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."

Comments

Prior Art

[dangitman]

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.

Exploiting?

[clarkkent09]

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.

Re:Guess I haven't played enough FB games

[Michael Kristopeit]

to gain experience you click the cow. when you do, you level up. your new powers are the ability to spend more in game currency to allow you to click on cows more to gain even more experience and level up more.

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?)

Re:Strange Game

[Logic and Reason]

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.