Flappy Bird is clearly racist, which is why it had to be taken down: little yellow bird struggles precariously through the bamboo forrest getting smacked in the face over and over and getting progressively whiter and whiter medals as he does better and better, except that the woods are infinite, and the whitest medal, a high score, is covered in red. Well not necessarily racist but racially precarious in how it can be interpreted. Now I'm not saying that the creator did that consciously, but that the essentializing nature of his game design just let it shine through, which is probably why he had to take it down, to make a clear statement of his priorities.
So why not take the opportunity, in the absence of a real beginning so far to the conversation on race that Barrack Obama promised, to start an international conversation on race, just in time for the 2016 elections?
This could take the form of a series of a Flappy Bird knockoffs, each colored and themed for a list of racial, cultural, sexual and ability environments.-- JesusHChrist, Feb 12 2014 You mean like this? http://deidealewereld.vier.be/vladibird/ [ytk, Feb 15 2014] He took it down because the enormous succes changed his life too much. He just went back to the way his life was, foregoing a lot of money but (re)gaining peace of mind.-- zeno, Feb 12 2014 <<enormous succes changed his life too much>>
Yes and I will also sell you everlasting life for only one tenth of all of your earnings.-- JesusHChrist, Feb 12 2014 I find that piece of mind thing reeks of BS. Sell the game and take royalties then. Disappear, like the CalvIn & Hobbes author. Money is good and can do good. If you have already done the work why forgo it?-- bungston, Feb 12 2014 //But to be honest, I'd never even heard of it until I saw an ad saying it's being taken offline. My earlier comment stands: someone please explain how this game is functionally different from Copter Classic, and why this incarnation seems so popular.//
I think it's just that it was a joke amongst gamers due to inherent difficulty or crapness etc. Then some non-gamers mistook that for a recommendation and bought. Once it was popular, more people are interested, so it took off from there.
This effect - that there is no such thing as bad publicity was demonstrated elsewhere when the hacking of random socialite's phone (Paris Hilton?) was reported. The message people got from that was not "this phone is insecure" but "hey, look at all this stuff the phone can do, as used by celebrities". So sales of that model of phone greatly increased.-- Loris, Feb 15 2014 It's simpler than that. People like repetitive, mind numbing entertainment with a clear objective. Hence the popularity of Zynga games. What made Flappy Bird so popular is its simplicity. You can start a game easily, and get good at it fairly quickly, but no matter how good you get at it there will always be a higher score you can get. And when you do finally lose, it's easy to start over again. The whole thing doesn't require much of an investment in time or brainpower, so it's a perfect game to play while waiting for a bus or in a boring lecture or whatever. That simple.-- ytk, Feb 15 2014 //than copter classic//
It's like Manga as opposed to American superhero cartoons - - there's is a logarithmic difference. Flappy Bird may not be racist, but I could read my own racism into it, because it is interpretable, so it functions as cultural commentary. Copter Classic is hard to read as anything but a helicopter avoiding obstacles.-- JesusHChrist, Feb 16 2014 random, halfbakery