
Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants - bpierre
http://www.polygon.com/2014/2/5/5382450/flappy-bird-is-proof-that-no-one-knows-what-the-audience-is-looking
======
jonnathanson
_" The big players in the AAA sector believe the people want military shooters
and open-world games full of the old ultra violence."_

A lot of people _do_ want those things, which is why "Call of Duty" and "Grand
Theft Auto" make billions of dollars every sequel.

 _" The indie community believes that what people really want is experimental
games with heart and a unique visual sensibility. And puzzle platformers. And
roguelikes."_

Some people do want those things, which is why these genres have dedicated
followings.

At the risk of sounding glib: Flappy Bird's success doesn't prove or disprove
anything about the gaming industry. It certainly isn't some sort of paradigm
shift, and it's hardly an indication that "no one knows what the audience
wants."

To put it more directly: there is no "the audience," in some monolithic and
homogenous sense of the word. There are _audiences_. When an outlier comes
around every now and then, offering novel gameplay and a unique sensibility,
that's awesome. But it doesn't mean everyone else is somehow wrong. The only
ones who will get it wrong, in this case, will be the legions of publishers
rushing Flappy Bird clones to market in the hopes of catching some of its halo
effect. (Upon last app store search, it seemed there are already many dozens
of these in the market.)

~~~
jaredklewis
I don't disagree with most of your post, but I still think the basic message
of the blog post is valid.

Obviously, if developers in AAA or indie sector knew that this kind of huge
success could be had with a game like this, they would have made it. But it's
humbling to consider that no matter how long people make games, nobody knows
the formula for the making next big hit. I don't think he's trying to say that
AAA or indie developers are dumb.

~~~
kosei
AAA developers aren't trying to make games that earn $50K/day (while a game is
getting 1MM+ installs per day). AAA developers can spend $100MM+ in
development costs and are looking for titles that can make $200K/day or launch
and make $75MM on day 1.

Indie developers would love to make this type of game, but the fact is that
even with the monumental success the game has had from a download perspective
(50MM downloads), it's still only making $50K/day. That's like winning the
lottery. Most indie devs are going to make games that get downloaded fewer
than 1 million times, which, for a title like this, isn't going to make more
than 1-2 employee salaries (let alone the up-front cost of building the game
for the first X months for free).

~~~
jaredklewis
That's all true, but I still think that if anyone (indie, AAA, or otherwise)
knew they could have the no 1 spot in the app store simply by making Flapper
(a relatively small investment to develop), they would have done it. Even if
the game is free, the publicity alone is worth a huge amount.

But nobody knew.

~~~
fiesycal
I feel like you're saying if indie, AAA knew the lottery numbers for next week
they would have bought a ticket. Which of course they would have. But I don't
see this game as something that is repeatable. It seems literally like winning
the lottery, whether or not you can get a simple game in the app store to be
such a success.

So I don't see the value in saying that nobody knew. In the same way saying
someone didn't know next weeks lottery numbers doesn't make them incompetent
or the person who won the lottery a genius (or have some special insight).

~~~
jaredklewis
I didn't call the other game developers incompetent and I don't think the
Flapper developer is a genius.

I'm just saying that art is pretty mysterious and despite the fact that people
have been making video games for quite a while now, no one knows the formula
for the next big hit and somehow the next hit always finds new and old ways to
surprise us. But just my $0.02 ^_^

~~~
kazagistar
We know a lot of very effective formulas. Thats not to say all profit comes
from games that follow formulas, but the formulas certainly make it more
likely.

------
tsunamifury
This story is incredibly reductionist to the point of being false.

Flappy Bird tells you nothing about what the 'People' want. Today they want a
single button physics game, tomorrow they want hardcore shooters. Some people
want RPGs, others want micropayment sandboxes.

They problem is that everyone is trying to copy the dumb luck of developers
who happen upon the right mix of categories at the right moment in time. Once
flappy bird is copied 100x times and becomes an expected mechanic it will no
longer be what the people want.

~~~
jessedhillon
_It turns out that what the people really want, for the moment at least, is
Flappy Bird._

The point of the story is not that people want Flappy Bird -- it's that
despite numerous predictions and formulas used in the industry to determine
which projects get funded, nobody was talking about doing a game like Flappy
Bird. Prior to its success, it would have been dismissed out of hand to spend
resources on a title like that. The author is making the point that predicting
what people _want_ is not formulaic, it appears to be quite random.

