A decade after the wildly popular game Flappy Bird disappeared, an organization calling itself The Flappy Bird Foundation announced plans to “re-hatch the official Flappy Bird® game.”
But this morning, the game’s creator Dong Nguyen posted a characteristically terse comment stating that he has nothing to do with the revival, and that he “did not sell anything.” He added, “I also don’t support crypto.”
To be clear, Nguyen’s comments don’t exactly contradict anything in the foundation’s announcement, which described the group as a “new team of passionate fans committed to sharing the game with the world,” and said it had “acquired the rights from Gametech Holdings, LLC.” (Apparently Gametech successfully filed to terminate Nguyen’s Flappy Bird trademark a couple years ago.)
But the post makes it clear that Nguyen is not involved with the new project, and that he doesn’t seem particularly happy about it.
As for Nguyen’s reference to crypto, while the foundation’s current PR materials don’t mention anything crypto-related, Varun Biniwale did some digging around hidden pages on the Flappy Bird Foundation website and found a reference to Flappy Bird flying “higher than ever on Solana as it soars into Web 3.0,” though it’s not clear whether that refers to upcoming features or abandoned plans.
Flappy Bird — a relatively simple side-scrolling game with retro graphics — was first released in 2013, eventually becoming a viral hit and becoming the most-downloaded app on both the iOS and Android app stores. However, Nguyen took the app down in February 2014, declaring, “I cannot take this anymore.”
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I have a guilty pleasure, and it’s not that I just rewatched “Glee” in its entirety (yes, even the awful later seasons), or that I have read an ungodly amount of Harry Potter fan fiction in my time.
My guilty pleasure is that I play the LinkedIn games.
To answer the obvious question: Wait, LinkedIn has games? Yes. In May, LinkedIn launched three puzzles through LinkedIn News, like a knock-off version of New York Times games. There’s the logic puzzle Queens (my favorite), the word game Crossclimb (pretty good), and the word-association game Pinpoint (not a great game, but whatever).
LinkedIn is adopting the classic tech strategy of seeing what works for another company and then trying to replicate that success, even if it might seem odd to play games on a professional networking platform. But it’s no wonder why NYT Games has spurred this inspiration. In a way, The New York Times is a gaming company now — as of December 2023, users spent more time on the NYT Games app than on its news app.
LinkedIn isn’t alone. Everyone has games now. Apple News. Netflix. YouTube. There are so many games for us to indulge in. And yet, once I finish my various New York Times puzzles, I still want more. It’s not like I’m itching to play LinkedIn’s Crossclimb before Connections, but the games are good enough to give me that sweet rush of dopamine.
Usually I play LinkedIn’s games during the workday (sorry to my boss). Sometimes it’s because I’ve gone on LinkedIn to fact-check something or search for a source, but then I remember I can take a few minutes to play a little game. Other times, my mind is scrambled after staring too long at the same draft of an article, and taking a break to solve a colorful Queens puzzle makes it easier to go back and confront that Google Doc again.
But it turns out that there’s a science to why we love these quick, once-a-day brain teasers.
I recently spoke with DeepWell DTx co-founder Ryan Douglas, whose company is predicated on the idea that playing video games (in moderation) can have mental health benefits. In some cases, the brief distraction of a game can pull us out of negative thought spirals or help us approach a problem from a new perspective.
“If you’re playing Tetris, for instance, you can’t have a big conversation in your head about how terrible you are, and how you suck, and what’s going to go on next week, and all that,” Douglas told TechCrunch.
On a neuroscientific level, Douglas explained that when we play games, we activate the limbic system in our brains, which is responsible for navigating stress. But even if these stressors are simulated, they get our brains accustomed to overcoming that stress in a variety of ways.
“You start learning on a subconscious level, creating new neural pathways at an accelerated rate, and choosing them preferentially on a subconscious level for how you’re going to deal with these issues in the future,” he said. “If you cope with [a stressor] in this particular environment, you’ve gained agency. You have control.”
This isn’t to say we should all go and play Pokémon all day — the video game developer tools that DeepWell makes are approved for therapeutic use in 15-minute doses. Maybe that’s why we’ve all become so enamored with games like Wordle, as well as other games from The New York Times (and LinkedIn), which have a finite ending. You do your one puzzle per day and then you move on.
Josh Wardle, the creator of Wordle, spoke to TechCrunch about his viral success, back before his game was acquired by The New York Times.
“I’m kind of suspicious of apps and games that want your endless attention — like, I worked in Silicon Valley. I know why they do that,” Wardle said. “I think people have an appetite for things that transparently don’t want anything from you.”
