7 ms·

Why Do Fads Fade? The Inevitable Death Of Flappy Bird

91 points by mkarthik 9y ago

vinchuco 9y ago
TLDR; conflict,mystery,resolution : are three phases in a cycle to keep you engaged (akin to the way this article was written)
xchaotic 9y ago
Interesting timing as a French clone of Flappy Bird - VooDoo (with a ball instead of bird) is currently the top game in Google Play store...
jrs95 9y ago
Didn’t Flappy Bird die because it was pulled from app stores?
- rando444 9y ago
  The author decided he preferred peace and quiet over leaving flappy bird in the app store. http://uk.businessinsider.com/why-flappy-birds-shut-down-2014-2 http://uk.businessinsider.com/why-flappy-birds-shut-down-201...
  - SyneRyder 9y ago
    Dong Nguyen kept making games, though. His company is called .GEARS, and the successor is Swing Copters: http://www.dotgears.com/ http://www.dotgears.com/ https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=DOTGEARS https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=DOTGEARS He also made Ninja Spinki Challenges, which I really enjoyed for a while and has some really cute graphics: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dotgears.ninjabounce https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dotgears.n...
    - randlet 9y ago
      > Swing Copters This appears to just be Flappy Bird rotated 90deg [1]. Pretty funny! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuoCeze0B3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuoCeze0B3c
- watwut 9y ago
  Yes. The dude got harassed more then he cared for. Which is quite sad if you think about it.
- Kiro 9y ago
  Yes, which is mentioned several times throughout the article but I take it you didn't even click the link.
throwaway2016a 9y ago
I would love to create an app that makes $50k a day and lasted even a week. I wouldn't care if it was a fad at that point.
- xienze 9y ago
  No kidding, if I had made Flappy Bird I’d be writing an article about how my days of working were just a fad.
- elboru 9y ago
  Imaging making that amount of money for a programmer in a developing country (in this case Vietnam), it would be insane, making $20k a year as a developer in my country is considered a well payed job. If you could make $350k in a week that would mean 17.5 years of a "well payed" programming job.
natecavanaugh 9y ago
This one kind of lost me on it's comparison to Breaking Bad. I could be an outlier here, but I've rewatched Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and The Walking Dead at least 4 times, probably more. The reason I don't think I'm too much of an outlier, in that AMC always runs a marathon to both attract new viewers and reconnect existing viewers, and if it weren't successful, I doubt they'd keep doing it. The article makes some good points about variability and using the story line format to get people hooked, but it's examples and connections seem really tenuous to the overall point.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Given that all the production costs are sunk at this point, the incremental cost of offering as part of a streaming catalog or filling up some AMC broadcast slots as part of an "event" is pretty low. Pre-streaming, I'm sure a lot more people bought DVD sets of favorite series than actually rewatched them from beginning to end. The same principle applies today I'm sure even in the cases where the content is effectively free. I'm not sure this example really counts as a fad though. While successive groups rediscover older TV shows (not that the ones you list are very old at all) viewership is rarely going to be more than of a fraction than it was originally. Perhaps there are marginal exceptions for shows that never really had an audience but develop a bit of a cult following over time. ADDED: The other issue I have with the author's broader theory is that much of what he says is just as applicable to episodic TV shows like Seinfeld as it is to serialized shows.
tw1010 9y ago
What a weird article. It feels like the author wanted to convey his insight that the reason fads fade is due to the gameplay having a constrained information density. And then he felt the urge to follow the tradition of anchoring the thesis in a concrete current example, and he chose flappy birds. But flappy birds is not at all an example that satisfies the hypothesis. Flappy bird, as he mentions, was deliberately pulled from the store by its creator. Why didn't he choose pokemon go instead? Because that hasn't fully faded yet? I'm not trying to personally attack the author, I'm just making a comment that the style in this article probably isn't what we want to emulate in our own stuff.
- golergka 9y ago
  > But flappy flappy birds is not at all an example that satisfies the hypothesis. Flappy bird, as he mentions, was deliberately pulled from the store by its creator. Meanwhile, there are thousands of clones out there, and people who wanted to play it were and are free to play any of them. So, we can safely gauge if the fad is really gone by popularity of the whole genre it created, not necessarily by the original itself.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - watwut 9y ago
    That is not entirely true. Most of those clones are not fun at all despite having the same concept. Or they are fun, but not nearly as addictive for some reason. Details of execution matter and original flappy bird somehow got a lot of details right. Randomly downloaded app does not. It is same as with pc-man and tetris. Most of clones are not fun at all, despite having the same concept. Source: I played both original flappy and then tried some of clones.
    - cr0sh 9y ago
      There's a claim (according to wikipedia and other sources) that Flappy Bird was a clone of another game (called "Piou Piou vs Cactus"). I'm not going to argue "which came first", but your comment is intriguing: 1. If Flappy Bird was a clone, what made it more "addictive" or "fun to play" than the original (Piou Piou)? 2. What did clones of Flappy Bird do wrong? 3. How does Flappy Bird's "addictive mechanics" compare/relate to other games that hook players? 4. What about similar schemes/products (non-virtual)? I mean - what do all these hook into; why and how do they become ultra-popular (seriously - $50K per day for Flappy Bird!), etc? I and some former coworkers called these types of products (League of Legends could certainly fit in here) "Money Fountains" - relatively simple mechanics (in some cases executed extremely well - I mean, to my eye, LoL is a beautiful and engaging game, despite the basic concepts) that generate for their developers insane amounts of cash, seemingly without end. All legally. But at the same time, others trying to follow in the footsteps of the "pioneers" seem to fail more than they succeed. So the question is, why and how to the originals succeed? Is it just luck? First mover advantage? Or is it something else?
indescions_2017 9y ago
Indie GameDev is absolutely a hits driven business. Often I tell people you will learn more from studying some thing like the Autobiography of Keith Richards. Than yet another build a game engine in thirty days book ;) Html5 "io" games follow similar viral trajectories. But also have some staying power. Once they develop mechanics or features that encourage replay-ablity. Particularly at web scale multiplayer with leaderboards ;) Some examples for Friday Fun http://splix.io/ http://splix.io/ https://starblast.io/ https://starblast.io/ http://zombs.io/ http://zombs.io/
- metalrain 9y ago
  One more http://agar.io/ http://agar.io/ This one seems to have quite long legs, but no idea how profitable it is.
  - DiThi 9y ago
    That's the game that made the genre that people call "io games"
    - jameskegel 9y ago
      I don't like this trend, that would be like me calling all SNES games "SUPER Games" because most of them were prepended with the word "SUPER", but it's not a descriptor of the genre, just the nomenclature.
      - Kiro 9y ago
        Do you have a better name?
        jameskegel 9y ago
        How about "Browser-based"?
        9y ago
tantalor 9y ago
Author is blissfully unaware that Flappy Bird is alive and well in arcades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIZvK5yORrw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIZvK5yORrw (video from 2015 but I played one last week)
hasbot 9y ago
Anybody here remember the pet rock fad of the 70's? The more interesting question to me regarding silly fads like pet rocks, droopy pants, and "Baby On Board" stickers is how they begin.
erikb 9y ago
I don't think there is much reason analysing lucky successes. Real success happens by getting a little lucky here and a little lucky there, learning over time how to keep the good fortune once acquired, and then stacking one success over another. Analysing FarmVille and Flappy Bird is like analysing why a lottery winner chose the right numbers. And in both cases the surprise money is gone just as quickly.
DoodleBuggy 9y ago
Because that's what fads do. They're transient by nature, that's why they're called a fad.

