6 Flappy Bird Lessons for Entrepreneurs

A few months ago, when opening a social network or website, you inevitably came across references to “Flappy Bird”. What started out as the next independent project of a single developer from Vietnam was a global sensation, which caused an incredible amount of rumors, discussions and riddles, as well as turmoil, alienation and immense anger.

Did the creator of the game, Dong Nguyen, want to deliberately call one of the above? Not in the least. After the storm had subsided, he broke his silence for the first time since he removed the game from the app stores for iOS and Android, saying that he did it for the good of the players themselves, because I was afraid that the game is too addictive. Hypothetically, this is quite good for a game developer.
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But having penetrated a little, I thought that not only independent game developers, hoping to create another Flappy Bird, but also beginners, as well as existing entrepreneurs of any field of activity, could draw valuable lessons from this. So let's honor the memory of the now deceased bird, remembering all the things she taught us, and thinking about how we can carry this legacy further, applying some of her lessons in practice.

1. Keep it simple

Still, there is a ghostly chance that you, perhaps for some strange reason, have never played this game yourself. In fact, to play Flappy Bird, you had to know three basic rules:

• When a bird falls, its speed decreases, but then it levels off at the same height.
• When a bird flies horizontally, its speed remains constant.
• Pipes through which the bird must fly, have different heights, but the same clearance in the vertical and the distance horizontally.

This was the mechanism of the game, which brought Nguyen 50 thousand dollars a day. So, how can you this application can help start a business?

Let's imagine a typical scenario: you listened to the angry tirade of a loved one about a product that he cannot tolerate, and what he would like to have instead. Then you go out for a walk, and it suddenly dawns on you. Eureka! It’s as if the heavens have opened up, and someone’s hand has put a million dollar business idea right in your head. You may not believe it, but in fact from now on you become paranoid and worry all the time, no matter how someone steals your idea.

What happens next? We all know what is happening, because we are going through everything. We begin to do research, think about competition and millions of things that need to be set in motion for an idea to be successful, and after we share an idea with a friend and hear how stupid and hopeless it is, we give up Oh, yes, it is, not having taken a single step yet, we are blown away, and our brilliant idea ends in nothing.

The problem is that we get too bogged down in details and are frightened by the complexity of the enterprise. Nguyen could add 100 different parameters in an attempt to make Flappy Bird more interesting, but he formed the whole game around just touching the screen with his finger. You can also do yourself a favor by following the advice of Tim Ferris, and, before investing in a product, do a micro research and find out what the need for it exists. Or, listen to Eric Ries, when he advises not to invest in the idea completely, but first create a minimally viable product in order to receive primary feedback from the consumer. But the most reliable and recommended way to start a business is not to invest a penny in it.

So, when another brilliant idea comes to you, remember the eternal truth that Flappy Bird taught you: the principle of KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) or do not be a fool, do not complicate.

2. Try to "touch the quick"

This is what Flappy Bird really did succeed. The game was ridiculously hard to play, and this infuriated novice players (including me) when they spent the first few minutes just flying between the first pair of pipes. People started to hate this game, the person who advised her to complain about people who brag about their points on Twitter and Facebook (see Point 4). But all this hatred only generated tremendous attention, and more importantly, these people continued to maintain the desire to play, along with dependent players, frantically trying to increase the score, successfully passing another pipe. Take a look at this tweet:

Hitting your audience is what advice Guy Kawasaki gives in his book “The Art of the Start”, as well as what Seth Godin defined as the basic principle of good marketing and product development as part of his idea create a " purple cow ".

3. Strive to cause irresistible attraction

Returning to the above, I would like to note that no matter how hard it was to control or “fly” the bird through the damn pipes, people still could not give up playing. And again, as noted above, this mania served as a force that made the game top-end and so popular.

In fact, the best explanation of this dependence on the game Flappy Bird I saw in an article published by the Guardian: “One of the good ways to ensure such an attraction is to make the player believe that he can always achieve a better result - if he fails, then defeat angers his so that he returns to the game again and again. "

The design and mechanics of the game were so absurdly simple that people simply could not believe that they were not able to score more than two points.

