As a long term developer of entertainment software, I totally agree with his point of view about the impact one's software has upon the lives of the user. The general acceptance goes that the crazies and depressed will be triggered by something and its not your fault if something provocative you worked on triggers an incident. That's what the group think tells us, but in ones personal reality it's not that easy to shrug off. Over the decades I've been on the teams of high profile games and films with medium levels of violence. After each title is released, I'd receive a half dozen or so "fan" emails from people who obviously researched the dev team and was reaching out. On the games with medium levels of violence, of the half dozen fan emails only one would be praise, the others would be serious hate mail. That kind of stuff throws you, even if you suspect pretty strongly that the sender is probably 8 years old. Yeah, I can totally see why he pulled the plug. He's got enough momey, and he's not greedy. What he want's most is clearly freedom, and fame was taking that away. Yeah, I'd pull the plug too.
To be fair, seen from outside, this seems something strange and, in my opinion, not good about the American culture: there is always somebody to blame for your problem, a reason why you are acting in a given way, an external cause if you suffer a medical problem, eat too much, put all the kind of pills in your body, and so forth.
Probably this is representative only of a minority, but from the outside this looks like a vocal minority, and even a very small minority, if can feel offended, or addicted, or something else because of your work, can easily turn your work into a nightmare.
Now the thing is: it is not true. You, with your work, are not forcing anyone. We live in a world full of possibilities, the problem here is, to be able to critically analyze what you do, otherwise there is no thing that can save you, you'll misuse even the simpler things to cause yourself some kind of problems.
There is more, even controversial things have some very good impact on the life of people making judicious use of those things. Example: a violent game can be a way to express violence of an otherwise repressed person, or some other people that is having a few bad weeks, is finding an escape playing at it. Similarly alcool, that if abused can be bad, addicting, and destroy people, is the joy of many people having a glass of wine from time to time, and so forth.
Most of the times the problem is not the tool but the user.
> Example: a violent game can be a way to express violence of an otherwise repressed person, or some other people that is having a few bad weeks, is finding an escape playing at it.
Yeah, that's not actually true. "Letting your anger out" makes you angrier.
The study outlined in the article hasn't convinced me and like all studies on matters of bullshit I'm pretty sure other studies will follow trying to prove the opposite.
Personally I have had problems much bigger than what I can handle and as a passive aggressive personality my mind's response is to simply ignore many problems which are otherwise very serious, which has led me into even bigger problems and on the edge of depression. But when I do happen to let my anger out, an interesting thing happens - I take steps to solve those problems, because vetting in itself can also be acknowledgement that you do have a problem in need of a fix.
That's why I don't like the study outlined, because like many other studies of psychology, it's very, very shallow and has a problem with causality.
Also, be mindful about the studies you read about. Before believing anything, be mindful about the science, the methodology behind it. For example if you take a look in the last 60 years, you'll probably discover hundreds of flawed studies on nutrition and cholesterol based on which medical personnel in all countries have been spreading myths as some sort of gospel.
This is quite misleading. Yes, letting your anger out can make you angrier in the long term - providing the right circumstances.
Why? Because if anger becomes socially acceptable, you're more likely to express it. However, saying everyone should bottle it up is trying to take an extreme and apply it to everyone.
Anger is an emotional response to a situation, much like depression. If you don't change your situation, you will become angrier or more depressed. If this "venting" makes someone feel better, and prolongs their stay in this bad situation, then of course they're going to get angrier.
This is like someone who's depressed because they're in an abusive relationship taking antidepressants rather than leaving the relationship. You're treating symptoms, not dealing with causes.
So suppressing that anger is going to promote you to resolve the situation rather than tolerate it.
I'll point out that you're linking to a blog post and not a peer reviewed study, so the actual merit is zip without sources, which he provides none.
I however, would like to provide an analogy that is well studied. Porn. The availability of pornography is a well known reducer in rates of both rape and violence against women. Enacting the fantasy - Aristotle's method - IS a proven way to release sexual frustration and thus reduces the resulting violence. At least as far as the general population is concerned.
However, overconsumption of porn is linked with a progressive increase in aggression against women, decreased sympathy to rape victims, etc. Although, this is a chicken and egg issue is the porn delaying the persons aggression or causing it. Basically is porn preventing men from becoming Jack the Ripper, or is it causing them. We don't know because all we have is a correlation between overconsumption of porn and increasing violence.
To put it simply, for the average person "venting" their anger in a healthy way is going to be beneficial if their situation isn't producing the anger but an isolated incident did: your hot water heater rusted through, you've got a new one now but you're pissed about the flood. Getting that anger out is going to be beneficial if you do it in a healthy way (go to the batting cages or driving range and hit some balls). It's the same as porn, your girlfriend went away for two weeks over christmas to see her parents is a very different mental state compared to someone who's watching porn to see women have the shit beat out of them.
To me, it's looking at the chicken and the egg problem and saying "oh my god, eggs cause more eggs! Let's get rid of all the eggs." It's wholly naive. If you don't want eggs, just get rid of the god damn chicken!
"Why? Because if anger becomes socially acceptable, you're more likely to express it."
