The end of cow clicker(kotaku.com)
kotaku.com
The end of cow clicker
http://kotaku.com/5846080/the-life+changing-20-rightward+facing-cow
16 comments
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
"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
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.
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."
"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."
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.
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.
Which is exactly the definition of misaimed fandom...
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.
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.
In this particular case, it seems to have taught the artist a lot in the process.
...but people also spend real money to buy (ugly) ProgressQuest real-world items. I'm pretty sure if PQ introduced some stupid free-to-play/pay-to-get-juicy-upgrades thing that they'd get a bit of cash.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sounds like a "social" version of Progress Wars! http://progresswars.com/
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.
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.
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.