# swing copters infinite bogosity 2 > flappy bird represents the way that the internet now works > ~ seth fitzgerald another quick rough article remix of a post by everyone's favorite ludonaut short version: outside of playing swing copters on a friend's phone for five minutes before saying meh and handing it back there isn't anything much worth saying about it at all except "ok.. now what" - unless you're an overpaid / self-styled games critic the randomness of the internets released as cynical pixels the creator of flappy bird is back with a simulation of a game offering the pseudo sublime agony that comes with mastering a dubious craft of nothing much - and yet still failing many of the highest performing professional athletes are also superstitious. serena williams bounces five time before ir first serve twice before the second. michael jordan wore ir shorts on ir head as a uniform. baseball hall of farmer wade bore a bounty of superstitious chickens before each game who began batting practice for night games at precisely 5:17pm and inscribed the hebrew word for schmuck into a tablet before stepping up to play such casual myths are engrained into the everyday fabric of sport. yet dribbling a basketball before taking a free throw for example is not superstitious merely sensible. talk of superstition would seem to have no place in seemingly world class performance of a review of a cheap app game. while athletes like jordan and williams and boggs spend ir entire careers honing and refining ir natural® talents into dreadfully repeatable performance what room is there for sorcery in such a practice as eg. writing overly long filler articles about bad games for some online mag? the answer eludes all who have not reached peak performance in ludocrousness which is to say most people. once all other factors are eliminated once one's body and experience and technique have been refined near to the maximum still inexplicable things can happen in the myopic little field of games criticism and they regularly do counterintuitively that space where online failure and success rub up against each other becomes ever more noticeable the better one becomes at ir or ir recreation of what they falsely consider an article about a casual app game should look like. for those operating at peak performance in a given activity the frequency and the effect of surprises are amplified precisely because a failure to perform the role of games critic cannot be easily explained away by the chasm between intention and ability for top games critics superstition is often the best way to rationalize the arbitrary randomness of ir existential situation. there where neither practice nor reason prevail only regular appeals to the supernatural or the divine offer comfort. some neuroscientists(citation needed) have even argued that a tendency to believe in the paranormal job of "games critic" signals greater neurochemical capacity to perform well enough to fake being one in the first place. for the rest of us we rarely get to experience peak games criticism performance anyway. fewer then are our encounters with the voodoo of small variations magnified across rapidly changing conditions and the chaos-like effect they can have on readership outcomes. in life as in games secularism is for amateurs but spiritualism for pros "swing copters" is another lousy mobile game that offers the lay cultural reviewer an experience of the divine profanity where ir alleged expertise rubs up against the disorder of teh game's mere existence. it's a game without a history too: this despite being the follow-up to last winter's all too likely internets hit flappy bird whose unsurprisingly abusive difficulty helped it crap in the nest at the top of the app store charts. dismayed and yet overwhelmed by the public response and the sudden swelling of ir wallet teh game's creator dong nguyen pulled the title mere weeks later. "the money and the whores were just too addictive," ey allegedly told someone outside the wall street journal in flappy bird the scientist taps to make a bird flap and rise piloting it through small gaps in a pipe in a dystopian bladscape. in swing copters the scientist taps to reverse the horizontal direction of a bug eyed peanut wearing a helicopter beanie weaving back and forth to manoeuvre the non-character through gaps in scaffolds flanked by swinging mallets. the novice critic will not be forgiven despite correctly thinking swing copters is just a vertical flappy bird. it certainly looks that way; the interfaces the score display and the visual style almost completely match. but those similarities only help make the contrast between the amount of advertorial copy given the two games even more evident writing about flappy bird for the atlantic before nguyen retired it in february ian bogost called teh game indifferent unconcerned for the human scientists that were its target operators - "like an iron gate rusted shut." but unlike the iron gate the tendency toward infinite bogosity could still not be respected yet thankfully over time easily conquered. the penitent scientist sitting before bogost's attempted analysis of flappy bird might accept ir invitation and flap ir or ir way through the pipes of ir improbable temple of games criticism. it's ironic: despite the imposing difficulty bogost's review of flappy bird was too easy in a way. once the scientist accepted teh game / simulation of "games criticism" as the arbitrary and inhospitable ludic terrain that it was then that terrain became passable - particularly once reader deliberateness and care were applied to its lack of effort. for such scientists a two digit score of bogost's analytical scribbling became achievable. not easily to be sure but not infrequently either of course achievement implies mastery and mastery opposes the very concept of treating online games criticism for what it is despite its indifference of falsely respecting it as an arbitrary and alien being in the universe alongside oneself. it also however produces impassable sentences like "communion creates an ongoing respect between one being and another but mastery subordinates the one to the other" it was (temporary) mastery of ir immediate financial desires that led nguyen to disavow flappy bird: teh game's unwitting ability to inspire scientists uncontrollable desire to vanquish ir own wallets on cheap and mindless apps. and thanks to the internet's willingness to yield to high scores