Is Dong Nguyen Trolling Gamers With "Swing Copters"?

Nerval's Lobster writes Given its extreme difficulty, it's tempting to think that the new Swing Copters is Dong Nguyen's attempt at a joke (You thought 'Flappy Bird' was hard? Check this out!), or maybe even a meta-comment on the emerging "masocore" gaming category. Or maybe he just wanted to make another game, and the idea of an ultra-difficult one appealed. Whatever the case, Nguyen can rely on the enduring popularity of Flappy Bird to propel Swing Copters to the top of the Google and iOS charts. But his games' popularity illuminates a rough issue for developers of popular (or even just semi-popular) apps everywhere: how do you deal with all the copycats flooding the world's app stores? Although Google and Apple boast that their respective app stores feature hundreds of thousands of apps, sometimes it seems as if most of those apps are crude imitations of other apps. The perpetual fear among app developers is that they'll score a modest hit—only to see their years of hard work undermined by someone who cobbles together a clone in a matter of weeks or days. If Apple and Google want to make things friendlier out there for developers, they might consider stricter enforcement policies for the blatant rip-offs filling their digital storefronts.

Comments

It's easy to troll gamers.

[i kan reed]

Point out literally any trivial mistake in any popular platform or game, and they(they being self-identified gamers) will inexplicably act as if you have invented the most vile insults about their parentage.

Honestly, my observation is that it's harder to not troll gamers than to do so.

I have nothing to add

[Nimey]

I just wanted to post "trolling with a swinging dong" and have it be relevant to the story for once.

Hye, how about this...

[Anonymous Coward]

So when someone expends significant effort and time to develop something we want to ensure that they realize the benefit for their work. The challenge is that once the work has been done, it is easy for someone else to copy it and steal your profits (because they avoided all the development costs).

What is being asked is for an institution, such as Google or Apple, to take steps to prevent other from copying one's work.

Put another way, the ask is that Google/Apple create a private patent system.

I have to laugh that when developers want to take advantage of other people's work, they condemn patents, but when they find their own work being cloned suddenly they are clamoring for someone to come in and protect their work...