BY DANIEL LEIBOWITZ
Flappy Bird is now an iconic game that will be going down in history books. Created by Dong Nguyen, an indie developer in Vietnam, it was first released for iOS on May 24, 2013 as Flap Flap. Later on, its name was changed to Flappy Bird as a result of another app having the same title.
Initially, Flappy Bird did not see many downloads, however in November it slowly picked up and in late December the game exploded with popularity. At one point, Nguyen was making $50,000 a day simply off the advertisements in the game and on January 17th it reached the top spot of #1 free app in the world.
Flappy Bird is pretty simple, all you do is tap the screen in an attempt to get a bird to flap its wings to avoid pipes.
At the peak of its popularity, the game drew criticism from websites like Kotaku, accusing Nguyen for ripping off Nintendo sprites. Nguyen denied these claims, and Kotaku later apologized for the article, taking it off their website. Others have claimed that he paid for bots to boost the rating of his game, due to the game’s fast rise through the App Store’s top 100. Numerous others simply hated Flappy Bird for its simple yet difficult gameplay, to the point where people where breaking their phones in pure anger.
All of these accusations eventually led Nguyen to state on Twitter, “I can call ‘Flappy Bird’ a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it.” This occurred on February 8th, and 9 hours later, he announced that he would remove Flappy Bird from the AP store in 22 hours. While many speculated this was due to legal reasons, Nguyen confirmed it was not. He also stated he will still be making games. True to his word, Flappy Bird was taken down on February 9th. However, its legacy did not die there.
Phones with Flappy Bird on them are currently being sold on eBay for unbelievable prices, with one phone being bid on for over $90,000. Although, these bids are probably fraudulent, it does attest to the pure popularity of the game. Flappy Bird‘s legacy also lives on in its clones, with games like Flappy Doge, a parody of the popular Doge meme, along with many other Flappy (insert some animal here) games. Other more original clones, such as Ironpants, also exist. Sadly for Nguyen, who stated that he took down Flappy Bird due to its addictive nature, Flappy Bird players are still getting their fix from other games.
Overall, Flappy Bird was a completely unexpected success. It came out of nowhere to become one of the most popular games for any mobile device, and in roughly the same time it took to rise, it fell. Flappy Bird is proof that you don’t need a fancy, AAA title to succeed in the cutthroat mobile marketplace. With a little bit of luck and good game design, any game can leave its mark.
