I think the complete opposite as the OP. I'm a full time indie dev since 2008 with a good portfollio on iOS whom never had a big hit (like most dev obviously). I've got a trully excellent game staring birds too: Jump Birdy Jump, that never get a lot of exposure (shame, the game is pure gold, look at the great reviews). But I don't feel like receiving a punch in my face. Actually, it made me smile... It means that it is still possible to succeed without paying huge pile of cash in marketing. That's an awesome news for all tiny devs like me.
Another article By the way, here's another article on it http://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/feb/05/flappy-bird-new-angry-birds-makes-rage-apps - and thus, further fueling the flames/fire and increasing exposure... Go flappy bird!
You better hurry up, looks like many devs are doing the same. No need to tell you that no-one will be able to replicate this success. JC
ya i have seen part of why I want too. Most of the clones are very similar sadly. Mine won't be that close anyway cause will have extra controls and an end. I make games for a hobby, so it about enjoyment for me, and I am finding it enjoyable playing around with the mechanics.
Hi robinK, and friends, dont get upset ... what happened to Flappy wings, or flappy birds or what ever its called .. is like winning the lottery ... it is a statistic anomaly that tells nothing about the real world! is our first iOS title better than this? probably, but who cares. concentrate on making an amazing game, and make it happen ... Miracles can happen, this time they happened to some one else! i just notice the forum janitor is making the same point ... so ill keep preparing amazing concept art for my team and get ready for amsterdam!!!
I think also there is an element of snobbery in game development anyway, especially in indie game development. There is this subtle message that "gaming is art" or "gaming is deep and has a story". There is also a common theme in most of the complaints, it goes something like this .... "My game is deep, it has a story, you can collect and craft in it, I spent ages on perfecting each element of the game-play....WHY does Flappy Bird get successful when its only a Mario cutesy style, one button control, simple game-play....I could have made that in an afternoon". Flappy Bird is successful because PewDiePie played it. Check the graph and the date he released his video about it. He has 12 MILLION YouTube subscribers!!!! 1 2 M I L L I O N!!!. And I am guessing most of his subscribers are in the 12 - 18 age bracket. This is a group that have lots of time on their hands and mostly spend their time socialising i.e talking about what everyone else in their peer group is talking about.
Flappy Birds owes its entire success to pewdiepie, that guy is that influential unfortunately. Without pewdiepie the game would have been completely overlooked. Better ask pewdiepie to play your next game.
PewDiePie made a video blog about Flappy at the end of January. The game itself started charts storm in December.
It's not because a game is successfull that it's a good game!! Don't find good points on something that don't exist. If you want to be succefull: Climb the chart with money, hope a big youtuber review it, and hope that it makes a buzz that fuel the phenomena. If you are on the top people will convince themself that's because the game is good, even when it's just exterior factor... being on the top keeps you on the top. 6 months ago the game was the same, but no word to mouth nothing.... If it was only the quality of the game that make it climbed the charts, it should have been happen months before. So it's a bad new for every app developper... No matter how good your game is, you just need some luck and some money, not talent or work. 1 success out of thousand of small developper once every year, a good news ? I like your optimistic look at a business.
You're thinking of Backflip Madness. http://toucharcade.com/2013/11/04/backflip-madness-gets-the-recognition-it-deserves-via-youtuber-pewdiepie/ Flappy Bird is just a pure viral hit, and the amount of sour grapes it is producing from other developers who you'd think would be happy that something other than Angry Birds is glued to #1 is mind boggling.
Marketing and money are always part of success of a product. If you don't have those you need some luck. That is the same with everything. Also a lot of developers have very false impressions of their own games because they develop in the dark work hard for a long time, release and expect everyone to jump up and down saying they love it. Thats why I post my prototypes and just to be open, because I realise what I like isn't what everyone else likes. It is also why I am doing small games for now.
This is why I repeat over and over and over when I do talks at developer conventions to never develop your game in a vacuum. The most colossal failures always seem to come from people who spend forever working on their game and don't show it to a single person until it's available for download on the App Store. With developer communities the way they are, it always blows my mind when this happens.
Your obviously completely right. And sadly, I am falling in the wrong category here: my next game is almost finished and I haven't talk a lot about it yet (oops). Admitting I'm really poor at marketing, I still know one thing: it never end. I had game making really good income years after they were released, so even if we (devs) don't do a lot of marketing before the release date, it doesn't mean it is all doom. And flappy thingy is a proof of that. Anyway, I don't get why people will get upset about a "poor" dev winning the jackpot. Personally, I prefer to hear this story than some BS about Rovio building angry birds for the next 100 years. JC
I wrote a detailed deconstruction of Flappy's incredible success, you can read it here: http://www.appfreak.net/deconstructing-incredible-success-flappy-bird/
Ok so flappy bird has gone.. That is not the common developer story.. Too much success so removes the game. Unless it is a ploy, and it will return in a few days, but removing a game like that will probably kill the crazy in a matter of days.
I guess the new benchmark for AppStore success is how many death threats you get on twitter. Maybe apple could included it in the search algorithm.
Exactly what I was thinking. At first I thought he gamed the ratings/reviews, but he seems to be a genuine individual indie game dev who got lucky and game went viral after seeing how TA reviewed it and it was mentioned in tweets a lot. And after I tried the game myself, I got that same feeling when I play TIny Wings for the first time. It is so simple, yet so appealing! Now that the game is removed, I feel pretty sorry for him. Some people speculate that he removed the game because Nintendo filed a suit against him but the news last night confirms that Nintendo isnt even bothered about the pipe design. REF: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/flappy-bird-removal-wasn-t-nintendo-s-doing/1100-6417644/ So to be honest, I really want to know the reason why he removed the game because we all could learn something from this. "Too much to bear" seems to be not a good enough reason to remove a #1 game from App Store.
