Stop making Flappy Bird clones

I mean bloody hell, isn't there enough of them? One flappy bird is enough.

 

Hehe, yea. I was just thinking that apple should make a category just especially for them.

 

The problem isn't necessarily with the developers, but the consumers that keep throwing their money/time at them. A lot of those clones are stupidly successful so far.

 

At least they're making something putting it out there instead of just moaning on a forum....

 

They're not making anything, they're copying.

 

Copying is still better than doing nothing. At least they're being productive.

 

I agree, stop making them - guys its because people are selling templates that they make them.
I dont want to place links to templates source code as it allow people gain more visibility.
We need to stop the template sellers!!!

 

Why the developers are only pursuing a fad that 'worked' for one developer. And it seems to be a type of game that people want to play: free, addictive and simple gameplay with cute friendly graphics.

 

It's like all the slender clones that came after the Eight Pages. Just stop.

 

So Candy Crush suing the guy they stole from is "being prductive"...?

 

Why?

Ever heard of "free enterprise", or "supply and demand"?

There is no reason to stop something. This will die out eventually, when people get tired of it.

Seriously, you want to make games? Then make them and stop ranting about other developers in a forum.

 

We're not allowed to express our opinions?

 

Yeh I have heard all of them, when a noob starts making "crap" from a template he bought on the web and expects to be rich...then im like thats cute

Seems like you yourself are probably one of them

And what other developers in the forum am I ranting about?

EDIT: I see you are replying to every flappy bird thread on here, please link us to all the clones you have made so I can see the quality of them?

 

Who cares...

 

Are you serious?

 

Very.

Why should i care if people want to copy some silly mobile hit? I am not forced to play them and i am not forced to create a copy my self.

 

I'm with you.

What is exactly the problem here...?
Are they having fun making those clones? Or are they just making money with those clones? Or maybe none of those, so they are wasting their own time with those clones... why should any of this be a concern to us? Don't worry, be happy!

This is casual gaming, nothing else. Tetris, platformers, tower defense, side scroller cars that ride on hills... etc. it's full of games like this. Should be the least of our concerns.

 

Actually people keep doing them, people will get fed up with them and maybe they'll want something different.

Also I would recommend every newbie to try to make a flappy bird instead of Pong. Sounds more fun as a first project.

 

It's not about fun, game dev isn't mean to be fun.

 

Submit a clone now and you will most likely get the response of:

Rejected. 'We found your app name attempts to leverage a popular app'

Both Google and Apple are cracking down on this sort of thing.

 

I guess the people who have been #1, #2, #3 etc on the app store and raking in a tonne of money from their `clones` would probably be laughing in the face of people who say to not make the clones. You may have a point that it goes against the creative spirit or does not advance game design or does not take the medium forward or whatever elitism... but some of the people are making a lot of money from very simple games that took very little time or effort to make... is that not some kind of an indie dream come true?

 

I'm not in this industry to make money.

 

Not everyone is like you, and you can always ignore things you don't like. As a cat lover, I don't walk up to dog owners and ask them why on earth they didn't get a cat.

Not every clone was made just to make money.

I'll be joining the 'Flappy Bird clone club' soon enough, not because of money (I expect to make very little, if any) but because I had someone message me saying "I have all the art done, just need a programmer to put it all together. Here's how it's different than Flappy Bird, and possibly better. I want this to be fun" He didn't even know whether or not he wanted ads in the game!

I didn't agree to have a chance at the million $$$ surely waiting for this game's release. I agreed because it was clear that this person was excited about creating his own version of Flappy Bird.

 

They say they are, but they are not, there been a number of new releases with the word flappy in the title, trust me I have been monitoring it all

 

Are you just guessing that "a lot" are making money, or do you have any sources to back that statement up? My guess would be most of them are not making money -- but I don't know that for sure. I'd like to see how many of the clones are actually making money.