91 points by mkarthik 9y ago

TLDR; conflict,mystery,resolution : are three phases in a cycle to keep you engaged (akin to the way this article was written)

xchaotic 9y ago

Interesting timing as a French clone of Flappy Bird - VooDoo (with a ball instead of bird) is currently the top game in Google Play store...

jrs95 9y ago

Didn’t Flappy Bird die because it was pulled from app stores?

rando444 9y ago
The author decided he preferred peace and quiet over leaving flappy bird in the app store. http://uk.businessinsider.com/why-flappy-birds-shut-down-2014-2 http://uk.businessinsider.com/why-flappy-birds-shut-down-201...
- SyneRyder 9y ago
  Dong Nguyen kept making games, though. His company is called .GEARS, and the successor is Swing Copters: http://www.dotgears.com/ http://www.dotgears.com/ https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=DOTGEARS https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=DOTGEARS He also made Ninja Spinki Challenges, which I really enjoyed for a while and has some really cute graphics: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dotgears.ninjabounce https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dotgears.n...
  - randlet 9y ago
    > Swing Copters This appears to just be Flappy Bird rotated 90deg [1]. Pretty funny! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuoCeze0B3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuoCeze0B3c
watwut 9y ago
Yes. The dude got harassed more then he cared for. Which is quite sad if you think about it.
Kiro 9y ago
Yes, which is mentioned several times throughout the article but I take it you didn't even click the link.

throwaway2016a 9y ago

I would love to create an app that makes $50k a day and lasted even a week. I wouldn't care if it was a fad at that point.

xienze 9y ago
No kidding, if I had made Flappy Bird I’d be writing an article about how my days of working were just a fad.
elboru 9y ago
Imaging making that amount of money for a programmer in a developing country (in this case Vietnam), it would be insane, making $20k a year as a developer in my country is considered a well payed job. If you could make $350k in a week that would mean 17.5 years of a "well payed" programming job.

natecavanaugh 9y ago

This one kind of lost me on it's comparison to Breaking Bad. I could be an outlier here, but I've rewatched Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and The Walking Dead at least 4 times, probably more. The reason I don't think I'm too much of an outlier, in that AMC always runs a marathon to both attract new viewers and reconnect existing viewers, and if it weren't successful, I doubt they'd keep doing it. The article makes some good points about variability and using the story line format to get people hooked, but it's examples and connections seem really tenuous to the overall point.

