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Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

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Re: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

#121

Post by biot »

hnriot wrote: post #60
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…

I totally disagree with his point of view. He could simply sell the game to an established company that is already set up to handle the responsibilities that come with running a business. Throwing away $50k/day is just a stupid thing to do.

Two things about that:

  1. He's still earning ad revenue from existing installs.
  2. In the last 22 hours of the app's existence (when he announced
     he would be taking it down) more than 10 million new people
     installed it.
In other words, he's likely making just as much if not more today. He could have instantly removed it from the app store instead of saying "in 22 hours", so it's entirely possible that he's way better off due to all the publicity and attention from the app's removal.

Re: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

#122

Post by DigitalSea »

I wish the game industry as a whole was a lot more like Dong, instead of being all about the money. He gave up 50k a day, no doubt if the app had stayed in the store it might have even climbed higher before peaking and slowly coming back down. That one line in the interview when asked why he took his game down, "I'm master of my own fate" says it all about the type of guy Dong is: a decent one.

Sure he's still making money from the people that downloaded it, but he's not being greedy and I respect that. He put the well-being and privacy of himself and his family above the crazy amounts of money he was making. He made his money and he is grateful, he didn't try and push it as far as he could have. Heck, he had so many offers from people wanting to buy the game, he could have easily commanded a six-figure sum for the IP alone, but didn't. He just decided to take it down and leave it at that.

The world needs more people like Dong.

Re: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

#123

Post by i386 »

pgrote wrote: post #83
stevejohnson wrote: post #74

Does anyone have the source for the Romero quote on the third page? John Romero, co-creator of the game Doom, says Flappy Bird is "a reaction against prevailing design the way grunge was a reaction to metal."

Odd. I cannot find a source for it on Google, twitter, his personal site or facebook.

Its called journalism.

Re: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

#124

Post by NPC82 »

robflynn wrote: post #99
conesus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was the same for me when I was project lead for Gaim/Pidgin. I was lead for something like 6 years and I eventually got tired of the hate. Sure, there was plenty of praise, too. But the harassment eventually became annoying. It hit it's breaking point when someone folks managed to figure out my cell phone number and would call me at all sorts of hours (3am once!) to "tell me about their ideas." I changed my cell n…

Pidgin/gaim fan here - thank you. I think I started using it just before the time of the name change and it's had an enormously positive impact on my life. That might sound silly but it was one of the few Linux programs I knew how to install and configure at the time.

Re: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

#125

Post by sergiotapia »

grey-area wrote: post #113
georgiecasey wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big difference is you weren't being paid! I had a free and ad-free app on Android and I got some abuse about missing features. I took it down after a while. The sense of entitlement was unreal. Now if I was making $50k a day, I'd take all the abuse that could have been thrown at me!

Imagine that abuse and entitlement scaled up by 10000, would you still want the money?

Yes. I can stuff my ears with wads of $100 bills to cancel the noise from peasants.

Re: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

#127

Post by stevejohnson »

stevejohnson wrote: post #74

Does anyone have the source for the Romero quote on the third page? John Romero, co-creator of the game Doom, says Flappy Bird is "a reaction against prevailing design the way grunge was a reaction to metal."

To the snarky replies in this comment subtree: that passage read as if it was referring to some other piece or statement by Romero, which I'd be interested in reading further if it existed. The comparison is apt.

Intuitively, this doesn't seem like a good way to quote someone you called up specifically for this article.

Re: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

#128

Post by dsrguru »

elhector wrote: post #103
xg15 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As he wrote, he didn't put the game down because he was afraid of the money or didn't want to run a business, he was actually afraid of the effect the "addictiveness" of the game had on some of its users. With that premise, selling to an established company would have been the most irresponsible thing he could do. After all, the biggest assets of the game are its large user base, the media hype and just that "addicti…

Agree, funny how most comments focus on the money aspect of the conversation. He wanted to feel socially responsible again, did not like the impact that his game had on people's psyche / addictive behaviors and pulled the plug because of it.

In fairness, the three games he's currently working on follow that same mold of being super easy to learn and super hard to beat--not a good recipe for warding off addiction!

Re: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

#129

Post by xg15 »

dsrguru wrote: post #128
elhector wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, funny how most comments focus on the money aspect of the conversation. He wanted to feel socially responsible again, did not like the impact that his game had on people's psyche / addictive behaviors and pulled the plug because of it.

In fairness, the three games he's currently working on follow that same mold of being super easy to learn and super hard to beat--not a good recipe for warding off addiction!

You have a point there. The article states he wants to introduce reminders to take a break, though that sounds like the usual excuse feature in such cases.

Re: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

#130

Post by jusben1369 »

antirez wrote: post #120
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, seen from outside, this seems something strange and, in my opinion, not good about the American culture: there is always somebody to blame for your problem, a reason why you are acting in a given way, an external cause if you suffer a medical problem, eat too much, put all the kind of pills in your body, and so forth. Probably this is representative only of a minority, but from the outside this looks like…

Why do you think this is a US specific issue?
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