I don't think it's just social. In general, "X, then I Y and it feels good" reinforces behavior Y when I do it. Neurons are trained over time, and your brain works differently. My understanding is that studies have supported this regarding "venting" in general, but have not shown this particularly with violent video games (which means likely you're not "venting" at all, really, by playing games).
"This is like someone who's depressed because they're in an abusive relationship taking antidepressants rather than leaving the relationship. You're treating symptoms, not dealing with causes."
Causes should be dealt with, but venting is not necessarily dealing with causes - whether I go play video games or slink off and punch a pillow or whatever. Even when venting has some effect on causes (my demonstration of anger is observable and so you notice there's actually a problem, and hopefully we deal with it) it's not likely to be the best way to deal with it.
'To me, it's looking at the chicken and the egg problem and saying "oh my god, eggs cause more eggs! Let's get rid of all the eggs." It's wholly naive. If you don't want eggs, just get rid of the god damn chicken!'
If you do a good job getting rid of all the eggs, time will get rid of the chickens. If getting rid of eggs is easier or seen as more ethical or whatever, it may well be the right approach to wiping out chickens. (Actually, as I recall it's been pretty effective - DDT put a few species on the endangered species list by thinning their egg shells).
From Europe is easy to notice the difference, random examples: the class actions against tobacco companies are strange from our point of view, or, the other day there was a blog post about somebody losing a member of his family for an illness and he blamed in part a software (it was not the case...), and instead to see a WTF reaction there were plenty of retweets and messages supporting this point of view. Or, even in popular culture like reality shows that are transmitted here, this attitude is constantly present "I did this because of this".
I think you can see it at different levels even on the other side of the medal. I think customer care Americans experience is stellare compared to Europe on average, because Europeans hardly will blame enough the service supplier even when it is the case and this would result in raising the level of service. Apple was one of the first companies to provide US customer service here and at first I and my friends were pretty surprised that this was possible at all.
As with everything I guess this is just a bias and everywhere there are people of all the kinds, but because of culture there are some biases. Like, sicilians can be the most honest often, but surely on average my island exhibits a bias for not being able to stay in line, park the car where it is not possible and so forth. Basically I'm not generalizing.
I had never noticed this about the level of service Apple offers here in the UK, but it is true. Most people don't like making a fuss here, from what I can tell. They grumble about it, but don't actually complain if something is wrong. I think it is changing.
But I would agree that the concept that something you do is someone else's fault is wrong. If anything, accepting that idea leads to daft warning messages on everything, eg. mats on the Land Rover Freelander dashboard for putting stuff with massive warnings reading "Don't put hot drinks here!". It is obvious, but they felt the need to put it there in case someone blamed them for their action of putting a roasting hot drink there and then accelerating swiftly. It's silly.
I had a professor visiting from the U.S. and he was absolutely in love with the culture in Europe - how we sort of accept more responsibility.
He told me he would choose building a business in europe vs. the U.S. every single time. He has been sued several times for the most ridiculous things that never would have held any ground over here.
That, he said, was the single best thing about Europe's business culture. Not sure if I agree with that, but he has a point.
funny addendum: he was surprised at the lack of disclaimers on products here. Go figure.
Do not forget that lawsuits in USA have regulatory function. The attitude seems to be: let them sue each other and see who wins. All those lawsuits results and precedents are replacement for European regulations.
While like European way better, it is not fair to compare lawsuits prevalence in isolation. You have to compare the combination of lawsuits and regulations to say which system is better. And Europe has more regulations about a lot of things.
The thing is that the cost of regulation is borne by the government and thus society at large, while the cost of lawsuits is borne by the few unlucky saps that happen to get hit by the issue first.
Someone in Vietnam released software to the world, therefore this is a story about American culture. That's just how Americans think. It's also necessarily about modern American culture, even if you know absolutely nothing about the past.
Rolling Stone isn't going to run an article about the impact of Flappy Bird on culture in Tazmania or Greece; while it would be tangentially interesting, the subject's incredibly small proximity to the life of the average reader of the American version of Rolling Stone means it won't have the same impact.
Not a "just how Americans think" issue, a "what is relevant to our readers' lives" issue.
Aren't you are proving the parent's point there? You say that only articles depicting their own culture are seem as relevant to the american reader, which is what he claims.
That's absolutely not the case in other places of the world. In some cases, even the opposite problem arises (that is, discriminating against your own country/culture and favouring a foreign one)
No, I said an article about a culture only tangentially related to the reader will be less relevant than an article directly related to the reader.
(To note, the article wasn't about American culture, it was a personal interest piece on a person who was unprepared for the effects of the success he experienced.)
If by "other places in the world" you mean areas that are small enough or have an ephemeral-enough regional identity to have developed strong codependent identities with other regions, then I would certainly agree.
Living in a number of places has shown me that, in larger countries/communities with defined identities, internally facing publications will publish stories that are strongly relevant to their reader.
Because, as I said, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to spend that sort of space on an article that wasn't relevant to the reader.
As a transplant to America I agree with the difference in cultures but to be fair, you're comparing "other places of the world," which tend to be much smaller and more homogenous that the US, to a country founded as a loose federation of states divided largely along political and religious lines.
Cultural diversity (and exceptionalism, etc) is all rolled into the DNA of the country.
