Angry Birds and Parabolic Instinct In Humans

Frankie70 writes "Matt Ridley writes about Angry Birds, an iPhone game (later ported to other platforms) which has sold more than 12 million copies. The spectacular trajectory of the game, from obscure Finnish iPhone app to global ubiquity — there are board games, maybe even movies in the works — is probably inexplicable. Ridley wonders if there is an evolutionary aspect to its allure. There is something much more satisfactory about an object tracing a parabolic ballistic trajectory through space towards its target than either following a straight line or propelling itself."

Comments

Not just people

[plover]

When I was a kid, I had a dog that could follow a parabolic trajectory. By throwing the ball at an angle to roll along the angled roof of our house, its trajectory would follow the arc and drop down at a point further down the yard.

The dog learned to anticipate where the ball would fall from the roof, even though she couldn't see the ball from her vantage point on the ground.

Re:Not just people

[blair1q]

That's just learning by repetition.

There are a couple of things suggesting that "parabolic instinct" is hogwash.

First, objects in the gravitational field of a sphere follow ellipses, not parabolas. Granted, on the scale of a human-powered throw the higher-order terms in the Taylor-series expansion are as near to nothing as makes no odd, but still, if you're talking about an instinct and getting mathematical, you need to be more precise.

Second, objects in a nonconserving gravitational field don't follow a parabola even to second order. Ballistic objects in the atmosphere are affected by lift and drag, and follow a lot of different families of curves depending on the wind, altitude, precise shape, and spin of the object. A couple of decades ago we marvelled at the ability of outfielders to do all that math in their heads within the first few feet of a batted ball's flight and head for the right spot at the right speed to catch a batted ball. There was even a formula derived to do it. But it can't be right, because, as I said, batted balls are vanishingly unlikely to follow a parabolic trajectory. Play a few thousand games in the outfield, though, and you'll have an enormous database of neural sense-memory to tell you where a ball is likely to land.

Third, I'm pretty sure I've caught Angry Birds fixing-up a few trajectories. I could be imagining it, but the accuracy of the targeting mechanism using a 2x4-inch touchscreen of dubious quality just isn't good enough to make some of those precision shots.

Fourth, and this might be surprising, most kids can't catch. Period. Good athletes are rare. Most people ain't close. Throw them a high one and they're likely to run the wrong way entirely.

Re:Jeez.

[Monkeedude1212]

Perhaps, but I think its a good idea that some study goes into this. I've experienced this weird effect personally. Having JUST gotten an Android phone this past month (I know, what took me so long) I asked a buddy of mine what apps he has that are handy. I figured I'd grab iTriage in case of emergencies, and that 3G Watchdog to keep an eye on my data usage. He recommended Angry Birds as a game, so I downloaded it and played it a bit.

I didn't think much of it, having played Bloons on Flash for the PC years ago, and then Worms before that, and some manner of tank game before that - I've noticed that theres always some addictive parabolic gravity based game here or there.

THEN my girlfriend got a hold of my new phone. Testing out the apps she stumbled across Angry Birds. She can't put it down. I absolutely can't understand it. She'll get her attention devoted to it. Enough to a point where I'm driving and we'll be having a conversation and she'll be playing the game at the same time, and then she'll go "Oh darn... shoot..." and then when I stop talking she goes "oh yeah... I'm still listening. Open Source, Microsoft, Yada yada. Continue" (perhaps I shouldn't BORE her with certain topics but it shows that she can't even fake an attention span while playing the game). She's killed my battery more than a few times just playing Angry Birds while driving across the city. She hasn't been a gamer like me and been exposed to this type of game before.

I wonder if its the same reason we like to throw rocks in the river and/or make them skip, or put basketball through hoops, kick balls into nets, or swing clubs at them to make them land in a tiny hole. I think there might be something deeply engrained into every human mind that enjoys this, and I'm curious to see what they find.

Re:OK...

[grumbel]

What's with all the talk about this Angry Birds game everywhere?

It is the result of the way the AppStore and basically the whole Internet works. Some stuff gets to the top and then, by being on the top it enters a feedback loop: more people see it, thus more people buy and thus more people report about it, which in turn means more people will see it and buy it. This feedback loop then turns a decent game into such a blockbuster success. All those random flash games out there never entered into such a feedback loop and thus never got that popular.

This is one of those depressing things with modern technology. You have access to basically everything, which should mean more variety, but due to the self enforcing feedback everybody gets exposed to basically the same stuff and the result is less variety.

Cafeteria-table football!!

[PopeRatzo]

Parabolic, wind resistance, thrust, what a physics project that was.

The coolest version of this game was "Football" played on a cafeteria tabletop with a folded up sheet of paper. You would score by flicking the paper with your middle finger through a set of "uprights" consisting of your opponent holding up two "L's" with his thumbs and index fingers.

Had it all. Parabolic, wind resistance, thrust, what a physics game that was.