The enigmatic and oppressively difficult mobile game Flappy Bird has turned into quite the cash cow for Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen. In an interview with The Verge, Nguyen revealed that the game, which has been sitting atop the App Store and Google Play Store charts for nearly a month, is earning on average $50,000 a day from in-app ads.
If you're only now hearing of Flappy Bird, the game goes as follows: you tap the screen to propel a tiny, pixelated bird upwards. If you hit any of the green pipes in your way as you fly towards some unknowable, unreachable finish line, the game is over. The goal is simply to accumulate the highest score possible. The catch? You'll very likely spend an hour even reaching a score of five. The app has been downloaded 50 million times, and has accumulated over 47,000 reviews in the App Store — as many as apps like Evernote and Gmail. Mobile games studios generally spend months coding up deliberately addictive and viral titles, but Nguyen did it by spending a few nights coding when he got home from work.
"The reason Flappy Bird is so popular is that it happens to be something different from mobile games today, and is a really good game to compete against each other," Nguyen says. "People in the same classroom can play and compete easily because [Flappy Bird] is simple to learn, but you need skill to get a high score." The app is compatible with Apple's Game Center and Google's Google Play Games, so it's easy to compare scores with friends. You can also, of course, share your scores on Facebook and Twitter, a feature which some have attributed its success to.
In my own manic pursuit of higher scores, I often longed for an in-app purchase to turn off the game's distracting ads — because as any Flappy Bird veteran knows, even something as involuntary as blinking can send you spiraling into doom. But Nguyen says he has no plans to change or even update the game. "Flappy Bird has reached a state where anything added to the game will ruin it somehow, so I'd like to leave it as is," he says "I will think about a sequel but I'm not sure about the timeline." In the meantime, Nguyen has a few other hit games on his hands.
Super Ball Juggling has also been hovering in the App Store's top ten, as has Shuriken Block. Neither game as perfectly balances difficulty and fun as Flappy Bird, but it's become clear that Nguyen has a knack for bite-sized arcade titles. The games' mechanics are inspired by Nintendo titles Nguyen played as a child, and even by some of the characters therein. Flappy Bird's titular bird was inspired by Cheep Cheep in Super Mario Bros, as are its iconic green pipes. Adding advertisements to the mix was his modern spin on the titles. "I want to make an ads-based game because it is very common in the Japanese market — minigames are free and have ads," Nguyen says. The formula seems to be working — Nguyen's tiny dotGears gaming studio is cleaning up. The company has amassed hundreds of thousands of dollars from games that take just one tap to play.
DotGear's now-famous titles only spiked in popularity in November, 2013. Flappy Bird, for one, launched all the way back in May, 2013. Nguyen can't figure out exactly why the games took off, but plans to keep on building new ones: his next project is a fresh take on the popular "Jetpack" genre of mobile games. Nguyen's games have an odd resemblance to the pick-up-and-play appeal and frenetic speed of games like WarioWare. It might not be long before you can fill a home screen with bite-sized dotGears titles that will make you pull your hair out. But then you'll come back for more.
Comments
This shit is bananas. I can’t fathom how the game could be so popular seemingly overnight, despite its simplicity.
By CaptainAnywho on 02.05.14 6:19pm
That’s the whole point, apps are like Tetris now a days. The problem is that while he maybe making $50 k larger and more “in-depth” games don’t do that easily.
By Kirielson on 02.05.14 6:24pm
More than enough smartphone players have short attention span. They want something to keep them distracted from the inevitable boredom of life’s uneventful intermissions. Something challenging yet seemingly trivial is the incarnate bane of their egos. Once it gets them they turn to others, trying to justify their failure. It then runs contagiously for a while before the next attention snatcher.
tl;dr This is where we are headed.
By poutcho on 02.05.14 7:02pm
Who makes this shit
By ishtanbulh1n1 on 02.05.14 11:37pm
f _ u
my friend made
he from viet nam
you know vietnam_ vietnam is near china on map
By cannotquit on 02.06.14 7:46am
How near China?
By Torontabash on 02.06.14 8:48am
Which map?
By VoxMediaUser604384 on 02.06.14 12:28pm
I used to be a gamer. Now I’ve got a job, a family and other hobbies; I rarely have long, sustained blocks of time to spend learning and playing through a deep, difficult title. But I do have a few minutes at a time on the subway, while waiting for my wife or during lunch.