~~~
prof_hobart
I'm not sure what you mean by nobody talking about doing a game like Flappy
Bird. Of course, no one was talking about a game exactly like it - every game
is different.

But there's loads of games quite a lot like it already - it's basically a very
simple version of something like Jetpack Joyride with a subtly different input
mechanism (repeated tap instead of holding down to fly). That's a game so
common that there's even a tutorial ([http://www.raywenderlich.com/9050/how-
to-make-a-game-like-je...](http://www.raywenderlich.com/9050/how-to-make-a-
game-like-jetpack-joyride-using-levelhelper-spritehelper-and-corona-sdk-
part-1)) on how to write your own version. There's a fair chance that the
author of Flappy Bird used this as the source for the game.

I've no idea what actually made Flappy Bird successful, but whatever it was
it's certainly not any huge gameplay innovation that others had failed to
spot.

~~~
checker
A few points to compare the two:

\- Jetpack Joyride is way easier. I think something "unique" about Flappy Bird
is how difficult it is.

\- It's extremely easy to start a new round in Flappy Bird (and it happens
quite often). Die on the first pipe? Tap again to jump right back in. You
don't even need to hit a button, it's pretty much tap anywhere on the screen.

\- Sharing high scores with friends is way easier. "I got a 22 the other day."
is way easier than saying "I got 108,000".

\- The high scores are more meaningful to other players because they will know
exactly how Player1 got that score. The 108,000 in Jetpack Joyride is
ambiguous because the score is a function of distance, coins, kills, etc.
Remember back in the day, hearing about some dude's cousin that made it to
level 55, and how seemingly impossible that was?

~~~
prof_hobart
The two games clearly have some differences, but I'm not sure that I'd class
any of those as being particularly unique.

Somehow, something about this game has grabbed people's interest, but it's not
some brilliant gameplay innovation that the rest of the gaming world had
overlooked.

------
kcorbitt
I haven't played Flappy Bird, but it seems really similar to a helicopter game
that was inordinately popular in my middle school 10-12 years ago. It looks
like it's still up. [http://www.addictinggames.com/action-
games/helicoptergame.js...](http://www.addictinggames.com/action-
games/helicoptergame.jsp)

~~~
napoleoncomplex
I might be wrong on this one, but as far as I remember, the originator of this
type of game is "The Infamous Worm Game":
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OjeFYNq05k](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OjeFYNq05k)

Sadly, the original site that hosted it just has a "Java Applet" placeholder
there now:
[http://www.liquidcode.org/worm.html](http://www.liquidcode.org/worm.html)

It had a very good balance between difficulty and frustration. Or in other
words, I wasted a lot of time on it.

~~~
smoyer
The flapping mechanic is very similar to that used in Joust
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joust_%28video_game%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joust_%28video_game%29)),
but without direction control, opponents or lava trolls.

~~~
nsxwolf
And without anything like the level of control and finesse of the flapping in
Joust.

------
habosa
I love Flappy Bird. I play a ton of games on my phone but FB is now my go-to
casual game. My high score is 104 if that's any indicator of how much I like
it.

Before Flappy Bird I was pretty into Clash of Clans and another similar build-
and-wait-and-repeat game. I realized that there is no true progress in those
games, and all you have to do to "win" is play more than the other guy.

Flappy Bird is exactly the opposite of Clash of Clans. Clash is all about
incremental progress - do One More Thing and you'll get 1% more resources to
do That Other One More Thing. Over and over. You inch towards a goal that's
not there.

In Flappy Bird, you can't make progress. Every time you click start it might
as well be the first time you opened the app. No power ups, no In App
Purchases, no levels, just you and those pipes. I get 50 and 5 equally often.
Something in my brain rebelled when I played Flappy Bird and made me delete
Clash and my other slow-build games. I just want to play something that's over
quickly, highly interactive, and uses actual skill.

I'm sure after a few weeks of Flapping i'll be as sick of it as I was of
Clash, but I think it's worth nothing that FB is the exact opposite of all of
the most popular games out there right now and I think that hits a
subconscious note with some people like me.

~~~
bsder
The success of Flappy Bird is probably two factors:

1) Social Competition

I deleted Flappy Bird almost immediately after downloading it with the
thought: "Seen it. Seen it done better." So, there is some level of social
interaction that keeps people engaged with it if there are other people around
also playing Flappy Bird.

