Problem of the Game Developers

Dong Nguyen is the guy who wrote Flappy Birds, the mobile video game that became so popular that it was netting him $50,000 a day via in-game ads! Then, while Flappymania was still at its peak, Nguyen tweeted:

“I am sorry 'Flappy Bird' users. 22 hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down. I cannot take this anymore.”

Which obviously led to the question that Rolling Stone magazine asked :

“Who was this dude, and WTF had he done?...How could someone who hit the online jackpot suddenly pull the plug?”

His answer was that his new found, sudden fame was suffocating; the paparazzi were besieging his home; there were relentless accusations for having created an addictive game that ruined people’s lives; and the criticism of having copied the theme from an older Nintendo game.

Rami Ismail who came up with another popular game, Ridiculous Fishing, felt guilty about the money:

“Ever since I was a kid I’ve watched my mom wake up at six in the morning, work all day, come home, make my brother and me dinner—maybe shout at me for too much ‘computering’. My first thought that day was that while I was asleep I’d made more money than she had all year. And I’d done it with a mobile-phone game about shooting fish with a machine gun.”

And even though he knows there’s nothing to feel guilty about, he does:

“Somewhere in the back of your head you know that you worked hard, that you sacrificed your stability and you took on the risk of financial ruin for a long while. You did things that other people were not willing or capable of. And that paid off. But, even so, it feels awful.”

Why do these game developers feel guilty? Is it because, as the New Yorker, said, they know that “this kind of overnight success is often the result of an un-replicable recipe involving privilege, education, talent, toil, and timing”?

Another game developer, Davey Wreden of the The Stanley Parable fame, knows how such problems might sound to the rest of us:

“Oh, yeah, we get it, real rough life you’ve got there. Sounds pretty miserable to be loved for your art. Maybe go cry about it into a pile of money?”

All this reminds me of the time when Calvin’s dad told him the world isn’t fair. To which Calvin asked:

“I know, but why isn’t it ever unfair in my favor?”

There’s your answer, game developers: the world was unfair…in your favour.