ABSTRACT
At the end of Chapter 6, I closed by discussing how ethical or eudaimonic responses to some of the utilitarian procedural habits in social media games should not avoid Foggian design elements or the more generalized forms of habituation that occur during videogame play; rather, these responses should channel habits using similar structures toward non-utilitarian ends. In so doing, I suggested that Bogost’s Cow Clicker offers one way to call social media games players’ attention to the ways that their play habits can convert their online relations to Heidegger’s notion of enframing—a standing reserve or a means to an end. Cow Clicker did not actually avoid the effort to make players click; instead, the game channeled players’ habits differently beyond the attempt to create an argument that satirizes the lack of expressive interactive features. I argue that Bogost’s work directs us toward concepts like Aristotle’s eudaimonia and other related forms of heuretic (Ulmer) invention.
