Did you think the Flappy Bird gold rush was over? Not even close. With Dong Nguyen famously deleting his number one app nearly a month ago now, developers have been scrambling to cash in on the popularity of his already cloned game with clones of their own.
The app store has been absolutely flooded with Flappy Bird clones, defined as any game where a figure is navigated through pipes or pipe-like objects, and according to Pocket Gamer, the rate doesn't seem to be slowing. Tracking data for the latest clones (of which there are hundreds, if not thousands) they found that on average, there were sixty Flappy Bird clones a day uploaded to
That's one Flappy Bird clone every 24 minutes.
The reason this gold rush is even possible is because of how simplistic the code is for the game. Wired recently ran an interesting piece where they set out to see the minimum amount of effort it would take to make their own Flappy Bird knock-off. What they found is that after purchasing the source code from another clone ("Flappy Crocodile"), they were able to slap one together in three hours for a total cost of $99.
With how insane the app store is in terms of what randomly shoots up to the top of the charts, trying to make your own Flappy Bird clone is almost an investment at this point. You're spending very little time and money for the chance to find yourself in the top 100 or top 10 charts, which would automatically mean your game would be hugely profitable if you were monetizing it correctly.
Granted, there isn't going to be room for thousands of clones, and not all will succeed. But even if they don't, there's a chance your $99 investment will turn into something that at least makes some money. For anyone with even a moderate amount of app programming knowledge, it's almost foolish not to try and make a Flappy Bird clone at this point, just to see what happens. It costs you practically no time or effort, and the payout could be small, moderate, or huge.
At present, I'm counting 10 out of the top 100 games on Apple's iOS app store that are Flappy Bird clones including Flappy Wings, Splashy Fish, Flying Cyrus and the current #1 champion, Tiny Flying Drizzy, featuring the floating head of rap star Drake (seen above).
Flappy Bird is a unique case. Though pretty much any mobile title can be cloned to some extent, Flappy Bird was so simplistic that it could be replicated by a single person in a few hours with limited programming skills, hence why hundreds of these clones are currently flooding the app store. This is only possible in the mobile scene, as most PC or console games require far more resources to build, and certainly more than one person and a few hours to clone.
In my estimation, Apple is rewarding this kind of behavior. Every time I go to search for a popular game in the app store, I'm usually greeted with what I'm looking for, but it's always juxtaposed with a half dozen or more clones of the same game. Their automated system effectively serves to push clones into the limelight. Now when you search for Flappy Bird, you're treated to countless clones Apple suggests for you. Before the game was taken down, the top clones listed next to it were the ones who got to really explode after the original was removed from the store.
Moderation is tricky here, as is the whole concept of cloning. I don't think Apple has the grounds to simply erase these variants from the app store, but they could at least help declutter things by not outright promoting these types of games by giving them prominent listings. Then again, there's no real reason for Apple to care. Whether it's 10 Flappy Bird clones with in-app ads or 10 original games, they make their money either way. The people decide what's popular, and the people want idiotic Flappy Bird clones. So here we are.
This will die down eventually, but all of this goes to show that the current state of the mobile scene is the pursuit of the lowest common denominator as developers chase the easiest, cheapest concepts they can all steal from one another. The worst part is, all of this makes actual business sense given how the public has reacted not only to Flappy Bird, but its myriad of clones as well. Consumers have shown they'll download anything that flaps, and anyone with three hours and $100 would be wise to try and get in on the action.
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