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

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

#91

Post by joshvm » Sat, Feb 08, 2014, 10:14 PM UTC

kin wrote: post #51

If this is because of harassment then I feel really bad for him. The game may be super simple and silly but it shouldn't be ridiculed by those who are jealous of its luck and success. My personal score is 102 and I appreciate the game for what it is.

There was a Polygon article on HN recently about how the audience has no idea what it wants. It used Flappy Bird as the example, mentioning how it was an overnight success, but repeatedly slammed it:

"Not only is the visual language of Flappy Bird almost entirely re-appropriated from early NES games, but it seems to be engineered and designed by someone still learning how to create games. There are frequent slowdowns and animation glitches in the Android version but, more importantly, Flappy Bird has absolutely no sense of what indie game developers call "feel."

The hitboxes are ridiculously large, which is the source of much of the game’s difficulty. The flapping mechanic, while serviceable, is entirely ordinary. It looks and feels like a game design student's first project in their intro to programming class."

In other words: "Well, this product is a turd, but it look how many idiots are buying it!" If that was your pet project, how would you feel? Imagine if every news article covering your game did so by giving you backhand compliments. It would crush you very, very quickly.

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

#92

Post by sgustard » Sat, Feb 08, 2014, 10:15 PM UTC

keithpeter wrote: post #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.

Cost of living in Hanoi is so high because of strict building codes. They have these towers, you see, and they constantly have to move them a floor at a time across the city, and the larger floors have to sit below the smaller floors, with a severely constrained workforce. It's a logistics nightmare.

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

#93

Post by jonny_eh » Sat, Feb 08, 2014, 10:18 PM UTC

cfinke wrote: post #65

Jhsto wrote: post #55

As a side note, Dong has doubled his Twitter followers in one hour from 7000 to what now is nearly 16000. Whatever was his real intentions, he is receiving media attention which will most likely last even after he pulls out the game. You could speculate that he is trying to make a name for himself, so that the upcoming games would make him a stable income. As an indie developer he should know the fact that Flappy Bir…

You could speculate that he is trying to make a name for himself, so that the upcoming games would make him a stable income. Are you speculating that, or are you suggesting that others should speculate that?

HN has quite an interesting population of bots that comment. You might think they're human, but they're super pedantic, much more than any human you would meet in real life.

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

#94

Post by jonny_eh » Sat, Feb 08, 2014, 10:19 PM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #64

SurfScore wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's about more than money for this guy

I respect his morals but the people over using the game are just going to move on to some other game and get addicted to it. If he feels bad about profiting from the game, he should donate it to a charity. That amount of money can do a lot of good.

And if a drug dealer decides to stop selling meth, you'd discourage him since addicts can just buy it down the block?

Note: I'm not saying Flappy Bird is like meth, but just pointing out your logic.

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

#95

Post by dustyreagan » Sat, Feb 08, 2014, 10:24 PM UTC

Accidental product success, followed by accidental PR success. Half of HN would kill for this kind of luck, and this poor guy doesn't want it... Which makes it even more interesting!

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

#96

Post by _delirium » Sat, Feb 08, 2014, 10:25 PM UTC

freyrs3 wrote: post #54

qrybam wrote: post #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…

This is actually quite common behavior. You see this a lot in any sort of craft where you get sudden and unexpected success, they end up resenting their creation or feel some disconnect between the effort they put in and the result.

You also tend to get a whole different level of weird attacks when you hit that. When you suddenly go from mildly obscure musician or developer to unexpected-spotlight, a huge pile of people appear to tell you that your thing is shit and you should feel bad for making it, whereas when it's safely obscure you don't tend to get that a lot.

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

#97

Post by forgottenpass » Sat, Feb 08, 2014, 10:28 PM UTC

catshirt wrote: post #62

forgottenpass wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing more to life than profit. Except maybe regretting your priorities on your deathbed, but whatevs, you won't be worried about it for long.

even if you actually hated money , it seems strange to turn your back on your passion because it came with a shit ton of money .

I don't buy the premise of either of those hypotheticals.

Where is he turning his back on his passion? It doesn't sound like the way people are responding to Flappy Bird are the embodiment of his passion he wants. And his passion is in game dev, not an oddly specific passion for riding only the Flappy Bird app to success. Taking it down doesn't mean he can't build different games.

I also reject the idea that it was because of the money alone that he is taking the app down. Money wasn't the only byproduct of the success. Far be it for me to make assumptions, but it may be the "ruins my simple life" levels of baggage that came with the success of Flappy Bird.

My post was attempting to point out that he may have priorities in addition to profit, not that he is anti-money. If you meant to respond to the guy that is actually saying that the money alone could be the problem, perhaps you should move your post.

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

#98

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Feb 08, 2014, 10:32 PM UTC

pikachu_is_cool wrote: post #70

catshirt wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

even if you actually hated money , it seems strange to turn your back on your passion because it came with a shit ton of money .

Oh yeah, becoming rich is so great. You can buy whatever you want for people you are not entirely sure are your real friends.

If you literally don't want the money, give it to charity.

Problem solved, get back to your passion.

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

#99

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Feb 08, 2014, 10:35 PM UTC

freyrs3 wrote: post #54

qrybam wrote: post #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…

This is actually quite common behavior. You see this a lot in any sort of craft where you get sudden and unexpected success, they end up resenting their creation or feel some disconnect between the effort they put in and the result.

They probably feel there's a disconnect between effort put in and resulting popularity because that's objectively true.

And I understand feeling resentment when faced with a shining, blinking example of how unfair such things are and how hard it is to get popular even with something very good.

Note: this is a comment about the general case

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

#100

Post by Wohui » Sat, Feb 08, 2014, 10:35 PM UTC

joshvm wrote: post #91

kin wrote: post #51

If this is because of harassment then I feel really bad for him. The game may be super simple and silly but it shouldn't be ridiculed by those who are jealous of its luck and success. My personal score is 102 and I appreciate the game for what it is.

There was a Polygon article on HN recently about how the audience has no idea what it wants. It used Flappy Bird as the example, mentioning how it was an overnight success, but repeatedly slammed it: "Not only is the visual language of Flappy Bird almost entirely re-appropriated from early NES games, but it seems to be engineered and designed by someone still learning how to create games. There are frequent slowdowns…

Good point, I read that article before trying the game thus never realised how insulting the author was. And he's a drama queen about the hitbox. The game is smooth on my 1½ years old S3 (FWIW).