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Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

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Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#151

Post by yamtaddle »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #101
yamtaddle wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of great modern movies have pacing similar to those older ones you don't like. It's not that they "leveled up" into some new form and obsoleted what came before—the other sorts of pacing remain entirely valid and in heavy use.

I'm not saying no one uses long shots or takes anymore and they aren't totally ineffective - I just watched Mandy over the weekend and it has plenty and they are used effectively but it's also a move that seems to have people regarding it in extremes - it's really a love or hate because of the choices they make. But what I'm trying to say is there are other tools in the toolbox now - I haven't heard anyone say that E…

Ah, OK—I may not have followed what you meant re: pacing in older movies, then.

I can think of a lot of older movies I'd not touch the pacing on. I don't think it'd improve the film. Then again, I admit I've bounced off a couple because of extremely-flat cinematography and slow-as-molasses pacing (the original Oceans Eleven comes to mind—I don't drop many movies that I start, but I'm not sure I even made it to the 20 minute mark on that one).

Maybe I'm misjudging what you mean by "old"—I'd kinda assumed you meant "before digital editing", say, 80s and earlier. I don't think films from the '70s tend to feel terribly different from modern ones (we've developed new and more-chaotic ways to assemble very bad action scenes, but that aside, not much different) for example, but would grant that it's probably possible to divide cinema into silent/middle/modern period as far as the feel or what's asked of the viewer, and that the former two do feel pretty different from modern films—but I'd say we were already transitioning out of "middle" and into "modern" in the '60s, so you've got to go pretty old to get into what I'd judge to be notably different.

Now, film films do tend to look very different from modern movies, even as recently as the 90s, but that's because easy digital color grading hadn't ruined the artform yet. :-)

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#152

Post by permo-w »

mkaic wrote: post #52
NackerHughes wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only speaks of how severely the attention span of the average person has plummeted in recent decades. It's impossible to sit through a movie without enough dopamine-inducing distractions or MTV-style jump cuts every few seconds.

Definitely disagree with this take. I'd argue that all it means is that filmmakers have learned to make more exciting films. Cinema is a young art form and hasn't even been around for 200 year, it's no surprise to me that the movies of today are fundamentally different and more engaging than movies from last century.

more exciting != better

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#153

Post by protonbob »

stewx wrote: post #64

Anyone remember Tap Tap Revenge? Another game that was delisted a long time ago after a period of great popularity (15 million downloads in that game series, per Wikipedia).

That was my favorite mobile game of all time.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#154

Post by JohnFen »

branko_d wrote: post #115
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should really call out Apple and Google for mismanagement here. Imagine if there was the option to play a game for an hour as a free trial, and then buy the game instead of having to plunk down $4.99 sight-unseen - or having your game in the Free category with the microtransaction shovelware around it. If I'm the developer who wants users to have any semblance of try-before-you-buy, the free category (with…

I always wondered why Apple can't implement something similar to Steam refunds. Quote from https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds : You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam—for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn't meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn't like it. It doesn't matter. Valve will, upon request via help.s…

I mean, even Google has a policy like this (with a tighter time limit).

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#155

Post by mschuster91 »

acdha wrote: post #38
blockwriter wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With movies, I find it to be the opposite. I might recognize the old movies as better in many ways, but their pacing is excruciatingly slow compared to modern movies. It takes a layer of appreciation to get through many of them.

There is definitely an element of conditioning here. People have grown accustomed to frenetic action and the studios like it because it’s easier than hiring good writers – especially since they’re hoping for global sales and humor, subtly, and nuance are hard to translate – but that’s a learned preference based on what dominates the market. If different things came back on the market people would get used to them, to…

> especially since they’re hoping for global sales

On top of that, a lot of actually interesting content has the potential to cause shitstorms. Like, especially anything LGBT and women's rights won't fly in China, Russia, Arabia and lots of Asian countries. Black lead actors lead to massive shitstorms from the far-right in the USA and parts of Europe [1] - and so, producers leave all that "potentially troubling for sales" content out.

Everything "mainstream" is just the same bullshit now, white- and dumbwashed.

