Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

rollingstone.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 236 posts

Re: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

#21

Post by mark212 »

legohead wrote: post #11
uptown wrote: post #2

"Then he hit a button, and Flappy Bird disappeared. When I ask him why he did it, he answers with the same conviction that led him to create the game. 'I'm master of my own fate,' he says. 'Independent thinker.'" Good for him. The world needs more people with this attitude.

Or he spent money on buying votes for his game and rather than deal with a ToS breach and lose his money, he took it off the market.

I'm not so sure. It would have to use iAd on iOS to do display ads, and Apple would yank that access with a breach of the terms of service. I doubt he's still getting "tens of thousands" of dollars from ad revenue in Android alone.

Re: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

#22

Post by mpermar »

uptown wrote: post #2

"Then he hit a button, and Flappy Bird disappeared. When I ask him why he did it, he answers with the same conviction that led him to create the game. 'I'm master of my own fate,' he says. 'Independent thinker.'" Good for him. The world needs more people with this attitude.

He could also have scheduled a recurrent funds transfer to the charity of his choice. That would have been a lot of karma for the future.

Re: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

#23

Post by GuiA »

mpermar wrote: post #22
uptown wrote: post #2

"Then he hit a button, and Flappy Bird disappeared. When I ask him why he did it, he answers with the same conviction that led him to create the game. 'I'm master of my own fate,' he says. 'Independent thinker.'" Good for him. The world needs more people with this attitude.

He could also have scheduled a recurrent funds transfer to the charity of his choice. That would have been a lot of karma for the future.

> "But the hardest thing of all, he says, was something else entirely. He hands me his iPhone so that I can scroll through some messages he's saved. One is from a woman chastising him for "distracting the children of the world." Another laments that "13 kids at my school broke their phones because of your game, and they still play it cause it's addicting like crack." Nguyen tells me of e-mails from workers who had lost their jobs, a mother who had stopped talking to her kids. "At first I thought they were just joking," he says, "but I realize they really hurt themselves." Nguyen – who says he botched tests in high school because he was playing too much Counter-Strike – genuinely took them to heart."

Re: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

#25

Post by bsenftner »

As a long term developer of entertainment software, I totally agree with his point of view about the impact one's software has upon the lives of the user. The general acceptance goes that the crazies and depressed will be triggered by something and its not your fault if something provocative you worked on triggers an incident. That's what the group think tells us, but in ones personal reality it's not that easy to shrug off. Over the decades I've been on the teams of high profile games and films with medium levels of violence. After each title is released, I'd receive a half dozen or so "fan" emails from people who obviously researched the dev team and was reaching out. On the games with medium levels of violence, of the half dozen fan emails only one would be praise, the others would be serious hate mail. That kind of stuff throws you, even if you suspect pretty strongly that the sender is probably 8 years old. Yeah, I can totally see why he pulled the plug. He's got enough momey, and he's not greedy. What he want's most is clearly freedom, and fame was taking that away. Yeah, I'd pull the plug too.

Re: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

#26

Post by sdegutis »

uptown wrote: post #2

"Then he hit a button, and Flappy Bird disappeared. When I ask him why he did it, he answers with the same conviction that led him to create the game. 'I'm master of my own fate,' he says. 'Independent thinker.'" Good for him. The world needs more people with this attitude.

Disagreed.

Re: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

#27

Post by conesus »

bsenftner wrote: post #25

As a long term developer of entertainment software, I totally agree with his point of view about the impact one's software has upon the lives of the user. The general acceptance goes that the crazies and depressed will be triggered by something and its not your fault if something provocative you worked on triggers an incident. That's what the group think tells us, but in ones personal reality it's not that easy to sh…

To be fair, I run a news reader and you wouldn't believe some of the hate mail I receive. I just assumed he received much more of it and not enough of the positive mail.

Also, when you're at the business end of a press blitz, you get overwhelmed and can make irrational decisions that you might come to regret.

Re: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

#28

Post by pervycreeper »

pfisch wrote: post #9

I heard it was just a reskin of a premade game he got off an asset store. Is that not the case? This article made it sound like it was an original idea, but I thought it was just that one button to go up, no button to go down flash game. Is that not what it is?

What asset store would that be?

The article explains how the game was designed.

Re: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

#29

Post by sixQuarks »

Ryel wrote: post #24

Just to clarify, Dong Nguyen is still alive... right? The article is a little fuzzy - "In the wake of Flappy Bird's demise, rumors spread. Nguyen had committed suicide."

Didn't you read the article? He committed Japanese ritual suicide, in front of 100 broken iphones sent to him by irate players.
Post reply on HN