You make some good points, but games are a special case. Making something fun is not really that different from making it addictive. There's a huge grey area and lots of room for cognitive dissonance / rationalization among game creators. We've learned a lot about addiction, and people are not nearly as rational as they want to believe.
My thinking is that many of the people who are really passionate about making games have somewhat addictive personalities. I.e. there are some people who would just never stay up 'till 3 am playing a game when there's something more "important" to do, whereas game creators have turned this flaw into a virtue (and a career).
EDIT> I love games, and I have a great job making games, but I'm 38 and I now realize that I spent way too much time playing games in my 20's. While it is a matter of self-control, I do have some guilt that some kid is going to fail their Compilers exam because they'd rather play computer games instead of studying, like me circa 1995.
I would say the problem is people blaming the proximate but not the absolute causes. In a lot of cases, society sets people up to fail and then blames them when they do. In your overeating example, the problem is that we have tons of highly available, cheap, unhealthy food being marketed to you 24/7. The proximate cause of your obesity might be that you eat too much, but the absolute one is a combination of capitalism, technology, and human physiology.
The "blame game." It's so ingrained in US culture that many people don't know how to operate otherwise. It's not exclusive to the US, but it's certainly a defining factor of society here.
That's what the group think tells us, but in ones personal reality it's not that easy to shrug off.
The Internet not only has increased the range of hateful groupthink, it has made a large number of people believe that it is somehow noble and elevated. It almost seems like there's an anti-intelligentsia of forum manipulators who see the creation of new and pointless forms of prejudice as a kind of sport.
I have the growing impression that there's a growing segment of people online who see their outrage and any acts motivated by it as the expression of some kind of enlightened vigilante justice. It just so happens that the worst crimes against humanity were motivated by people who thought just like that. Unfortunately, it's the single best way to blind yourself against your own evil deeds while making it likely you'll get trapped into irrevocable courses of action.
People haven't changed. There have always been trolls, malcontents, crazies. Attend any public hearing, ask any fan club or newspaper mail room.
Yes, but now the seductive idea that one can improve the world by getting one's teenage hormonal aggression out on somebody "who deserves it" is beamed into people's living rooms and onto devices in their pocket, complete with calls to action. How many teenagers do you know who realize how morally bankrupt this is, vs the number of teenagers who are actively enthusiastic about some idea like this?
And, how many people do you know who are past their teens who still haven't "gotten it" yet?
I know what "getting it" means. So now you're targetting people who "don't get it" .. is this one of those chase-the-tail until the snake disappears threads?
No, either you're a bit dim or you're trolling. Where in this thread do I say anything about punishment? And also, why is targeting people with philosophical speech a bad thing?
You're probably just emotionally invested in memes and feel hurt when I point out they implicitly espouse shallow and prejudicial positions.
The difference is today, flames are hugely aided by convection.
Or in other words, there's a world of harm that can be done by putting a huge number of these malcontents in contact with each other in a way that they can all cooperate, with laser focus on a single subject.
Basically, the whole series of prejudicial fictions involving fedoras and then there's another series involving neckbeards. It's all shallow, based on appearances.
To be fair, I run a news reader and you wouldn't believe some of the hate mail I receive. I just assumed he received much more of it and not enough of the positive mail.
Also, when you're at the business end of a press blitz, you get overwhelmed and can make irrational decisions that you might come to regret.
It was the same for me when I was project lead for Gaim/Pidgin. I was lead for something like 6 years and I eventually got tired of the hate.
Sure, there was plenty of praise, too. But the harassment eventually became annoying. It hit it's breaking point when someone folks managed to figure out my cell phone number and would call me at all sorts of hours (3am once!) to "tell me about their ideas."
I changed my cell number but it eventually happened again.
Most of my interactions with users were positive, though. But, the various legal issues, hateful folks, and my day job suddenly taking more time I decided to give it up and pass it on to someone else. I had already become mostly observational/maintenance on the project in my last year there anyways.
Slight digressions aside, I was fairly young when I got with the project and it was surprisingly to me how angry some people could be for no reason at all.
Big difference is you weren't being paid! I had a free and ad-free app on Android and I got some abuse about missing features. I took it down after a while. The sense of entitlement was unreal. Now if I was making $50k a day, I'd take all the abuse that could have been thrown at me!
Pidgin/gaim fan here - thank you. I think I started using it just before the time of the name change and it's had an enormously positive impact on my life. That might sound silly but it was one of the few Linux programs I knew how to install and configure at the time.
I created a fairly successful app that aimed to give users the best drink specials in my college town. I honestly can't bring myself to work on it anymore because I feel morally reprehensible and somewhat socially responsible for binge drinking when alcohol is such a dangerous substance. Who's not going to over-drink when well drinks are $0.25 a pop, nobody makes a ton of expendable income in college, and my app prominently puts that special in front of 3000 sets of eyeballs? I just don't feel like I'm adding goodness to the world - I feel like I'm subtracting it.
For what it's worth, Australia's been a pretty good case study on how significantly increased (+70%) taxes - and therefore, prices - for alcohol did not deter binge drinking [1]. All it did was shift the consumption from one form to another, as well as decrease drinking between binges. In that sense, you could arguably say that you're not materially increasing the prevalence of binge drinking but really just saving the money of those who are inevitably going to do it.