[1] Black Panther and the 3rd Star Wars trilogy were surrounded by some of the most vile harassment campaigns I've seen, for example

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#156

Post by TimMurnaghan »

blockwriter wrote: post #25
cld8483 wrote: post #11

They can't compete with what they once were, so they bury the past. I suspect many industries are like this. If classic movies were played alongside new Hollywood releases, the new movies would probably be choked out. Accordingly, Disney will even restrict the availability of their old movies on DVD. They can't stand competing with their former great selves.

With movies, I find it to be the opposite. I might recognize the old movies as better in many ways, but their pacing is excruciatingly slow compared to modern movies. It takes a layer of appreciation to get through many of them.

Obligatory counterexample, comedies. A quickfire screwball classic like "His Girl Friday" has lots of smart lines per minute where recent Hollywood ones will have two jokes in 90mins that they've had to put into the trailer, and slow build ups so that everybody can get the lame joke.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#157

Post by JohnFen »

mkaic wrote: post #52
NackerHughes wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only speaks of how severely the attention span of the average person has plummeted in recent decades. It's impossible to sit through a movie without enough dopamine-inducing distractions or MTV-style jump cuts every few seconds.

Definitely disagree with this take. I'd argue that all it means is that filmmakers have learned to make more exciting films. Cinema is a young art form and hasn't even been around for 200 year, it's no surprise to me that the movies of today are fundamentally different and more engaging than movies from last century.

> filmmakers have learned to make more exciting films

Filmmakers have learned how to optimize for a very specific kind of "excitement", but I disagree that movies are more exciting now than they used to be.

The most exciting and engaging movies I can think of are all pretty old.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#158

Post by cld8483 »

yamtaddle wrote: post #151
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying no one uses long shots or takes anymore and they aren't totally ineffective - I just watched Mandy over the weekend and it has plenty and they are used effectively but it's also a move that seems to have people regarding it in extremes - it's really a love or hate because of the choices they make. But what I'm trying to say is there are other tools in the toolbox now - I haven't heard anyone say that E…

Ah, OK—I may not have followed what you meant re: pacing in older movies, then. I can think of a lot of older movies I'd not touch the pacing on. I don't think it'd improve the film. Then again, I admit I've bounced off a couple because of extremely-flat cinematography and slow-as-molasses pacing (the original Oceans Eleven comes to mind—I don't drop many movies that I start, but I'm not sure I even made it to the 20…

> (the original Oceans Eleven comes to mind—I don't drop many movies that I start, but I'm not sure I even made it to the 20 minute mark on that one).

Some movies were just never very good in the first place, I'd put the original Oceans Eleven in that category. On the other hand, compare the original The Italian Job to the remake. The remake has faster 'modern' editing but it's definitely a much worse movie than the (excellent) original.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#159

Post by JohnFen »

ssully wrote: post #111
_5uxp wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are more dumb tho, scripts and dialogues are so much simple. They rarely give you the feeling of once a lifetime seeing experience. Most of them have too much CGI and sometimes not even looking rea at all.

Sorry, but you are just generalizing based on the top blockbuster movies. Films have never been more diverse in their style and quality and, in my opinion, offer something for everyone. If you are looking for movies that focus on strong dialogue and character work those movies are still being made and are fantastic.

But they all seem to be locked up in streaming services and the like.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#160

Post by itsoktocry »

dgb23 wrote: post #148
joenot443 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me about it. I'm an iOS engineer at FAANG, but I've been shipping my own apps since 2011. It's depressing that there's no longer a market for paid, high quality, ad-free, fully packaged apps and games. I actually interned at a mobile games studio for a summer and it was made clear to me what the profit model was: pander solely to the whales, ignore the free users. Something like 70% of our revenue came from 2% o…

Is that the only conclusion? There's a subset of users who are hungry for high quality applications and games. They will happily pay for substantial extensions and content upgrades. They will remember your name and see anything you release as worth considering. It's a smaller market of course but a sustainable one. In terms of video games. I'm personally not a mobile gamer though. Maybe it's quite a bit different fro…

>There's a subset of users who are hungry for high quality applications and games. They will happily pay for substantial extensions and content upgrades.

Can you point to someone having this sort of success based on this model in the mobile space?

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