It's an SFCave ripoff!
Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
101–110 of 149 posts
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
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).
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#103IMO 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.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
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 ^_^
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#105no 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.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#106One very interesting thing about this game was its size. I was pleasantly surprised to see a game less than 1 MB.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#107First, 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.
I think he was joking.
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.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#108This 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…
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 tha…
Some thing tells me this dude spent way less on development. Justifying it is easier when there is no budget.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#109This is very similar to the helicopter game back in the day! What a simple idea, amazing! :)
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#110I 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.