Then again, binge drinking here is baked in to the cultural psyche. It may still be seen as more dangerous and therefore less socially acceptable in the States.
Yeah, I've read tons of statistics from both sides of the debate, and still feel a little morally wrong for it. I did add taxi calling directly from the app to 7 different local taxi companies to help assuage some of my perceived guilt. The taxi page does see visits in my analytics though, so that's good if nothing else.
I totally disagree with his point of view. He could simply sell the game to an established company that is already set up to handle the responsibilities that come with running a business. Throwing away $50k/day is just a stupid thing to do.
As he wrote, he didn't put the game down because he was afraid of the money or didn't want to run a business, he was actually afraid of the effect the "addictiveness" of the game had on some of its users.
With that premise, selling to an established company would have been the most irresponsible thing he could do. After all, the biggest assets of the game are its large user base, the media hype and just that "addictiveness". So this would probably be the first thing any buyer would have exploited, making Dong's problem worse instead of better.
Agree, funny how most comments focus on the money aspect of the conversation. He wanted to feel socially responsible again, did not like the impact that his game had on people's psyche / addictive behaviors and pulled the plug because of it.
In fairness, the three games he's currently working on follow that same mold of being super easy to learn and super hard to beat--not a good recipe for warding off addiction!
You have a point there. The article states he wants to introduce reminders to take a break, though that sounds like the usual excuse feature in such cases.
The average wage in Vietnam is $2,200 a year.[1] He made over 22 times the average yearly wage in a day. The average wage in the US is $50,233.[2] 22 times that is $1,105,126.
If you did that for a month, that would be the Vietnam purchasing equivalent of maybe about $33,000,000. He still has income coming in from the game, it hasn't stopped. He has enough money to retire and live a nice life in Vietnam.
For many people (myself included) enough is enough! He made enough and now he wants to get back to his quiet simple life. That is what he values, not an endless quest for more money. He felt the game was destroying his life. I don't blame him, I wouldn't want that kind of attention either.
Some people can just be happy with what they have.
Yes but let's be clear, he was making $50k/day with no effort of his own besides the work he did last year. There was no chase or action to give up, so his motives lied elsewhere.
Let's be clearer: he has the money he needs to live comfortably. For some people, that's all the money they need. "But you could have even more if you gave it to an agency!" Yes, but a) that means negotiating with an agency (which includes /finding/ one) and jumping through a bunch of hoops, and b) still having to deal with being a 'maverick personality' on the internet.
Or you could just take the Bill Watterson route, shut up shop, and live the rest of your life comfortably and in private.
I don't know why is this so hard for people to understand? Once you have enough so that you don't have to work anymore and live comfortably, one choice is to stop and actually do it. I already have my mark set, f I by any chance get 1.5 million US$, I'll quit. Even if I could keep on getting more and reach twice that.
> I already have my mark set, f I by any chance get 1.5 million US$, I'll quit.
That's the Workaholic Test™ -- if you make a million dollars, do you drop everything and sit on a beach somewhere reading a worthwhile novel, or do you move the goal posts and carry on toward a new, less realistic goal?
Most people won't make a million dollars, so most people will never know whether they're workaholics.
Ditto. This "test" assumes lying on a beach producing nothing is an ideal to strive for. I enjoy my vacations, but I wouldn't want to do that all the time!
I won't sit on a beach all day, but maybe I'll move to a beach house somewhere safe, and enjoy the hell out of my children growing up. And will read/learn/do interesting stuff. And I think I can get to be worth 1.5 mil someday.
Ha, I didn't read your name before I replied. You actually stopped when you reached your mark, and travelled the world on a boat. Awesome. I also read your 'Cottage Computer Programming' when I was a teen. Double awesome.
People still have the game, his money was being made of in game ads, which are still running for the people that are playing. I'd say he's probably doing fine.
The article mentions that he IS still making a ton of money. In fact, the announcement that it is being closed down, actually millions of more download in the next 22 hours
Beyond basic survival, money's a tool that lets you avoid having to do annoying things or to deal with annoying people. What is annoying is deeply personal. So if pursuing the tool to de-annoy your life is more annoying than some threshold, it stops being worth it.
1. He's still earning ad revenue from existing installs.
2. In the last 22 hours of the app's existence (when he announced
he would be taking it down) more than 10 million new people
installed it.
In other words, he's likely making just as much if not more today. He could have instantly removed it from the app store instead of saying "in 22 hours", so it's entirely possible that he's way better off due to all the publicity and attention from the app's removal.
Yes, quite possible he managed to snatch the last boost from an app that would otherwise have met a decline. It was already being covered all over the news. Reporters were looking for something more to say about it and he gave them that chance. Instead of being featured all over the news once, he got one mention for the initial spread, another one for the takedown threat. Now as a final (?) third one he achieves cult status for the game, increasing replays for the already installed base and ensuring interest for his future games.
I'm sure everything he says is true and it is not a conscious strategy, but the end result is the same.
So what if it's stupid? We know how much damage greed does to the world. The world would be a better place if more people stood up for principles over money.
The problem there is that there's no universal set of principles that are right or good.
