The
author of the game Flappy Bird eventually took down the game, stating he
couldn’t take it anymore. With some attributions to him of saying it
was too addictive.
Is this perhaps the modern guilt (rarely felt) of
having something which one took to be a simple sideshow entertainment,
and watch it instead become something that does nothing but add an
addictive drug to millions of lives? I’m guessing that’ll be taken as
hyperbole – nobody is breaking into their families home to pay for this
drug, right? But it’s simple math, really – the void, the hundreds, then
the thousands, then the millions of hours of peoples lives sucked away.
On little. On nothing. And here’s some money for making that happen –
no, wait, here’s some more money! And more and more – not joy, just
money, and people burning away their lives – not as some community or
together. Just burning and burning.
Shorn of the naiveté that lets
such a game become a special treat, a special occasion amongst its
author and friends, it’s rather like one of those tribal hallucinogenic,
used in various honoured rituals – except when it hits the street and
just becomes yet another slumped in an alley high.
But that’s the
thing – people treat ‘It’s addictive!’ as a great compliment and
achievement for a game at this point in time. And why not? When
something grips you, owns you, are you going to say you got owned by
something weak and bad? Or flatter the thing you’re going back to time
and time again that everyone sees you at, over and over? Sip that coffee
and reflect.
Dong Nguyen. Did he feel this modern guilt – felt it
and the mounting funds every day were just damnation after damnation for
releasing something that had a warm place in his heart and to find it
just turned black and drugging entertainment once it hit the street?
Maybe he’ll get a movie one day. And get more money over the whole thing, eh?
With a bit of luck the thing will be a student effort.
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