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.
Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
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Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#42I 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...
Jetpack Joyride is a better example of the original helicopter game. Flappy bird is pretty much the Profit Bird in jetpack joyride but much more derpy, kind of like balloon fighter or joust.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#43There 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.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#44If 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…
Canabalt?
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#45If 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…
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Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#46I 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…
I was thinking the same thing. The ads appear only on the Game Over screen. On my Droid, the ads appears to be cropped, so I don't even know what is being advertised to me. Finally, I don't even see it for more than a half second 'cause I just hit the Play button as soon as it appears.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#47And 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...
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#48If 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…
Adam Atomic's canabalt, and it was a brilliant and polished game (even if it was created in a super short period of time). I'm sad to see Flappy Bird mentioned alongside it, yet the comparison is apt and I've spent nearly as much time in a marathon happy bird session as I ever did in a canabalt session.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#49If 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…
You're thinking of Canabalt, which had a pixilated art style with a limited monochrome palette:
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#50This 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. O…
absolutely. if the success of flappy birds teaches us anything it's certainly not a lesson about game design. the big players in the mobile space know very well how to generate long term revenues with their games. flappy birds is a lesson about virality (and how unpredictable it is).