"The writer has a vision. They've created a character who represents everything they loathe, and have placed him in a setting that satirizes everything they hate about modern society. Bring on the Moral Guardians and Media Watchdogs; he's prepared for controversy!
Except, it's not misaimed fandom. People seem to genuinely agree with him about how stupid some aspects of modern gaming are. Having cowclick is a way of saying you agree. A clicky plusone.
"More surprisingly, Cow Clicker developed an active player base–-people who missed the humor and attached to it as if it were a "real" game. These players unquestioningly spent real-money Facebook credits to enjoy their cows and sent Bogost innocent player feedback in the hopes of improving their experience.
It subverted every expectation that he had, even as it reaffirmed his worst fears about the exploitive sadism of Facebook game design. Its success also became something to dread. A Slow Year represented everything Bogost loved about games; Cow Clicker was about everything he hated."
It may not matter whether everyone got the joke or not. In fact, the guy's behavior suggests it wasn't a joke to him at all - it was intended to be a somewhat serious (and passive aggressive) statement. I think what happened is akin to a guy who hates Impressionism and one day he decides to just smear some meaningless colors on a canvas - just to make a statement about how meaningless that artform is. Then along come people and find themselves attracted to the artwork he created, whether they realize he did it to make a point or not, they simply like it.
Now I never "played" Cow Clicker but I assume there were some players who genuinely liked visiting that page and clicking on their cow. As stupid as that sounds, they had some kind of relationship with the artwork, even if that was never intended by the artist. Also, I believe the concept of Cow Clicker is a whole lot more honest than any of the Zynga "games" so I can see how people might prefer the Cow as their web Tamagotchi...
What I find really sad is that Ian Bogost actually feels tormented by the state of gaming general and the reception of Cow Clicker in particular. If you make a satirical work like this, you probably should have some healthy mental distance to the subject.
One might argue that the consumer/beholder of the artwork is always right by default - as opposed to the artist setting the purpose and judging other people's views of his work by comparing them to that purpose. By this "the consumer is always right" definition there is no such thing as misaimed fandom because everybody is free to feel about the work as they like. If a piece of art (or a game or whatever) makes me feel a certain way, that doesn't make me wrong - even if that feeling was not intended by the artist.
The viewer's interpretation seems like the important one. It leeds to an interesting situation when creator and consumer are diametrically opposed in their understanding of a work.
In this particular case, it seems to have taught the artist a lot in the process.
...but people also spend real money to buy (ugly) ProgressQuest real-world items. I'm pretty sure if PQ introduced some stupid free-to-play/pay-to-get-juicy-upgrades thing that they'd get a bit of cash.
"The writer has a vision. They've created a character who represents everything they loathe, and have placed him in a setting that satirizes everything they hate about modern society. Bring on the Moral Guardians and Media Watchdogs; he's prepared for controversy!
Only... it doesn't quite work like that."
From http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MisaimedFandom