5 ms·

Read this, despite the title. It describes truths about public creation generally, and should be of particular interest to HNers who dream of going into indie

by patio11 13y ago

Read this, despite the title. It describes truths about public creation generally, and should be of particular interest to HNers who dream of going into indie game development.

jaimebuelta 13y ago
I've tried to improve the title giving a better idea. I loved this sentence in particular: "These factors mean that, when these devs break, you see it, and it's spectacular"
davedx 13y ago
I had a brief foray into indie game development. Luckily, my game "Discretion" was quickly swallowed into Android Market obscurity and only sold a couple 100. Out of this I got 1 (one) real fan, who emailed me a couple of times being really positive and nagged me for the one update I did for the game. Sometimes, I count myself lucky :) It would have been nice to keep doing that for a living, though.
- mathattack 13y ago
  And I think that's the point of the article. To make money, you have to put up with a lot of other BS. (Same as working in a bank or large company, just that the BS is more public in gaming)
- suby 13y ago
  If you ever do decide to do it again, or if anyone reading decides to make a game, please pick a name that can be easily googled. Mentioning the game anywhere is a form of marketing, but it's useless if it's not something that the reader can immediately and indiscriminately find by typing into google "name game". Googling discretion game turned up 31 million results, with none of the first page links seeming to be your game. Just a small pet peeve I have, I guess.
nForce 13y ago
I don't think this article is anywhere near accurate of the current situation. The author doesn't know the creator of Happy Birds personally, and makes a lot of presumptions whilst perhaps projecting a lot of his own issues onto him. I'm more inclined to think the creator took the game down to save himself being sued to oblivion and keep whatever money he currently has.
- rickyc091 13y ago
  He did an interview with Forbes and clearly stated that he was not being sued. If he was, we know about it since I'm sure the thousands of other clones would be sued and the company suing them would want some publicity. http://www.forbes.com/sites/lananhnguyen/2014/02/11/exclusive-flappy-bird-creator-dong-nguyen-says-app-gone-forever-because-it-was-an-addictive-product/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/lananhnguyen/2014/02/11/exclusiv...
  - nForce 13y ago
    I never said he was currently being sued. Also many of the clones probably don't make the money the original does. I personally believe he's probably some poor indie developer who's practically won the lottery and realizes he could loose it all by all the attention he's received. Removing the app, and disappearing until everything settles down, (whilst still making residual revenue from all the current installs), is the best way for him to mitigate his growing risk of being sued, which is probably scary for him and out of his depth, being a solo indie developer from Vietnam. Of course he could just be a crazy irrational indie developer as the article assumes, among a number of other explanations which we will probably never know the truth :)
- marktangotango 13y ago
  Well, it IS a blog post after all...
- lotsofmangos 13y ago
  I probably trust his analysis more than yours though, as at least he managed to get the name of the game correct. Happy Birds sounds fun though. How do you play it?
joneil 13y ago
The review systems on the app stores, and internet comments more generally do have a tenancy to bring out the hate, and the article does a great job of exploring the effects of this. As people who designs user interfaces and interactions, I wonder what we can do to bring out more respectful reviews and comments, to remind users of the human on the other side of the app...
- jlees 13y ago
  Great point. Situations like this make it abundantly clear that folks out there are more than happy to bash away at some poor indie the other side of the world, as well as making demands, publicly vilifying and the like. I guess it's the Internet. It's trained us to be angry in public at anonymous faces, so when the faces are other people, it's a lot easier to treat them like they aren't.
  - TDL 13y ago
    "I guess it's the Internet." I don't think we should accept this though. I think most people would benefit from having "thicker skin", but at the same rate we should not rationalize boorish & hostile behavior. Anonymity does not have to lead to ass hattery.
- diydsp 13y ago
  That's a completely worthwhile cause, imo. One of my colleagues, Aaron Zinman, (hi, Aaron!) spent a lot of time thinking about that. You can find some of his work at [1] and [2]. The other day after meditating, I had in insight into why the hate comes out. It has to do with when we go online, we're trained to imitate characters, not ourselves. This thought will require additional unraveling. We also need to steel ourselves to inflammatory comments and inhibit ourselves from escalating them, too. But I can't believe people threatened the Flappy Birds guy. [1] http://defuse.media.mit.edu/ http://defuse.media.mit.edu/ [2] http://azinman.com/ http://azinman.com/

by patio11 13y ago

Read this, despite the title. It describes truths about public creation generally, and should be of particular interest to HNers who dream of going into indie game development.