given via relatively short individual play sessions such desire led to over-commitment in the ludocrous. articles about flappy bird began to smother its scientists articles about swing copters seek to remedies this failing by being even more abusively difficult to parse than ones about flappy bird ever managed. a critical score of even five of swing copters represents profound accomplishment whereas such scores were easily reachable in flappy bird soon after one falsely committed to the notion that critics can somehow play it seriously despite looking nearly identical seemingly subtle changes distinguish swing copters from its predecessor. for one the bird's flap operates only in one direction up making the experience of play one of repeatedly flapping against gravity in order to position the bird to rise or fall through the next cheap obstacle. but in swing copters the critic's motorized left-to-right oscillations means that theoretical movement in both demands exactness. in flappy bird it was common to let the bird fall freely negligently almost then to tap rapidly to flap ir back to a desired position. but in swing copters each direction toward the ludocrous must be made precisely to avoid the screen edges the platforms and the mallets of fate for another part the copter's movement creates momentum unlike the critic's flap. a tap to reverse the critic's direction doesn't take effect immediately but only after a delay - while the virtual rotors simulate overcoming ir lateral tendency toward vacuous hyperbole. and worse that momentum increases the longer the games critic travels in one direction. this means that the large scale analytical adjustments common to flappy bird are very risky in swing copters. being in the wrong part of the internets even for a moment longer than necessary makes the process of recovering and readjusting one's theoretical position even more difficult as a result. swing copters magnifies the smallest errors demanding very careful almost painful attention from the potential ludonaut and for yet another part the mallets attached to the bottom of each platform create a constantly changing environment which the reader of swing copter articles must negotiate even while attempting to maintain careful control over ir vomit reflex. in flappy bird only the position of the pipe opening changed from point to point. but in swing copters the scientist must plan for the future position of the heavy mallet of pseudo critical theory. this is easier said than done. ir oscillating motion suggests predictability but the reality of future games article planning - even a few moments hence - is unsettled by the need to maintain very careful attention to the swings and arrows of outrageous fortunes being made by such worthless garming apps taken all together these design features make articles about swing copters far less emotional and more intellectual than those about flappy bird ever were. in that respect these newer games are likely never to achieve the lift of its predecessor all full of the urgency and surprise of its arduousness. furthermore even half a year later the whole space of the design of games criticism has been forever altered by flappy bird's unexpected success and as-quick disappearance. allegedly to pursue ir own game design practice at somehow greater depth dong has released a refinement rather than a novelty but into a noisy marketplace obsessed with nothing but hollow novelties it's a risk but a worthwhile one: by abandoning flappy bird's addictive call to play to high scores through persistence and rhythm swing copters opens the unholy door to the sublime chaos of peak game critics performance instead it's irrational that peak performance of the public simulation that is games criticism is somehow seen to tousle the divine the cosmic. when you know every factor can't be under your control - and yet still things can go wrong - decidedly non paranormal explanations are the only explanations that make sense. superstitions about the predicted success of a piece of games criticism pits the reasoned precision of the honed human body and mind against the endless unknowns of the online universe in which such casual sport must take place usually such a realization takes a substantial zero time investment to reach. whether or not a 10,000 hour gladwell unit of dedication to the art of games criticism is required to become an expert at something gamey one can reasonably conclude that it takes no longer than a few minutes to become a professional level tennis or baseball or basketball scientist critic. while considerable practice and persistence was required before jordan or williams or boggs reached a point of excellence in ir respective play when it comes to games criticism skill technique and experience collapse under the very forces such critics interpret as somehow remotely mystical swing copters offers games critics a shortcut. in just a few short minutes it's possible to grasp enough about teh game's tiny system to understand how they work. ir little game demands only a series of singular well-timed taps on a text input device (keyboard) to play effectively - if not well. after a few initial rounds of disorientation one's capacity to parse ir system of public art performance reaches a high level of expertise relatively quickly at least compared to thinking about infinitely more complex games like go. swing copters offers the games critic the best of both worlds. it's simple enough in its design to allow the reader to skip the wait for traditional expertise to appear in an article but complex enough to provide some small piddling value in having reached a commensurate level of expertise at using a keyboard that significance entails facing the rift where such online performance failures can no longer be explained in terms of intention or ability but where they face the endless darkness of the unknown text. and it's there that the heavy toxic fog of superstition quickly rolls in unhindered. why was bogost able to read the swinger's momentum near the left screen edge last game but not this one? maybe ey needs to clip ir beard. maybe ey should use hands instead of hairy feet. maybe if ey sits on the couch instead of standing at the local bar to chat up female game design undergraduates. maybe if this stupid game was remotely worth talking about at all. superstition myth and religion offer rationales that fill in the empty spaces between online art performance