Monday, March 24, 2014

Flappy bird – the poison of pure entertainment and author guilt?

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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