2) Microtransaction fatigue

The success of Flappy Bird may actually be more of a reaction _against_ all
the microtransaction garbage than anything else. Flappy Bird _REALLY_ stuck
out for not having microtransactions. I was absolutely gobsmacked when I
opened it, could play it, and didn't get hounded. That's pretty powerful.

~~~
habosa
#2 is partially what I was getting at. It's a rebellion against all of the
dishonest games out there.

------
malbs
My kids had this game on their ipad. They asked me to have a go at it, I had a
look, started playing... 30 minutes later "Dad can I have my my ipad back".
Seriously I was hating that game, but the desire to beat my kids score
outweighed my frustration at some of those issues (hitbox of the pipes etc). I
HAD to beat my previous score, I HAD to master the delicate touch required to
precisely navigate those pipes. It's not even a new mechanic. It's the same as
Jet Pack Joyride, so it's a copy of existing games, and it completely flogged
Mario world graphics, possibly stole them as is and the guy might even have to
answer to Nintendo.

It isn't on my list of games I've loved, but it was fun, in a completely
infuriating way.

It's better than other games my kids typically play, ice-cream
manufacturing/construction type games

~~~
shurcooL
Actually, the game mechanic is deceptively different.

It looks and feels like those previous helicopter games where you hold to
accelerate up. But it's very different, in that, you top to give the bird a
sudden impulse. This is much harder to control with precision.

That's where it's addictive nature comes from... It's deceptive as in "oh I
know how to play this kind of game, I can do this!" but in reality it's way
more difficult that you estimate it to be.

~~~
germano
Jetpack Joyride has the exact same control idea when you're controlling the
"Profit Bird" vehicle. So it must be a bird thing.

~~~
shurcooL
Hey, I just looked at it, and Jetpack Joyride does not have the same control
scheme. It is the "hold button to accelerate up at constant acceleration"
controls like other previous games, not the Flappy Bird's "tap to give a
sudden impulse" scheme.

Edit: Actually, it's a combination of many schemes. There's a gravity suit
that inverts gravity. There's jumping from the ground, which is impulse-based.
But the generic jetpack flying is acceleration-while-holding-based. Bottom
line, I would not say it's "exactly the same idea" as flappy bird at all.

------
ricardobeat
Badland, a very successful title [1], has the same game mechanics, along with
beautiful graphics, a great physics system and well-designed puzzles. It's
been around for a while, so why is 'Flappy Bird', with borrowed Super Mario
graphics, overshadowing it?

Free vs $3.99.

[1] [http://www.badlandgame.com/](http://www.badlandgame.com/)

~~~
juandopazo
Badland is free on Android. And in the Play Store it has 271,073 ratings
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.frogmind.b...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.frogmind.badland)

...so yeah.

------
incision
Just replace the gaming genres mentioned with musical ones and Flappy Bird
with "Macarena" or "Who Let the Dogs Out?".

It doesn't really need 1000 words.

~~~
TillE
That's exactly the right comparison, just without the money that record labels
use to push songs. Remember Draw Something? Huge for maybe a month, then
completely gone.

Flappy Bird is sort of notable because it's probably the simplest "hit" game
we've seen in recent memory. It's the sort of thing that appeals to people who
aren't even casual gamers, people who wouldn't engage with something like the
original Plants vs. Zombies.

------
bostik
If I remember correctly, the last time single-action games were hot topic was
about three years ago. Back then it was the black-and-white iOS game, with
character running through the city roofs, and your only control was a tap to
jump. No idea what it was called.

The success spawned hundreds of imitations, and in about a year the craze had
died.

The only surprising things here are, in my mind: A) that the full cycle has
gone so quickly, and B) that the author of the article doesn't remember (or
acknowledge) a fairly recent past.

~~~
dmazin
Didn't the name have quite a few capitalized As and Hs in it?

~~~
SquareWheel
Are you thinking of Aaaa!: A Reckless Disregard for Gravity?