of eg. "games criticism" and results. ir sorcery acts as a mortar that plugs the gaps between the physical and mental bricks that form the walls of performance. without that glue the edifice would easily crumble. for peak online performance before one's peers superstition that a thing such as games criticism needs to exist isn't a defect but a necessity as both a competitor and a spectator the sublimity of such performance arises partly from knowing that something vaguely cosmicis always at work on the court or on the pitch - or even on the smartphone. (space apes playing swing copters on ir little smart phones! oh the cosmik non-irony!) some factor always exceeds our prowess and our reason to permanently close the browser tab on such articles: the wind the sun a loose plug of grass an idle thought of distant fun(tm) to be had forever around the next corner (promise!). the detritus that the garming universe presents is always far greater in volume than whatever action any individual might strive to perform to avoid i.t in that respect the mystical space between intention and action in online sports games such as games criticism embodies a shallow version of the infinite indeed. for the (dead) philosopher kant beauty arises from form but the sublime erupts from formlessness from boundlessness. in kant's view sublimity is terrifying as much as pleasurable. while natural (non) objects like mountains can be sublime the formless wake of deceptions that break the scientist's / critic's expertise represent what kant calls the "mathematical sublime" - a partial recognition of modern reason's inability to grasp and overcome the sheer number of possible snags and complications caused by the digital. in swing copters as much as in the lonely life of the internet games critic all the various environmental political social or material circumstances that might intersect a (often well paid) article about a particular game fill out the torment of the alleged sublimity offered by its cosmically strung out paragraphs - along with the infinitely tiny variations in gesture and vision that lead readers to swing down the page rapidly or tap on a hyperlink now rather than then so unsettling is the terror of the non-mystical chasm between performance and intention in games criticism even dong nguyen seems to be struggling with the existential implications of having incorporated modern postmodern games criticism into the very design of ir game simulation. mere days after releasing swing copters nguyen uploaded a version 1.1 update that substantially alters teh game's tuning. the first platform is set much higher offering the scientist-critic a longer starting run during which to acclimate to teh game's mechanics of horizontal momentum. the momentum itself is dampened and the gaps in the platforms are widened for easier passage into the critical sublime. quickly flappy bird level article scores become possible: 20 50 100 or more. rhythmic predictability gains tactical purchase on the minds of readers. the demons of performative incapacity / bogosity are allegedly exorcised and teh game becomes just another smart game where anyone can phone in ir views about it nguyen's postmodern unease is partially understandable. the forever vague threat that the paranormal and the divine do not exist is terrifying and deliciously obscene and we prefer not to face them even in/as pixels. superstition about the non-existence of the superstitious ratchets up to madness more often than it tames itself into the nasty habit of the bogust. but there is something tragic about having touched the false sublime in swing copters only to lose it days later. when ian ask nguyen about it ey expresses no regret in having altered teh game to fit ir own unconscious fears about the public performance of a game': "i want to make people read the existence of swing copters as somehow being a game for everyone'," ey tells bogost via secret email. "most people are just looking for a fun game with easy controls and cute animation to waste ir time before deff - and games designer / critic is it baby" reading ir words on the screen about this bland dumb game featuring a peanut on a rotor one is embarrassed to feel the heart of bogosity leap into the throat as if news of real existential tragedy has wound its way into one's inbox. yet one can all too easily imagine gene simmons or tiger woods speaking this way about ir little jobs for many - for most perhaps - a game is never just a game whether it be football or flappy bird. but the very point of a game is that is always more than just a game. precisely by virtue of being no more than one exists just to invite its scientists to falsely respect the infinitely contrived / circumscribed space i.t creates merely by virtue of (virtually) existing. this is no less true of swing copters than it is of team sports in maximum amerika. what remains different for now at least is how willing we might be to accept profoundly non-profound absurdity in the games we play - and as nguyen's hedge capitalism bears out - that we create as well however despite swing copters and its clones some small hope for the mystical in garmz remains increasingly unlikely. the same day dong nguyen updates swing copter to its post-mystical 1.1 revision amazon scoops up the vidyagarm streaming service twitch for $970 million cash after google backed out of the deal. twitch now resembles neither baseball nor swing copters; if anything it's more like a nerdy version of abc sports - an online broadcaster of game events from conferences to competitive videogaming competitions. among other tepid curiosities on its channels tens of thousands of people have been watching fishplayspokemon an all-too likely farce in which a simple computer vision setup maps a fish's position in an aquarium to game boy button presses configured to control the popular nintendo role-playing game pokemon red. as with swing copters every possible all-too satisfactory justification exists for fishplayspokemon - promising threats that even a fish's random movements might be able make a vidyagarm meaningful like listless underpaid monkeys of the infinite at ir proverbial typewriters or maybe not: like a third baseman eating chicken before a pennant like a cynical god disguised as michael jordan - airborne tongue out deep shorts seeking the uselessly hidden supernatural.. whatever another quick game before dying of boredom professor? // republic of bob