Since the days of Monopoly and Scrabble, socialization has been a pivotal aspect of gaming. This is why I disagree with two points that Tanz, author of “The Curse of the Cow Clicker” argues in his article.
The first point is about the use of the term “gamification.” Tanz discusses how more companies are gamifying apps to reap the benefits that they offer. Most of the time these benefits are purely social in form. Think about it, Words with Friends, Scramble with Friends, Draw Something and Farmville. What do these all have in common? The fact that they encourage and even thrive on the idea of social gaming. After thinking about these facts, it’s hard for me to accept the term gamification when these games all depend on socialization.
What companies want and may even need to do is add a social aspect to their activities. Why? Well, social games not only are fun but they also initiate competition. In all the games I listed above, users are purely incentivized by knowing that they have the ability to win and beat their friends. Even for basic games such as monopoly and scrabble, putting the idea of power ups and points aside, you draw satisfaction from knowing that you are the best in the social group.
This idea of social groups and incentives leads me to my next point about how games like Cow Clicker offers no deep value. While on the surface it may seem this way, this assumption is false. Yes, Cow Clicker is a mundane game that when stripped down really doesn’t have anything more than the user clicking on a patch of grass. However, under all this mundane activity the game still managed to thrive because of the community that users built around it. People found ways to connect through clicking cows. This not only shows how there is meaning behind this game but illustrates how the internet is built to be a social tool and that with sites like Facebook and Twitter it is on its way to reaching that full potential.