If they are making money, then I'd say I can't believe the number of people that like to play "dumb" games. Of course, that's just my opinion. I really don't understand why people like games like that. Even flappy bird itself......it's just stupid to me. But if people will give their money to play stupid games, I'll definitely be willing to make stupid games

 

The problem, for me atleast, is that it is expected for the large companies in the games industry to act like prostitutes, and take an art form and completely commercialize it, and conform to whatever market research and trends say will make them money with almost no other consideration.
That means it's no longer art, it's manufacturing, from a blueprint they were given.
They aren't making what they want to make, they're making what we tell them we like...
But how do we know we wouldn't like what they wanted to make? They never made it, so we never played it. This cautious strategy slows innovation and experimentation in the games industry, and the lack of passion behind such projects is far too often palpable.

Indy devs, up until recenty, had the reputation of being risk takers and innovators to a much higher degree than the big studios. To an extent they offset the lack of experimentation in the rest of the industry.
I think that reputation has taken a lot of hits in the last few years though. Things have changed. Indie games can be much more successful these days, and most indies can clone these successful indie games, to the point where they are even improving the look and feel of the originals. That's obviously not not real innovation, mind you.

A genre used to be a few fundamental concepts that allowed for a lot of diversity. Now, new genres are being created by single indie titles, which restricts the scope. I'm not seeing much diversity or innovation in those "genres", atleast it's coming in too small increments. Smaller than the increments of the big companies, when they are following their most cautious strategy.

Now.. If the market is being saturated by what is already popular, with little diversity, and games developers are increasingly basing their blueprints on market research and/or literally cloning games, we can expect a further slowdown.


It's not "live and let live". Everyone is affecting the games that are going to be available to me in the future, of course I will hold people responsible if I suffer from their actions.

 

He's not "excited about copying Flappy Bird", he's wetting himself at the prospect of being "kool 4 makin flippy bord"

 

Wow. Well said This sounds like it should be an article on Gamasutra -- pretty insightful. I agree with the general attitude and perspective you present with that. The only thing I disagree with, is that I wouldn't go so far as to call it prostitution, just good/smart business (but not illegal). But while it might be good business, it also shows a complete lack of creativity and innovation as you stated.

 

I can't believe I'm reading half of these posts. The industry is not going to die because some people are making clones of a popular game, and even if you see videogames as an artform and aim for innovation, it doesn't mean others have to.

 

I argue that the best way to practice any art is to copy the masters. If you want to write music, one of the common things is to transcribe existing pieces by ear, and attempt to recreate the original piece. If you want to create art, in addition to creating your own, you recreate things you see in real life; in college, when I was doing my music minor stuff, I used to always see art students in our hallways in front of the practice rooms drawing perspective excersizes.

I think for games, when something succeeds, yes, absolutely copy the crap out of the mechanics. There is nothing wrong with this, because in implementing them, you can learn all sorts of cool things that carry over to other games well. You could even find vectors to improve them.

 

My guess is that this is the first time some people are seeing the video game industry as an actual industry, and this shocks them. If people like playing this form of game, those supplying it will have success. If or rather, when people get bored of it, the developers will not have the same level of success.

Elitism and idealism won't change the market, but the interest of the buyers will. If people want flappy to go away, they better prepare more interesting projects in terms of mass appeal and hope they get a similar level of attention. If anything, like you said, developers could be learning from the fact a relatively simple game got this much positive feedback in so little time.

 

I'm not here to convince you that people should be making Flappy Bird clones. That's your opinion, and it's fine for you to have it. The first section of my post was more important; not to force your opinion onto others (though you also grossly misinterpreted of the second part).

Flappy Bird clones don't affect you (unless you have a clone out and don't want the market saturated). Why do you care? Just continue making non-flappy bird clones and eventually the craze will end.

 

People... you're acting like you're powerless before this silly passing trend.

Are you saying you can't offer something that stands out among these silly flappy games? It shouldn't worry you what competition has to offer, what you have is better.

Heck, this flappy birds clones phenomenon is nothing but a blessing, think about it.... that's your competition: shameless copies of a very simple game.. now speed up production while you can, and unseat those guys from the top 10 charts!

 

Is that your litmus test for caring? "It's not going to die. Good enough."?

Informing people can, which is what we are trying to do.
I am wondering why you are not trying to help us. In fact, you seem to be trying to stifle us.