[http://www.dejobaan.com/aaaaa/](http://www.dejobaan.com/aaaaa/)

------
codeka
This is an interesting point on the rise of Flappy Bird:
[http://www.bluecloudsolutions.com/blog/flappy-birds-smoke-
mi...](http://www.bluecloudsolutions.com/blog/flappy-birds-smoke-mirrors-
scamming-app-store/)

"When you release games in MAY (Shuriken Block) and JUNE (Flappy Birds) that
have a non-existant launch, then magically lift off 6 months later, it looks
weird. Especially when your other games coincidentally all do so at the exact
same time as well."

~~~
smackfu
I'm surprised he finds it so unbelievable that people would rate a really hard
game five stars.

------
btbuildem
Yes exactly: the game doesn't try to sell you shit, just lets you play. That
is refreshing and eerily quiet.

Other than that, it has some winning elements: it's difficult but not
impossible. You can play it for 30 seconds or 30 minutes. It is simple. It has
a goal you can endlessly pursue. It tickles the nostalgia of all those who
grew up on games that this game "borrows" the visuals from.

~~~
kosei
It has interstitial ads and banner ads that refresh during the middle of
gameplay. For most game developers this is an absolute non-starter and
considered a terrible game experience. I absolutely would not call that a
"refreshing" take on freemium game design.

Not to mention that it probably has horrific monetization and despite its high
download titles it likely has poor revenues. Fine for a small development
team, but terrible compared to industry norms.

~~~
drak0n1c
He claims that the ads are making him $50,000 a day, which adds up to a few
million dollars before the game dies. Totally fine for a solo dev in Vietnam.
Sure the ads could be optimized, but given the game's simple pick-up-and-drop
viral format, ads are definitely superior to making this kind of app paid or
IAP instead.

[http://www.polygon.com/2014/2/6/5385880/flappy-bird-
collects...](http://www.polygon.com/2014/2/6/5385880/flappy-bird-
collects-50k-per-day-in-ad-revenue)

~~~
kosei
Exactly. Fine for a solo game developer, but when compared to most top
grossing titles which regularly eclipse $250K/day (and are also long-lasting,
whereas I'd guess Flappy Bird falls off the radar within a month or two).

Ads never monetize close to the revenue that you can make from IAP - a typical
ad installation will make between $0.005 and $0.01 per daily active user,
whereas a decently monetizing free to play title can make between $0.03 and
$0.20. Smaller userbase titles like card battlers can make upwards of $0.50.

Again, fine for one guy, but I wouldn't call this a raging success of a title
and something that free-to-play game studios will use as a framework, by any
means. If it takes 50 million installs to make $50K/day, that's a really bad
thing.

------
smtddr
I've said it before[1], you just don't know what the public wants or what will
become popular. If you have an idea & the technical ability to execute, just
do it. Doesn't matter if you think you're building a terrible app... just do
it; especially if you have nothing else in particular to do.

Seriously, someone should just make this game:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is12anYx2Qs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is12anYx2Qs)
...it's meaningless. Don't bother with a story, or points, or anything. Just a
Title screen that says "Disks in Funnels!" with a big start button. Then the
game goes forever, maybe it starts to speed up or something. Sell it for 99
cents; you'll be a millionaire.

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7008449](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7008449)

------
joeconway
I have been wondering if the developer has made much money from the app at all
really. In spite of the overwhelmingly vast number of downloads, the adverts
only show whilst you are playing the game. Aside from the momentary lag when
they appear, most users probably don't even notice them because they are
concentrating so hard. Users are almost guaranteed to pay the adverts no
attention lest they risk the possibility of sacrificing their amazing score of
1.

~~~
bunkat
Apparently they make $50k a day in ad revenue
([http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/5/5383708/flappy-bird-
revenue...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/5/5383708/flappy-bird-
revenue-50-k-per-day-dong-nguyen-interview)). Seems like that would be 'much
money'.

~~~
joeconway
Good for them, it is always nice to see indie developers succeed. I didn't
mean to come across negatively, if that's what your disparaging quote was
inferring.

~~~
shawn-furyan
As someone who has a tendency to read negativity into neutral comments on the
internet, allow me to point out that there's nothing in the GPs comment that
suggest that it is disparaging. It is actually extremely matter of fact, and
even helpful (even though it contradicted part of your original statement).
Sure, the quotation could be read as snarky, but that's only because there are
a lot of shitty, snarky people on the internet that use neutral language to be
jerks. It kind of spoils the well for everyone when neutral direct language is
transformed into mean, hateful sentiment, but this comment gives absolutely no
outward indication that it is of that sort. Whether or not it was meant to be
snarky, as people who communicate often on the internet, we would all be
happier if we had the ability to take such comments at face value.

And to be clear, if I had made your original comment earnestly, and received
the GPs reply, I am not at all certain that I wouldn't take it just the way
you did. I'm just pointing out that it needn't be taken that way.

