Cow Clicker survives FBML retirement with limited features

With all Facebook Markup Language apps ceasing to work today, it wasn’t certain if parody game Cow Clicker would survive the FBML retirement. It turns out the game was successfully migrated to the new iFrame platform, albeit in a limited form.

Persuasive Games co-founder Ian Bogost launched Cow Clicker in July 2010 as a satire of other Facebook games. The game lampoons standard social game mechanics like microtransactions, repetitive gameplay and viral posts. Word of mouth spread, and the game peaked that August with 54,000 monthly active users and 6,000 daily active users, according to AppData. Cow Clicker still has 3,000 MAU and 200 DAU. With FBML being phased out, the game’s future wasn’t certain, as Bogost made a post on the game’s Timeline at the end of May that implied the game might not survive the migration process.

Part of FBML’s appeal for some was its ease of use – even if a user didn’t have much programming expertise, but it’s functionality was limited. Facebook’s move away from FBML has been a long time coming, going all the way back to 2008 when the social network started recommending designers create canvas apps in iFrames instead of FBML.

Bogost says he wasn’t sure about how easy the migration would be, which made him unsure about updating the game. “I had dreaded that the transition away from FBML would be very time consuming and technically involved,” he explains to us. “It turned out to be less awful than I expected, but still quite time-consuming.”

According to Bogost, the transition turned out to be more annoying than difficult. Although major changes like the retirement of FBML happen a few times a year, Facebook regularly makes other changes that can break app features each week.

“It’s demoralizing to rebuild features that once worked fine just because Facebook decides to change their platform arbitrarily,” he says. “And of course, the people who play games and use apps on Facebook have no concept of how the platform works — or doesn’t — so it’s very hard to explain what’s going on.”

Bogost recently posted to Cow Clicker’s Timeline, stating how the FBML retirement would affect the game. Bogost was able to bring over Cow Clicker’s core features onto the new platform, but he had to disable a number of mechanics. While he hopes to eventually migrate these features over to the new platform, he isn’t promising until he sees how easily they can be transitioned.

“For the time being, note that you cannot take new cows out of your barn, send new invitations, buy new cows, or gift new cows,” he wrote in the post. Bogost now says he’s planning to migrate all the old features to the new platform, but doesn’t have a specific time frame in mind.

When asked why he decided to keep the game going instead of letting it phase out, Bogost tells us, “Cow Clicker is a weird game, in that it doesn’t really make money and I have a very well documented love/hate relationship with it. But people are still discovering the game anew, and I wanted to keep it going for historical reasons at least, as best I can.”

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Social Gaming News Roundup: RockYou, Elvis, Cow Clicker, Mafia Wars Shakedown and Dungeons & Dragons

Sony & RockYou Team for Zookeeper Promotion – Players of Zoo World 2 on Facebook will notice a few new features in the popular Facebook game soon. Sony has teamed with RockYou to add characters and activities tied to its movie Zookeeper. In addition to getting special edition animals to collect in game, players who purchase Zookeeper on Blu Ray will receive $10 worth of Zoo Bucks for the social game.

Report Reveals Social Media Strategies of World’s Largest Companies – Buddy Media has released the results of a study they conducted in association with Booz & Company that breaks down the social media strategies of more than 100 industry leaders. The resulting report titled “Campaigns to Capabilities: Social Media & Marketing 2011” revealed some very interesting facts. For example, only 35% of respondents indicated their company had a senior executive responsible for social media. The full report can be found here.

Cow Clicker Shuttered by its Creator - Game designer Ian Bogost has shut down his “protest against social games” social game Cow Clicker, according to Kotaku. Originally conceived of as a joke that aped only the worst features of free to play micro-transaction funded Facebook games, Cow Clicker proved to be unusually successful, much to the annoyance of Bogost. The entire article and interview can be read here.

Mobile MapleStory Game Launches in Japan, Only on Mobage - Nexon’s latest game MapleStory: Bokurano Boken, a social game based in the MapleStory universe, has made its debut on DeNA’s Mobage platform. As with previous iterations of the hit franchise, players of Bokurano Boken team up with other players to defeat monsters.

Hide Your Daughters, Elvis Coming to Facebook, Google+, Mobile - Games Blog is reporting that Entertainment Games has reached a licensing deal with Elvis Presley Enterprises to bring the King himself to their as yet unannounced, celebrity based, storyline-focused social game. In a press release, the Pennsylvania based company said that Elvis will be just one of the celebrities featured the the nostalgic themed game.

TeePee Games Expands Offerings Again – TeePee Games is aggressively growing its network. This week they announced a new deal with Alpha Digital Network to bring the Facebook game Lands & Legends to their platform.  Readers may recall last week we reported that UK based TeePee Games had inked a similar deal with SetGo bring aboard its game Castaways.

Car Town Teams With Walmart to Sell Fast Five Blu Ray – Cie Games has announced a promotional partnership with Walmart that will allow players of its popular Facebook game Car Town to pre-order Fast Five in virtual Walmart stores. Car Town has been promoting the auto racing movie since April, when Cie Games added a Rio de Janeiro race environment based on the movie’s key location to the game.

Former Mythic CEO Moves into Social Games – Two former heavyweights of the gaming industry have teamed up to venture into the red-hot social gaming market. Mark Jacobs, co-founder and former CEO of Mythic Entertainment and Andrew Meggs, former senior software engineer at Bethesda, Mythic and Trioka, announced last week that they had formed City State Entertainment in March. City State will focus on creating what it is calling “brand-focused” mobile and social games.

Mafia Wars Shakedown coming to Android? - Last week Zynga revealed that a new Mafia Wars game, Mafia Wars Shakedown, was coming to iOS. As they’ve done before, Zynga went on a domain name buying spree in anticipation of the launch. Tech blog Fusible noticed, Zynga registered several domains such as MafiaWarsShakedownAndroid.com, which point towards an eventual Android release. For the full list of Shakedown domains, read the Fusible article here.

You’ll Probably be Seeing More Social Game Movie Promotions – According to a study commissioned by RockYou, social gamers are also big fans of movies. The results showed that 41% of social gamers preferred to watch movies in the theaters, and that more than half of them had watched at least one rented movie in the last thre months. On average people who identified as social gamers had watched 15 movies in the last three months, four in theaters and 11 on DVD/Blu Ray/Streaming.

[Launch] CW’s Vampire Diaries Now on Facebook – TV is proving to be the next great frontier of Facebook Games, with the CW premiering The Vampire Diaries: Get Sucked In, on the social network. The game will build upon the plot of the TV show, challenging players to complete missions given to them by the show’s characters. The game is free, but also gives players the option of using Facebook Credits to purchase in-game items and new areas to explore.

[Launch] Dungeons & Dragons Officially Live on Facebook – Atari announced the official launch of Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter on September 15; we got an early look at the game back in June. Neverwinter allows players to create their own characters and venture through dungeons slaying monsters and collecting items. Players can also take on the role of dungeon master, creating adventures that other players can complete.

[Launch] BBC’s Being Human Coming to Facebook as Social Game – Utinni Games is bringing the BBC’s ultra-popular supernatural drama Being Human to Facebook. Players will be able create their own characters and explore the universe of the TV show as they work through an extensive and persistent storyline, according to a promotional video on Utinni’s website.

[Launch] Ravenworld Expanding into RavenSkye City - Lolapps is adding more content to their hit Facebook game Ravenworld Fair with an expansion called Ravenskye City. According to the developer, Ravenskye maintains the look and feel of Ravenworld Fair, but adds more character development, more quests and allows for interplay between other Ravenworld games.

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