> The game serves as a deconstructive satire of social games
> The goal of the game is to earn "clicks" by clicking on a sprite of a cow every six hours. [...] A premium currency known as "Mooney" allows the user to purchase different cow designs and skip the six-hour interval between clicks.
This doesn't really sound "successful" in the traditional sense.
Except that there's a direct line from Cow Clicker to Cookie Clicker and the entire idle games genre. Sure, this wasn't Bogost's intention, but it's hard to deny his influence here.
> The goal of the game is to earn "clicks" by clicking on a sprite of a cow every six hours. [...] A premium currency known as "Mooney" allows the user to purchase different cow designs and skip the six-hour interval between clicks.
This doesn't really sound "successful" in the traditional sense.