Video Games

Flappy Bird may be gone forever, but buck up, because there are plenty of other games out there

This past weekend, the creator of soaringly popular mobile game Flappy Bird announced that he was removing it from the app store. This abrupt decision seemed to set the entire Internet ablaze, prompting many fans to threaten to either kill the creator, Dong Nguyen, or themselves. Others are now bidding large sums of money to get their hands on devices that already have the game installed.

But really, everyone should just calm down, because there are plenty of other games out there to keep you idly tapping away at your phone for hours. Here are five solid alternatives.

If you want something just like Flappy Bird…

Ironpants. This is essentially the exact same thing as Flappy Bird, but instead of guiding a little bird through sets of pipes, you’re guiding a little superhero through sets of boxes. But the physics, mechanics and overall aesthetic are pretty much equal. (Available for iOS and Android)

If you want something that’s nothing like Flappy Bird…

Ruzzle. This is a fast-paced version of Boggle that’s been around for two years but has gained most of its popularity in the past few months. Each round comes with a two-minute time limit, and you can challenge either your friends or, if you don’t have any friends, you can play against strangers. (Available for iOS and Android)

If you want something that requires thinking…

QuizUp. Instead of giving your fingers a workout (you know, from all the swiping and tapping), try giving your brain a workout with this popular trivia app. You can challenge opponents in topics ranging from brand logos to chemistry to Mean Girls. (Available for iOS; Android version coming soon)

If you want something that requires no thinking…

Pocket Frogs. If you’ve ever dreamt of breeding and selling frogs, this game is for you. And if you haven’t ever dreamt of that, but you have dreamt of a mindless game with plenty of pretty colors, this is still for you. (Available for iOS and Android)

If you want something visually beautiful…

Badland. Like Flappy Bird, this is a side-scrolling game with just one control. But unlike Flappy Bird, Badland places you in a visually stunning world — a complex, colorful rainforest. Also unlike Flappy Bird, it is not free, but this one seems like it’s worth the purchase. (Available for iOS and Android)

The app's creator Dong Nguyen says he yanked it from the Internet because it was too addictive and had 'become a problem'

Flappy Bird fans are questioning why on earth its mysterious developer would pull the wildly successful game after it became an instantaneous success, rising to the top of Apple’s App Store and pulling in an estimated $50,000 a day from advertising. But for Dong Nguyen, the 29-year-old Vietnamese game maker, the fact that it had people so hooked is exactly why it had to be deleted.

“Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed,” Nguyen told Forbes, which noted that the creator seemed stressed and smoked several cigarettes during the 45-minute interview. “But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever.”

People are so desperate to continue playing the difficult game that some are bidding up to $100,000 on eBay for an iPhone with the game installed. Reviewers of the game in the app store said that they would have sold their soul to Satan to have not downloaded the app, and Nguyen did not want that devilish connotation.

Nguyen had previously tweeted that the instantaneous fame is what was getting to him.

I am sorry 'Flappy Bird' users, 22 hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down. I cannot take this anymore.—
Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 08, 2014

It is not anything related to legal issues. I just cannot keep it anymore.—
Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 08, 2014

I also don't sell 'Flappy Bird', please don't ask.—
Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 08, 2014

Nguyen told Forbes that he couldn’t sleep and his life had taken an uncomfortable turn. He does see a silver lining: “After the success of Flappy Bird, I feel more confident, and I have the freedom to do what I want to do.”

So expect more, perhaps less addictive, games from Nguyen.

And I still make games.—
Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 08, 2014

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It's the Borderlands 2 model or bust, but the price may be right.

Call it a slim PS Vita, not a PS Vita Slim: the latter doesn’t exist, but the former’s finally coming to North America this spring, Sony’s John Koller confirmed in a phone interview — as well as on Sony’s PlayStation blog — this evening.

Sony says the new Wi-Fi Vita, model PCH-2000, is roughly 20% slimmer and 15% lighter than the original Vita. It’s been sculpted with beveled edges for ergonomic comfort, and includes a new 5-inch LCD screen; on paper, LCD tech is a step down from OLED, which is what the original Vita employs. Sony claims the visual differences are almost imperceptible given advances in LCD screen tech since the Vita launched, and that jibes with what I’ve read, reaction-wise, to the new screen since the slimline Vita debuted in Japan last October.

Battery life has also improved, says Sony — presumably benefitting from improvements in battery tech as well as the LCD screen — from 3-5 hours to 4-6 hours of gameplay, with video playback bumping from about five hours to seven hours total.