~~~
bunkat
Thanks, I really didn't mean any snark by it. The comment asked if they made
'much money' and for me $50k a day would qualify. I used quotes since I was
literally quoting the original comment.

------
Goladus
_First, they want games about birds._

What kind of conclusion is this? It's a 2-d side-scrolling game with basic
sinking/gravity dynamics. There are only a few ways to make a game with those
rules.

(1) use a flying object/animal

(2) put the level underwater (eg Super Mario Brothers, 1985)

(3) make the game entirely abstract.

~~~
MrJagil
I think he was joking.

~~~
Goladus
Yeah I wondered that but since I didn't find the passage at all funny and
thought it detracted considerably from his primary thesis (by suggesting that
he wasn't taking the point seriously) it bothered me.

------
shittyanalogy
There is no "what the audience wants" there are markets and things that sell
well in certain markets.

This sold well in a certain market for many reasons that are hard to predict
and study.

Flappy bird is not displacing revenue from AAA studios and AAA studios still
shouldn't be concerned what the next flappy bird is. They're too busy
researching, analyzing, and developing the next multi-hundred-million-dollar
videogame franchise that fits into the markets they understand.

Just because some game gets a lot of attention, doesn't mean that it's
signalling a paradigm shift or that everyone else has it wrong.

------
brownbat
I feel like we're reliving the late 80s and early 90s in gaming. I keep seeing
new game ideas and getting a lot of nostalgia, like, "yeah, that's something
that might have even been in an arcade, or on a PC back when SVGA was a
thing."

I love that "the people" can immediately jump back through several generations
of graphics or locked in gameplay tropes and still have fun. Jonnathanson's
right, there's not a single audience out there, but it's good to see lots of
people, whatever portion of the gaming population they are, getting some
enjoyment from a lo fi experience and making a successful dev along the way.

Why is that exciting to me?

Because I lived through shooters killing adventure games.

And while I love a lot of shooters, and there's been an adventure game
renaissance, it took a long time, and that was kind of a tragedy.

But this isn't just about adventure games, there just needs to be space for
lots of genres to thrive. And tech limitations (currently on phones/tablets,
then on everything) sometimes seem to help this along in a weird way, people
pursuing lots of different ideas to package the most fun in a really
constrained environment, without just jumping into a 3d environment because an
engine is available for licensing.

~~~
velik_m
Who really killed adventure games:
[http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html](http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html)

~~~
brownbat
That dude is a bit of an ass, but I'll make two concessions...

Bad adventure games are really bad, true. Pixel hunting and verb guessing and
odd sequences...

So really I mourn the death of good writing in games, especially comedy.
Adventure games aren't the only source of good writing though, nor were all
adventure games well written.

But there is still a dichotomy, because you cant have an adventure game
without at least trying to write a story, but an FPS can just be quake.

------
sambeau
_Everyone_ knows what the audience wants from a game: _fun_.

It's not easy to define fun nor to quantify and it plus it is extremely
fragile in the face of money people and managers. Fun takes design, accidents
and a lot of iteration.

------
Macsenour
The first title of this type I recall playing in the arcades was Scramble, but
you had lasers and bombs. Of the non-increasingly difficult type, they're a
dime a dozen. We did one at MTV with SpongeBob and I think AddictingGames did
one for Potty Racers. Pretty common, still fun if the controls are done right.

And that's the hitch.

The controls in the Potty Racers version were poor, to give it a compliment.
Getting things in any game exactly "right" is what makes one game better than
another. Lots of physics games before Angry Birds, none got the physics
exactly right.

I'm sure some of your remember Doodle Jump. There was a game before that, that
was the exact same type. Same controls, same type of character. But the
controls, and what was expected of the character were both off, so no huge
hit.

In the game industry, we'll continue to learn this rule over and over as long
as accountants tell us what is a good game and what isn't.

------
kingnight
Flappy Bird does have viral appeal. I haven't downloaded an iOS game in over
6-12 months probably, but I got this one. I initially saw 'Mario knock off'
screens on tumblr, but didn't bother to seek out what it was. I then randomly
viewed the iOS top charts and saw the same bird in the icon so I thought I'd
give it a shot.

