![]() This has come as a surprise to many people, most of all Nguyen himself. Once this mechanic is mastered the only task is to fly the bird through narrow gaps in an endless series of pipes.Īs you might expect, this is easier said than done.Ĭreated by a single indie developer in Vietnam, Dong Nguyen, Flappy Bird is currently being downloaded several million times a day and as of this writing sits atop the charts in both the iOS App Store and the GooglePlay Store. Tap rapidly and the bird will begin to climb quickly, but stop tapping and the bird will plummet like a rock. It turns out that what the people really want, for the moment at least, is Flappy Bird.įlappy Bird is a very simple game for smartphones where the player taps on the screen to make their bird avatar pop slightly higher into the air. Recently, the people have spoken, and what they’ve said might come as a shock to many of the prognosticators and taste makers across the video game business. The mobile and social game companies, like Zynga and King, are of the opinion that people want something inoffensive to click on every now and then, but not too often, unless they’ve got cash to spend. The indie community believes that what people really want is experimental games with heart and a unique visual sensibility. The big players in the AAA sector believe the people want military shooters and open-world games full of the old ultra violence. On that basis, the game needs to be updated with interstitial and video adverts as soon as possible, with in-app purchases arriving soon after to really take advantage of its chart position.Īfter all, who wouldn't want to spend $0.Everyone in the games industry is trying to figure out what "the people" want. On that basis, the game generates $6,000 on day 1 and just $4,000 on day 2, $2,667 on day 3, $1,778 on day 4 etc.Įven assuming downloaders do continue to play it daily, Flappy Bird would have to maintain these usage numbers for over a month (in the best scenario) and 167 days (in the lower case scenario) to generate the magical $1 million. On day 2, say 30 percent have uninstalled the game after high scoring 3 points. Obviously, that's on a day that all 50 million downloaders play the game. Tweaking our initial data points changes the end result significantly.ĥ0 million downloads, with 3 sessions a day and 2 ads per session results in revenue of $6,000 per day. But removing that context and considering the global impact of Flappy Bird, it's not a lot of money compared to the millions per day that top grossing games with IAPs are making.īut, let's now throw some reality onto this back-of-the-envelope calculation.ġ00 million downloads is likely too high, and not everyone who downloads the game plays it after day 1. On that basis, Flappy Bird is showing 1.5 billion ads daily at $0.00002 per impression, which gives us a daily total of $30,000.Ĭertainly not bad for a single developer from Vietnam (who also has two globally top grossing apps). The revenue for showing 1,000 banner ads (its eCPM) is around 2 cents. On that basis we have 100 million installs, 100 million players, 500 daily sessions and 1.5 billion ads per day.īut banner ads are pitiful at generating revenue. And, again on average, three ads are served per session. On average, a player plays five sessions per day. Everyone who downloaded it is playing it. Let assume Flappy Bird has been downloaded 100 million times. Of course, there are no hard figures in terms of the game's downloads, daily active users, average game sessions etc so we'll have to use some back-of-the-envelope guestimates. Talking to industry insiders you start to get an idea. Even with the giant audience that Flappy Bird has, the amount of cash generated is relatively tiny. ![]() These are the worst ways to monetise an app or game, as banner ads are the lowest performing ad unit you can integrate. Show me the money?Īs a free game without any in-app purchases, Flappy Bird's only monetisation stream is through the banner ads served through Google Ads - as shown at the bottom of the screen. Of course, its success has been predicated on the fact that Flappy Bird is a deeply frustrating game - one in which players (like me) immediately uninstall it, or perversely use that frustration to try to power their high score into double figures.įrom that point of view, everything is more enjoyable than Flappy Bird. We've used it to discuss everything of geopolitics to the state of the entire industry, but there is another subject it can throw some light on.īut, before we start, we have to correct our initial sentence "If there's something more enjoyable than Flappy Bird." If there's something more enjoyable than playing Flappy Bird then it's writing about Flappy Bird. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |