join me in this fun game that's the awesomest thing ever!!!!!".
3. Hopefully occasionally sucker someone into spending real money to level up or gain new powers.
Facebook game developers, on the other hand, have only one goal. Access to your Facebook account so they can see information about you and all your friends. The actual mechanics of gameplay are almost irrelevant, as long as it's compelling enough to draw you in and maybe use your account to convince your friends to help with your lost sheep or by giving you a pink balloon or a warm huggie or whatever.
The upshot of this article is that the bar can be lowered significantly and still manage to sucker people in. Who needs a whole Farmville when you can just scan in a bad picture of a cow and have people click it every 6 hours, and get the exact same data on them that way?
Personally, I'd do a blue circle that sighs every time you click on it. Then, if you convince enough friends to join, your circle slowly turns from blue to red. I bet I'd get full account profile data on a million people within a month.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
When applications first came out, I just started hiding them every time, and hiding the people who announced them. I haven't seen any application-based spam in well over 6 months.
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
You know, it's entirely possible to have a Facebook account without spending excessive amounts of time on it. Nothing forces you to play these insipid games, update your profile every day, or respond to every message you get.
It's also very invasive. It's likely he cancelled his account for many reasons, but that less time on facebook altogether was a happy byproduct.
I'll tell the 40 or so women I've slept with and my two ex-wives what you said.
So you confirm that you fail regularly in your attempts at relationships with women? Interesting ;)
which is totally what she said
I don't think there's a one-dimensional score of "fun" that's the "only" thing that matters. Different media have different mixtures of qualities: they provoke thought, entertain, addict, inspire, horrify, bore, explain, question, etc. And I think it makes some sense to look at why people are drawn to different media, and what we're getting out of them. What's compelling about reality TV, for example, and how is that similar or different to what's compelling about Futurama, or about Seinfeld, or about 24? Are there interesting angles to explore, things maybe people would be better off avoiding, etc.?
Using some pure "fun" metric is like judging films by their box-office totals or exit surveys or something, which is a pretty boring one-dimensional way to do it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
As I indicate in a response to a sibling, the deciding factor in me quitting Facebook was Mark Zuckerberg's statements characterizing a desire for privacy as disingenuous and socially unacceptable. He can think what he chooses to, and I can choose not to do business with him.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Funny, I always loose to my girlfriend in chess because she /does/ show me her pieces.
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "