If there was ever a game that should never be recreated, and kept dead and buried forever, it's Peter Moolyneux's cube clicker "Curiosity", which was released on 6 November 2012, and thankfully ended on May 26, 2013, but never delivered on its grandiose promises:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity:_What%27s_Inside_the...

Before Curiosity ever reared its ugly cube, Ian Bogost's game Cow Clicker, released July 21, 2010, actually monetized delaying the Cowpocalypse from its scheduled one-year termination date of July 21, 2011 until September 7, 2011:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker#%22Cowpocalypse%22...

>"Cowpocalypse" event and conclusion

>In 2011, an alternate reality game known as the "Cow ClickARG" was held, where a series of clues from the "bovine gods" eventually 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 made by players would deduct thirty seconds from a countdown clock leading to the Cowpocalypse. However, players could extend the countdown clock by paying to supplicate with Facebook Credits: paying 10 credits would extend the countdown by a single hour, while 4,000 would extend the countdown by an entire month.

>After $700 worth of extensions, the countdown clock expired on the evening of September 7, 2011. At this point, the game remained playable, but all the cows were replaced by blank spaces and said to have been raptured. Bogost intended the Cowpocalypse event to signal the "end" of the game to players; when addressing a complaint by a fan who felt the game was no longer fun after the cow rapture, Bogost responded that "it wasn't very fun before."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47110605

DonHopkins 3 months ago | parent | context | favorite | on: Gamedate – A site to revive dead multiplayer games

I want to recreate the server for Peter Molyneux's "Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube?", but put a life changing Rightward-Facing Cow from Ian Bogost's social commentary game "Cow Clicker" inside the cube, instead of a huge disappointment and a pack of broken promises and lies and hype and literal promises of godhood and credits and royalties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31981916

DonHopkins on July 4, 2022 | parent | context | favorite | on: Cow Clicker (2010)

A decade ago attempted to troll Peter Molyneux at the Unity3D "Unite 2012" conference after his insufferably vainglorious keynote presentation of his "Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube?" Cube Clicker game, jokingly guessing that the big secret inside the box was a cow, but he just didn't get the joke, even after I explained it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity:_What%27s_Inside_the...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24380418

DonHopkins on Sept 5, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: Bullfrog After Populous

His Cube game was the epitome of dopamine addiction games, all that was wrong with Zynga/Facebook games, the rage at the time. Nothing at all original about that: a total cop-out of game design.

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.

I don't think he got the point that I was trying to make an ironic reference to Ian Bogost's Cow Clicker, which is a parody of and social commentary on dopamine games.

I tried to explain the joke to him, and he still didn'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.

Unite 2012 : Keynote - Founders & Peter Molyneux (The BS starts at 1h 8m 21s -- It's been 8 years since I saw this live, and it's much worse than I remembered, especially now knowing how it turned out!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24AY4fJ66xA&t=1h08m21s

>1h 48m 06s, with arms spread out like Jesus H Christ on a crucifix: "Because we can dynamically put on ANY surface of the cube ANY image we like. So THAT's how we're going to surprise the world, is by giving clues about what's in the middle later on."

http://www.cowclicker.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker

>In the wake of a controversial speech by Zynga'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.

>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.

https://qz.com/34024/life-really-is-a-game-with-a-lot-of-cli...

>Life really is a game—with a lot of clicks—and then you die

>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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27324466

DonHopkins on May 29, 2021 | parent | context | favorite | on: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatan...

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...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molyneux

The Lesson of Peter Molyneux

https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/15/the-lesson-of-peter-molyne...

Peter Molyneux - Dreamer? Or Con Man?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62-J4KDMAIk&ab_channel=Shott...

Peter Molyneux Interview: "I haven’t got a reputation in this industry any more"

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/peter-molyneux-interview-go...

>RPS: Do you think that you're a pathological liar?

>Peter Molyneux: That's a very...

>RPS: I know it'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.

>Peter Molyneux: I'm not aware of a single lie, actually. I'm aware of me saying things and because of circumstances often outside of our control those things don't come to pass, but I don't think that's called lying, is it? I don't think I've ever knowingly lied, at all. And if you want to call me on one I'll talk about it for sure.

The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'