In a welcome change from the original Vita’s M.I.A. internal storage, the new model will ship with 1GB of internal memory. And if you’re picking up the limited edition, which ships with Borderlands 2 for $199, you’ll get an additional 8GB memory card in the bargain. The original Vita launched for $250 in February 2012 (here’s my review), then dropped to $199 last August. It’s been priced in bundle configurations before (with a game, for $199), but Sony’s taking an interesting approach here by throwing in what’s probably the most anticipated Vita game yet made, plus six DLC packs at launch (most of season one’s DLC), four-player co-op and PS3 cross-play support, meaning you can access you PS3 save games.

Anything missing? A few things. Like: Will there be a standalone model (with presumably reduced price)? Will we eventually see multiple colored model choices (in Japan the slimline Vita launched with six colors, but your choices are black, black or black at launch here)? And what about a firm release date? The new Vita (with a different bundle — no one has Borderlands 2 yet) debuted in the U.K. last Friday, but at this point, Sony’s saying only “spring” for North America, meaning this thing could show up stateside anytime between March 20 and June 21.

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Rumors of legal threats false, says gaming giant

Don’t blame Mario for your favorite game disappearing from app stores. Nintendo denies it had anything to do with the death of the uber-popular app Flappy Bird.

Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen deleted the game Sunday as rumors spread that Nintendo threatened legal action against him.

The game, in which you repeatedly tap your screen to keep a bird afloat and avoiding obstacles, includes a series of pipes that look suspiciously similar to those in Nintendo’s Super Mario games. But the gaming giant told TIME it “did not contact the creator of [Flappy Bird]. We also did not seek its removal from the marketplace.”

More likely, the Vietnamese game developer pulled the game because he felt overwhelmed by its sudden popularity. The game had been downloaded 50 million times before its removal from the iTunes and Android stores. A number of tweets from Nguyen himself confirms that decision was not influenced by Nintendo.

I can call 'Flappy Bird' is a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it.—
Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 08, 2014

It is not anything related to legal issues. I just cannot keep it anymore.—
Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 08, 2014

But not to worry. If you have a thousand bucks to waste, you can always buy a phone with the game pre-loaded on eBay.

— with reporting by Alex Fitzpatrick

Care to wager how many ripoffs are in the offing?

I’ve said most of what I needed to about now ex-mobile game Flappy Bird, because saying much more starts to look like a dissertation on the skeletomuscular parameters of Miley Cyrus’ stage maneuvers. I mostly hope the game’s creator, Nguyen Ha Dong, is able to find some kind of respite from the spotlight, which reportedly drove him to yank the game off Apple’s and Google’s mobile stores this weekend.

But I want to add a few more things before we bid Nguyen’s little bolt from the blue farewell (until the invasion of me-too clones arrives). Not about how much the game supposedly made per day in ad revenue, or whether Nguyen used bots to grease Flappy Bird‘s uncanny luge ride to the iTunes Store’s app throne, or whether someone else (Apple, Nintendo) applied pressure of whatever sort to hasten the game’s demise, or what ultimately prompted Nguyen to mysteriously yank the game, most of which detour into feckless speculation.

I want to write instead a little more about the game itself, because I’ve read some amusingly wrongheaded defenses of its mechanics — defenses telegraphing their allegiance to nostalgia, if nothing else.

But I should probably review how the game works before we go any further, since some of you haven’t played it, and may never at this point, short of buying it off eBay for crazy-bucks (or, if you’re an Android user, downloading the APK file from an APK host site).

In brief, Flappy Bird is about finessing a bird’s flightpath, left to right, while avoiding no-frills obstacles: basically the cartoonish green pipes from Super Mario Bros. on infinite recycle. The bird flaps its wings each time you tap the screen and otherwise nosedives like a rocket-propelled bomb. Touch the pipes, which extend from the top and bottom of the screen, creating a tiny space for passage, and you fail. Touch the ground and you fail. The pipes change height (and therein lies most of the difficulty), but the distance between them never varies. That distance is relatively small, while the distance the bird travels with each flap — as well as the speed at which it plummets — is considerable, making repeat navigation between the pipes ridiculously hard.

Those are the rules. Like an endless runner, the game has no end. There are no levels, no extra lives, no continues and no finish lines. You tap to start, then remain aloft for as long as you can. The closest thing to performance metrics is a pipes-cleared counter that feeds a public scoreboard, as well as gold, silver or bronze medals for clearing 10, 20 or 30 pipes (the medals reset each time you restart the game). I came close to snatching silver (20 pipes) early last week before throwing in the towel, at which point I removed the game from my iPhone. When Nguyen informed the world that he planned to retract his little wunder-game on Sunday, nothing impelled me to pull it down for posterity.

So why was Flappy Bird such a crummy game, as quick-play games go?

Imagine an endless runner whose first leap took a dozen tries (and exponentially more to make the next dozen). Imagine a platformer with nearly-impossible-to-land-on platforms. Imagine Pac-Man with twice as many ghosts, or levels a fraction as big. Imagine Angry Birds if the only way to pass a level was to get all the stars and on the first try.

