Just North of Something Important: The high insufferable period of indie games
“All the cows were whisked away. And all that was left were the little shadows where they had been standing. But the game continued to run. And, in fact, the game continues to run to this day. And there are still people clicking on the spot where a cow used to be.”
The problem (such as it is) with Cow Clicker is that it’s not doing anything to reveal shallowness; it’s just revealing mechanics. “Click in a particular space as many times as you can in a minute” is one of the most basic game mechanics there is — any targeting game, from Duck Hunt to Medal of Honor, is essentially “click in the right places as much as you can in a given point in time.” So Cow Clicker isn’t a “superficial” game, it’s just a simple one. The indie comparison is apt — success lives and dies by the logic of the format/genre/expectations/etc. All Bogost is really doing is subtextually making a claim about his users while pandering to them less effectively than, say, Angry Birds. So yeah, the joke is on Bogost, but not because the world “out-stupided” him. He just wasn’t very thoughtful himself.