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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."
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.