The game is tough. It does remind me of iCopter that was a jailbreak game back
for the original iPhone before there was an App Store. It's not nearly as
complex, but in some ways more enjoyable once you figure out the ridiculously
difficult way in which you have to navigate since the pace is slower and maybe
more soothing in motion? (prob not...)

I think this games appeal is all looks.

------
chrisBob
What both game players and developers want is VIRAL. I admit to downloading it
and playing for few minutes, but only because it was covered on so many news
sources. That is the only thing is has going for it.

------
nilkn
I think it's pretty much impossible to predict what little games like this
will go viral. Flappy Bird definitely has all the ingredients, but so do so
many other games that never exploded this big. I wonder if anybody has made a
business out of "investing" in the development of a large number of such games
(a single developer could probably make a game a week), in the hope that just
one of them goes viral.

Regardless, I think there's an untapped market of people who want decent
mobile games that don't have predatory schemes for monetization.

~~~
Jare
I don't think brainless game spamming is a viable tactic any more than buying
lots of tickets is a smart lottery strategy. Each day there are tens of new
"very small" games released on mobile, so you are still competing with a
fraction of % chance to win.

That doesn't mean making many games is a bad idea. Rovio had made several
dozen games before Angry Birds went viral. Halfbrick spent years barely
scraping by before Fruit Ninja became a huge hit. Zynga of course had
published many games before Farmville. NimbleBit were doing a game every two
months for 3 years before Tiny Tower.

The difference is that each (or at least most) of the games in these companies
was developed with the belief that is was a game worthy of being made. To
paraphrase Picasso, luck must catch you hard at work.

As for the untapped market, I don't know. There's lots of excellent non-
predatory games of any type imaginable in the $1-$4 bracket for anyone who
doesn't mind paying for quality. The mass F2P market seems more tailored
towards people who don't want to pay, therefore predatory tactics are the only
thing that can 'coerce' money out of them.

------
etler
Run and avoid games are nothing new at all. Jetpack Joyride is practically the
same thing, and it also did very well. It has 50,000,000+ downloads just on
google play. This is not a new genre. The helicopter game is one of the first
flash games I ever played, and it certainly existed before that too. We
already know these kinds of games do well, so what's the surprise here? I
don't get it. It's a game mechanic that's done well before and it's doing well
again.

------
conductr
For me, this signifies how much the mobile gaming interface sucks. Touch sucks
when it comes to games. Only simple things like flicking a bird and solving
puzzles[1] are enjoyable without a physical controller - for most people.

Also, this is basically a download and delete app. Are there any stats on
that?

[1] candy crush, sudoku, dots, words with friends, even angry birds is a
strategy more so than a skill and could be called a puzzle

------
kosei
Many folks in the mobile games industry believe that Flappy Bird is actually a
triumph of gaming Apple's downloads and ratings system more than it is
indicative of the game's actual success. We'll see whether it's able to keep a
stronghold or if it falls off the map shortly.

~~~
ROFISH
I thought that it was popular only because Pewdiepie featured it on his
Youtube channel.

------
Just_Some_Dummy
What I am hearing is: \- You can be successful, just make sure you don't get
it by dumb luck. \- You can be successful, just make sure you spent more than
2 days coding your app.

Otherwise, you suck and we hate you.

~~~
qbrass
If you're trying to be successful from dumb luck, don't spend more than 2 days
coding your app.

The payoff's the same, but you're wasting resources you could have used to
make more attempts.

Plus, you suck, and we hate you, so you'll have to deal with it.

------
baby
If I remember correctly, almost 10 years ago (or less?) Helicopter.swf, which
was exactly (or even better imo) what Flappy Bird is now, was crazy popular.

Except we didn't have all the media around internet, we didn't have all those
famous websites that talked about buzz, hype, memes...

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hrabago
What I'm most curious about these games is how do these games gain traction in
the first place?

~~~
dpcan
This was talked about in a reddit post about Flappy Bird, and one commenter
pointed out that there was something of a youtube review landslide - and that
some of their other games were already popular in Japan.

