
Our Flappy Dystopia - Impossible
http://www.mattiebrice.com/our-flappy-dystopia/
======
draq
I thought the introductory statement is ironical, but, apparently, it is not.
I don't think this article resounds well within the HN community since it is a
"mainstream space" that is being criticized. However, despite its polemic
nature, it is a worthwhile read, a representative neo-Marxist critique, that
you won't often find on HN.

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unclebucknasty
Let us coin a new acronym: IAFG - It's A Frickin' Game.

The problem isn't capitalism. The problem is that people are so wrapped up in
first-world problems and distractions from anything meaningful that they
actually believe something as trivial as Flappy Birds is worthy of expending
any emotion whatsoever.

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farsttol
The author makes some important critiques of the video game and video game
reporting industries in general, which I readily agree with. Most importantly,
the author points out that

 _how our societies are organized by valuing people and things by their
monetary value above all else structures how we talk about games_

and

 _The mainstream culture of games development demands you are from a class of
people who could go into computer science or digital art training and have
enough resources to handle an industry that has a terrible track record with
labor issues._

But the application of these ideas to Flappy Bird and Candy Crush misses the
mark. From everyone I've heard from, the backlash against these games stemmed
from the fact that they are addictive, dull, and not creative; capitalism was
not a significant factor.

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david_otoole
Yes. This. The real problem with Flappy Bird is that it made money and got
attention without being blessed by curator types who think it shouldn't be
popular.

If one of the usual indie darlings had made Flappy Bird, it would be hailed as
a "brilliant, hardcore, minimalist free-to-play flying game with ingenously-
simple touchscreen control, procedurally generated obstacle courses, and
8-bit-styled graphics that recall the glory days of NES."

I also found it really surprising that the author didn't mention Minecraft,
which somehow graduated from being an Infiniminer clone to being an original
IP you can sue over. Not coincidentally, today there are only "Minecraft
clones".

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anigbrowl
_Dong is considered an outsider. Who is he? From Vietnam? Oh, that explains
this ‘knock-off’ rhetoric people are using._

Ehh....to the extent people are complaining that it looks like Super Mario,
they're complaining about infringement upon a Japanese game, so the xenophobia
complaint doesn't really hold up. I thought most people hated Flappy Bird
because it was difficult, pointless, and so addictive that they had wasted
lots of time on it despite the other two flaws.

~~~
chipsy
From the article:

 _A quick google image search of Jonathan Blow’s Braid can not only reveal
that the indie darling also uses green pipes, but also uses analogues, very
obvious references, to Mario’s enemies, mechanics, and story line._

indie darling

~~~
anigbrowl
What's your point? _Braid_ is a vasly more ambitious concept, with complex
puzzles, unusual-yet-intuitive game mechanics, and very elaborate visual
design, as opposed to a quickie game like Flappy Bird.

And again, I don't think anyone hates Flappy Bird because it has green pipes,
they hate it mainly because it's addictive without really being satisfying.

------
vezzy-fnord
_Why aren’t there more minorities writing about minority issues in a time of
heightened social justice on sites that pay fair wages? Because someone wants
to make money. Why are the weird free games made commonly by minority artists
that play a huge role in changing how we think of the medium excluded from
news coverage and conference talks? Because someone wants to make money._

There are? In fact, there's more now than ever, especially with the popularity
of postmodernism in a large variety of media publications.

Now, I agree with you on "weird free games" that are excluded from mainstream
attention. They're not profitable. But then again, being countercultural has
never been profitable. What's more: most people don't want to play art games
and minimalistic, philosophically motivated indie productions. They want the
next multiplayer Call of Duty game. It's a sad reality, but it is what it is.

I have to ask you, however... why are you specifically referring to _minority_
artists? Minority in the sense of intellectual disposition, or in the sense of
demographics? If it's the latter, then minority game developers are very rare
to begin with. That's not really a fault of institutions not giving them
attention.

You also imply that all art games or games developed by minorities _deserve_
attention. This is not the case. I consider myself to be open-minded when it
comes to a good art game with a message, but there's tons of underproduced
crap that masquerades under the banner of art to make up for its mediocrity.

