I had had no idea he became a socialist, among other things. I might need to see if I can find some of his collected letters.
Joshi, the author of this, happens to be the editor of the first Lovecraft book I bought. Pretty cool.
![This is pretty funny. From Wikipedia:
Although continually disturbed by its popularity, Bogost also used Cow Clicker to parody other recent gaming trends, such as the addition of an API to allow “Cowclickification” of other web sites (which would allow sites to incorporate opportunities for sites to have clickable cows of their own), the spin-off game Cow Clicker Blitz — co-developed with PopCap Games co-founder Jason Kapalka, “My First Cow Clicker” for iOS (a parody of what he considered to be “simple” educational apps; designed to “train” children on cow clicking and let the resulting clicks go to the “parent’s” total), and a “Cow Clicktivism” campaign where users could click on a emaciated cow to donate to Oxfam America — with a goal of donating an actual cow to a third world country. The cow, known as the “Cowclicktivist Cow”, could also be unlocked for the player’s pasture with a $110 donation.
In 2011, a “Cow ClickARG” event was held, where “clues scattered by the bovine gods” to various locations revealed that a “Cowpocalypse” would occur on July 21, 2011, exactly one year since the original release of the game. From then on, every click would deduct time from a countdown clock, but users could also pay Credits in order to extend the countdown and “save” their cows. Paying 10 credits would extend the countdown by a single hour, while 4,000 would extend the countdown by an entire month. [5] While $700 worth of payments extended the countdown into September, time finally ran out on the evening of September 7, 2011. At this time, the game remained playable, but all the cows were said to have been raptured, and replaced by blank spaces. Bogost intended the Cowpocalypse event to signal the “end” of the game to players, since in response to a fan’s complaint that the game was no longer fun after the cow rapture, Bogost responded that “it wasn’t very fun before.”
I’ve actually read one of Bogost’s books, Unit Operations. It was at my university library next to the CS books, and I figured for whatever reason I do that I should try to know at least something basic about fields far from my own interests, like lit crit. I doubt that I understood it much at all, but it did at least make me think about some things, the most lasting being the idea that video games can express political or other opinions just through gameplay. The example from the book that stuck with me was SimCity; no taxes dooms you but too much tax means you get angry citizenry, you can’t have anything but a capitalist economy, etc. Pretty interesting even for a math nerd like me.
EDIT: Whoops, implied I actually have a field.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m568g0iYMw1r7tprao1_500.png)
This is pretty funny. From Wikipedia:
Although continually disturbed by its popularity, Bogost also used Cow Clicker to parody other recent gaming trends, such as the addition of an API to allow “Cowclickification” of other web sites (which would allow sites to incorporate opportunities for sites to have clickable cows of their own), the spin-off game Cow Clicker Blitz — co-developed with PopCap Games co-founder Jason Kapalka, “My First Cow Clicker” for iOS (a parody of what he considered to be “simple” educational apps; designed to “train” children on cow clicking and let the resulting clicks go to the “parent’s” total), and a “Cow Clicktivism” campaign where users could click on a emaciated cow to donate to Oxfam America — with a goal of donating an actual cow to a third world country. The cow, known as the “Cowclicktivist Cow”, could also be unlocked for the player’s pasture with a $110 donation.
In 2011, a “Cow ClickARG” event was held, where “clues scattered by the bovine gods” to various locations revealed that a “Cowpocalypse” would occur on July 21, 2011, exactly one year since the original release of the game. From then on, every click would deduct time from a countdown clock, but users could also pay Credits in order to extend the countdown and “save” their cows. Paying 10 credits would extend the countdown by a single hour, while 4,000 would extend the countdown by an entire month. [5] While $700 worth of payments extended the countdown into September, time finally ran out on the evening of September 7, 2011. At this time, the game remained playable, but all the cows were said to have been raptured, and replaced by blank spaces. Bogost intended the Cowpocalypse event to signal the “end” of the game to players, since in response to a fan’s complaint that the game was no longer fun after the cow rapture, Bogost responded that “it wasn’t very fun before.”
I’ve actually read one of Bogost’s books, Unit Operations. It was at my university library next to the CS books, and I figured for whatever reason I do that I should try to know at least something basic about fields far from my own interests, like lit crit. I doubt that I understood it much at all, but it did at least make me think about some things, the most lasting being the idea that video games can express political or other opinions just through gameplay. The example from the book that stuck with me was SimCity; no taxes dooms you but too much tax means you get angry citizenry, you can’t have anything but a capitalist economy, etc. Pretty interesting even for a math nerd like me.
EDIT: Whoops, implied I actually have a field.
