游戏设计者伊恩·博格斯特（Ian Bogost）出席了2011年游戏开发者大会，并用自己所设计的恶搞版社交游戏《Cow Clicker》狠狠地讽刺了当今社交游戏的肤浅。

讨论小组之间发表激昂的“辩论”已经成为游戏开发者大会的一个传统了。每年的GDC大会都会邀请一些游戏开发者针对游戏产业的现状进行“咆哮”，“埋怨”和“控诉”，今年游戏设计师兼作家伊恩·博格斯也加入了这一行列。

现在游戏行业的大势是“社交游戏”，因此这次的大会被命名为“No Freakin’ Respect! Social Game Developers Rant Back”。和博格斯特一起进行“咆哮”的还有布伦达·布瑞斯伟特(Brenda Brathwaite)，布莱恩·雷诺兹（Brian Reynolds），史帝芬·马瑞察克（Steve Meretzky），斯科特·乔恩·西格尔（Scott Jon Siegel）以及特里普·霍金斯（Trip Hawkins）。

以下是游戏邦编译博格斯特于2011年3月3日所发表的相关演说内容:

Cow Clicker

关于《Cow Clicker》和创造性

博格斯特于去年在Facebook上推出了恶搞版社交游戏《Cow Clicker》，让用户每隔六小时点击一只虚拟牛，然后将自己的点击积分发布到Facebok上与他人分享。

在很多关于《Cow Clicker》的描述中，出现最多的词语就是“创造性”了。博格斯特表示，即便该游戏倍受争论，但是比起他之前所设计的其它社交游戏，这款游戏更能够锻炼玩家的想象力和创造力。

行业作家凯尔·奥兰多（Kyle Orland）则针对《Cow Clicker》提出了反对的观点，他认为，“《FarmVille》用户并不只是热衷于不断积分才玩这款游戏，他们的乐趣在于按照自己的设想，建立属于自己的虚拟农场。在虚拟农场里同样会有谷仓，鸡舍以及干草堆等等。玩家只需花点时间就可以‘白手起家’，它不仅能够帮帮助人们从一整天枯燥无味的工作中解放出来，而且还能够促使他们与一些志同道合的朋友们在这个虚拟的世界里进行交流。而《Cow Clicker》则不能提供给玩家这种创造性的机会。它整个游戏中只有一只静态的奶牛。我认为从它与《FarmVille》的区别中我们就能够看出为什么社交游戏会那么流行了。《Cow Clicker》只能虏获玩家的心，却不能真正影响到他们的内在精神。它只是单纯地效仿那些游戏玩法的规则，而未能考虑到那些真正能直击玩家内心的众多社会和审美要素。”

博格斯特反驳了奥兰多的观点，他认为《Cow Clicker》虽然并非《FarmVille》这种接近“真实”的游戏。但是在当今社会上，即使是款最低级的社交游戏也具备有奥兰多所提到的创造性。

他表示开发者可以从Chaim Gingold提出的“Magic Crayon”概念中获得一些启发。“Magic Crayon”在某种程度上能够推动玩家形成自己的创造力，使玩家将能够为物体注入“生命”。然后就有很多人在想，要是所有的蜡笔都有魔法就好了。可是这种事情只可能出现在古代的那种“魔法书”里，这是不真实的，“Magic Crayon”只是套用了它的特殊功能而命名的。有一些阻碍势力正在约束这种创新，但如果屈从这一现实的话，任何关于“magic”的灵感都会被迫变成一文不值的“shit”。

博格斯特表示，他和很多玩家一样都在用“shit crayons”在他精心创造的这个游戏上奋力涂鸦。在他的游戏《Cow Clicker》中，他精心设计的那只奶牛始终围绕着当今实事，包括反向散射X射线，游戏产业高管等等，从这些方面我们可以看出他对这些“蠢事”的执著。

他认为如果能在《Cow Clicker》这个游戏基础上进一步开发，将产生更多让人意想不到的结果，包括：带有API以及Cow Clicker Connect部件的Cowclickification平台；Moogle搜索引擎服务；益智类游戏《Cow Clicker Blitz》，让玩家快速点击奶牛而不是宝石；针对儿童iPhone用户开发的游戏《My First Cow Clicker》，以及能给世界带来改变的“Cowclicktivism”活动，让玩家将虚拟点击为第三世界换取真实的奶牛。

“shit”是个令人生厌的词，所有不幸与之挂钩的产品总会使人畏惧而退缩。博格斯特继续说到：“尽管这样，我们也必须克服这个困难。当我们发现房间里光滑的墙壁上有个裂缝时，如果我们能够忽视它继续生活，那么我们就算战胜了它。人类的承受力到底有多大呢？不论别人把多少压力施加在他的身上，他都能够克服，并顽强地继续前进发展，那样他就能够把这些挫折变成最宝贵的黄金。”

