14 DAY TRIAL // Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen was merely trying his luck when he deployed the free, ad-supported Flappy Bird in the App Store last year. But, recently, the game got so much traction it rakes in tens of thousands of dollars daily.
More precisely, $50,000 / €37,000 per day, all ad revenue.
Flappy Bird is free, but it displays ads. It’s a model that has proved to be very successful on virtually every platform in the world. On mobile, a game like Flappy Bird can turn into a cash cow, especially when the media is talking about it.
It all started when people began to notice just how excruciatingly difficult the game was. Everyone was suddenly curious and started downloading it. Before he knew it, Nguyen was seeing thousands of downloads daily, and now even more.
It’s not just the hype though. The game is addictive too, despite being incredibly hard to beat.
Dong Nguyen tells The Verge, “It happens to be something different from mobile games today, and is a really good game to compete against each other.”
“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,” he added.
What you do is tap with your finger on the screen repeatedly to keep a birdie afloat and traveling through a range of pipes (or pillars). The pipes have an opening between them, sometimes bigger, other times smaller. The player needs to negotiate the taps carefully in order to avoid crashing into the scenery.
It’s really simple when you hear about it, or even when you see other people play. But try it yourself and, if you're the temperamental type, you’ll probably want to throw your device across the room after five minutes of play.
Although some gamers say Flappy Bird has its share of flaws, Nguyen is convinced any update will ruin the experience.
“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 said. “I will think about a sequel but I’m not sure about the timeline.”