by FREDERICA VON McTOAST-HYPHEN, Alternate Reality News Service Pop Culture Writer
Rewards. We all love them. And, we're not all that discriminating about them, either. We'll spend hours mining Sillonium in an obscure area of World of Wowcraft just to win a Silver Sword of Splicing that we could just as easily have bought at the online WOWShoppe for 10 cents and a pair of popsicle sticks.
Game designer and twice convicted Hello Kitty collector Adrian Schlumpf has created a game that he believes satirically comments on people's irrational need for inconsequential rewards: The Long Cow Clicker.
The Long Cow Clicker opens with an 8-bit image of a cow lazily eating grass in a field. Move your mouse around the screen, and you will find that the only thing you can click on is the cow. Click on the cow and...it will continue to lazily eat grass in the field. For almost 10 years (actually, nine years, 11 months, 31 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds). Then, a second cow will appear in the field. Clicking on either of the cows will cause other things to happen in a decade, which will open up new possibilities for interaction another 10 years later, and so on. The Long Cow Clicker has been designed to last for 23,000 years.
"It's not so much a game," said Gamer Bois Mag editor Chip deWilmonte, "as it is a family heirloom."
"I was inspired by that musician," Schlumpf said. "You know - the experimental one? The one who would do crazy things like replace the strings in a piano with live animals - I still can't figure out how he got the rhinoceros in the case - he was a musical genius, I guess - and, then played Beethoven's 'Etude for woodwinds and brass in Mona's Flat' on it. What was his name...?"
Luke Cage? I suggested.
Schlumpf thought about it a moment, then shook his head. "No," he replied, "wasn't Luke Cage the actor who played the part of the maniac with his head on fire...and also the Ghost Rider?"
I asked if he wasn't thinking of Nick Cave.
"Nick Cave was a musician," Schlumpf stated, "so, I guess that's close enough. I was inspired by Nick Cave's 'Long Cough,' which has a chorus of 24 arc welders who meet once every three years, four months, two days, six hours, 23 minutes and seven seconds to clear their throats. If all goes according to plan, that piece should be completed in just under 500 years. The Long Cow Clicker will just be warming up by then!"
To Sclump's chagrin (which is not the name of a Zane Grey western, although it sure sounds like it should be, pardner), The Long Cow Clicker has developed a devoted fan base, The Slick Clicker Flickers, with its own online publication, Short Takes on the Long Cow. The emag contains articles on game play strategy - "What strategy? How can you have any strategy when your only move is to click on a cow?!" Schlump protested - profiles of master players - "Master players? Really? How much skill does anybody have to have to click on a cow?" Schlump moaned - and recipes for cow clicker chocolate chip cookies -"No," Schlump allowed. "I've tried the cookies - actually, they're pretty tasty."
Perhaps the most controversial response to the game has been The Slick Clicker Flickers' contest to see who can come up with the best way to play the game for the next 23,000 years. One player suggested traveling five light years away from Earth at near light speed, then returning just in time to see the change, click on the screen, and take off again. Unfortunately, space exploration currently consists of Virgin Very Mobile ferrying tourists to the casino strip on the moon, so this seems impractical.
"But...but this goes against the whole point of the game!" Schlumph protested.
Another player posted that she would be willing to be cryogenically frozen for almost 10 year intervals in order to play the game. As it happens, cryogenics is still in its "Melting Fudgsicles" phase, so this also seems impractical.
"No, no, you're not getting it!" Schlumph insisted. "The Long Cow Clicker is supposed to make fun of the way games give players lame rewards for trivial actions! THE WHOLE POINT IS THAT IT IS UNPLAYABLE!"
One unlikely candidate would be to step through a wormhole into a dimension where time passes differently than in ours. However, an accident with an instant coffee maker at DIS-CERN has resulted in the creation of stable wormholes, giving The Long Cow Clicker players hope of being able to complete the game.
"Look, I'll tell you how it ends!" Schlumpf angrily shouted. " Twenty-three polka dotted cows in a variety of colours belch methane as the glaciers of a new ice age advance to the mid-way point of the field! Is that really something you want to figure out how to experience 23,000 years from now?"
A special issue of Short Takes on the Long Cow was put out with a one word response:
YES!
Defeated, the trumped Schlump slumped on his rump.