 _It doesn’t sound nice when it’s constantly called out, does it? Because it
isn’t. There is a price tag to participating in games. The mainstream culture
of games development demands you are from a class of people who could go into
computer science or digital art training and have enough resources to handle
an industry that has a terrible track record with labor issues. The standard
success story of someone in the games media is a person who can afford to keep
up with the newest products and has the resources to write for free or low-
wage for about two years. Important conferences, even when you’re invited to
speak, often cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars to attend._

This is all true. Crunch time and low wages are notorious.

 _The idea of success outside the conventional method of capitalism, which is
intersectional in its effects, is met with contempt._

This is obviously true for AAA companies who want to keep their hegemony, but
I honestly doubt most people are hostile to unconventional business models for
indie games. Quite the contrary, such endeavors are becoming more popular and
people are getting more receptive to them. I'd blame contempt on a lack of
imagination more than anything.

 _The conversation of what is and isn’t a game is often, intentionally or not,
used to assign value to already established gaming conventions that benefit
the established system and marginalize works that do not look like it, and
therefore threaten it. Mobile games are often slated as ‘casual’ games, which
people in the gaming press and development overall side-eye as a genre of
games mostly just looking to grab people’s money._

Except casual games _are_ a legitimate distinction. This also includes their
business model. As for people berating hardcores versus casuals, that's
largely an in-joke.

 _Except, well, that’s ALL of AAA games, such as the hype around how much
Grand Theft Auto V made despite that it was profiting off of flagrant sexism
and racism._

Uh... GTA V may not exactly be the most social justice-friendly game out
there, but it portrays the grisly aspects of the real world as they are.

 _Dong is considered an outsider. Who is he? From Vietnam? Oh, that explains
this ‘knock-off’ rhetoric people are using._

 _It’s because the gaming community set up a success narrative for certain
indie, mostly white, mostly men, mostly from English-speaking countries,
developers who strive to make smaller games competitive with the big dogs._

And here we go, people... the reason there was a backlash against Flappy Bird
was because the developer was Vietnamese! IT WAS ALL RACISM!

Hate to break it to you, but Flappy Bird was a painfully generic and dead
simple Helicopter clone with graphics that imitated (not saying stolen from,
but imitated) Super Mario Bros. People were mostly baffled at the insane
success of such a, quite frankly, stupid game.

 _Because of social justice activism and outside pressure from a society that
sees gaming as grotesque, awareness about how exclusionary games are is at
critical mass and the industry is scrambling to answer. It has no fucking clue
how to market to and include minority members of their community and in the
world at large. So when Farmville, Peggle, Candy Crush Saga, and Flappy Bird
appeal to this mysterious audience big budget and scrappy indies can’t seem to
tap, it’s foul play._

I can't believe this author is legitimately defending games like Farmville and
Candy Crush, which are deliberately designed to be highly addictive, while
having a highly grinding gameplay and then carelessly exploiting its players
down to the last penny. All this coming from an anti-capitalist, too.

But that's how the gaming industry works. Like any other industry, it exists
to make a profit. The gaming community isn't some misogynistic wasteland of
sexism and racism. If you can even claim there's one coherent gaming
"community", that is. There's plenty of subcultures separated from each other.
The main problem with gaming is the immaturity of its audience.

Ultimately, more social justice drivel. Can't have enough of it on HN, I
guess.

~~~
herokusaki
> As for people berating hardcores versus casuals, that's largely an in-joke.

I am under the impression that a sizable group of people on the internet
regularly gets legitimately angry about any given video game issue. Why would
this be different? I remember people being genuinely upset with Nintendo's
"betrayal of its fans" with the Wii.

~~~
ijk
The Flappy Bird dev was getting death/suicide threats on Twitter after he
announced he was taking it down.
[https://twitter.com/EliLanger/timelines/432588181611892736](https://twitter.com/EliLanger/timelines/432588181611892736)

I hope these people aren't the majority, but there are a lot of people who are
abusive about games that don't measure up to their definition of a 'game'.
It's unfortunate.

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courtf
I don't mean to go off topic here, but what is it with postings on HN that
have blatant typos in the first sentence? I think this is the third time today
I've seen it, and it's starting to make me paranoid. Is this some kind of sick
game?

~~~
anigbrowl
Proofreading is a form of oppression, or so I'm told whenever I venture to
critique its absence.

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increment_i
Hopefully this flappy birds fiasco is the dumbest thing that hits critical
mass this year because I can't imagine anything possibly being dumber.