For example "don't leave money on the table" or "make as much money as possible" could easily be a principle someone adopts. In such a case, she would be standing up for her principles by maximizing her acquisition of money at the expense of other things.
I don't need a universal set of principles that are good because such a thing is impossible. The entire world of human thought is a subjective abstraction. This need for objectivity is a common failing of the scientific mind, and it is a struggle in vain as our brains are far too puny to truly comprehend the nature of things—we must deal in abstractions, and abstractions as, any programmer knows, are leaky.
And people who put wealth and money before everything else are generally seen as assholes or even evil.
Example: The asbestos industry officials knew of asbestos dangers of asbestos since the 1930s and had purposefully concealed them from the public. To make money.
>>Throwing away $50k/day is just a stupid thing to do.
I would have done the same thing if I was in his shoes; just get out of the spotlight with whatever money I already made(and still making from previous-installs). Getting paid 50k, even just once, for a mobile game I wrote over a weekend is more than enough. I wouldn't care how many millions I left at the table by dropping it and running away.
I'd just upload it to github, throw on WTFPL[1], and run away never to be seen again.
Depending upon one's starting debt load, any person of average intelligence or better would be able to, after a few days to a couple of weeks of that income, "retire" to a lower stress job, or even have the freedom to work for oneself in a less public arena.
In the US, $350,000 (1 week @$50k/day average) works out to somewhere north of $200,000 after taxes. That's a lot of money, even if it's not life changing for somebody in the tech industry with a typical salaried job in the Bay Area.
He did not throw away $50k/day. He walked away from it because he had enough money already and did not need any more of it (especially since he did not particularly enjoy all the attention that came with the money, but even if he did not mind it, that would not change my point).
"Then he hit a button, and Flappy Bird disappeared. When I ask him why he did it, he answers with the same conviction that led him to create the game. 'I'm master of my own fate,' he says. 'Independent thinker.'"
Good for him. The world needs more people with this attitude.
I agree. I love this guy. I bet that very few of us on HN would have done what he did. I certainly wouldn't have.
I'm not saying that what he did was right, but it was right for him, and what is impressive to me is that he realized that. That kind of self-knowledge is a wonderful quality to have or develop.
Yes, it is difficult to bring oneself to turn off the magic money machine once it starts printing, but keep in mind how much money he made and how much the existing installed copies still make for him. It certainly made the decision easier, I think.
Personally, I think this sentiment cheapens his decision and makes less of what he's really done here. I think what he's done is pretty heroic, at least in modern terms, and something that very few, possibly none, of us would be willing to pull the trigger on.
Wether he's made, or is still making, a fortune is besides the point. He made the hard choice and has made it clear to everyone who's asked that he is all the better for it. This more than anything else is a powerful and important example that we may or may not see again. If nothing else he has highlighted the need for more empathy in software. His focus seems to be in bringing joy and entertainment to people and doesn't appear to have any ulterior motive. This is rare and we should be celebrating it rather than dismiss it by the fact that he has been fortunate enough to actually be successful from it (something that is also extremely rare).
The 'heroic' attribution is thrown around a lot today, and few deserve it less than a man who decided to no longer offer a silly game for sale as a result of idiot-generated controversy.
I think to myself that I definitely wouldn't have, and that I would have weather the storm of the press outside my house, and just focused on that great payday (everyday).
But from what I've heard, the paparazzi changes everything and it really is life-changing. So hard to say either way.
With millions of dollars, you can just get stuff delivered to you for a couple of weeks until the press sees something else shiny. I've been straight-up bedridden for longer than he lasted under the attention of the press, and there is no way it's more restrictive than that. The guy's choice was his to make, but I do not buy that he had no choice.
And yet, here we are a few weeks later, and he's in Rolling Stone magazine. The game hasn't been forgotten. He had the #1 game on the iTunes App Store charts, the same store where people now buy music by rock stars. I wouldn't dismiss the comparison too quickly.
What made his move puzzling wasn't that he didn't like the attention (I totally get that) but that it seemed obvious that pulling the app would make it worse, not better.
Maybe it was worse for a short time, but if the app was still available the craze might still be active, or not, you just can't be sure of that. By removing it he dictated his own terms.
I guess I don't quite understand. I also believe that I am to some extent "master of my fate," but I would use my authority to choose to leave the game up and keep earning money. I would do so with as much pride and conviction as Dong Nguyen.
If it is a marketing ploy, it is far from brilliant. Brilliant would have been taking it down for a day then putting it back up. Not keeping it down for weeks while the excitement around the game fades.
Brilliant would have been taking it down for a day then putting it back up. Not keeping it down for weeks while the excitement around the game fades.
Based on what, exactly? This sounds like conjecture.
UPDATE: Fine. Taking it down for one day can result in the audience feeling jerked around, him being perceived as unreliable, and any number of other negative connotations. There are also myriad instances of successful relaunches after extended absences, even to the degree that minor appearance tweaks justify a sequel or version bump. Simply put, there are just as many reasons why it wouldn't matter if he waited, if not more, than those supporting it to be "brilliant" for him to only wait a day and disastrous if he didn't.