 

I'm against cloning games especially if you're trying to make your name or your team's/company's name into something. But that's just my personal opinion. I don't hate the clone games, I just find them slightly annoying especially if there's more than one of them and they're just as popular and if they're the exact or worse replica of the original. But most times they give me a laugh and its sort of encouraging to people that do have original ideas. But if they mix it up and add new features that's better. It's all my individual opinion, I could be wrong.

There was always clones of popular games, and there will always be clones of popular games. Give it time, it'll blow over like every other hit.

 

I mean, making another Pong is easy.

It's just when you see

"i mad new gam <3 flatty gird (NOT FLAPPY BIRD LOL) really original not a bird itsa gird"

 

NA-RA-KU, I'm not trying to help you with your idealized version of the world, because it makes no sense. I am trying to help you and others see that this isn't the apocalypse of gaming. You're trying to portray me as a villain here, when all I'm doing is telling you not to bang your head against the wall over the flavor of the moment, because if you do, you're not going to last as a professional in any sort of creative business. There's always going to be something really popular that will be copied to death, and the only difference is that this time it was so simple everyone can do it.

Garmalak, that's just a matter of preference, because someone copying Pong, Arkanoid or Minecraft isn't any different from someone making a flappy clone. The difference is not in what the developer did, but how you feel about the final product or the advertising method used. That's the very definition of a double standard.

 

My question is what would you inform people about?

Likely they'll inform you they will install on their phones whatever they feel like, until you have something better to offer. Basically how market works.

Having said that, if you think you can actually try to tell people what they should want.... well that's plain marketing. An integral part of commerce which is to convince people your product is better, before they purchase it. And yes, it is widely recommended you invest as much effort (if not more) in marketing, as you do in developing the actual game.

 

Guess I'm in the wrong field then.

Blizzard does this exact thing. Takes ideas other people have made and polishes the S*** out of it.

Agree with everyone else. Let people do whatever the F*** they want it's not affecting you in any way. This isn't going to collapse the games industry (which is laughable to even suggest). If it wasn't flappy bird it would be something else.

 

Game Dev isn't mean to be fun? Oh. Hm. I guess I'm developing the wrong way. As for now I'm going to cry while developing.

 

Only the companies that survive, have a voice. And that's true whether you work for $$ or for free.

Gigi

 

I named my pet bird Flappy like 4 years ago. I think this guy actually ripped me off...

 

Wait wait wait, let me try. "HAI GAIS I MAYD A FLOPPY TIRD CONE, U LIKE?"

Am I doing it right?

 

From a consumers point of view, I can see how it might be annoying that there's a flood of flappy bird clones, when they want something different. So that is possibly one thing that is 'bad' from the clones. But if they still download and play these clones then its still a temporary fad. Temporary because let's say every game dev releases a flappy bird. Do you really think the consumers will not get tired of it and want to move on?

From a developers point of view, I can see how it could be beneficial to create these clones to ride the fad before it dies and hope to make some money out of it. Which doesn’t hurt anyone, except the other game developers who are making Flappy bird clones.

However, I don’t see how it could harm the success of non-flappy bird clones, except for the fact that the market is currently saturated with incoming flappy bird clones, and your game would take longer or not have good exposure. I think that if you can estimate the time of when the Flappy bird fad dies, and release your game at the right time, it’d have more exposure and recognition than, if flappy bird clones never happened. Because people would be looking for the new fad/game.

The more flappy bird clones there are, the more new non-flappy bird clones will stand out. It just needs to be released at the right time.

So the negative and positives of the Flappy bird clones situation weighs towards neutral or positive for new game releases, in my opinion.

 

Hey! Here's an idea. Don't play them if it bothers you and stop trying to tell other people what game they should develop. How's that sound?

 

How about you stop and think about how S*** like this makes exposure on the mobile market even worse than it already is?

But yeah, "just don't play it."

That totally solves it.

 

Well, if it makes you feel any better, I've never played one or made one. But please, go on telling people what to do. That solves everything too!

 

I gotta disappoint you, but I never created a Flappy Bird game, nor do I play any of those (only at the beginning out of pure curiosity)

You rant about every developer who makes those games. And you want to stop them to make such games. What's the point?

Just get over it.
99,9% of those have no success and eventually this trend will vanish.

 

Seems a huge task for some people here :roll:

 

They are not allowed to make the games they want to make?