Comments on: Editorial: Flapping over Creativity

By: Julian 'SiliconNooB' Taylor

Julian 'SiliconNooB' Taylor — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 10:54:58 +0000

People are only playing it because it has become a watercooler conversation starter.

By: Andrew 'Mel' Melcon

Andrew 'Mel' Melcon — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 03:07:09 +0000

Things often get blown up to silly proportions when the thing itself is quite ordinary. But people aren’t talking about Flappy Bird because of the game itself and I don’t think (too many) people think Flappy Bird represents a unique or outstanding case. What happened was an incidental piece of news, in this case it was Flappy Bird’s sudden success, got everyone talking about a topic they all clearly had strong opinions about. Mobile platform shovelware is a topic we’re all familiar with and have an opinion on (most of them negative and therefore loud) and Flappy Bird became that catalyst for the subject at large, it became a singular topic we could all talk about it through. The only thing that makes Flappy Bird unique was its timing.

By: Wolfe

Wolfe — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 20:40:41 +0000

Flappy Bird is the gaming version of a viral youtube video. And evidence that you don’t need anything more than a lot of (moronic) people talking about something in order to make that something famous and sought after.

By: Lusipurr

Lusipurr — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 17:08:34 +0000

We've heard today from both Nintendo and Nguyen. The Big N affirms that they did not contact Nguyen and that they are in no way responsible for Flappy Bird being pulled. Nguyen, for his part, says that he chose to take the game down because it is 'too addictive'. What I think is remarkable is not that Flappy Bird made money, or that it was pulled, or that it exists at all, but that we are talking about it. It is by all accounts an extremely ordinary/sub-ordinary iOS title which, like many other similar titles, borrows heavily in gameplay elements and design. This is wrapped around coding which is far from optimal. So why is Flappy Bird generating this kind of press at all? One feels it is almost a Lemming effect, where one person starts talking about it, and so others feel they must also, and suddenly everyone is talking about it, even though the subject is, itself, worthy of but very little attention indeed. There is a real place for a study here--not of the game itself, but of the explosive hype/furor/interest surrounding it, which appears to have come from nowhere but hype/furor/interest itself: the sort of wholly media-generated 'news' that our industry, in particular, is known for.