A premium currency known as "Mooney" allows the user to purchase different cow designs and skip the six-hour interval between clicks.

As in other Facebook games, players are encouraged to post announcements to their news feed whenever they click their cow.

Bogost compared the players of Zynga's games to the rats in B. F. Skinner's operant conditioning experiment, often receiving variable reinforcement rather than regular rewards.

As one of the most vocal critics of Zynga's practices and business model, Bogost made further appearances at various events and panels to discuss his views on social gaming.

From then on, every click made by players would deduct thirty seconds from a countdown clock leading to the Cowpocalypse.

Bogost notes that Facebook apps appear to be part of the website itself, whereas they actually operate with almost no oversight.

Bogost notes that he could have used this data for malicious purposes, criticising Facebook's "move-fast-and-break-things attitude toward software development".

In an interview, Bogost foresaw the transformation of the internet into a "compulsive virtual dystopia" through Zynga's use of social gaming.

[2][3] Nick Yee of the Palo Alto Research Center compared the players of games which do not provide "meaningful opportunities for achievement, social interaction, and challenge" to rats in a Skinner box.