> "But the hardest thing of all, he says, was something else entirely. He hands me his iPhone so that I can scroll through some messages he's saved. One is from a woman chastising him for "distracting the children of the world." Another laments that "13 kids at my school broke their phones because of your game, and they still play it cause it's addicting like crack." Nguyen tells me of e-mails from workers who had lost their jobs, a mother who had stopped talking to her kids. "At first I thought they were just joking," he says, "but I realize they really hurt themselves." Nguyen – who says he botched tests in high school because he was playing too much Counter-Strike – genuinely took them to heart."
Those people's lives will go down with the next game then whether is FarmCrush, or Angryville, or CandyBirds. It does not matter. So... well... better give the money to a good cause imho.
I'm not so sure. It would have to use iAd on iOS to do display ads, and Apple would yank that access with a breach of the terms of service. I doubt he's still getting "tens of thousands" of dollars from ad revenue in Android alone.
I did, but you probably didn't notice it because it wasn't in your face whilst you played the main game. I think it was shown after you had ditched. Clever.
(It was probably because I was always ditching and dying that I saw them; I was pretty hopeless at it, although when I plugged my Xperia S into HDMI, the phone ran noticeably slower so it was significantly easier to play.... just a tip for anyone out there....)
I'm reminded of a time in elementary school when I opened a Pokémon booster pack to discover a Charizard. I thought it was the best day of my life, but all my friends wanted to trade me for it, and I began to hate my Charizard card. I even had a nightmare in which Charizard blew fire at me. Alas, fame and fortune are quite the deception.
I had a Charizard card, but I bought it from a local hobby store for some insane price with birthday money. I don't remember how old I was, elementary school I think, all the adults in my life told me it was a terrible decision but I had poor impulse control, wasn't one to listen to anyone, and my parents tended to let me learn my own lessons, so I ended up buying the card anyway. Ultimately all the card collectors at school worshipped me for having a Charizard, it was totally worth it and the lesson I took from it all ended up being 'don't listen to your parents' combined with 'money will buy you happiness' or something along those lines.
I am millenial like yourself. I got the praise and worship from my other classmates for owning a charzard the difference from my story and yours is that I opened up the booster pack and found one. I ended up listening to my parents, saved the $75 dollars, and was ultimately happy.
Until some kid actually stole my binder and I lost it all.
"Nguyen wanted to make games for people like himself: busy, harried, always on the move. "I pictured how people play," he says, as he taps his iPhone and reaches his other hand in the air. "One hand holding the train strap." He'd make a game for them."
I found myself playing in this exact manner many times while riding the subway. Even when I would go just one or two stops, it was convenient way to spend the time squeezing in a few games of Flappy Bird without worrying about concentrating too hard on any one game, or being concerned about getting cutoff in any one round by having to leave or dodge a bystander.
Ah dangit, another famous Nguyen (along with Dat Nguyen) who I'll be asked if I'm related to. It's especially interesting and cool that he's still in Vietnam, and I'm not surprised that was a heavy factor in just waking away...$50,000 a day, even a year, is a lot of money. My uncle was making less than that (a year) in Saigon and yet could still afford to rent a massive house with courtyard, 2 servants and a nanny, and a SUV with a driver.
(BTW, dong is the name of Vietnam's currency, something that is probably worth a lot of jokes in the Vietnamese media)
Also, becoming a viral success (regardless of quality of the game) from Vietnam is a much different and rarer accomplishment than doing it from America (or any place where the world's media is more attuned to). Kudos to him!
Ha, when I was a kid there was a criminal in my city named Nguyen Thanh (I think he might have been on the run or wanted for a warrant or something). One day I was playing an online game and saw somebody who had "nguyenthanh" as their username. I freaked out and ran to my dad, excited to tell him that I'd cracked the case. Much to my dismay he explained to me that those were 2 of the most common names in Vietnam.
Another plausible reason that I've not seen reported is that if he was indeed pulling in $50k/day, that makes you a target in Vietnam (average monthly salary $185).
In that part of the world, being rich without having the right connections/protection can be very, very dangerous.
It's hard to get any source that would satisfy your question.
Let me put it this way. You are poor. Your family is poor. Everyone around you is poor. When you are financially in trouble, you ask someone to lend you money. In Asian culture, you don't start asking bank for money. You ask your friends, relatives and neighbors for help.
Now you are famous. Making $50,000 a day. Everyone is going to come after you and ask for help. You don't want to because who wants to be debt collector? But you have to because they are your relatives, friends and neighbors. You are in a dilemma and you don't know what to do about it.
Also, regardless of where you live, when you are rich you and your family becomes kidnappers' target. In countries like Vietnam making $50,000 a day makes you a millionaire to the people who are just making a few dollars a day...
He was happy with the initial revenue but he then realize his publicity would have cost him relationship with other people and that's what money can't undo for him. He just can't.
I've lived/worked/travelled in Asia for several years and still regularly visit family and friends.
Sadly Vietnam (and China, etc) don't really adhere to the rule of law except on paper, bribes and corruption are normal and it's really about the connections you have.
You really have to live there to appreciate that -- not just on a holiday for a week.
The scale of wealth is so different, wouldn't he be able to purchase protection?
Granted, it would involve a radical lifestyle transformation that might be unpleasant and jarring, but it seems like he already got exposed to that by getting internet famous. Might as well enjoy the money.
