Irish Dev Terry Cavanagh on Flappy Bird

Image via: terrycavanaghgames.com

Irish indie developer Terry Cavanagh has made his Flappy Bird tribute, Maverick Bird, available for free on his website.

The two-button, PC-only game is built using the same tools as Cavanagh's 2012 hit - Super Hexagon. It expands on Flappy Bird's simplistic game play by allowing players to fly down as well as up to avoid obstacles.

Flappy Bird was a mobile game on iOS and Android developed by Vietmanese developer Dong Nguyen. The game was releasde last summer but rose to prominance in recent weeks. The developer has since pulled the game from the App Store and Google Play saying that its success, and the backlash from gamers, was negatively impacting on his life.

I can call 'Flappy Bird' is a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it.
— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 8, 2014

Terry Cavanagh, on his twitter account, said that his game is intended as a tribute and not a clone. He is resisting calls to release the game for mobile devices.

Getting asked this lots, so here's an answer: I'm sorry, I'm not porting Maverick Bird to iOS or making a Super version. It's a fan game!
— Terry (@terrycavanagh) February 13, 2014

I'm glad people like it, but understand why I made it. I didn't want the only response to Flappy Bird to be anger and jealousy.
— Terry (@terrycavanagh) February 13, 2014

For a while, in my feed at least, that was the only voice I was hearing. I wanted to express something else. I wanted to celebrate it.
— Terry (@terrycavanagh) February 13, 2014

Singapore - Now we are cosmic friends forever.

Sometimes things don't go according to plan. This blog was supposed to catalogue a year of intense retro gaming. This was meant to be my opportunity to catch up on all those classics I've missed. Instead I'm living out of a hotel in Singapore. A plesent experience no doubt, but not conducive to gaming. Now on my third weekend here I find myself slightly under the weather. I'm cooped up inside rather than out seeing the sites. So I've dipped into my Steam account and tested the waters with a couple of gems. One old, one new, both thoroughly enchanting.

Pretty Sweet, no?

Singapore is a city of contrasts. It's population is diverse. Its streets hide hindu temples, British colonial facades and modern towers of glass and steel. The rich are rich and the poor are poor, but the same could be said of anywhere. The people are obsessed with technology - Samsung and Apple branded tablets and phones are everywhere, but oddly gaming has almost no visible presence. Except, of course, for that guy in my office with the plushy cactaur sitting on his desk.

None of this bothers me of course.  I'm not in the market for new releases. The lack of Gamestops littering shopping centres is no concern of mine. I've got Steam loaded up with classics from the Hackett Out pile of shame. But where do I begin? 

Two Player Productions are documenting the making of Double Fine Adventure. It's Tim Shafer's latest (Monkey Island, Grim Fandango) and it's being funded through Kickstarter. The passion of the Double Fine team is something else and while watching it, I've been thinking about their 2006 release, Psychonauts. I bought Sands of Time, Beyond Good and Evil and Shadow of the Colossus all on day one. I take nerd-pride in having sought out these much loved but under-played classics. Psychonauts is another one of those games. Of course, I didn't own an original XBox. That's my excuse, but it's been six years. Never having played Psychnauts is damaging my street cred.

Psychonauts's clunky camera and overwraught opening hour did drive me towards a more carefully designed modern release however and I'm now playing them both. Superbrothers: Swords and Sworcery EP is something of a revelation on PC. I played the original iOS release but it bored me. I lately took to lsitening to Jim Guthrie's simply outstanding soundtrack and it drew me back to the game. The control implimentation for mouse is lacking, most notably in combat where I would have tweaked the configuration somewhat, but seeing the Superbrothers artwork on a 13" rather than a 4.3" screen has made all the difference. The care and love that exudes from every aspect of the game is tangible.

I'll be back to outline my thoughts on Psychonauts. I'm here for another five weeks, rattling around this hotel suite. In between swimming in the roof-top pool, sipping beers in street-side bars and eating delectable €2 meals from the hawker centres, I'm sure I'll fit in the time to complete Double Fine's platformer. And maybe work through Deus Ex too. 

That is, of course, if the outstanding 10000000 on iOS doesn't eat up my every waking second. Get it!

