First published at IloiloMetropolitanTimes.com
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I came to know Flappy Bird just last week, from a pair of students who were busy playing it in their iPad, while we were waiting outside the classroom for the other class to finish. It was my lone Monday-Wednesday class in HUMALIT (Introduction to Humanities) scheduled on 9:40-11:10 in the morning housed in the Engineering building of the university. Before and after this, I either rush to go home to the condo building across the street or proceed to my 3rd office – the coffee shop (the 1st being my place and the 2nd the department) to write The 2nd Novel currently titled Kamatayun sa Isla Boracay (yes, it is in Kinaray-a). It is now on its 5th year, a New PhD Grant, and the University Research Coordination Office already, formally, issued its deadliest deadline: April 30, 2014. Otherwise, I will pay back more than two hundred thousand pesos for my 9-unit deloading and budget, all spent years way back.
Of course, I will not let that happen. I will finish the novel. And yet I entertained the thought of playing Flappy Bird? Why not, I said to myself. There’s such a thing as productive distraction. I would like to believe I have a high susceptibility to distraction. The pause and the gap away from the work I am focusing at the moment allow my brain to wander and rest. What it does to me is like a window where insight could come in. May of last year for instance, I was able to write a commissioned short story, a retelling of our aswang tale, because I played Candy Crush Saga (prior to this, yes, Angry Bird). Similarly, I got curious of this Flappy Bird: of what I could learn from it; of what it could do to me, specifically, in stimulating my imagination and creativity.
So I downloaded it to my iPhone after I had my quota of pages and energy with the novel. I played it and found it boring. It has no literary reference and resonance that I found right away with Candy Crush Saga, like the word saga brings to mind epic heroes and their journeys. There is a universe marked with places that unravel to you as you level up. There is the delight in the sound of candies crushing at your fingertips.
With Flappy Bird, there are the vertical green pipes. Phallic. To play, you tap the screen and Flappy Bird flaps its wings, up and down the erected green pipes. Very simple actually, and yet it is hard. Why? Because Flappy Bird is such a tiny, fragile thing that it could die right away in a slight bump into the pipe. And you have to go back to the start button. Your last score is your highest score. I came to know in the article “Flappy Bird is dead – but brilliant mechanics made it fly” by Keith Stuart published last February 10 in The Guardian that this is the point of compulsive game design: to make players feel they can do it, and when they fail, they blame themselves. So the addiction: you want to prove to yourself you can do it, right?
By now we all know Dong Nguyen, the Vietnamese creator of the game ended his life. He was earning $50,000 a day from the ads. He also received harsh criticisms from the game industry itself. We don’t really know the real reason for his suicide, though reported speculations have already been (re) tweeted and (re) shared online.
Now, what about my novel around this time? I am navigating the puzzle posed by Book III. Here, a player of a summer adventure set in Boracay Island designed to trace the trail of the early inhabitants, the Aetas, will encounter a sacred bird upon his death. This bird, as early belief tells, will carry the soul of the departed near the sun, which they revere. This assures a good travel and condition for the soul toward its final rest.
As of Feb. 15, my last score is 68. Am I glad that I was able to download Flappy Bird before Dong Nguyen took it down online and killed himself? I would say yes, and deep in my heart, I sincerely wish there’s the sacred bird of the old Aetas to transport Nguyen to a safer, kinder abode.
Filed under: BLOG, PANGGA GEN Tagged: Balay Sugidanun, Flappy Bird, Kamatayun sa Isla Boracay
