
Marketing beats quality - marksteve
http://blog.marksteve.com/marketing-beats-quality
======
basil
Sorry to hear about this, but don't let it dishearten you from making games
and open sourcing them.

Someone stealing your code doesn't take away from the fact that you
accomplished your goal of making a complete game. And from what you just wrote
- that was your intention.

Regarding your blog title, I'd add 'timing' as well as 'marketing'. Titles of
both submissions were remarkably similar ("Flappy Bird in HTML5" vs "Flappy
Birdy html5 clone created using the Phaser framework"). Maybe the timing of
your submission was off.

Also you can now state that you're the original creator of all the HTML5
Flappy Bird clones that have been popping up recently.

~~~
marksteve
I was ecstatic to see the other forks but my smile does a 360 everytime I see
him getting the credit for it. But I'm happy to report that it didn't
discourage me to open source the things I create:
[https://github.com/marksteve/val](https://github.com/marksteve/val) :)

Yeah. My timing was off. But I think I now have a better idea on when and how
to post things here :P

I can't claim that :P There are some good clones that were genuinely created
from scratch like mine.

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
I wondered about that as well - I guess US evening time is a sweet spot? I'm
european, so I have no clue really.

------
dieulot
Marketing is definitely important here
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7023467](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7023467)
/
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7201353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7201353)
good timing + HN-specific introduction on this one: 300+ upvotes, made #1).
But I think there’s at least another factor here: his version is more fun,
because it’s faster-paced and has better graphics (obviously). So I’d say it’s
also about more _quality_. Being more fun is more important than not being a
rip-off in relation to quality too.

I totally understand why you’re pissed off, but I recommend trying (it’s not
always trivial) to see further than “it’s all marketing”. Most of the time
there are other factors at play, and nothing but good things come when you get
to know some of them.

~~~
marksteve
I'd be less annoyed if his version was indeed better but he just replaced the
graphics and bumped the physics values. So I can't accept that his version was
"more fun".

But I agree that there are things I didn't consider. And I learned a lot
because of this event.

------
netcan
I'm not sure this has much to do with either quality or marketing. It's about
stealing credit and whims of the internet in making things popular.

~~~
marksteve
It seemed to me that aside from poor timing, people upvoted it because it used
flappy bird assets. I guess quality isn't the best word but I picked the
phrase from a presentation I recently read and it sounded appropriate :)

------
hiphopyo
Another example of this is the popularity of Linux (marketing) over OpenBSD
(quality).

~~~
xixi77
and what exactly was the marketing trick that allowed Linux to beat OpenBSD,
in your opinion?

~~~
cpks
Linux had a much more friendly and welcoming community attitude.
OpenBSD/NetBSD developers had a bit of an anal-retentive BOFH streak to them.
Linus used strong language, but he was very easy-going. He invited folks in,
and allowed code from immature developers in, so long as the interfaces were
right. Turned out that build a much bigger developer community. It also turned
out that ability to code today is not indicative of ability to code five years
from now; many of the relatively immature folks who contributed to Linux early
got really good over time.

Ultimately, the larger developer base allowed Linux quality to beat OpenBSD
quality as well.

Good marketing is usually not a trick.

~~~
lazyjones
> _Linux had a much more friendly and welcoming community attitude. OpenBSD
> /NetBSD developers had a bit of an anal-retentive BOFH streak to them_

That may have played a role in this, but not a major one. What probably
contributed most to the success of Linux was the commercial redistribution and
accompanying marketing efforts by companies like SuSE (they even sent free CD
sets to unimportant Open Source developers, including me) and Red Hat.

