10 things Vietnamese people still don’t understand about Flappy Bird

UPDATE: For the Vietnamese version of this article, please see this link.The world is still talking about Flappy Bird, even after the game’s creator removed it from app stores. While English-language publications like Forbes and The Verge have put out particularly insightful articles on the Flappy Bird phenomenon, media outliets in Vietnam, where the game’s creator resides, have published drivel. They clearly don’t understand why the game is a hit.

Because of this, Vietnamese people are totally focused on the wrong aspects of Dong Nguyen’s success with the rise of Flappy Bird. Jump over to the many conversations happening on Facebook, the main channel for Vietnamese people to chat, and you’ll quickly see the main topics surrounding Flappy Bird are saying that Dong Nguyen stole from Nintendo, that he will be taxed on his income, that he is lucky, that he doesn’t deserve his success, and that the game is generally stupid.

So let’s clear some things up for those who have misconceptions about tech, entertainment, and Vietnam’s gaming world.

1. Copying happens all the time and it’s not the reason for success

There are many articles in English – and especially in Vietnamese – about how Dong Nguyen copied Piou Piou and Nintendo to come up with Flappy Bird. My response is this: even if he did copy all these elements from various games, so what? Was Facebook the first social network? Was Gangnam Style the first song with funny dancing? Was iPhone the first smartphone?

And if you attribute his success to how he copied the green pipes of Super Mario from Nintendo, that’s even more ridiculous. Let me ask you this, are the green pipes why people play the game? No. The main thing people mention in Flappy Bird reviews are how difficult the game is. By far the most viral video about Flappy Bird has nothing to do with the pipes. Nintendo even denied any complaints publicly. It’s all about how insanely tough the game is. And this underlines something else that is quite interesting…

2. It is not easy to copy Flappy Bird

Right now, there are at least ten clones of Flappy Bird on iOS and Android and they are starting to crawl up the charts, But if you are a gamer like me, you will immediately see disparities in quality. First of all, the clones’ graphics are simply not as good as Flappy Bird, which is ironic, given that Flappy Bird is a retro throw-back to pixelated gameplay.

Secondly, the reviews give a clear picture. After hundreds of thousands of reviews, Flappy Bird still maintains a four-star rating. That’s not an easy feat. All of the clones can’t even break three stars after thousands of reviews. Thirdly and most importantly, the physics of the games are just not as real, and the flight is not as difficult and punishing as in Flappy Bird. Fly Birdie, for example, the most blatant clone, with its cheesy music and profoundly ugly brown bird, is very easy. Ironpants, one of the first clones, is easily comparable to Flappy Bird. That leads us to an understanding of the game’s creator, the founder of .GEARS.

3. Dong Nguyen has discipline and passion

At first glance, Flappy Bird looks like a stupid yet fun game that anybody can make and probably took little time to code. But that’s not the point here. The fact that Dong Nguyen sat down and decided that Flappy Bird would be affected by a stronger gravity than other similar games is profound. For a game like Temple Run, the premise is that the game designers decided that they wanted the gamer to enjoy as much time as possible on a complete run. The purpose is to get better at running and jumping and to get a greater score from a longer journey. Indeed, Flappy Bird wants the same thing, but Dong Nguyen had the discipline to say, “No, let’s make this really difficult.”

This is very clear when you see how many bells and whistles games like Temple Run have. There are long stretches of time where it is easy before the game throws you something tougher. It also encourages you to collect different artifacts to enhance or make gameplay more engaging – and to persuade you to opt for in-app purchases. But Flappy Bird is simple. Win or lose. That’s it. This turned out to be one of the most viral aspects of the game.

So, saying that Flappy Bird is just luck isn’t the whole picture. Don’t underestimate its simplicity. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

4. Constraints lead to beauty

Let’s look deeper at simplicity and why it works. Ed Fries, the co-creator of the Xbox, went in depth into this issue at the BTIC event in Vietnam in 2012. He noted that console games are generally very similar. A great example of this is the proliferation of first-person shooters. Contrast this with the many genres of games that came out of the original Atari and Nintendo games, ranging from Pong to platformers to puzzles to Tetris. His point was that these older consoles involved constraints that lead to great diversity and beauty in games. By giving oneself artificial constraints, the game designer is forced to explore other options and possibilities of gameplay. This leads to more creativity in games. This is exactly what Flappy Bird has done. Don’t underestimate this.

5. It’s a content play, not a tech play

6. Venture capitalists are less likely to fund games because they’re hit-based

7. Flappy Bird is not necessarily successful because it’s Vietnamese

8. .GEARS has pioneered a new genre that will inspire whole new companies

9. Ném Đá is just whiny and immature

10. Vietnamese media also totally ignored the rise of Twitter

Time to flap away