As you know, Flappy Bird, the amazingly simple, addictive game has been removed from the App Store and Google Play after only 28 days being in the top 10 of the App Store by it’s author, Dong Nguyen. The story surrounding it’s rise to popularity and it’s ultimate demise is truly an interesting one and a must read. One of my favorite sites, Mashable, has so graciously put together a timeline of events leading to the author removing the game and it’s a must read:
From Mashable:
“The story of Flappy Bird — its sudden rise and equally sudden fall — is hard to pin down. That’s partially because Nguyen, overwhelmed by the popularity of the game, has declined press requests for interviews. [Update: Shortly after we posted this story, Forbes tracked down Nguyen in Hanoi, where he revealed that Flappy Bird is “gone forever’ because, essentially, it was addictive.]
Still, using Twitter data from Topsy, Nguyen’s Twitter stream and app-ranking data from App Annie, we’ve managed to put together a timeline of the game.”
CLICK HERE to read more.
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Personally, I just don’t understand it. It’s a GAME. Why was the author so beaten up by the press, by Twitter? If you hated the game, hated the graphics, delete it. Yes, he made a lot of money from the game, as do many others, like say, Candy Crush. Is the difference because he was just one guy in Vietnam rather than a huge company? Is it because the graphics resembled old Nintendo of yore? The only people that should care about that is Nintendo, and as of yet, they haven’t done anything about that. I just don’t understand why people couldn’t just download the game and be happy, or delete the game and be happy, rather than harass this man with questions of why it got so popular, why the graphics are what they are, his formula for success.
Could he have handled it better? Probably. Maybe he just should have left Twitter entirely, used some of the money to hire someone to field questions or the like, but he didn’t. Instead, the game was pulled. Now, people are selling their iphones on ebay for mass amounts of money if Flappy Bird is installed. Crazy! Hopefully, Nguyen will now be able to live in peace. In the meantime, I’m gonna go try and beat my all time high score of 13.