In this month's Wired Magazine
Jason Tanz wrote a fantastic feature for the January 2012 issue of Wired about me and Cow Clicker. The feature includes, to use Levi‘s words, a centerfold of me, on a fence, in a pasture, with a cow (see below). The print issue is on newsstands now, with a web and iPad version coming soon. Look out for those, as… read more
On CompuServe
Yes, I know it’s probably just a reference to checking stock prices (a bull market), but I choose to interpret the cow as a reference to the promised “adventure games” or perhaps even “fantastic space games.” If you can read the text, you’ll also note that “videotex service” CompuServe offered a multichannel CB simulator. (thanks to Mark Sample for this… read more
Are you investing in your calf's future?
By now, the virtues of cow clicking are well-known and understood. But there’s a problem: Cow Clicker is bound to Facebook, and to use Facebook one must be over the age of thirteen. Are our children meant to be cooped up indoors, never allowed to romp through pastures of their own? A startling truth reveals itself: despite the explosion in… read more
We are soon entering our 6th month online, and I want to take a moment to ask you for your help in continuing our mission. Cow Clicker is facing new challenges and encountering new opportunities and both are going to require major funds. Cow Clicker is based on a very radical idea, the realization of the dreams most of us… read more
My GDC Online Talk
Yesterday I gave my talk at GDC Online, about Cow Clicker. You can read Gamasutra’s recap of it, and you might also want to read Raph Koster’s thoughts. Next stop, Indiecade, where I’ll be showing A Slow Year.
On the different sorts of satire
What is Cow Clicker? Is it a satire? Yes, but it’s more complicated than that: it’s also a real game that people can (and as it would seem, many thousands do) play “in earnest.” That’s caused a number of people to ask if it ought to be taken seriously as satire. We tend to throw around words like “satire” and… read more
Dip your pointer into Fish Feeder
Cow Clicker is now officially a real Facebook game. How do I know? Because it’s been copied! Christian Primozich has created Fish Feeder, which takes Cow Clicker’s “innovative” cow clicking mechanics and applies them to the equally common social game genre of fish fondling. You can play it here. It’s… well, it’s Cow Clicker, but with fish. What did you… read more
The Making of Obsession
I made a Facebook game about Facebook games, called Cow Clicker. You can go play it on Facebook now, or you can see some screenshots on on this site. Here’s the short description, from the page just linked: Cow Clicker is a Facebook game about Facebook games. It’s partly a satire, and partly a playable theory of today’s social games,… read more
A Facebook Game about Facebook Games
Cow Clicker is a Facebook game about Facebook games. It’s partly a satire, and partly a playable theory of today’s social games, and partly an earnest example of that genre. You get a cow. You can click on it. In six hours, you can click it again. Clicking earns you clicks. You can buy custom “premium” cows through micropayments (the… read more
The Cambridge Analytica scandal is drawing attention to malicious data thieves and brokers. But every Facebook app—even the dumb, innocent ones—collected users’ personal data without even trying.
For a spell during 2010 and 2011, I was a virtual rancher of clickable cattle on Facebook. It feels like a long time ago. Obama was serving his first term as president. Google+ hadn’t arrived, let alone vanished again. Steve Jobs was still alive, as was Kim Jong Il. Facebook’s IPO hadn’t yet taken place, and its service was still… read more