When Flappy Bird is on fire

Recently, a simple game Flappy Bird has become the new darling, 28 days let it quickly hot the world. At the same time this Vietnamese developer Ruan Hedong developed a small game in the red, many developers have carried out its cottage, and some will slightly modify the game scene, and some will be replaced by the game of other birds, But the gameplay is still the user click on the screen to control the bird's flight altitude to avoid obstacles.

However, Flappy Bird is not the first game that has suffered such a large range of cottages. In fact, no matter what the game, as long as red, there will be more than one similar game. With the rise of web games and mobile games, more and more cottages for these games. Some developers even what game fire to imitate what the game.

In addition to the game, some popular applications are often subject to cottage, such as the country had a team that pixel-level cottage pictures social applications Path.

For developers, a cottage application can minimize development costs. A game designed from scratch, it usually takes six months to a year, but the cottage may come as fast as a month. Like Flappy Bird this game, Nguyen Ha Dong developed within three days out, for a team of mature and open-minded experience, can not make the same game in a day.

Due to its imitation of the product has proved the market demand, cottage product trial risk is also smaller. And for consumers, many people do not know that section is a cottage version of the application, and do not mind.

This is also a very important reason why cottage apps and games are popular - the mobile internet market is huge, and a cottage app and a game that yields more than its mock counterparts is also a common occurrence.

Cottage content or the influence of the occasion

Any business practices have their own definite purpose, as well as for large-scale cottages. In general, a cottage application usually has two purposes: to learn from the characteristics of this application to do a product, or by the popularity of a particular application launch similar applications to win the eye.

Flappy Bird was cottage mainly because of the latter. The game is very simple, the design is also very rough, and its success can be said that some "does not make sense." But the popularity of this game has become a topic, for other developers, a similar game can get attention because of this topic, access to users. The simplicity of this game also makes the cottage more convenient.

At the same time, Ruan Hada due to all kinds of pressure, the game off the shelf, which also gave the cottage a greater chance. From the app store data, there are already a large number of cottage Flappy Bird games into the top ten list.

Domestic fishing games have also been widely cottage. However, this cottage is more than fancy content of the game, but also fancy the timing of topic marketing.

Touch Technology launched the "Fishing Daren" Although it is a casual game, but relatively Flappy Bird to be more complex, the quality of the game is also very high, and the popularity of the game has also formed a very good topic effect. Therefore, a large number of imitators appeared on the market, but these imitated products did not completely plagiarize the "fishing master", and many developers made improvements to them.

Some game developers to Tencent Technology said that some cottage games, even more than the original. However, because these cottage games are launched after the "fishing master," then touch has been the next step in the layout, so although the cottage made a good game, but the company can not become a touch.

Last year, with the popularity of "My Name MT" and "Big Head", the domestic card game market ushered in the peak. Games practitioners told Tencent technology, in all online games theme, the most important cottage card, because the lowest cost. "Fast cottage products only take about a month or so to come out."

Make the game become the hardest hit cottage

At present the cottage is mostly used for games, which are also more out of commercial interests. Because the game is still the most profitable application on the mobile internet, the more money-making games tend to have more imitators.

According to foreign media reports, Flapyy Bird game with built-in ads, one day will be able to bring developers 50,000 US dollars in revenue. For such income, other developers are naturally willing to pay the cost of a day to imitate a game to try their luck.

Although the game is a creative industry, but at present there is no more than 10 types of heavy games in the field of mobile games and many similar games will inevitably have similar places. When a game appears in a big game, the game company will naturally absorb its worth learning.

Clash of Clans, a simulation strategy game launched by Finnish game developer Supercell in 2012, has pushed the company into battle, so many Chinese game companies started similar projects in late 2012. However, this cottage is more to learn the core elements of the game, not completely plagiarized.

A gaming company CEO told Tencent: "Good games difficult to appear for many reasons, one is the environmental factors, although some experts are optimistic about the game, but after the listing has been mediocre. The other reason is that the game's new rules are very Difficult, such as bloody battle in the end, fight landlords, so the cottage or learn some ready-made rules is a normal thing.

It is because of the unpredictability of the game's success and, once successful rewards are impressive, that many game companies are willing to adopt a relatively conservative strategy of mimicking a successful game instead of developing it from scratch.

However, if the cottage has always been difficult to make a good game company. This model cottage easy to let the company caught in an innovation dilemma, be comfortable with a follower. And the game industry has a high demand for talent, a long-term cottage game company is hard to attract first-class game developers.

It can be said that the cottage can solve the short-term survival of game companies, but to obtain long-term and stable development, rely on the cottage will not work.

(Zong Xiuqian, Liang Chen also contributed to this article)