This kind of mindless title is great for those times. But there are deeper games too that still work with small chunks of time. I’ve spent more hours on Minecraft Mobile than I’d care to admit, and simple strategy games like Greed Corp are also easy to pick up for just a few minutes at a time.
But games that ask me to invest hours just to learn them; that need me to play daily just so I don’t forget how – no, that’s just not going to happen any more. And the majority of the gaming population today are more like me than like 20-something college students with endless free time on their hands.
By Jan Moren on 02.05.14 8:55pm
What this guy says. Some of us aren’t in high school anymore and don’t have time to plod through 40-50 hour ‘epic’ video games like we used to. And others of us who do have time just don’t feel the same sense of satisfaction that we used to. Besides, some of these mindless mobile games are actually more fun than a lot of the shit they’re releasing on retail. Sure, these games might not last long, but at least it’s not another boring-ass military shooter.
By Gideon Waxfarb on 02.05.14 9:46pm
Exaclty. And i guess the gaming community has also evolved. I mean previously it belonges to those kids who have plenty of time. And it has been a niche area for companies. But with smartphones and tablets things have changed. Now anybody can play a game, kid to granma, everyone plays games, anywhere everywhere. So for the developers there is two choice, develop a heavy game like GTA and sell it to those teens or build a small game like this one and target to the mass.
And i guess this mass market will contunie to surprise us. Because playing games for these people means “killing some time”. And people do crazy things just to kill some time, so expect crazy games too!!! Anybody played that QWOP, it was rediculous to say the least, i could run ( sorry i mean crawl) only for 5 meters!!!!
By ahanmagey on 02.06.14 2:28am
While we still have games based on a controller, a box of some sort and a TV screen, along with a never-ending supply of FPS games (how original) ‘proper’ video games will continue to stagnate – ever since the Atari 2600 and consoles of its ilk, the premise hasn’t changed.
We need new immersive games and forms of entertainment – systems like the Oculus Rift and all the wearable devices coming off the back of it to change the face and direction of gaming.
By Dobba Jenkins on 02.06.14 3:31am
I agree that tastes in gaming have changed in the past decade, but the surplus of mobile games like Flappy Bird shouldn’t be interpreted as a loss in the “proper” console/PC games. They’re just more games to choose from and one could make the argument that simple games can help create an appetite for more immersive games.
By demazzidesign on 02.06.14 11:56am
I don’t think mobile and console gaming really compete with each other on the surface level. However, as soon as developers feel like they can make more money developing for mobile and that pouring millions of dollars into a AAA title just isn’t worth the expense anymore, say good bye to your AAA games.
By Gideon Waxfarb on 02.06.14 2:53pm
Way to write off an entire industry.
Think off all the boring repeat games we got last year:
Most of these can be played in small chunks and are lightyears better than stuff like flappy wings.
I’m 28 with a full time job, soccer teams, gym workouts, and a live in girlfriend and I can find time to play “real” games.
By eallan on 02.07.14 12:46am
And none of those actually run on a smartphone. The few similar titles that do are terrible to play, because of the small screen and the touch-only controls.
By FF22 on 02.09.14 5:20pm
I guess I’ll never get this micro-gaming phenomenon. I’d rather just sit in peace if I have a couple of spare minuets. Having to cram every second of my day with some form of activity sounds like a recipe for an addled mind — it’s completely ridiculous.
By soupisgoodfood42 on 02.06.14 1:37am
Agreed. It ok to unplug and think for a minute now and then. Gunna go do it now in fact.
By TechS on 02.06.14 3:11am
Usually, I would rather read. But I’ll try one of these games out from time to time, esp if I’m stranded somewhere like the airport for a couple of hours.
By Gideon Waxfarb on 02.06.14 2:56pm
Native advertising like this story.
By smoketree on 02.06.14 1:59am
B-A-YANA-YANA-YANAS!!!!
By PowerCodfish on 02.06.14 6:50pm
That’s because the guy gets like, 10 impressions a minute. You get a new ad on every screen… & since most players seemingly can’t get past 10 pipes, I’m sure he’s serving a lot of ads.
By Tsuyo on 02.05.14 6:25pm
All that gives them is low CTR.
By jfedor on 02.05.14 8:26pm
And more clicks.
By IDontGetIt on 02.06.14 2:44am
3. ????
4. Profit!
By Bionix on 02.05.14 10:00pm
By Good_ole_Pinocchio on 02.05.14 6:26pm