Wardle is right, though — of course, my beloved LinkedIn games do want something from me: my attention. And if I’m being honest, I’ve spent way more time on LinkedIn in recent months than I ever have.
According to LinkedIn’s own data, my behavior is not an anomaly. The company said that since the start of July, new player engagement has grown about 20% week over week. LinkedIn has also noticed strong traction in users starting conversations after playing games. When you complete a game, you can see which of your connections have also played, which I guess some people take as an opportunity to #network. I don’t do that, but then again, most of my conversations on LinkedIn are just me messaging my friends “hi,” because for some reason that’s funny to me.
So, get on LinkedIn and play your heart out … and then about four minutes later, get back to the relentless grind of global capitalism.
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There’s something oddly refreshing about starting the day by solving the Wordle. According to DeepWell DTx, there’s a scientific explanation for why our brains might feel just a bit better after a quick break to play a game. In fact, DeepWell now has the FDA clearance to support its claim that video games can treat stress.
With FDA clearance, DeepWell’s biofeedback software development kit is approved for over-the-counter use, meaning that patients can use its games as a supplement to other treatments for stress or hypertension. As Medicare weighs the benefits of reimbursing doctors for digital therapy software, it’s possible that DeepWell’s games could become eligible for reimbursement.
FDA-approved medical devices don’t have to be developed solely for medical purposes. Apple’s AirPods Pro just got FDA approval to serve as hearing aids, making them the first over-the-counter hearing aid software device. Consumer products like the Garmin watch and certain Apple Watch apps have also been approved to monitor conditions like atrial fibrillation and Parkinson’s disease. As rates of anxiety and depression escalate in the U.S., it’s no wonder that medical regulators are looking for solutions from unconventional sources, like a gaming developer kit.
“What I believe you’re seeing happening at the moment is a recognition of the mental health emergency we’re under and the resource constraints that we’ve got,” co-founder Ryan Douglas told TechCrunch. “What we’ve done is we’ve cleared a toolkit that allows media creators to connect media to the reimbursement stream that’s coming now for digital mental health.”
For over 20 years, Douglas has been designing therapeutic hardware and software, earning more than 30 patents for treatment systems and medical devices. Now, he is the president and CEO of NeuFluent, a venture studio for neurological products, which DeepWell is part of.
DeepWell doesn’t recommend its products to be used instead of talk therapy, but rather, as a supplement.
“We’ve seen amazing results, sometimes as much as four times more effective than talk therapy or a drug,” he said. “But in combination with talk therapy, it has been out of this world.”
As a proof of concept, DeepWell put out a virtual reality game on Meta Quest called Zengence, which it calls a “mental health action shooter.” The headset can sense the player’s breath, and by maintaining a consistent breathing pattern, it becomes easier to defeat enemies.
Games don’t need to have such overtly therapeutic mechanics to be useful. According to Douglas, even games like Super Mario or Animal Crossing can have positive effects.
As with anything, video games should be enjoyed in moderation — for the sake of both your physical and mental health, you probably shouldn’t play Tears of the Kingdom for 12 hours a day. But, DeepWell argues that playing a game for 15 minutes, three times a week — the “dose” it was cleared for by the FDA — can have noticeable benefits.
“It turns out that this overlap between being in a playful state — in a heavily dopaminergic state — while you’re gaining a lot of agency and having a lot of positive interaction… You’re really bioavailable to learn new things about yourself,” he said.
Playing games that capture our attention can also offer a temporary respite from our negative thoughts and feelings.
“If you’re playing Tetris, for instance, you can’t have a big conversation in your head about how terrible you are, and how you suck, and what’s going to go on next week, and all that,” Douglas said.
Then, the limbic system — the part of the brain responsible for reacting to stress — could become susceptible to learning new ways of coping with negative stimuli. So as we get more practice coping with stressors — even fake ones from a video game — it can impact how we respond to real-life stress.
“We see a lot of folks with high levels of stress, that have been through wars and stuff like that, and they go back and they actually play games that give them jump scares and have thrills,” Douglas said. “There’s a desire to get in and have control over an environment that they didn’t have control over before.”
So far, DeepWell is cleared to treat stress and hypertension, but Douglas hopes that in the future, this technology could treat PTSD, epilepsy, sleep disorders, and memory disorders. Though DeepWell’s work focuses on digital media, Douglas thinks that these same principles can be observed through other forms of entertainment.
“That’s why you see people go into a concert or a movie, and they come back out two hours later thinking differently about what they’re going to do next,” he said. “In that time, you’ve overcome a major hurdle, or got over a rut in your thinking that you otherwise couldn’t do without that stimulus.”
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