ghaff 9y ago
Given that all the production costs are sunk at this point, the incremental cost of offering as part of a streaming catalog or filling up some AMC broadcast slots as part of an "event" is pretty low. Pre-streaming, I'm sure a lot more people bought DVD sets of favorite series than actually rewatched them from beginning to end. The same principle applies today I'm sure even in the cases where the content is effectively free. I'm not sure this example really counts as a fad though. While successive groups rediscover older TV shows (not that the ones you list are very old at all) viewership is rarely going to be more than of a fraction than it was originally. Perhaps there are marginal exceptions for shows that never really had an audience but develop a bit of a cult following over time. ADDED: The other issue I have with the author's broader theory is that much of what he says is just as applicable to episodic TV shows like Seinfeld as it is to serialized shows.

tw1010 9y ago

What a weird article. It feels like the author wanted to convey his insight that the reason fads fade is due to the gameplay having a constrained information density. And then he felt the urge to follow the tradition of anchoring the thesis in a concrete current example, and he chose flappy birds. But flappy birds is not at all an example that satisfies the hypothesis. Flappy bird, as he mentions, was deliberately pulled from the store by its creator. Why didn't he choose pokemon go instead? Because that hasn't fully faded yet? I'm not trying to personally attack the author, I'm just making a comment that the style in this article probably isn't what we want to emulate in our own stuff.

golergka 9y ago
> But flappy flappy birds is not at all an example that satisfies the hypothesis. Flappy bird, as he mentions, was deliberately pulled from the store by its creator. Meanwhile, there are thousands of clones out there, and people who wanted to play it were and are free to play any of them. So, we can safely gauge if the fad is really gone by popularity of the whole genre it created, not necessarily by the original itself.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- watwut 9y ago
  That is not entirely true. Most of those clones are not fun at all despite having the same concept. Or they are fun, but not nearly as addictive for some reason. Details of execution matter and original flappy bird somehow got a lot of details right. Randomly downloaded app does not. It is same as with pc-man and tetris. Most of clones are not fun at all, despite having the same concept. Source: I played both original flappy and then tried some of clones.
  - cr0sh 9y ago
    There's a claim (according to wikipedia and other sources) that Flappy Bird was a clone of another game (called "Piou Piou vs Cactus"). I'm not going to argue "which came first", but your comment is intriguing: 1. If Flappy Bird was a clone, what made it more "addictive" or "fun to play" than the original (Piou Piou)? 2. What did clones of Flappy Bird do wrong? 3. How does Flappy Bird's "addictive mechanics" compare/relate to other games that hook players? 4. What about similar schemes/products (non-virtual)? I mean - what do all these hook into; why and how do they become ultra-popular (seriously - $50K per day for Flappy Bird!), etc? I and some former coworkers called these types of products (League of Legends could certainly fit in here) "Money Fountains" - relatively simple mechanics (in some cases executed extremely well - I mean, to my eye, LoL is a beautiful and engaging game, despite the basic concepts) that generate for their developers insane amounts of cash, seemingly without end. All legally. But at the same time, others trying to follow in the footsteps of the "pioneers" seem to fail more than they succeed. So the question is, why and how to the originals succeed? Is it just luck? First mover advantage? Or is it something else?

indescions_2017 9y ago

Indie GameDev is absolutely a hits driven business. Often I tell people you will learn more from studying some thing like the Autobiography of Keith Richards. Than yet another build a game engine in thirty days book ;) Html5 "io" games follow similar viral trajectories. But also have some staying power. Once they develop mechanics or features that encourage replay-ablity. Particularly at web scale multiplayer with leaderboards ;) Some examples for Friday Fun http://splix.io/ http://splix.io/ https://starblast.io/ https://starblast.io/ http://zombs.io/ http://zombs.io/

metalrain 9y ago
One more http://agar.io/ http://agar.io/ This one seems to have quite long legs, but no idea how profitable it is.
- DiThi 9y ago
  That's the game that made the genre that people call "io games"
  - jameskegel 9y ago
    I don't like this trend, that would be like me calling all SNES games "SUPER Games" because most of them were prepended with the word "SUPER", but it's not a descriptor of the genre, just the nomenclature.
    - Kiro 9y ago
      Do you have a better name?
      - jameskegel 9y ago
        How about "Browser-based"?
        9y ago

tantalor 9y ago

Author is blissfully unaware that Flappy Bird is alive and well in arcades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIZvK5yORrw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIZvK5yORrw (video from 2015 but I played one last week)

hasbot 9y ago

Anybody here remember the pet rock fad of the 70's? The more interesting question to me regarding silly fads like pet rocks, droopy pants, and "Baby On Board" stickers is how they begin.

erikb 9y ago

I don't think there is much reason analysing lucky successes. Real success happens by getting a little lucky here and a little lucky there, learning over time how to keep the good fortune once acquired, and then stacking one success over another. Analysing FarmVille and Flappy Bird is like analysing why a lottery winner chose the right numbers. And in both cases the surprise money is gone just as quickly.

DoodleBuggy 9y ago

Because that's what fads do. They're transient by nature, that's why they're called a fad.