After warning the world of Flappy Bird’s impending demise yesterday, developer Dong Nguyen fulfilled his promise and removed the #1 free app in the world from the app store. The devoted (and frustrated) followers of Flappy Bird have begun to mourn the loss all across the social media landscape.
The loss of Flappy Bird has left a tremendous void to be filled, and many an enterprising appreneur has put together their best efforts to capitalize on Nguyen’s surprising decision to retire Flappy Bird at the height of its popularity. In fact, Flappy Bird style source code has become a hot commodity. Several clones and imitators have already broken into the Top 100 Free Apps, including the current #1 free app IronPants.
IronPants was ranking within the Top 5 free apps for the past few days, but with Flappy Bird’s demise has jumped up to #1. The game was clearly designed to appeal to the same crowd that were addicted to the sadistic qualities of Flappy Bird. It uses a similar pixel artstyle, while adding its own bit of charm. The gameplay is essentially the same, using the same one-button control system, but is exceedingly more difficult because of the speed of the character. After a few play throughs, I have yet to exceed a score of 1.
Will IronPants succeed where Flappy Bird left off? It is hard to say, but I don’t think so. IronPants tried to top the level of difficulty presented by Flappy Bird, but it becomes tiresome quickly. Flappy Bird found a balance of difficulty that hit a sweet spot among casual gamers. Unless IronPants tweaks its difficulty accordingly, I don’t see it inciting the same fanatic following and offline competition that Flappy Bird sparked.
Unfortunately, there are more predatory developers trying to cash in on the absence of the app store’s top bird, unlike IronPants which doesn’t try to exploit users. At least two more Flappy-inspired apps cracked the Top 100 free apps using app store optimization (ASO) techniques to find visibility during “flappy bird” searches. Flappy Plane currently ranks 19 in Top Free Apps while Fly Birdie – Flappy Bird Flyer and Flappy Bee rank 39 and 42 respectively.
Unlike IronPants, which still attempts to provide a gameplay experience that isn’t exploitive, Flappy Plane and Fly Birdie are littered with intrusive ads and questionable in-app purchases. These are clear cash grabs and nothing more.
Just take one look at these spamtastic screenshots of Flappy Plane:
Almost as if to top the pure spam that is Flappy Plane, Fly Birdie takes it a step further by adding in-app purchases in ways that are extremely easy for a user to accidentally purchase. In my opinion, there is no place for this kind of exploitive design and my hope is that Apple will remove this game from the app store soon.
Will any of these apps serve to fill the insatiable sado-masochistic appetites of Flappy Bird fans? Or will a new app rise to fill the void? Only time will tell. For now, Nguyen’s surprising decision to remove Flappy Bird from the app store has created a grand opportunity for other developers to cash in on a phenomenon he created.
Rivera says
How are people easily or accidentally making In App Purchase? It gives a warning popup before you make the purchase so what’s wrong with having that in the store? You’re just hating for no reason. So what if others are trying to capitalize. Candy Crush copied Bejeweled. If these games are in the top, let them be. What’s your problem
Shane K. says
Rivera, at least when I played the game, it was very confusing and very easy to purchase the IAP. First of all, when you die, the two buttons are “OK” and “Continue”. Not very descriptive. It’s not clear which brings you back to the game. When you click “Continue”, it shows the IAP screen asking you to purchase “3 lives”. Before I can even click cancel on this, it already asks for my itunes password. If I had my password already saved in there, I probably would have purchased it accidentally. The game is a mess in a variety of ways (including the inclusion of an upside down facebook share button), but this feature really turned me off
Rivera says
Games cannot be developed for free. If it’s a free game, ads are required in the app. How else is one going to make any money for the effort and expenses put into development? Silly for you to think that App Store should have absolutely FREE FREE FREE apps.
Shane K. says
Rivera, I never said free apps shouldn’t have ads. Of course they should. Developers must monetize somehow. My gripe is with developers who monetize in ways that impact the gameplay experience in negative ways and basically make it impossible to enjoy the game. Both Flappy Plane and Fly Birdie have littered their apps with ads in ways that makes it an unenjoyable gameplay experience for the user.
Ironpants actually monetizes well. It isn’t intrusive and only displays after the user fails.
Rivera says
So you’re talking crap about the devs that are reskinning and flipping games but you’re taking a reskinning course yourself of Flappy Bird? What a hypocrite!
Shane K. says
Rivera, I’ve been more than forthcoming on this topic, in fact I wrote a whole post about it. See here: https://www.appbattleground.com/2014/02/08/app-reskinning-wrong/
My stance has always been that reskinning is fine as long as you provide value to the user, don’t exploit them with shady iAP, or ads to the point where the experience isn’t enjoyable.
IronPants is a good example of an acceptable reskin need game
Shane K. says
The other games I called out use shady tactics to milk users of money via questionable IAP or have ads to the point where it harms the experience. That was my gripe with those two.
Also, I believe that reskinning apps is a great way to learn about the app dev process and business, so that’s why I’m starting out that way. I’ve been writing posts about that called #OPReskin.
Again, I have no problem with reskinning as long as you are responsible and don’t exploit users.