The end of cow clicker
kotaku.com
kotaku.com
For me, the takeaway from the article isn't so ironic when you look at Game Development as any of the arts. And bear with the cliche, but save the odd exception, an artists' life is almost always a compromise between staying true to one's principles and courting mainstream appeal. Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, "perhaps the biggest rock band most people have never heard of", will certainly attest to this.
"The writer has a vision. They've created a character who represents everything they loathe, and have placed him in a setting that satirizes everything they hate about modern society. Bring on the Moral Guardians and Media Watchdogs; he's prepared for controversy!
Only... it doesn't quite work like that."
From http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MisaimedFandom
"More surprisingly, Cow Clicker developed an active player base–-people who missed the humor and attached to it as if it were a "real" game. These players unquestioningly spent real-money Facebook credits to enjoy their cows and sent Bogost innocent player feedback in the hopes of improving their experience.
It subverted every expectation that he had, even as it reaffirmed his worst fears about the exploitive sadism of Facebook game design. Its success also became something to dread. A Slow Year represented everything Bogost loved about games; Cow Clicker was about everything he hated."
Now I never "played" Cow Clicker but I assume there were some players who genuinely liked visiting that page and clicking on their cow. As stupid as that sounds, they had some kind of relationship with the artwork, even if that was never intended by the artist. Also, I believe the concept of Cow Clicker is a whole lot more honest than any of the Zynga "games" so I can see how people might prefer the Cow as their web Tamagotchi...
What I find really sad is that Ian Bogost actually feels tormented by the state of gaming general and the reception of Cow Clicker in particular. If you make a satirical work like this, you probably should have some healthy mental distance to the subject.
In this particular case, it seems to have taught the artist a lot in the process.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013828/
It's been a while since I watched it, so I forget whether he actually highlights his ambivalence toward the game, but it's more than obvious in the way he talks about it.
I understand that there might be deep, philosophical implications here, with regard to the psychology of social gaming and whatnot, but throughout history, way before Facebook and the Internet, artists would frequently create "popular" art, even though they despised it, so that they could have the money to privately create the "real" art that they loved. It is not only rude, but a sign of poor character, for the artist to also despise the people who gladly pay him for what they perceive to have value. I don't know anything more about this guy than what I read in the above article, but HNers, given their tendency towards startups, should stand with his disappointed customers, and not with his lofty attitude. If someone paid me for the privilege of being able to click on the image of a cow more often than those who do not pay, I would try to figure out how to improve the experience for them, and/or how to charge them even more, all the while pocketing the money for some project that was important to me on an idealistic level. Making fun of your customers' intelligence, especially because they've simply made the choice to pay for your product, is never a good thing.