I realize Flappy Bird isn’t about seeing the sights or amassing content that feeds other systems. However, an essential part of better than merely compulsive game design — as a guy like Shigeru Miyamoto proved time and again with games like Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong – is striking the right balance between failure and success (including how those states fall along a play session’s timeline). Flappy Bird fails that test, in my view, by eschewing progressive play mechanics — call it an acclimation period to acquaint you with the game’s physics — for mere difficulty, which is both immediate and crushing.

Any game can be sadistically difficult. Just put dozens of Hammer Bros. at the start of Super Mario Bros. or make every jump all but un-make-able from the outset. Better games teach you their limits (as well as yours, skill-wise) gradually.

Flappy Bird can’t be bothered with any of that: It’s as one-note about its one-noteness as this tune goes. There’s a certain flavor of old-school to that sort of punitive minimalism, sure, but in saying so, we gloss over the fact that the old-school games we’re probably thinking about often worked as such out of technical necessity, not because gaming’s grandparents were somehow wiser about video game design. If I revisit those games, it’s for nostalgic reasons, not to celebrate their brilliant mechanical brutality. Sadism in games has its place, you’ll brook no argument from me, but I need more than mere sadism to ring my compulsion bell (more than a few times, anyway).

Some of you will disagree, and that’s fine, because in the end, we’re just arguing for what we want to see more — or less — of. And when a game like Flappy Bird emerges to dominate the conversation unexpectedly, it gives us a chance to.

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Some parting words for an example of straightforward, honest game design.

By now, you’ve probably heard that Flappy Bird has left this world, pulled from the iOS App Store and Google Play by its creator Dong Nguyen for mysterious reasons. If you haven’t downloaded the game already, your only options are piracy and eBay.

Do you have to play Flappy Bird? Not really, but those who did should appreciate what the game brought us in its limited time on Earth.

Flappy Bird is as brutally difficult as it is simple and addictive, but none of those qualities alone are what make the game praiseworthy. The thing to appreciate most about Flappy Bird is its purity.

There are three basic rules that drive Flappy Bird:

• Your bird gains downward speed as it falls, but will always flap up by the same height–just enough to stay between the two pipes.
• Your bird’s horizontal speed remains constant.
• The pipes through which your bird flies appear at varying heights, but always have the same vertical clearance and horizontal distance between them.

Other endless-style games may seem simple, but the rules often become more complex.

The classic Helicopter Game, for example, makes you account for momentum. The faster the free-fall, the longer you must hold the button down to pull out of it. This adds an element of planning, as you must fly steadily and bring yourself back to center-screen when possible to avoid being trapped.

No such planning is required with Flappy Bird. You can only see as far as the next pipe, and there’s always just enough space to position yourself for the next opening. While some people have criticized Flappy Bird for being in portrait orientation, being able to see farther ahead in landscape view would only be a distraction. (It’d also be less comfortable to play while holding the phone one-handed.)

Flappy Bird also differs from many similar games in that it doesn’t become harder over time, either through faster speeds or reduced distance between pipes. You’re being challenged from the beginning, and you could theoretically play it forever without hitting an impossible situation. The closest you get to a difficulty spike is when two pipes are set far apart, vertically, but because you don’t have to plan your moves ahead, you’re never really stuck.

All of this boils down to a game of precision and perseverance. The trick with Flappy Bird is to get as close to the bottom pipe as you can before tapping the screen. If you can time that tap just right, every time, there’s no reason you can’t get a hundred or even a thousand points. If you fail, you only have yourself to blame.

Perhaps you dislike Flappy Bird for being too simple, for capitalizing on a vaguely Mario-like aesthetic, or just for being too darned popular. But if you can somehow seek the game out post-app store, it remains an example of straightforward, honest game design that respects the player’s time. At least we have have the rest of .Gears Studios’ catalog to play with.

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How not to solicit feedback from customers.

Innovation — that hydra-headed cliche of a word — comes in many guises. You might describe what the NSA’s been up to as innovative. Google’s policy of scanning everything you do, since you’re doing it on its turf and dime, is arguably innovative. And certainly what marketing arms across the product-service spectrum have been doing in an always-connected, activity-cataloged, behaviorally-scrutinized era has the tinge of pioneering to it.

Like figuring out how to get players to either leave full marks on an app’s official store page, or sidestep a star-rating entirely — a little trick Electronic Arts comes close to perfecting with freemium Android and iOS game Dungeon Keeper Mobile.