One of my favorite books that helps overcome the mechanism of habit is The Habit Loop. The author of this book believes that the emergence of a habit is due to the existence of a certain cycle: a sign - a habitual action - a reward. Flappy Bird managed to lengthen the distance between the usual action and the reward, which as a result led players to use every opportunity to play.

As a rule, entrepreneurs try to take advantage of this thirst to consume more, using various means, including e-mails, incentive discounts, temporary promotions and pre-orders. It will take several substantive publications so that your target audience becomes addicted to the product, so you need to think about how to hook it.

A good example is Blue Goji, a company that specializes in wearable gadgets, which allows people who want to turn any cardiovascular machine into a game and move to storm the fitness room, gradually increasing irresistible attraction to physical activity (as well as sales).

4. Remember that “social effect” increases virality.

It is noticed that criticism, gloating, and complaints that frustrated players shared on social networks became one of the driving factors behind the spread of this game. It all started with Tweet Nguyen himself, in which he announced the early exit of the game and shared his result. Encouraging people to share their points, statuses and achievements is common practice in the world of game design and gamification , but anyone who wants to start a business can benefit from this process.

Perhaps one of the easiest and fastest ways to make your online store successful is to place buttons on a product / service page so that a user can share a photo on social networks such as Instagram and Facebook, thereby increasing virality by publishing “ social proof. You can also take advantage of such incentives as gifts, discounts or exclusive souvenirs provided during the campaign, in exchange for the publication of photos of your product by users.

5. Do not try to reinvent the wheel.

A lot of things have been said about pipes and graphic elements, borrowed mainly from the Mario Brothers, a legendary game played by more than three generations of gamers. There were even rumors that the game is just a parody of the previous versions of the Piou Piou and Helicopter games. However, if we look at the history of video games, we will see that it is full of cases of plagiarism, and with the same success we can blame all the puzzles related to the sorting of blocks, that this principle has already been used in Tetris.



The fact is that many enterprises and innovations are set in increments, develop in stages and are based on existing ideas rather than starting from scratch. How can this help you to start a multi-million dollar business? Find what to sell, determine what people do not like the most, and just create something better or almost the same, but with a slight difference.

A good way to determine the level of consumption and get ideas for improving the product is to use Google's Keyword Planner tool. Choose an industry, think over keywords, enter them to analyze the search volume. Then go back to Google search and notice which companies regularly rank on the first page of the search results. Here you must assess whether you can independently identify the gaps and minuses in the work of these companies and find them ingenious solutions.

6. Keep the intrigue

The most interesting part of the staggering and rapid success that has made Flappy Bird a place in the top app stores is chronologically described to the last detail in a wonderful article (from Mashable), and is how ardently and aggressively developers and journalists wanted to know the secret of Nguyen’s success. They went through a lot of options: from cross-advertising in other popular games to suggesting that Nguyen uses bots to fill app stores with tons of reviews. All this led Nguyen to a similar answer: “I don’t understand why Flappy Bird has become so popular.”

SideResult Software : Great Flappy Bird game. Dong Nguyen, how did you manage to get a rating of 10 in the ranking?

Dong Nguyen : Thank you. It's great to know that people like my game. I do not promote it.

But what really sounded like a bolt from the blue is Nguyen’s decision to withdraw the game from the stores, even despite the high level of virality. I mean the conversation about how to hit the quick (see Paragraph 2).

Dong Nguyen: I apologize, dear users, in 22 hours I will be forced to withdraw Flappy Bird from mobile app stores. I can't take it anymore.

What was he really going to do? Is he serious? The whole world of mobile applications was in his palm, wondering if he really would “pull the trigger” and do it. But now everything is great.

The main thing that entrepreneurs need to understand: you always need to maintain a certain level of mystery, even if there is nothing behind it. This will not only make people invent wild, entertaining, contradictory and lively rumors about your success, failure or new product development (Apple is an example), but more importantly, it will force people to continue talking about your product.

So, before the inherent forgetfulness erases Flappy Bird from our memory, I hope that these tips will help you to do everything right with regard to the next great idea or to raise an existing company to a new level.