Flappy Bird

“Flappy Bird” is just like any other social epidemic. Like its predecessors (such as Gangnam Style and Nyan Cat) its’ popularity soared for a short time period and then died down.

 

Well, it might not be exactly the same.

 

The game’s rise on the charts only stopped because the creator, Dong Nguyen, took the game down out of feelings of guilt.

 

So what exactly is “Flappy Bird?”

 

It’s a game created by Dong Nguyen. It came out on May 24th, 2013, and suddenly got popular in 2014. The rules of the game are simple. Users have to make a flying bird fly in between sets of pipes without colliding with them. If the bird hits the pipes, the game ends. The score is determined by the number of pipes the player passed through.

 

When the game began generating interest, there were mixed reviews on it. Some said that it was ridiculously hard and irking and thought that the game contained terrible graphics. Others thought it was fun and engaging with simple graphics that matched the game very well.

 

Nguyen obviously decided that the game was leaning more towards the bad side than the good side and because of this, he ultimately took down the game from the app store.

 

After this game was taken off of the app charts, people started to make parodies of the game to replace it. So far “Splashy Fish” and “Flappy Wings” are the most popular of these parodies. Some people even sold phones with the app pre-downloaded.

 

These phones were priced highly, some even over a $1000

Although the game is now gone from the app stores, it’s players’ enthusiasm doesn’t seem to have died out – as “Flappy Bird” will most likely be the most popular mobile game of 2014.