"Juvenile, Silly and Intellectually Lazy" - Jonathan Blow (Designer of Braid)

I don't know much about hip-hop, but I know what I like...and hip-hop isn't it. I've given rap music a fair shot over the years. I've listened to American artists from both coasts, everything from NWA to Kanye and a little of what came in between - Dre and Snoop's solo work, Wu-Tang, Cypress Hill. I've dabbled in punk derivatives The Beastie Boys, the reggae-influenced Fugees and UK trip-hop acts like Tricky. 

Some I've loved, but when it comes to hip-hop - rap's main-stream arm - I just hit a wall. I can't get passed the posturing and misogyny that permeate the culture. So what's this got to do with videogames, right?

Well there are parallels. Hip-hop and gaming are both marketed squarely at a young, adult (often male) demographic. Much like rap, games’ mainstream arm overshadows its more thought provoking offerings. Apart from a few notable indie exceptions, gaming’s best titles struggle to provide context for their violent mechanics. 

I recently read The Atlantic's article 'American Mozart' (David Samuels May 2012). It challenged me to rethink my take on hip-hop. And that's a good thing, right? That’s good writing. Hell, I was tempted to pick up tickets for last week's 'Watch the Throne' gig at The O2 right there on the spot. The article profiled Kanye West - his past, his successes and failures, his strengths and weaknesses. Samuels understands his subject. He wrote convincingly, spinning a narrative interwoven with impressions of West's ongoing tour with Jay-Z. It's worth reading for the sense of perspective alone - it's a window into another world.

Watch Taylor Clark's thoughts on modern gaming, and Jonathan Blow's work, here.

Something else popped up in The Atlantic last month – a piece on another self-made, independently wealthy, social pariah. 'The Most Dangerous Gamer' (Taylor Clark May 2012) is a scathing attack on mainstream gaming from the perspective of indie-game developer Jonathan Blow. Clarke's take is overly simplistic perhaps. To paraphrase - modern mainstream games are 'dumb', no one is doing anything about it and Jonathan Blow will single-handedly change the world's opinion of the medium. But at its core, there's more than a grain of truth to the article. 

If good writing challenges perceptions and provokes responses then Clarke’s article is just as successful as the Kanye West piece. He received an icy reception from many gamers. It’s the same reaction we saw from the fighting game community when the misogyny rife in that scene came to light earlier this year. For me, Clarke's writing was a shot in the arm. It’s OK to call bullshit if that’s what you see – to point out puerile art direction or a lowest-common-denominator marketing approach. But it’s just as important to highlight gaming’s strengths. Clarke may have failed in that regard but he is a gamer and it’s encouraging to see his writing in the mainstream media. I'd recommend reading his response to his detractors on Kotaku.

Why is that I'm willing to give gaming a pass, one that I won’t extend to hip-hop? Games are greater than the sum of their parts, but in a way I can't yet quantify. Ultimately it has something to do with the design process - a good designer’s intent is expressed in the mechanics and will shine through an uninspired art style or weak story. 


While it can be difficult to focus on gaming’s strengths, it’s even more difficult to explain those strengths to others. There's something to games that even the most ill-conceived marketing message can’t touch. It's up to writers in the field to find that 'something' and to focus on it while not being afraid to call out the "juvenile, sill and intellectually lazy" aspects that so often dominate. And then maybe someday we wont have people cheering every violent death during stage presentations at E3.


Sources:
theatlantic.com
giantbomb.com
image via Steam

An Embarrassment of Riches

Progress. I’ve gotten my hands on a new console, and this weekend I’ll try rescuing the old one. I’ve also had a look at my shelves to see where I should begin working through the backlog.

Here’s a list of the titles I’ll be digging into over the next few months. I've at least started the vast majority but a few have never been touched. Some, I invested quite some time into before getting bored or distracted. I abandoned others because they were too difficult. It’s been 17 years and I still haven’t finished The Revenge of Shinobi. A few simply outstayed their welcome - good ideas strained through repetition.

Some of the games on this list are a source of embarrassment. I haven’t finished Super Mario Brothers, for example. I’ve never played Super Metriod or Deus Ex or Psychonauts. I consider myself a well rounded gamer and these are blatant gaps in my knowledge that I look forward to filling.

But they’re not all gems. There are games on this list that I don’t want to go back to. Final Fantasy XII and Prince of Persia (2008) were both unique takes on their respective series’ but were largely largely uninspired. I sunk hours into both in good faith but they just never clicked.

Any suggestions? There are over 40 games listed below. Even if they aren’t all classics, I certainly won’t run out of things to do:

Super Mario Brothers (1985) NES

Legend of Zelda (1986) NES