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Comment by kcorbitt | Hacker News Reader

I haven't played Flappy Bird, but it seems really similar to a helicopter game that was inordinately popular in my middle school 10-12 years ago. It looks like it's still up. http://www.addictinggames.com/action-games/helicoptergame.js...

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There are roughly eleventy kazillion mobile clones of that helicopter game. However, Flappy Bird is the first one I've seen that has a constant difficulty. Most things start easy, get increasingly hard, and arguably at some point become impossible. High scores become primarily a function of the RNG at the skill ceiling. In Flappy Bird if you die it's 100% your fault all the time which makes it quite compelling to try again.

Also it's a total Black Swan event and should be treated as such.

Not exactly a black swan (because afterwards you know of black swans and can anticipated them) but more a lottery ticket. There is no recipe or logic behind why Flappy Bird got immensely popular, just sheer luck.

I might be wrong on this one, but as far as I remember, the originator of this type of game is "The Infamous Worm Game": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OjeFYNq05k

Sadly, the original site that hosted it just has a "Java Applet" placeholder there now: http://www.liquidcode.org/worm.html

It had a very good balance between difficulty and frustration. Or in other words, I wasted a lot of time on it.

You can play it here: http://www2.sunflat.net/en/games/sfcave.html

I remember playing SFCave on my Palm IIIe. That was so much fun.

The flapping mechanic is very similar to that used in Joust (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joust_%28video_game%29), but without direction control, opponents or lava trolls.

And without anything like the level of control and finesse of the flapping in Joust.

SFCave is availabt on Andoid, and it's very satisfying.

That's why Flappy Bird is so interesting. A lot of people have played the helicopter game or a variant of it. But despite its cheery exterior and familiarity, Flappy Bird is brutally difficult. That juxtaposition makes it surprising. The challenge makes it delightful.

Jetpack Joyride is a better example of the original helicopter game. Flappy bird is pretty much the Profit Bird in jetpack joyride but much more derpy, kind of like balloon fighter or joust.

"derpy" is a good way to put it. I think it meets the sensibilities of many young teens who find the game stupidly fun and it doesn't take itself very seriously.

There's probably an uncanny game design valley here. Abstract ideas that look stupid can be fun, as you iterate and add "polish" there comes a point when your polished game is just dumb and no-one will play it, so you need to add more game mechanics to it to give it more depth.

That helicopter game was originally created for BBC South Coast Diaries and was located here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20020604072320/http://www.seethr...

The main site is now spam, so don't visit it, but archive caught the original and most of the diary pages, which are an interesting read.

This reminds me of a couple of games I had on the Commodore-64. One had a helicopter, but the other was Lunar Lander, which has a very similar mechanic.

I can recall a few others with similar play style - Star paws and Zaxxon come to mind.

Zaxxon! That's a blast from the past, and the only reason I ever knew for someone to be jealous of a ColecoVision.

There were some decent ColecoVision games like some of the arcade ports. The joystick was murder on your hands though if you played long enough.

Fortunately that was back when I was very young, and had very small hands.

yea, you are right. Flappy Bird is exactly the same. I was addicted to the Copter game, prolly around 2007..

https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/copter-game/id433399893?mt=8

Similar, but even less forgiving.

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