Cow Clicker (2010)
A decade ago attempted to troll Peter Molyneux at the Unity3D &quot;Unite 2012&quot; conference after his insufferably vainglorious keynote presentation of his &quot;Curiosity: What&#x27;s Inside the Cube?&quot; Cube Clicker game, jokingly guessing that the big secret inside the box was a cow, but he just didn&#x27;t get the joke, even after I explained it:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Curiosity:_What's_Inside_the_Cube?" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Curiosity:_What's_Inside_the...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24380418" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24380418</a><p>DonHopkins on Sept 5, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: Bullfrog After Populous<p>His Cube game was the epitome of dopamine addiction games, all that was wrong with Zynga&#x2F;Facebook games, the rage at the time. Nothing at all original about that: a total cop-out of game design.<p>When Peter Molyneux gave his insufferably vainglorious keynote presentation of Cube at the Unity3D Unite conference at Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam, I chatted him up afterwards and attempted to troll him by guessing that the big surprise in the box was a cow.<p>I don&#x27;t think he got the point that I was trying to make an ironic reference to Ian Bogost&#x27;s Cow Clicker, which is a parody of and social commentary on dopamine games.<p>I tried to explain the joke to him, and he still didn&#x27;t get it. At least Ian Bogost had the self awareness to design Cow Clicker in the service of making a critical statement about game design, and the capacity of shame to be embarrassed when it was an accidental run-away success.<p>Unite 2012 : Keynote - Founders &amp; Peter Molyneux (The BS starts at 1h 8m 21s -- It&#x27;s been 8 years since I saw this live, and it&#x27;s much worse than I remembered, especially now knowing how it turned out!)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=24AY4fJ66xA&amp;t=1h08m21s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=24AY4fJ66xA&amp;t=1h08m21s</a><p>&gt;1h 48m 06s, with arms spread out like Jesus H Christ on a crucifix: &quot;Because we can dynamically put on ANY surface of the cube ANY image we like. So THAT&#x27;s how we&#x27;re going to surprise the world, is by giving clues about what&#x27;s in the middle later on.&quot;<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cowclicker.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cowclicker.com&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cow_Clicker" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cow_Clicker</a><p>&gt;In the wake of a controversial speech by Zynga&#x27;s president at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2010, Bogost developed Cow Clicker for a presentation at a New York University seminar on social gaming in July 2010. The game was created to demonstrate what Bogost felt were the most commonly abused mechanics of social games, such as the promotion of social interaction and monetization rather than the artistic aspects of the medium. As the game unexpectedly began to grow in popularity, Bogost also used Cow Clicker to parody other recent gaming trends, such as gamification, educational apps, and alternate reality games.<p>&gt;Some critics praised Cow Clicker for its dissection of the common mechanics of social network games and viewed it as a commentary on how social games affect people.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qz.com&#x2F;34024&#x2F;life-really-is-a-game-with-a-lot-of-clicks-and-then-you-die&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qz.com&#x2F;34024&#x2F;life-really-is-a-game-with-a-lot-of-cli...</a><p>&gt;Life really is a game—with a lot of clicks—and then you die<p>&gt;Curiosity is just the latest in a series of social experiments that rely on user interactions with seemingly no point. Of course, Zynga is the king of this phenomenon, providing games full of sticky and addictive action that encourage more clicks for the sake of clicks. Arbitrary value becomes real value, even when it’s not meant to. Just ask Ian Bogost, who created the satirical social game Cow Clicker that went on to such absurd popularity that he felt compelled to continue developing it, trapping himself in an ironic loop that refuses to end. In Cow Clicker, you literally click one cow every six hours to collect Mooney, which lets you buy other cows to click on.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27324466" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27324466</a><p>DonHopkins on May 29, 2021 | parent | context | favorite | on: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatan...<p>Is Peter Molyneux a scammer? Or just a pathological liar who believes his own hype? He made some fantastic games in the past, but then...<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Peter_Molyneux" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Peter_Molyneux</a><p>The Lesson of Peter Molyneux<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;15&#x2F;the-lesson-of-peter-molyneux&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;15&#x2F;the-lesson-of-peter-molyne...</a><p>Peter Molyneux - Dreamer? Or Con Man?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=62-J4KDMAIk&amp;ab_channel=Shott1e" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=62-J4KDMAIk&amp;ab_channel=Shott...</a><p>Peter Molyneux Interview: &quot;I haven’t got a reputation in this industry any more&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rockpapershotgun.com&#x2F;peter-molyneux-interview-godus-reputation-kickstarter" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rockpapershotgun.com&#x2F;peter-molyneux-interview-go...</a><p>&gt;RPS: Do you think that you&#x27;re a pathological liar?<p>&gt;Peter Molyneux: That&#x27;s a very...<p>&gt;RPS: I know it&#x27;s a harsh question, but it seems an important question to ask because there do seem to be lots and lots of lies piling up.<p>&gt;Peter Molyneux: I&#x27;m not aware of a single lie, actually. I&#x27;m aware of me saying things and because of circumstances often outside of our control those things don&#x27;t come to pass, but I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s called lying, is it? I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;ve ever knowingly lied, at all. And if you want to call me on one I&#x27;ll talk about it for sure.