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Flappy Bird creator, Dong Nguyen, taking down game; "I can't take this anymore"

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11–20 of 194 posts

Re: Flappy Bird creator, Dong Nguyen, taking down game; "I can't take this anymore"

#11
My teenager students will be devastated by this. They really liked the game. We also had a good class discussion about adverts, the amount of money you can get from adverts, and the cost of living in Hanoi.

The main thing is that they worked out that there is a human being who lives somewhere and who has a name sitting down at a computer and hacking away at this game so they can play it.

Re: Flappy Bird creator, Dong Nguyen, taking down game; "I can't take this anymore"

#16
post #3

Some context would be nice. I have no idea who this guy is (or Flappy Bird) and why we should care.

Flappy Bird is a silly game in which you tap on the screen of your touch device to nagivate a (duck?) through a series of narrow paths delineated by tubes sprouting from the sky and ground. In the tradition of older 8 bit video games it's extremely unforgiving one mistake and you have to start over. It's apparently been a big hit. In regard to who the guy is, he is the developer of that silly game which he did for fu…

I don't get it.

Why did he get harassed?

Because he made money?

Re: Flappy Bird creator, Dong Nguyen, taking down game; "I can't take this anymore"

#17
I feel for the guy. He made something a while ago, put on the market without much fanfare and then out of the blue his game suddenly shot to the top and raked in 50 million downloads. If you're not expecting it and you don't have the right people around you, all this publicity (a lot of which is quite negative, despite the game's popularity) can be pretty hard to take for some people. Remember Susan Boyle's breakdown post her win on Britain's Got Talent?

Having said that, I've spent a couple of hours playing it since the first posts on HN showed up (yesterday) and got myself a top score of 50. I feel the appeal is in its simplicity.

I hope the creator takes some time out and gets the support he needs.

Re: Flappy Bird creator, Dong Nguyen, taking down game; "I can't take this anymore"

#19
This very recent tweet from Dong seems to explain his motivation: https://twitter.com/dongatory/statuses/432096186313355264

other guy: "No problem, but you hate the success of Flappy Bird?"

Dong: "Not because of them but because how people use my game. They are overusing it."

Re: Flappy Bird creator, Dong Nguyen, taking down game; "I can't take this anymore"

#20
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flappy Bird is a silly game in which you tap on the screen of your touch device to nagivate a (duck?) through a series of narrow paths delineated by tubes sprouting from the sky and ground. In the tradition of older 8 bit video games it's extremely unforgiving one mistake and you have to start over. It's apparently been a big hit. In regard to who the guy is, he is the developer of that silly game which he did for fu…

I don't get it. Why did he get harassed? Because he made money?

Every creator gets harassed these days, to varying degrees. You can create the most sublime and enthralling game in history and people will still complain about it. It's even worse if you create a simple game that is frustratingly difficult. The culture of entitlement and harassment is one of the worst aspects of the internet today.
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