What I'm most curious about these games is how do these games gain traction in the first place?
Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
81–90 of 149 posts
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#82Flappy 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.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#83What I'm most curious about these games is how do these games gain traction in the first place?
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.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#84I 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...
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 Sadly, the original site that hosted it just has a "Java Applet" placeholder there now: 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.
The flapping mechanic is very similar to that used in Joust (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joust_%28video_game%29), but without direction control, opponents or lava trolls.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#85Run 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.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Sadly, the original site that hosted it just has a "Java Applet" placeholder there now: 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.
The flapping mechanic is very similar to that used in Joust ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joust_%28video_game%29 ), but without direction control, opponents or lava trolls.
And without anything like the level of control and finesse of the flapping in Joust.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#87Yes 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.
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,…
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...
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#88This 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…
Relevant:
Malcolm Gladwell: Choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce...
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
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...
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.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#90Many 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.