jaimebuelta 13y ago

I've tried to improve the title giving a better idea. I loved this sentence in particular: "These factors mean that, when these devs break, you see it, and it's spectacular"

davedx 13y ago

I had a brief foray into indie game development. Luckily, my game "Discretion" was quickly swallowed into Android Market obscurity and only sold a couple 100. Out of this I got 1 (one) real fan, who emailed me a couple of times being really positive and nagged me for the one update I did for the game. Sometimes, I count myself lucky :) It would have been nice to keep doing that for a living, though.

mathattack 13y ago
And I think that's the point of the article. To make money, you have to put up with a lot of other BS. (Same as working in a bank or large company, just that the BS is more public in gaming)
suby 13y ago
If you ever do decide to do it again, or if anyone reading decides to make a game, please pick a name that can be easily googled. Mentioning the game anywhere is a form of marketing, but it's useless if it's not something that the reader can immediately and indiscriminately find by typing into google "name game". Googling discretion game turned up 31 million results, with none of the first page links seeming to be your game. Just a small pet peeve I have, I guess.

nForce 13y ago

I don't think this article is anywhere near accurate of the current situation. The author doesn't know the creator of Happy Birds personally, and makes a lot of presumptions whilst perhaps projecting a lot of his own issues onto him. I'm more inclined to think the creator took the game down to save himself being sued to oblivion and keep whatever money he currently has.

rickyc091 13y ago
He did an interview with Forbes and clearly stated that he was not being sued. If he was, we know about it since I'm sure the thousands of other clones would be sued and the company suing them would want some publicity. http://www.forbes.com/sites/lananhnguyen/2014/02/11/exclusive-flappy-bird-creator-dong-nguyen-says-app-gone-forever-because-it-was-an-addictive-product/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/lananhnguyen/2014/02/11/exclusiv...
- nForce 13y ago
  I never said he was currently being sued. Also many of the clones probably don't make the money the original does. I personally believe he's probably some poor indie developer who's practically won the lottery and realizes he could loose it all by all the attention he's received. Removing the app, and disappearing until everything settles down, (whilst still making residual revenue from all the current installs), is the best way for him to mitigate his growing risk of being sued, which is probably scary for him and out of his depth, being a solo indie developer from Vietnam. Of course he could just be a crazy irrational indie developer as the article assumes, among a number of other explanations which we will probably never know the truth :)
marktangotango 13y ago
Well, it IS a blog post after all...
lotsofmangos 13y ago
I probably trust his analysis more than yours though, as at least he managed to get the name of the game correct. Happy Birds sounds fun though. How do you play it?

joneil 13y ago

The review systems on the app stores, and internet comments more generally do have a tenancy to bring out the hate, and the article does a great job of exploring the effects of this. As people who designs user interfaces and interactions, I wonder what we can do to bring out more respectful reviews and comments, to remind users of the human on the other side of the app...

jlees 13y ago
Great point. Situations like this make it abundantly clear that folks out there are more than happy to bash away at some poor indie the other side of the world, as well as making demands, publicly vilifying and the like. I guess it's the Internet. It's trained us to be angry in public at anonymous faces, so when the faces are other people, it's a lot easier to treat them like they aren't.
- TDL 13y ago
  "I guess it's the Internet." I don't think we should accept this though. I think most people would benefit from having "thicker skin", but at the same rate we should not rationalize boorish & hostile behavior. Anonymity does not have to lead to ass hattery.
diydsp 13y ago
That's a completely worthwhile cause, imo. One of my colleagues, Aaron Zinman, (hi, Aaron!) spent a lot of time thinking about that. You can find some of his work at [1] and [2]. The other day after meditating, I had in insight into why the hate comes out. It has to do with when we go online, we're trained to imitate characters, not ourselves. This thought will require additional unraveling. We also need to steel ourselves to inflammatory comments and inhibit ourselves from escalating them, too. But I can't believe people threatened the Flappy Birds guy. [1] http://defuse.media.mit.edu/ http://defuse.media.mit.edu/ [2] http://azinman.com/ http://azinman.com/