No, not the fascinating PC-only real-time dungeon-delver Peter Molyneux delivered while heading up Bullfrog back in 1997. That’s one of my favorite real-time strategy games going. I haven’t tried this one, crafted by EA subsidiary Mythic Entertainment (Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer Online), thus read none of this as commentary on the game itself, which may be terrific for all I know (though Molyneux’s apparently no fan).

But if you’re playing the Android version and you want to rate the game, DK Mobile — noticed by a player, verified by Gamasutra and confirmed by EA — offers an in-app screen that lets you “rate your experience.”

“Enjoying Dungeon Keeper?” asks the game, followed by a goofy-sounding appeal: “5-Star ratings from you help us provide free updates!” I don’t see how the latter factors, short of an incentive mechanism whereby the design team isn’t funded (or allowed) to provide free updates without five-star feedback. That’s followed by the question “How would you rate Dungeon Keeper?” below which you’re offered a button that reads “1-4 Stars” and another that reads “5 Stars.” Two buttons, not five — five stars, or bust.

In logic circles, I believe this is what’s known as Hobson’s choice: take it or leave it. If you leave it, EA redirects you to a feedback form, and no star rating is registered. If you still want to leave a lower-than-five-star rating, you have to go to Google’s Play store directly to do so. That this is an option many players probably won’t realize they have, as it involves circumventing the game, seems to be lost on whoever designed DK Mobile‘s bifurcated ratings interface.

Defending itself, EA told Gamasutra “We’re always looking at new ways to gather player feedback so that we can continue to improve our games. The ‘rate this app’ feature in the Google Play version of Dungeon Keeper was designed to help us collect valuable feedback from players who don’t feel the game is worth a top rating.”

The point, says EA, is to “make it easier” for players to fire off feedback in-game.

But if that’s really the point, why not split your in-game feedback button out from your in-game ratings system? Why mash them together and turn the whole thing into a bait-and-switch? If all you want is player feedback, why appeal explicitly for a five-star rating (and dangle a “free updates” carrot)? And why not let the user leave the lower-than-five-star rating in-game, then manifest your feedback screen?

Spin it any way you like: It feels deceitful. You’d think by now there’d be some sensitivity to this, given consumers’ heightened sensitivity to manipulation. You’d think the potential negative publicity might outweigh the perks (in a crowded, noisy marketplace) of your product being noticed. You’d think companies would have more respect for their customers.

But who knows. Maybe the game’s selling in droves because of rubberneckers, and the “no such thing as bad publicity” adage applies.

I understand that drive-by feedback is a problem. People sometimes leave low star ratings for bizarre reasons. Others use star ratings to punish companies for an unrelated perceived slight instead of rating the product on its own merits. So I salute EA’s desire to increase customer engagement beyond a one-click, nondescript vote. But this isn’t how you do that. This is how you upset customers and undermine trust. If EA has any sense, it’ll remove the feature from the Android version of DK Mobile, or at least tweak it so players can leave their star mark in the time-honored fashion if they so choose.

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As long as you've got incredibly deep pockets, it's not too late to catch up on mobile gaming's oddest fad.

I’m comfortable enough in my own skin to tell you that I’ve been playing Flappy Bird over the last few days and enjoying it. The suddenly, bizarrely popular smartphone game may be both crude and near-impossible to play, but it’s also fun. At least as a brief diversion.

So when word came down that Flappy creator Dong Nguyen — in an act of defiance with no parallel that I can remember — was snuffing out his golden goose by removing it from the Apple App Store and Google Play, I did check my iPhone to make sure that my copy still worked. It did. I played a few games, then got back to my weekend.

.GEARS Studios

But what if you’re a tad behind on your Internet fads and never got around to installing Flappy Bird when you could? Are you doomed to go through the rest of your existence wondering what what you missed?

Nope. Over at the hotbed of offbeat entrepreneurialism known as eBay, lots of merchants have put up iPhones and Android phones with Flappy Bird pre-installed. The market is so new that nobody seems to agree on how much to charge, but the listing shown above is for a Flappy-ready used 16GB space gray Verizon iPhone 5s that’s $1499 as a Buy It Now.

A comparable second-hand iPhone without Flappy Bird can be easily be had on eBay for $500 to $600, so in this instance, the game — which was an ad-supported freebie — commands a premium of $900 or more.

Or doesn’t. Doing an eBay search for items which have actually sold, I can’t find any evidence that anybody has bought any of these Flappy-Bird phones. Maybe it’s a category without a customer. But I wonder if sales would heat up if the sellers charged, say, $50 over the cost of a phone sans Flappy? Naw, let’s make that $25.

In any event, I don’t see myself playing the game for all that much longer. I’ve resolved to call it quits as soon as I score a 5. But just in case, I’m going to leave Flappy Bird on my iPhone 5. There may be McCrackens yet unborn who’ll want to play it someday.

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