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FigBug
Reminds me of Line Birds, but Line Birds is actually playable.
[https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/line-
birds/id438084823?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/line-
birds/id438084823?mt=8)

I can make it past 1 pine. :(

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Grue3
Eh, I played it for a bit to see what the hype is about, but I already played
games like this before (and much more interesting ones, like Canabalt), and
there's no way to disable sound, so I can't see myself spending much time on
it.

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ultramancool
Flappy Bird is not proof that no one knows what the audience wants, but it is
proof that you can make a slight variation on SFCave and still keep its
addictiveness. This type of game has been around forever and has been quite
popular.

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Morphling
Dang it, me and buddy made a same very similar to this about 1-1,5 back for
programming class and one of our peers told us multiple times to port it over
to mobile, but we didn't believe that anyone wanted to play such a game.

~~~
nsxwolf
I wouldn't feel too bad. Odds are it would have had a few dozen or hundred
downloads, then quickly dropped off to 0 forever.

I don't know how this game became so popular. Did Justin Bieber tweet about
it?

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Aardwolf
There are 100s of flash games that are the same as what this game looks to be
(but with various different kinds of characters like a helicopter, a flying
dude, ...). How can this game be noteworthy?

~~~
svantana
That's exactly the point (of the article - although it may in some weird sense
also be the point of the game)

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cschmidt
My son, who is 13, is playing Flappy Birds this week. At least in part, it is
because all the other kids in middle school are playing it. It does have some
viral buzz in that sense.

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coralreef
IMO Flappy Bird is a novelty. You play it a few times, you get pissed, you
laugh about how hard it is, tell your friends to try, and then you never play
it again.

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sirkneeland
And apparently Windows Phone will get this game weeks after it's everywhere
else.

You laugh (not wrongly), but mind you that if MSFT pulls that off it would be
a remarkable improvement from their track record from a year ago when they got
Draw Something and Words with Friends _months_ after they had ceased to matter
(which in turn was still an improvement over a year before that when they just
didn't get the games at all).

Of course, how much further they can improve this "WP game arrival latency"
and how much it really matters remain open questions...

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drobati
I played the game twice and deleted it. High score was 3. I guess I have more
sensibility then a lot of my peers.

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alokm
One very interesting thing about this game was its size. I was pleasantly
surprised to see a game less than 1 MB.

------
Houshalter
I'm not saying the author is wrong, but I think generalizing from a single
data point is a bad idea.

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incogmind
This is very similar to the helicopter game back in the day! What a simple
idea, amazing! :)

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gpvos
> people want games that are bone-crushingly difficult, but not punishing

Yes, VVVVVV taught me that.

~~~
jck
Super hexagon is pretty much the only game I play on my phone. Terry Cavanaugh
is an evil genius.

~~~
eterm
Super hexagon is crushingly difficult, it's the one game I can keep returning
to over and over on my commute.

Flappy bird also hits a similar spot, it's a game that's quick, each game
lasts < 1 minute so you can play right up to the minute your train pulls into
the station, and it has the anticipation of defeat in a similar manner.

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anovikov
Let's see how much cash he makes from the game, which will be a real proof.

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cLeEOGPw
People themselves don't know what they want, how can developers know.

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BigBalli
no one "knows" what the audience wants. Not even the audience knows what it
wants, that's one of the key principles of selling, make them believe they
want it.

------
iohufaeoih
Welcome to the world of record labels and art dealers.

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ThomPete
It's called a hits based business.

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kayoone
pretty sure the guy ripped the gfx straight from mario snes games...hes going
to have fun with nintendo!

------
hexasquid
People want games with birds in them.

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yaix
I thought Google+ was proof of that.

------
kdazzle
It's an SFCave ripoff!

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pgl
Data from 1 app != proof.

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benched
I've just discovered that 'Another One Bites the Dust' provides a good rhythm
for maintaining a roughly constant altitude. You're welcome.

------
kimonos
I love Flappy Bird! Everyone finds it challenging too!

------
greyfox
The audience is whatever flavor of the week all the sheeple are downloading to
be cool and fit in with their friends. I have never played nor downloaded
angry birds flappy bird or W/E

~~~
awj
... not sure it's that simple. Angry Birds became popular in part _because_
it's a fun game to play. The gameplay probably doesn't live up to the hype,
but it's at least capable of living up to _some_ amount of hype.

Flappy bird is just incredibly awful. It's like QWOP[1], but much simpler.

[1] [http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html](http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html)

