Code.org Resurrects 'Flappy Bird' As Programming Lesson 72
Nerval's Lobster writes "Flappy Bird might be kaput, but its hilariously awkward hero is serving another useful purpose in its afterlife: teaching people how to code. Flappy Bird, a free mobile game for Android and iOS that asks the player to guide the titular avian through an obstacle course of vertical pipes, became a sensation earlier this year, seizing the top spots on the Apple and Google Play app stores. Its creator, Dong Nguyen, said the game earned him an average of $50,000 a day through in-app advertising — but that didn't stop him from yanking the game offline in early February. Now Code.org has resurrected Flappy Bird, Phoenix-style, from the smoking wreckage, with a free tutorial that allows anyone with a bit of time to code his or her very own version of the game. There's no actual code to learn, thanks to a visual interface that allows budding developers to drag 'blocks' of commands into place. 'Flappy Bird recently met its untimely death. We might've been tempted to cry all day and give up on spreading computer science (not really, but R.I.P Flappy Bird),' read a note on Code.org's blog. 'Instead, we built a new drag-and-drop tutorial that lets you build your own Flappy game — whether it's Flappy Bird, or Flappy Easter Bunny, Flappy Santa, Flappy Shark with Lasers, Flappy Fairy or Flappy Underwater Unicorn.' Childish? Maybe. But it could help draw people into coding for fun or profit."
Re:Lego building != Architect (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, sparking that interest is fairly key. Shrug, if it works, it works.
Re:Copyright? (Score:4, Interesting)
Too addictive [bgr.com]
Re:Copyright? (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't copyright the mechanics of the game, which is why every successful game gets copied until there's 50 different versions of essentially the same thing.
In fact, I believe this is what Zynga based their business model on -- doing knock-offs of someone else's games.
You can copyright the specific images, but not the mechanics.
Hell, I've got one on my Android tablet called "Happy Poo Flap".
Re:Lego building != Architect (Score:5, Interesting)
It's no more a tutorial on programming, than watching the Nature channel is an education to become a biologist. It might spark someone's interest, but I do think that interest would have been sparked regardless.