

Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Says App 'Gone Forever' - dnqthao
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lananhnguyen/2014/02/11/exclusive-flappy-bird-creator-dong-nguyen-says-app-gone-forever-because-it-was-an-addictive-product/

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unwind
_Your chance of death multiplied exponentially with each gate you passed._

Because math doesn't matter, but words are cool when you're a writer. Aaargh.

I'm no Flappy champion, but I'm pretty certain there is very little
diffuculty-ramping. It's certainly not getting exponentially more difficult.

~~~
RyanZAG
The thinking here is probably along the lines of having an X% chance to die
every gate, eg 10%. Then the 'difficulty' or likelihood of surviving is 0.9^n
with n as the score etc. It's not really accurate, but you can get where the
'multiplied exponentially' is coming from.

That said, the game is actually about luck the better you are at it - if you
are skilled enough to always get through the gap if your bird starts near the
gap, then the difficulty comes down to chance - how far away the gaps are
vertically from each other at each step.

~~~
zeno334
The article is poorly phrased no matter what the thinking behind it was. It
says your chances of death increase with each gate you pass. If there's no
difficulty ramping that's simply not true.

That's like saying your chances of rolling another head after rolling 1000
heads are smaller. They're not. It's still 50/50.

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k-mcgrady
I've seen a lot of people comment that he's giving up $50,000 per day. As so
many people already have the app (and it's not being deleted from their
devices remotely) isn't he still going to be receiving that ad revenue, it
just won't be increasing anymore? A cynic might say he announced the 24 hour
deletion to get as many people as he could to download it, because even after
it was deleted they would be playing the game and he would be earning.

~~~
Styn
I was thinking the same thing. In a way it might even extend the lifetime of
the fad, instead of starting to die out this being spread over the news gives
a fresh impulse to make people show the game to others. The 24 hour window
adds another element to talk about. People telling eachother "You can only get
it the next few hours". Followed by people checking if it is really gone, and
(hopefully) playing the game again, or lending their phones to others who
didn't get it.

If he really wanted it all to stop he could just update it to remove the ads
en delete it after. Without announcing it on twitter.

Not that I blame him, he got lucky and if these are all marketing moves, well,
good job :)

~~~
matznerd
I don't think they are marketing moves...

~~~
soneca
I don't think they are marketing moves either. But I think the reasoning is
right, he did consider the money he will still earn in his decision.

By the end, I guess he would make more money keeping it on the store (hard to
find a math where this 24 hours peek would pay off a few more months of
declining downloads).

So I guess he did some math and thought "I already have my _FU money_ , so FU
fame!" :D

So the choice is about preferring $2 million and peace of mind, instead of $5
million and people annoying him 24/7\. Not the "I give up of _all_ the money
for the JD Salinger's lifestyle" as the press is framing this.

------
anhng
I believe in what he said, like this guy did:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/02/11/the-
bird-l...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/02/11/the-bird-lord-
speaks-why-we-should-believe-in-flappy-bird-creator-dong-nguyen/)

And as a Vietnamese, I can tell you that those f __king mass media in VN is
totally ruining his life. I admire him so much for his zen-like life style.

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blueskin_
This is another key weaknesss of the iphone.

I have it installed on my Android phone, but even if I didn't, I could
download the .apk and install it (because nothing is ever gone on the
internet), but you can't do that in a walled garden.

~~~
coldtea
> _This is another key weaknesss of the iphone._

The ability to respect the wish of the app author that wants it gone?

~~~
icebraining
Just because it's the wish of the author, doesn't mean it's imperative that we
respect it. Much like the King in the Little Prince, the wishes must be
reasonable. And wishing that the app would completely vanish is not
reasonable.

~~~
AznHisoka
Umm why?

~~~
icebraining
Why, what? Why must wishes be reasonable? Or why is that wish unreasonable?

------
grrowl
Please get over Flappy Birds as soon as possible. The lessons to learn are:
simplicity in difficulty is key (see: The Impossible Game[1]), mobile game
advertising has /horrible/ ROI, and the tech world is too easy to whip itself
into a frenzy caused by its own feedback.

The only reason this is still a story (Flappy Bird pre-installed iPhones,
knockoffs galore, etc) is because it's a story in itself. I feel really sorry
for this guy.

[1]:
[http://flukedude.com/theimpossiblegame/](http://flukedude.com/theimpossiblegame/)

~~~
hkmurakami
speaking of simplicity in difficulty: Super Hexagon :)

------
Baustin
"It happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem,"
he explained as he chain smoked cigarettes.

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panacea
Except in my heart where it still flaps. And my phone where it's still
installed. And as a weird internet ("mobile" = internet) historical relic,
akin to crazy frog.

~~~
herokusaki
And, according to a quick search, torrent trackers.

~~~
panacea
Hmmm... [emotive action] "Verb" [emotive avatar] "Noun".

I'm sure there's a formula here: Angry Birds, Flappy Bird, Crazy Frog, Stupid
Long-horses.1

Some stretches... Gangnam (flappy) Style (horsey Korean pop-star), and Kony
2012 was flappy bullshit activist. Mario? Plucky plumber... etc

1\.
[http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/8aqjh/awww_this_is_jus...](http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/8aqjh/awww_this_is_just_too_sad_pic/c08pp5z)

~~~
mkr-hn
Zero Wing

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negamax
Someone pull this guy to Singapore. If he was afraid of success he never would
had tried to promote the product.

~~~
CJefferson
Many people think they want fame, until they get it. I'm sure continual death
threats and every gaming web site falling iver itself to decree your game one
of worst ever would lead to me just shutting up shop.

~~~
Cthulhu_
idk, I think I'd laugh all the way to the bank.

~~~
blueskin_
Yep. At 50k/day, it's enough to ignore most people and shut up the worst
easily (I'd love to see someone sue Gawker, for example).

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uptown
Flappy Bird is a fun game, but to me it also demonstrates how broken mobile
advertising seems to be. He's generating revenue from ads that pop up at the
top of the screen that quickly vanish on the next tap of your finger. How
could any advertiser possibly hope to get any value out of what they paid to
have that happen?

------
lmm
It's the users I feel bad for, the people who wanted to play this thing but
will now never get the chance to.

~~~
coldtea
Oh the humanity!

That said, there are already like 100 clones of the app out there, some even
with identical graphics and levels.

