∞ Social Aspects of Success and Failure in Cultural Markets
In short, Marco is right that Flappy Bird would likely not have succeeded as it did without having the qualities that he listed. Games like Flappy Bird will occasionally be catapulted to success in the App Store, and when they are it will be pretty clear, in one sense, what it is about them that made them so popular. But John is right that there are likely many, many games with these qualities in the App Store, and in a market for cultural goods where phenomenally rapid word-of-mouth success can happen, it is next to impossible to predict which of the many candidate games specifically will make it big. This is one reason, by the way, that players in markets for cultural goods often seek to control the distribution pipeline (in more and less legitimate ways) rather than invest too much time and money in content creation. It’s more predictable. This may also help explain why the immediate reaction of some people was to suggest that the developer had gamed the rankings to drive up popularity.
A must read. Especially if you were trying to find out why Flappy Bird had such a success from the aspect of the game itself, or thought the developer “cheated”.