创造力也是来自于约束力的。创造不是完全的天马行空，也要有约束和限制。但如果一个带着巫师帽的专制君主不顾一切地煽动他的臣民忍耐一切生活下去，那么他将得不到任何赞扬。

博格斯特总结道：“请正视那些对你咆哮着却要求得到尊重的创造者。”

Opinion: Shit Crayons

[Game designer Ian Bogost presents his GDC 2011 rant against the current state of social games, looking at the implications of his satirical project Cow Clicker. Here, the presentation is reprinted with permission.]

The lively “rant” panel has become a tradition at the Game Developers Conference. In it, Eric Zimmerman and Jason Della Rocca invite a group of developers to rant, grouse, and complain

about a current trend in the industry. This year I was invited to participate.

The trend was “social gaming,” and the session was titled “No Freakin’ Respect! Social Game Developers Rant Back.” My fellow ranters were Brenda Brathwaite, Brian Reynolds, Steve Meretzky, Scott Jon Siegel, and Trip Hawkins.

Given that I’m only a social game developer by virtue of having been ranting about them all year, it was clear that my contribution would have to follow suit. I titled it “Shit Crayons.”

The full text of my talk as delivered on March 3, 2011 appears below, along with select visuals from my slides.

On Cow Clicker And Creativity

Last year I made a game about Facebook games, called Cow Clicker. You get a cow. You can click on it. In six hours, you can click it again.

Among the many retorts to Cow Clicker’s characterization of social games, a common one is about creativity. Players of these games, the argument goes, exercise imagination and creativity far beyond what my stupid game ever could allow.

Given the incontrovertible expertise of Farmville for Dummies author Kyle Orland, I shall single out his version of this objection as example:

“Most people don’t play Farmville just to mindlessly collect coins. They play so they can build a farm to their exact specifications–a barn over here, a chicken coop over there, a hay bale picture of Mario over there. They play these social games to escape their dreary work-a-day lives and spend some time constructing simple worlds from scratch, and to share those worlds with like-minded friends.

Cow Clicker offers none of these creative opportunities. All it offers is a static picture of a cow. I think this difference is key to understanding the popularity of social gaming. Cow Clicker captures the heart of many social games, but not the soul. It mimics the gameplay responsibilities without bothering to copy the social and aesthetic rewards that truly drive most social game players.”

But he’s wrong. It’s true not just of “real” games like Farmville. Even the most idiotic of social games are apparently capable of the sort of creativity Orland has in mind.

Several years ago, Chaim Gingold gave us the useful concept of the Magic Crayon. A magic crayon is a tool that facilitates creativity in a way that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. A magic crayon lets its users breathe life into things.

Some would like to think that all crayons are magic ones. That just any old thing can conjure. But that’s not true. The magic crayon has a shadow side.

Some barriers are benign, but others are insidious, like the despots who confined Soyinka until he shit poetry onto toilet paper, because he had to do or else go mad in isolation.

Inspirations like that are not magic crayons, but shit crayons.

Like my players, I too have struggled to scribble something meaningful with the shit crayons of my own fashioning. You can see that struggle in my own persistence at the idiocy that is Cow Clicker, fashioning new cows themed around current events, from backscatter x-rays to game industry executives to indie swag to my own game’s exploitation by script automators–or roboclickers.

Or through stubborn expansions through which I tried to find warmth in Cow Clicker’s shadow, a folly that has nigh suffocated me in cud: the Cowclickification platform with its API and Cow Clicker Connect widget; Moogle, the bovine search engine; Cow Clicker Blitz, in which players rapidly click cows instead of gems; the iPhone child exploitation game My First Cow Clicker; and the world-changing Cowclicktivism initiative, which converts virtual clicks into real cows for the third world.

Shit stinks. When forced to root in it, we wretch and cower. It strips us of our pride. And yet, despite it all, we rise above. We find tiny crevasses in the slippery stone walls of our cells and we climb up out of the filth. We overcome.

How resilient is the human spirit that it withstands so much? No matter what shit we throw, nevertheless people endure, they thrive even, spinning shit into gold.

Even if creativity comes from constraint, there’s constraint and there’s incarceration. A despot in a sorcerer’s hat does not deserve praise for inciting desperate resilience.

Behold the creators who rant at you for respect today. Feet up by the pools of their game design retirement communities, vesting on our souls, they briefly celebrate the turds their sphincters spin before squeezing them over the precipice, where they fertilize flowers in the garden of decay.（source:gamasutra）