Cow RP

I think about it when I'm at school, and when I'm in the shower.

I don't dare talk about it to anyone. When people ask me what videogames I'm playing, I say foolish things like "Skyrim" and "Arkham City". When my wife comes into the room I pretend I'm working. Sometimes, I pretend I'm playing a different videogame. Even The Sims.

I don't know why I'm embarrassed by Cow RP; I shouldn't be. But the game's appeal is unaccountable.

It has something to do with those big dopey eyes, and something to do with spontaneously alchemizing a few sprites and anonymous acquaintances into a smoky events-cocktail that, like a remembered dream, will form narrative cohesion only in hindsight, but be none the worse for it. Mostly the eyes, though.

When I tried to introduce a friend of mine - a WoW veteran - to Cow RP, he looked at the graphics and said "This sucks." He logged in under the name 'Walrus Face' and within moments an administrator had, rather than booting him out for breaking the RP rules, changed his name to Wallace 'The Walrus' Facio. My friend raised an eyebrow: from somewhere in the ether, a creative mind was making contact. Then the moment broke. "You can't even move diagonally," he laughed. He went back to playing WoW, which I guess has diagonal movement.

But I understand. What he's grinding for aren't the purple boots or the +20% movement-speed unicorn mounts, but those moments, rare to that genre, when human minds are impressed by one-another. Cow RP supplies this by doing almost nothing at all.

Plus cows are funny.