Would he be able to pay that in long term? And if not, what happens when he runs out of money? Relationships and livestyle he has now would be gone forever and he would not be able to pay new one.
Plus, he would be lucky if people protecting him would simply left. Those are probably people you do not want to mess with at all. It is entirely possible they would get dangerous and demanding.
He more or less admitted that he can't go back to how it was and buying an apartment and car sound like he's all for embracing a new lifestyle.
He also got himself a passport so I'm surprised he hasn't gone; anywhere but his home country he would be pretty anonymous. Could be just waiting for a visa.
I am so tired of this kind of ignorant bullshit. Do you folks still think countries like Vietnam are still like what they were thirty years ago? Like it or not, that part of the world has changed a lot.
We had a guy commit suicide on cam in the early days of our website. It was terrible. I was asleep in NL, nobody thought of calling us, just an email that went unseen for the better part of the night. Then in the morning I woke up to a site that was pulled off the air by the hosting provider (ev1) to lessen the chances of copycat acts or other mishaps.
Looking back through the chat snippets that people had mailed from that cam it looked like a bunch of assholes had actively pushed the guy to do it.
We figured out where he lived and sent the police to his home, they took the guy down and after that ev1 restored service to our machine but for the longest time I felt like simply leaving it off.
It's no fun at all when your creations get away from you in ways that you did not foresee. There is a lot more backstory to this which I'm not going to relate here for obvious reasons, and that wasn't even the lowest point of running a consumer oriented website for 15 years and counting, go figure.
three he's working on simultaneously: an untitled cowboy-themed shooter, a vertical flying game called Kitty Jetpack and an "action chess game," as he puts it, called Checkonaut, one of which he'll release this month
Don't say the names of his to-be-released games; someone might grab the app names now. (Unless they're already approved but hidden; though Apple usually doesn't allow "in-progress"/beta app submissions)
He can save the names for 180 days (plus more) for iOS. But it's still not smart because hundreds of games with similar titles might start launching before his.
I imagine it being more like Papi/Doodle Jump, but with constant upwards velocity, and perhaps some instability in moving left and right to dodge objects.
Unfortunately, by removing Flappy Bird from the App Store, he opened the door for shitty clones to reach the top of the charts. This arguably made the lives of users worse. He also passed up the opportunity to make millions of more dollars in merchandising.
At least it's given the world a new alternative to 'a to-do list' in demonstrating new technologies/languages/etc. There are ones for various different gaming frameworks:
Oh cool, I made something similar at PennApps this year. I made a Chrome extension that let you play a bunch of flappy bird clones by flapping your arms on webcam.
> He also passed up the opportunity to make millions of more dollars in merchandising.
If you had enough money, would you realize it?
In the US, one study found that income is positively correlated to happiness only up to $75,000/year. If the $50K/day claims are true, in the 41 days between January 1 and February 10, he made enough money to live at $75,000/year for the next 27 years, without investment of any kind.
It's reasonable to guess that he will invest the money, and that the money/happiness plateau is significantly lower in Vietnam than in the US due to a lower cost of living. So he could be living at the happiness plateau for the rest of his life.
So why exactly should he care that he's passed up millions of dollars in selling stuff nobody needs? Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.
Which was a really big help, but by the time it was on that Youtube channel it was already #1 on the App Store. It really was word of mouth that got it there. There are whole articles analyzing the Flappy Bird rise. I didn't bookmark any though, but they all seemed to conclude it was the perfect storm of viral awareness, it just spread by word of mouth perfectly.
I've never understood why people think this guy is interesting. He's just a socially awkward dude that makes loud, strange noises and acts like a child when he plays games. Meh.
To the snarky replies in this comment subtree: that passage read as if it was referring to some other piece or statement by Romero, which I'd be interested in reading further if it existed. The comparison is apt.
Intuitively, this doesn't seem like a good way to quote someone you called up specifically for this article.
I wish the game industry as a whole was a lot more like Dong, instead of being all about the money. He gave up 50k a day, no doubt if the app had stayed in the store it might have even climbed higher before peaking and slowly coming back down. That one line in the interview when asked why he took his game down, "I'm master of my own fate" says it all about the type of guy Dong is: a decent one.
Sure he's still making money from the people that downloaded it, but he's not being greedy and I respect that. He put the well-being and privacy of himself and his family above the crazy amounts of money he was making. He made his money and he is grateful, he didn't try and push it as far as he could have. Heck, he had so many offers from people wanting to buy the game, he could have easily commanded a six-figure sum for the IP alone, but didn't. He just decided to take it down and leave it at that.
Does anyone know what language he coded the game in? It's kind of a feat in itself that he ported it (by himself) to Android rather quickly. Is he using some sort of wrapper?
> the young programmer stood out for his speed, skills and fierce independent streak. "Dong didn't need a supervisor," Truong says. "He wasn't comfortable with it. So we said he did not have to report to anyone.
Years ago, when I heard of someone being spectacularly successful at something I "could have done" should I have chosen to I chalked it up to luck & circumstance. Two prominent examples come to mind: Facebook and Groupon.
Funny thing is, every time I actually looked into the story behind such phenomena (or met the individuals involved), I would find there's always more than meets the eye.
