I want to boil this down further…was is the physics, was it the design, was it the nostalgia of the Mario-esque pipes. There may not be any answer to my inquiry, but the app’s meteoric rise to success had me thinking quite a bit.

I am also looking into the “masterability” of the game. Not too steep as to scare new players away, but not flat enough to give seasoned users a reason to stop.

We are in a confusing age of gaming; one in which former RTS, RPG, MMO etc players have shifted to games like Flappy.

Since the Mario game has a fish, rather than a bird, it is not ripped. Nintendo does not hold copyright on green pipes or pixelated characters, the same way that Id does not hold a copyright on sci-fi soldiers, or on shooting in hallways.

It would be a copyright or cloning issue of you had the same gameplay as Piou Piou + cacti + nearly identical visual style. Or it could be copyright or cloning issue in relation to Nintendo if the graphics had actually been ripped, or if it involved an Italian plumber jumping on levels with similar layout as Super Mario.

For just about any popular game you can find dozens of earlier games that are similar in gameplay and graphical style. I don’t understand why people would be so critical of Flappy Bird.

“Flappy Bird is among the least guilty games in terms of cloning and borrowing graphics.”

Do your research. Flappy Bird is a blatant copy of a game called “Piou Piou”. A French game, with a flying bird, dodging green cactus.

Also, the “bird” is ripped from Mario – its a fish that jumps out of water in the original game.