To be honest like realy honest, i couldn't careless. The guy was making more money than me and given my current situation, i can't feel not even the most tiny drop of empathy for him. Don't even like the game.
Flappy Bird by the Numbers
61–70 of 149 posts
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#62I think the most interesting part of this is what the author points out: this is a story about a normal developer riding one hell of a roller-coaster. On top of that, let's face it: the game ain't that much. It's not like there was some special secret sauce he put in there. I can guarantee you that there are another 1000+ games out there just as simple and playable as flappy bird out there. So this story, aside from…
"I can guarantee you that there are another 1000+ games out there just as simple and playable as flappy bird out there." I don't know that this is true. Or maybe it's true for "simple and playable", but maybe they're missing the "fun and addictive" qualities that made Flappy Bird work. There's a lot of subtle things that made Flappy Bird a game people enjoyed- the exact responses of the control, the timing and spacin…
It's a mistake to cast these things in absolutes. Hopefully I didn't do that.
Of course, all those things you mention are important. Critical, even. But appstores are not meritocracies, no more than the music industry is. You've got to be working at the top of your game, getting all the details right, and even then 1) you've got a small chance of making it big, and 2) somebody with less skill and execution might do much better than you do.
These aren't reasons to give up, just to understand the risks involved. This market exists to extract the maximum amount of developer work for the minimum amount of money. That way the consumers love their little gadgets more -- and will buy even more. It does not exist to make really great developers a decent living. (Although that's certainly possible)
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Our culture is so completely and utterly obsessed with money that everyone says he's an idiot for taking down an app without realizing the chaos one goes through in a situation like that. It is not obsession with money, it is just confusion over it. I mean, it isn't that hard to ignore all the bad comments and emails, and a small price to pay for riches. There must be something else going on, and that is the bit th…
It is not obsession with money, it is just confusion over it. The actions and statements of the author seem completely at odds, and he literally could not do more self-promotion if he tried. Seriously, beyond assassinating a world leader dressed as flappy bird, I cannot fathom how he could have cemented more attention. He had a hit game. These come and go, usually with the creators completely shrouded and hidden. But…
I think some of this speculation that this man is some cunning, super-intelligent villain gives him, an average human being, too much credit. Honestly, these "theories" are too outlandish to really be about the actions of a mere human being. What is honestly more believable, that he is some "super PR genius" or, perhaps, just had more than he could handle?
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not obsession with money, it is just confusion over it. The actions and statements of the author seem completely at odds, and he literally could not do more self-promotion if he tried. Seriously, beyond assassinating a world leader dressed as flappy bird, I cannot fathom how he could have cemented more attention. He had a hit game. These come and go, usually with the creators completely shrouded and hidden. But…
I think some of this speculation that this man is some cunning, super-intelligent villain gives him, an average human being, too much credit. Honestly, these "theories" are too outlandish to really be about the actions of a mere human being. What is honestly more believable, that he is some "super PR genius" or, perhaps, just had more than he could handle?
Villain? Super-intelligent? While your strawman is interesting, and typical in a discourse that too often has to be extremely polarized opposites, it has zero relevance to my comment. Don't try to use me as a lever, thanks.
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#65I love Flappy Bird. Period.
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Discovery in general is still a pretty knotty problem. Even Netflix, which has a relatively small pool of things to sort through, doesn't do a particularly good job of it. It often recommends things I have no interest in whatsoever, and conversely never recommends things I very much want to watch but have to find manually. It's practical to manually sort as a Netflix customer precisely because their pool is relativel…
> Even Netflix ... doesn't do a particularly good job of [discovery]. I see this message repeated by a lot of tech people, but I feel like I get fairly good recommendations. Am I alone? What is it about the recommendations that seem bad? Is it because you know there is better content there but the metadata has somehow not categorized it properly for cross-referencing, or does it seem more like it's guessing from a sh…
I suspect it's that last one. I mostly use netflix in streaming mode. The pool of available content netflix is allowed to stream at any given time is pathetic - most of the best matches they could make are films they don't have so they have to settle for suggesting something half-assed that they do have.
As a result, I find myself gradually tending more and more to use various other streaming services first, and only settle for Netflix if I can't find it somewhere else first. (I should just cancel Netflix entirely but haven't gotten around to it yet.)
Their suggestions seemed better when they were a mail-only service and hence not subject to the same limited pool. (A separate factor: when I initially got Netflix there was a HUGE list of movies I wanted to see and hadn't yet; over time that pool also has substantially diminished. So there might be fewer good matches to find even if Netflix had unlimited scope to provide the good matches.)
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say, given what money can do for you in this world -- how much easier it can make your life, the doors it can open -- that it is at the very least surprising that anyone would turn down this kind of success. In fact, I'll bet you'd have trouble finding one person out of a hundred who would not be willing to suffer pretty significant pain for two weeks if it meant they'd make $50,000 a day. Given that people a…
The possible subtext is that he is shutting it down in fear of bad repercussion - like being exposed for gaming the app store rankings - or to simply avoid such accusations.
Highly speculative.
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#68I feel that instead of taking the game down he could use the money that he was getting from the game and give it to charity. That way he could still live the simple life that he wanted while doing something positive as well.
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say, given what money can do for you in this world -- how much easier it can make your life, the doors it can open -- that it is at the very least surprising that anyone would turn down this kind of success. In fact, I'll bet you'd have trouble finding one person out of a hundred who would not be willing to suffer pretty significant pain for two weeks if it meant they'd make $50,000 a day. Given that people a…
The possible subtext is that he is shutting it down in fear of bad repercussion - like being exposed for gaming the app store rankings - or to simply avoid such accusations.
That's what I think. Those are just way too much reviews, I would like to see this numbers stacked up against angry birds in its prime.
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#70I think the story of this game exemplifies the fact that content needs a minimum amount of attention to reveal it's true value. The journey of Flappy Bird appears to me like this: Stage 1: Almost no attention, almost no growth Stage 2: Some kind of grey market paid downloads / ratings service Stage 3: Attention of minimum critical mass of early consumers (increase in audience of 1 or perhaps 2 orders of magnitude) St…
Almost all markets work like this it's basically the innovation diffusion model from Crossing the Chasm.