

The end of cow clicker - throw_away
http://kotaku.com/5846080/the-life+changing-20-rightward+facing-cow

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noelsequeira
This is such an incredible article on so many counts. I stumbled upon Ian
Bogost when we were in the throes of the (then acerbic) "gamification" debate,
and Foursquare was the undisputed toast of the interwebs. I've been following
him since, and have found myself quite intrigued by the Cow Clicker story.

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.

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praptak
Ah yes, the misaimed fandom phenomenon :)

 _"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>

~~~
DanBC
Except, it's not misaimed fandom. People seem to genuinely agree with him
about how stupid some aspects of modern gaming are. Having cowclick is a way
of saying you agree. A clicky plusone.

~~~
praptak
The article says that not everyone got the joke:

 _"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._"

~~~
Udo
It may not matter whether everyone got the joke or not. In fact, the guy's
behavior suggests it wasn't a joke to him at all - it was intended to be a
somewhat serious (and passive aggressive) statement. I think what happened is
akin to a guy who hates Impressionism and one day he decides to just smear
some meaningless colors on a canvas - just to make a statement about how
meaningless that artform is. Then along come people and find themselves
attracted to the artwork he created, whether they realize he did it to make a
point or not, they simply like it.

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.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Which is exactly the definition of misaimed fandom...

~~~
Udo
One might argue that the consumer/beholder of the artwork is always right by
default - as opposed to the artist setting the purpose and judging other
people's views of his work by comparing them to that purpose. By this "the
consumer is always right" definition there is no such thing as misaimed fandom
because everybody is free to feel about the work as they like. If a piece of
art (or a game or whatever) makes me feel a certain way, that doesn't make me
wrong - even if that feeling was not intended by the artist.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
The viewer's interpretation seems like the important one. It leeds to an
interesting situation when creator and consumer are diametrically opposed in
their understanding of a work.

In this particular case, it seems to have taught the artist a lot in the
process.

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bendotc
Frank Lantz, Ian's friend mentioned in the article who used to work at
Area/Code and now at Zynga NYC wrote a response:
<http://gamedesignadvance.com/?p=2383>

~~~
nmcfarl
That was almost as good as the article, and very much worth a read. An
alternate, and in my opion better, explanation of the phenomenon.

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thristian
If you have an hour to spare and Flash player installed, Bogost gave a talk
about Cow Clicker at the Game Developers Conference, shortly before the
"Cowpocalypse" mentioned in the article:

<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.

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jerf
Now _that_ is some transgressive art, when the piece itself manages to
ultimately affect the artist himself. And I don't mean the way any piece
affects any artist or merely bringing up strong emotions, but actually
changing the artist's opinions on the same dimension the work was intended to
be about in the first place.

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smoyer
What a great story ... and an interesting experiment! If I had an FB page, I'd
put the empty pasture on it just to honor the irony behind the game - the
irony that so many people thought it was a real game and that the inventor got
sucked into his joke.

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sp332
Sounds like a "social" version of Progress Wars! <http://progresswars.com/>

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ThaddeusQuay2
TLDR: I am upset that my customers are so stupid that they pay for something
which was never meant to be a real product, while almost entirely ignoring the
real product, which just happens to be a true labor of love. Therefore, I
shall discontinue the thing that's bringing in more money, while also publicly
talking about how little I think of my customers. I am smarter than them, and
I like to rub this fact in their foolish faces.

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.

