Over the last few weeks, the entire internet has been in an uproar about Flappy Birds. The sudden boost in popularity for the game brought it into the sights of the media, and it has been a roller-coaster ride ever since. I’ll be stepping away from my conventional news reporting duties, and will speak honestly and personally about the matter, as I try to grasp what exactly made Flappy Birds such a hit.
I haven’t heard about the game until it actually got dragged into the spotlight. Truth be told, I’m not much of a mobile platform gamer. Sure, I give certain games a go on rare occasions, but my phone isn’t exactly designed for gaming, and most of my time I’m either behind a desk, or behind the wheel, driving from one destination to the other. Still, given how popular Flappy Birds had become, I figured I should see what the fuss is about. And, it doesn’t take a professional game reviewer to see that the game is, simply put, bad. I got frustrated with it within 5 minutes, and as I was uninstalling it from my phone, I was pondering on where the appeal was coming from. Sure, I can get the competitive drive among school kids, striving to beat each others records secretly during class. But other than that, it’s just a bird and some pipes, with uninteresting graphics (if you can call the visuals that in the first place), repetitive gameplay, no story, and nothing to really keep you going. Unless, of course, you have a need to prove yourself in some sadistic way, to people who might oddly be interested in how good you are at avoiding bashing into pipes.
A few things must be known about Dong Nguyen and his seemingly addictive game. Once Flappy Birds became viral and popular, the Vietnamese developer made over $50.000 a day from ads. That means that Flappy Birds generated revenues on the 7 digit scale. How much is not entirely known, but rough estimates (based on when the game became viral and how long the period until it was taken down lasted) would place the simplistic game at revenues of between $1 milliong and $2 million. That’s quite impressive, given that it probably took the guy a few days (at most) to program it.
Now, the internet is suffering from Flappy Birds withdrawal (which I simply cannot comprehend why) right now. Ideas of similar games are already running wild and clones are most likely available on the App Store. There were even people who considered a Flappy Birds MMO. The entire phenomenon is so unbelievably huge, that you can actually see people selling smartphones on ebay with the game pre-installed for over $2000. For a moment, I almost felt bad that I uninstalled Flappy Birds from my modest Samsung Galaxy Mini, which is pretty much a worthless phone by any standards….almost!
I simply don’t get the frenzy. There are so many great games for mobile devices, why would people limit themselves for a game that causes tremendous amounts of rage? Just watching gameplay videos about it in Youtube can get you frustrated enough to club some baby seals. I also don’t get why Dong Nguyen decided to pull it from the App Store. I’m not into conspiracy theories or anything, but let’s face it, if you’re living in Vietnam and you’re suddenly making $50.000 a day, you’d have to be pretty desperate to cut your profits short. Unless, of course, the speculation about him using bots to promote his game on the Apple Store is true. Or Nintendo actually threatened to sue (yes, those pipes are pure Mario copies). He justified his actions by stating that “I cannot take this anymore.”. Which, frankly, I’m not buying. How painful can the pressure from the press and public be, when you’re making more a day than your compatriots (or most people, as a matter of fact) are making in a year?
Regardless, I’m not sorry to see the game gone. I’m just hoping that the focus of the press on the matter will diminish over time. I initially wanted to avoid the subject completely, and avoid riding on the Flappy Birds bandwagon, but alas, I felt a need to share my thoughts. And I encourage you to do the same, either on our forums or in the comment section below. Perhaps you can shed light on what I missed to see in Flappy Birds.
P.S.: I would have added more screenshots about the subject, but that’s pretty much all there is or was to see in Flappy Birds.