Smart Casual: Cow Clicker

The bizarre response of the games community to the success of Facebook games - a mix of hysteria, hatred, and irrational claims about it "destroying" the games industry - has been a hot topic for 2010. One of the calmer and more concise discussions of the phenomenon is over on Mr Ian Bogost's blog. He didn't just write about it, however, he did what game designers do, and made a Facebook game of his own: Cow Clicker.

You get a cow. You can click on it. In six hours, you can click it again. Clicking earns you clicks. You can buy custom "premium" cows through micropayments (the Cow Clicker currency is called "mooney"), and you can buy your way out of the time delay by spending it.

It's not entirely satire, but it's pretty funny.