Of Flappy Birds, Travelling Alone & Entertainment News
A viral game back on the radar. A travelling short film. Youtube, AI & more.
Ola! Thanks for opening this week’s missive. And oh, a reminder- I love to hear from you!
The Rise, Fall (& Rise?) of Flappy Bird: The story of a viral sensation.
Friday Find: Watch: the unexpected beauty of traveling solo.
Youtube’s Glow Up: A natural next step in becoming a living room staple?
AI in Hollywood: Quick take on a new studio + AI deal.
With: Insta’s teen moves, a cricket anthem, astrology in Pakistan.
1. The Rise, Fall (& Rise?) of Flappy Bird
Tap Tap.
Its 2014.
The mobile games era is well and truly upon us. Candy Crush has been rotting teeth for a couple of years, as Clash of Clans is sneaking into wallets. There is Temple Run, already spawning clones egging us to play “just one more time”. And of course, some very Angry Birds had appeared in 2009. Now, another avian adventure begins. A pixelated bird with a death wish captures the world's attention.
Flappy Bird is the brainchild of Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen. It has been pecking around the app stores since May 2013, but has not quite found a nest. A late bloomer, it skyrockets to huge popularity in early 2014.
It is a deceptively simple game. Players ‘tap to flap’, helping a bug-eyed bird navigate a world built with pipes imported from Mario Bros. Despite- or perhaps because of- the challenging, even frustrating gameplay, and basic graphics, it becomes a global phenomenon.
Downloads soar, App Store and Google Play Store charts are topped, ad revenue starts to pour in. Nguyen reportedly finds himself earning an astonishing $50,000 per day in ad revenue. This is the very definition of soaring little-guy internet success.
Then, at the height of its popularity, it vanishes.
Nguyen does the unthinkable. He pulls the plug and sends Flappy Bird to that great app store in the sky. The internet collectively loses its mind (did we say “break the internet” back then?). Phones with Flappy Bird installed suddenly become hot commodities, selling for thousands on eBay.
What happened?
Getting Hooked.
Flappy Bird's meteoric rise wasn't quite a random occurrence. There had been a larger phenomenon at play in the mobile gaming world. Developers had seemingly cracked the code on how to make games highly engaging… and highly addictive.
A cocktail of psychological tricks were in the bag- variable reward schedules, social proof thats heightened FOMO, progress mechanics that gave wing to our sunk cost fallacies. Some would later wonder if we weren't just playing games; but being played.
The result? A mobile gaming industry that exploded faster than a Candy Crush colour bomb. Games like Angry Birds, Temple Run, and Pokémon GO became cultural phenomena. The ‘freemium’ model, offering free downloads with in-app purchases became the most common. While this allowed more players to access games, it began to raise concerns about exploitative practices, particularly around younger users.
Too Close to the Sun?
Dong Nguyen grew up in Van Phuc, a village outside Hanoi. When his family eventually got a Nintendo, he played a lot of Super Mario Bros. At 19, he placed in the top 20 of a programming competition and got an internship with Punch Entertainment, one of Hanoi’s only game companies back then. It made cellphone games.
Later, Nguyen said he 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.”
One weekend in April 2013, he churned out a “new simple game” that asked us, simply, to tap to flap. The game made no dent- on Twitter, the first mention came only five months later. A three-word review, “Fuck Flappy Bird.”
Two months later, it was topping the charts.
So why pull the game?
Its January 2014. News of how much money Nguyen is raking in has spread. His face is splashed in Vietnamese papers and TV- this is how his parents learn their son has made a wildly successful game! Reporters swarm their home. Nguyen feels suffocated by the attention. He tweets, “It is something I never want. Please give me peace.”
But it might be something more that makes him clip Flappy Bird's wings.
Dong is drowning in it all. The game's addictive nature is keeping him up at night. He says to Forbes soon after, “Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed. 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.”
It is like a bartender smashing all his bottles because people were having too much fun.
He later reveals more to Rolling Stone, sharing messages he has saved on his phone.
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.” 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.
On Ethical Gaming
(ever so briefly)
The 2010s also saw an intensification in ethical discussions, influenced in part by the highly addictive mobile gameplay that had become prevalent. Dong’s concern about the game's addictive potential resonated with a growing unease in the industry. The question was asked more meaningfully- could games be compelling without being exploitative?
Developers began exploring ways to create engaging experiences without relying on potentially harmful mechanics. Monument Valley, Florence, and Alto's Adventure demonstrated this, and are now recognised as shining examples of mobile games that could be both commercially successful and ethically designed.
Games like these often opted for one-time purchase models, prioritised finite, meaningful experiences over endless gameplay loops, and proved that mobile games could be appreciated as artistic works rather than just time-fillers.
Rise From the Ashes?
Fast forward to 2024, and like a phoenix un-splatting itself from a green pipe, Flappy Bird is making a comeback. Of sorts. Because here's the kicker: Nguyen has nothing to do with it.
While the iconic bird will soon flap around new pipes, it is an organization calling itself the Flappy Bird Foundation that announced this resurrection. It claims to be “led by a dedicated team of passionate fans and industry veterans who share a deep love for Flappy Bird and sought to rescue the iconic gameplay and IP for the community of over 100 million enthusiasts.” It all seems to be based on an ‘abandoned’ trademark that has since been acquired by this group. Either way, Dong’s not impressed.
(Michael Roberts, the “chief creative” behind Flappy Bird’s return, is the founder of 1208 Productions, a mobile game developer deeply involved with NFTs and cryptocurrency. This connection has raised eyebrows, especially among fans wary of crypto integration into beloved classics.)
