"cow-clicker" meaning in English

See cow-clicker in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: cow-clickers [plural]
Etymology: Coined by Ian Bogost in response to FarmVille winning an award for "Best New Social/Online Game" at the 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards. The win caused Bogost, a critic of the freemium model used by Zynga, to be struck with the thought: "Games like FarmVille are cow clickers. You click on a cow, and that's all you do." He subsequently developed Cow Clicker, an intentionally simplistic parody game, which itself became a surprise viral hit. Head templates: {{en-noun}} cow-clicker (plural cow-clickers)
  1. (video games, derogatory) A video game that requires the player to perform repetitive tasks at certain intervals. Wikipedia link: Cow Clicker, FarmVille, Game Developers Choice Awards, Ian Bogost, Zynga Tags: derogatory Categories (topical): Video game genres, Video games Related terms: clicker game
    Sense id: en-cow-clicker-en-noun-yR-PuIYF Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Topics: video-games

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for cow-clicker meaning in English (2.4kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Coined by Ian Bogost in response to FarmVille winning an award for \"Best New Social/Online Game\" at the 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards. The win caused Bogost, a critic of the freemium model used by Zynga, to be struck with the thought: \"Games like FarmVille are cow clickers. You click on a cow, and that's all you do.\" He subsequently developed Cow Clicker, an intentionally simplistic parody game, which itself became a surprise viral hit.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "cow-clickers",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "cow-clicker (plural cow-clickers)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Video game genres",
          "orig": "en:Video game genres",
          "parents": [
            "Genres",
            "Video games",
            "Entertainment",
            "Games",
            "Mass media",
            "Software",
            "Culture",
            "Recreation",
            "Media",
            "Computing",
            "Society",
            "Human activity",
            "Communication",
            "Technology",
            "All topics",
            "Human behaviour",
            "Fundamental",
            "Human"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Video games",
          "orig": "en:Video games",
          "parents": [
            "Games",
            "Mass media",
            "Software",
            "Recreation",
            "Culture",
            "Media",
            "Computing",
            "Human activity",
            "Society",
            "Communication",
            "Technology",
            "Human behaviour",
            "All topics",
            "Human",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2015, Juho Kuorikoski, Finnish Video Games: A History and Catalog, page 235",
          "text": "The plan was to offer a much deeper experience than what Farmville and rest of the cow-clickers ever could.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A video game that requires the player to perform repetitive tasks at certain intervals."
      ],
      "id": "en-cow-clicker-en-noun-yR-PuIYF",
      "links": [
        [
          "video game",
          "video game"
        ],
        [
          "derogatory",
          "derogatory"
        ],
        [
          "repetitive",
          "repetitive"
        ],
        [
          "task",
          "task"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(video games, derogatory) A video game that requires the player to perform repetitive tasks at certain intervals."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "clicker game"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "derogatory"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "video-games"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Cow Clicker",
        "FarmVille",
        "Game Developers Choice Awards",
        "Ian Bogost",
        "Zynga"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "cow-clicker"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Coined by Ian Bogost in response to FarmVille winning an award for \"Best New Social/Online Game\" at the 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards. The win caused Bogost, a critic of the freemium model used by Zynga, to be struck with the thought: \"Games like FarmVille are cow clickers. You click on a cow, and that's all you do.\" He subsequently developed Cow Clicker, an intentionally simplistic parody game, which itself became a surprise viral hit.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "cow-clickers",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "cow-clicker (plural cow-clickers)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "clicker game"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English derogatory terms",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned",
        "en:Video game genres",
        "en:Video games"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2015, Juho Kuorikoski, Finnish Video Games: A History and Catalog, page 235",
          "text": "The plan was to offer a much deeper experience than what Farmville and rest of the cow-clickers ever could.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A video game that requires the player to perform repetitive tasks at certain intervals."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "video game",
          "video game"
        ],
        [
          "derogatory",
          "derogatory"
        ],
        [
          "repetitive",
          "repetitive"
        ],
        [
          "task",
          "task"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(video games, derogatory) A video game that requires the player to perform repetitive tasks at certain intervals."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "derogatory"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "video-games"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Cow Clicker",
        "FarmVille",
        "Game Developers Choice Awards",
        "Ian Bogost",
        "Zynga"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "cow-clicker"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.