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.
Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
131–140 of 149 posts
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#132"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 roguelik…
Flappy bird is already a clone itself so they were there even before. And there are also similar games that are really polished and beautiful (like Badland with its great story and graphics). Flappy bird is a fluke (regarding popularity), I think. Being free definitely helped them too.
Yup. In my previous job I wrote a UI framework for set top box developers in my company to be able to be able to create interfaces relatively easily. One of the exercises I used to give them during training was to write exactly this game (well, except artwork). It's ideal for a platform that has an RC remote control as its interface... So it's far from an original idea, you have to just assume that the developer got lucky.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#133I 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 a…
Who really killed adventure games: http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#134Earlier 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.
You can play it here: http://www2.sunflat.net/en/games/sfcave.html
I remember playing SFCave on my Palm IIIe. That was so much fun.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#135People want games with birds in them.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#136"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 roguelik…
i think you're point is a bit off-the-mark, so i'm going to add a qualifier to the title to put you in the right direction.
"Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants..."
...in order to fully maximize revenue per employee.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#137I played the game twice and deleted it. High score was 3. I guess I have more sensibility then a lot of my peers.
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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…
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?
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#139For 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
Re: Flappy Bird is proof that no one knows what the audience wants
#140"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 roguelik…
Exactly - There is no universal truth involving pretty much anything/