The mobile gaming landscape has evolved since Flappy Bird first took flight. Players are savvier, developers are (sometimes) more conscientious, and the conversation around gaming ethics is louder. The most engaging games ought to be those that don’t just keep us playing-they respect our time, our wallets, and our mental well-being. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a sudden urge to Wordle.
Meanwhile, Dong, who still makes games but stays very much out of any spotlight, likely continues to live the same philosophy he spouted back in 2014.
“I’m master of my own fate. Independent thinker.”
~ · ~ more from 2014: Rolling Stone · Forbes ·
2. Friday Find: The Unexpected Beauty of Traveling Solo
This week, something not new, but evocative across the years. A (very) short film, After The Tone captures the unexpected beauty of solo traveling. Filmmaker Sertac Yuksel's own unaccompanied experiences crafted this; it made its way to many eyeballs when it was part of National Geographic’s Short Film Showcase some years ago.
If you have three minutes (and surely, we all must find three minutes?), just go along for the sights & sounds.
3. Youtube’s Glow Up
YouTube is revamping its TV app to look eerily similar to its premium rivals. Already outpacing Netflix in connected TV viewing, it now looks to dress the part.
The update allows creators to organise their videos into seasons and episodes, complete with auto-playing "immersive previews."
Other new features include a more prominent subscribe button and QR codes for video descriptions. Because clearly, what’s a "modern viewing experience" without pulling out your phone to scan a code on a 65-inch TV?
It announced plans at a ‘Made on YouTube’ event on Wednesday. Sounds like its putting on the streaming jacket, but surely it must look to keep the ‘authentic’ shorts & tee on under?
[a ton of our creators] are doing 20 to 40 minute videos, there’s kind of a season arc to it, there’s multiple episodes in it, so we’re giving them the tooling to really create what we’re calling Creator Show Pages… go to [a] channel page and actually just kind of go on that sort of binge episodic experience that I think the lean back TV environment really lends itself to.
My quick take.
A better way to navigate creator channels without feeling lost? Order in creator chaos? Yes, please.
Creators have long been moving into becoming media companies in their own right, or at least building a path to it. Most successful channels are more than just that one face in front of a phone camera. With this, it might feel like they’re asked to think a bit more like traditional media moguls (sans the old(er) men with far-out compensation packages). No pressure.
Makes it feel more premium, closer to a streaming service. This is both good and questionable- will it reduce the raw, native nature that entire generations have grown up on? Very much the "You" in YouTube.
Question: How much will this new organised approach mess with YouTube's recommendation-driven experience? That algorithm-powered watching is at the heart of the Youtube flow- will the rabbit holes we love to hate (or hate to love) get a bit shallower?
To be clear, their march in the connected TV space has been significant, reflected both in viewership numbers, and for the creators. Take these data points: the number of creators who make a majority of their revenue from TV is up 30 percent year over year ; in the last three years, the number of top creators that received the majority of their watchtime on the big screen has increased more than 400 percent.
Given this recent success on connected TVs- outperforming Netflix- the move isn't entirely surprising. It's a natural next step in their not-so-subtle narrative of becoming a living room staple. I'm all here to see how it will balance the curated and the spontaneous, the polished and the raw, the bingers and the scrollers.
It will be a staggered roll out, through 2025. Let’s see how the fancy dress works.
4. AI in Hollywood- another step
Plenty of chatter- expectedly, deservedly so- about the Lionsgate & Runway announcement, with much cautious excitement, wails of anguish and ... questions.
TLDR? Lionsgate, the studio behind franchises such as Hunger Games and John Wick, and the (very impressive) video-focused artificial intelligence research firm Runway, have inked a deal. It centres around the creation and training of a new AI model by Runway, customised to Lionsgate’s portfolio content. Lionsgate owns a film and television library with more than 20,000 titles.
So- many questions. Some of the most insightful ones I have seen are around:-
Is this intended to be a foundational model? If so, surely Lionsgate's catalogue is not enough for the training data. If then its being built on top of something Runway has already made, has Lionsgate looked at Runway's sources for training their model?
Is this enough training data for Runway to create high quality video content?
I am also curious for details on how they intend to develop and use this partnership- more to assist creatives, or slowly replace them... or is that difference merely separated by time?
Questions also abound around the use of work which was not previously signed off for such purposes by the talent involved (like an opt-in/out analogy). How will this evolve with humans involved in new projects Lionsgate gets into?
Its interesting not only for the deal itself, but for the path it is inevitably laying out for the industry and studios in general.
PS- This line from Michael Burns at Lionsgate was probably less thought out. Summed up by filmmaker Joe Russo, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a grosser string of words than: 'to develop cutting-edge, capital-efficient content creation opportunities.’ ”
5. Masala Peanuts
(where I share stories or tidbits I find interesting)
Know. Instagram has lined up changes for teens. Instagram Teen Accounts include built-in protections, limiting contact & content and needing parental permissions to change these. Changes come to the US, UK, EU this year and around the world in Jan 2025. There are many who bemoan that these are belated, but I say better late- these are welcome.
Watch. ‘The making of the ICC Anthem’ is a behind the scenes look at the little story of how cricket’s new anthem was crafted over the last year.
Read. YouTube is driving an astrology boom in Pakistan. Pakistanis are looking for certainty. Astrologers on YouTube want to help. “Astrologers have held a place within the South Asian imagination for centuries. Critics have argued that astrology is speculative and therefore forbidden by Islam.”
Off for a brew & a bite!
Lot of creators on Vero now, it looks interesting