There's some obsession, some genius (often bordering on insanity), some talent or character trait or propensity behind what seems to be just "luck".
Safe to say, I no longer believe in luck. Of course, there's randomness, which sometimes favors you and other times acts against your interests. But what people call "luck" is what you make of this randomness.
I don't know Dong Nguyen. I've never met him or talked to him. I don't know what makes him tick, or tap or flap. I have little to say about why he pulled his app, except that it likely had nothing to do with money or fame or success.
I can say, however, that there's likely more than meets the eye.
"Growing up in Van Phuc, a village outside Hanoi famous for silk-making, Nguyen (pronounced nwin) never imagined being a world-famous game designer."
As Nguyen is a very popular Vietnamese name, I'd thought to bring this up.. It is not pronounced with an 'N'.. wikipedia has the correct pronunciation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguyen
This was an interesting writeup, but I can't help but think that removing Flappy Bird at the height of popularity was anything less than the shrewdest of PR moves. He continues to get all the ad dollars from existing installs, and has achieved legendary status, assuring that any new games he may release get a lot of coverage and positioning him at the top of the heap. It's really genius!
Did anyone else find it odd that he's working on new games, that will (if successful) potentially have the same negative impact on the lives of the people who play and Nguyen himself?
I don't think Nguyen needs a reason to pull the app, and I respect his right to change his mind but I find it funny that we all seek some sort of wisdom when in fact there might not be any. Shit got crazy and he pulled the game, the end. Doesn't make for a compelling story, and creates no "guiding mantra" for other game developers, but for me it's just as meaningful.
There's just one recommendation i can give him develop a thicker skin you can't change your game for every person blaming external things for their own incompetence.
My office is net to the call center if you ever hear the stupid shit people say you will realize you can't take anything to heart.
Do your thing man and ignore people complaining that their life was ruined by you in some way they will blame everybody except themselves.
"Nguyen was earning an estimated $50,000 a day. Not even Mark Zuckerberg became rich so fast."
False. Zuckerberg became rich faster. Facebook was founded in February 2004. As of February 2014 Zuckerberg's personal wealth is estimated at $31.6 billion. So, during these 10 years, his wealth increased on average by $8.7 million per day.
But I guess the point is moot anyway since RollingStone is comparing apples to oranges (earning != wealth).
I heard it was just a reskin of a premade game he got off an asset store. Is that not the case?
This article made it sound like it was an original idea, but I thought it was just that one button to go up, no button to go down flash game. Is that not what it is?
Slight variation (which may have been done before) where you tap instead of holding. Your upward bounce has a predetermined strength that makes minor course corrections impossible. It's definitely an added challenge.
Re: Asset store reskin, I have no idea. But FWIW I hadn't heard that accusation before.
The basic gameplay has been around for a long time. My old palm pilot had a similar game called "cave". The a article however talks about him designing the graphics, sound, physics, etc.
Except for the one with a fat yellow bird with tiny wings, with the same game mechanic of a 2D scroller, flapping through holes defined by green cactus instead of Mario World tunnels, it's original.
Just something itching me wrong about purposefully making a game excruciatingly difficult and then getting so emotionally affected by their reactions to that difficultly that you are distraught.
So what will happen if his next game hit the top ten again? Shut it down? Why not put his game for charity or just stop releasing games if he really care about how his game affects the players?
I only know he is still alive because I've followed the Flappy Bird story.
I just shared this story with 3 people who only know OF him, all 3 of them replied with their condolences and then we found consolation in his humor about CounterStrike. As a reporter I would think there should be some importance in leaving zero room for misintepretation regarding somebody's well-being.
If you include the next few sentences it's clear that there was no suicide:
In the wake of Flappy Bird's demise, rumors spread. Nguyen
had committed suicide. Nintendo was suing him. He'd received
death threats. His refusal to speak fueled the speculation
even more.
It's a list of the rumors that were going around, and is terminated by a statement about his refusal to speak (at the time) which strongly implies that the suicide rumor was, well, just a rumor.
I see the flow you're talking about but IMO that second sentence is just too big and too bold. The paragraph seems to drop that bomb, inch away and then come back to discredit it rather than just spitting it out like, "rumors begun to spread that Dong had..."
Anyway, no sense in nit-picking but I would like to see a couple words rearranged. I really think he's a good guy and he seems to be someone worthy of the industry's admiration.
We need many, many more people like him in this world. (from what I know about him)
Ah, I see what you're concerned about. The implied structure there is something like:
In the wake of Flappy Bird's demise, rumors spread:
Nguyen had committed suicide; Nintendo was suing
him; he'd received death threats. His refusal to
speak fueled the speculation even more.
But their approach has more literary force, so I think what they did was a reasonable author's choice, not an editing error.
Huh. Maybe I know too much about journalism. But something titled "Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out" tells me that it's an interview with a person... speaking out. In the flesh and everything.
The reporter talking about going to meet him, and how that Nguyen has agreed to share his story with Rolling Stone for the first time. It ends with Nguyen saying (present tense) that he's good now and talking about what he'll do in the future.
I just don't see how somebody could read this story other than as an interview with a living person.
That part had strange wording. I'm assuming that that was one of the rumors. It could have been worded better, perhaps with a colon and then a list of rumors.
