Jeff is spot on in his blog post. To make an analogy, Dong Nguyen essentially tapped into the modern-day equivalent of Pac-Man Fever. In the 80s, it swept the

Jeff is spot on in his blog post. To make an analogy, Dong Nguyen essentially tapped into the modern-day equivalent of Pac-Man Fever. In the 80s, it swept the world, to the tune of billions of dollars. It was the highest-grossing arcade game ever produced. People simply loved the game, and they couldn't get enough of clearing boards of dots, power-pellets and ghosts. Most people probably knew nothing about who made the game, with the small exception of the corporate names on the game (e.g., Namco/Midway). Certainly, I suspect only the hardcore few would be able to name the programmer of Pac-Man, Shigeo Funaki. And I suspect that no one blinked their eyes in disdain when they saw the news reports of Pac-Man's financial success. In a similar way, Flappy Bird took very simple game-play, and combined it with a simple challenge. This is, of course, not the first game to do this, but it took off so successfully that I suspect that a very high percentage of gamers have it installed, and even some non-gamers could likely brand-identify the game, or have at least heard of it. The power of the Internet has made Nguyen's name known, and quite sadly in some circles, despised for his financial success. No one bemoaned Pac-Man's programmer, or Namco/Midway's success, but fast-forward from the 80s to today, and you get gems like this article [1] and its intellectual lamenting with, "[...] I begrudge a society that would turn it into a phenomenon." I suspect that the author would have said the same about Pac-Man. Casual games like Flappy Bird do not prevent someone from playing, say, EVE Online, to their heart's content. And, what if you just happen to like both types of games? I guess you are a real outcast at that point; a non-intellectual. To put it another way, just because you intellectually eschew casual games and choose instead to rock, say, Steel Battalion with a full-on controller [2] doesn't mean that you are necessarily leading the upliftment of society. Fortunately, there is a game in the world for every gamer. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/02/03/flappy-bird-review-winged-fury http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/02/03/flappy-bir... [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Steel_Battalion_controllers.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Steel_Ba...