We all remember Flappy Bird right? That insanely addictive game involving tapping a screen to keep a flappy bird flying. It was a viral sensation earning an alleged $50,000 a day for the writer, Dong Nguyen. Understandably the sequel has been much anticipated, though that second hit is always so hard to find.
On Thursday the sequel, called Swing Copters, was released do an awaiting audience, and was immediately beaten down to 63rd place by hundreds of Swing Copter clones which has been released at the same time. The cause of this was a video, released only on Monday, showing game play of Swing Copters. Copy-cat game developers immediately created clones based on the gameplay and started to release them to the various app stores.
Let’s just take that in for a moment. By the time that Swing Copters was released, 62 other games, all virtually identical, had already been released. Many people commented on the clone games, not even knowing they weren’t the official title.
I think this raises some dilemmas for small developers everywhere. In order to raise exposure for your game, and drive interest and sales, you have to promote the game prior to release. A lot of games that are very successful are very simple in nature. They’re relatively easy to reproduce. Add to that the skills and abilities of mobile developers and the tools available and it’s to see that this trend might continue.
Google, Apple and Amazon, and all the other App Store vendors are going to have to really start focusing on this with much sharper app verification procedures.
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