> Apophenia /æpɵˈfiːniə/ is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.
The term is attributed to Klaus Conrad[1] by Peter Brugger,[2] who defined it as the "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness", but it has come to represent the human tendency to seek patterns in random information in general, such as with gambling and paranormal phenomena.[3]
People tend to make that argument a lot when someone analyzes design, and it betrays an ignorance of the craft.
When you design something complex, your eyes and mind have to examine and make decisions on every detail. Even if the decisions took much less time than someone's later analysis, it's still a decision and there was still a significant amount of conscious or unconscious thought surrounding it.
Notice I said 'unconscious' thought? In this case, analysis is even more important, to help drive out a discussion on elements that nobody's really had yet. You might balk at calling someone whose obviously just 'threw something together' a genius, but the hand and eye and mind that threw something together like that managed to do something that thousands of others try and fail.
Aw, c'mon... I'm saying (with probably too many words for the internet, I'll concede) that changing any (not all, any of the details of Flappy Bird makes it shit. I tried it.
That's not seeing random patterns - that's double-blind testing. Well. Kinda.
It's a good argument, but I'm still not entirely convinced. Using "actual" gravity instead of video game gravity and having questionable collision detection sounds to me like it could have been done on purpose or it could be the result of poor planning or programming.
Maybe the "random" distance between starting the game and the first pipe coming up is also just a function of how far along a loop you are when you start playing. Did you check the timing or when you started compared to the background, for example? If it's completely random, that's actually very interesting. At the same time, however, it doesn't seem like there's any purpose for that, either.
I'm guessing that this is the only game Dong has released and there's no way for us to look at his previous work to help confirm/deny his genius status. It also doesn't look like he's going to keep releasing games. I think I read somewhere that he's not really open to interviews either. Oh well. It's looking like it might be one of those internet mysteries that will remain unresolved forever.
Perhaps you are really bad at game design? (It's okay, so am I.). You made a clone, you haven't understood the mechanics, and you call the original genius because your random changes don't improve it?
True, I'm bad at it - but I'm pretty good at copying stuff. My article originally highlighted a lot of problems and issues with all of the flappy clones that were coming out (I took that out 'cause I'm trying to not be negative on teh internets. Man, that's hard)
It was really in the clones that I noticed the flaws: Some are very well done and polished but were not fun... too easy and boring, or too hard and annoying.
When I started doing my "exact clone" I saw why - for such a simmmple idea it's very hard to balance. That's why I think the original author deserves more credit than he got. I personally would never call him a plagiarist and thinks he deserved every cent he made.
> Apophenia /æpɵˈfiːniə/ is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.
The term is attributed to Klaus Conrad[1] by Peter Brugger,[2] who defined it as the "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness", but it has come to represent the human tendency to seek patterns in random information in general, such as with gambling and paranormal phenomena.[3]