In early February, a colleague of mine suggested that I write a piece about a trending game called Flappy Bird, but before I did that, he urged me to play it a few times to really understand what made it so addicting, and why it went viral.

Oh how I hated him after that as I was consumed by the little bloated bird with an enormous beak whose sole purpose seems to be to faceplant the second you slip up with your rhythm of tap, tap, tapping away. I despised my colleague, but the funny thing was that despite my anger, I can’t stop playing the game even when I was at my wits end. I had to finally ask someone to hide phone from me so I could finally get around to writing about the game.

But it wasn’t only me who become insanely addicted with this game. The entire world did. And the more attention the game received from media outlets and social media, the more popular it became and more people downloaded it. Not only were people competing for the highest scores, but also for creative ways to describe the insanely addictive game. It was all fun, but some suffered broken screens, lost time, lost jobs, and some other mishaps.

The game was free to download, but it was earning its creator about $50,000 a day from advertising revenues. Which is why the world was stunned when it was suddenly pulled from the Apple and Android app stores almost as quickly as it burst onto the scene.

Dong Nguyen, the creator of Flappy Bird, was accused of many things – commentators said he had copied video game art, because the game’s graphics were so similar to the pixelated art of Super Mario Bros. fame.  Still, it seemed like nothing would stop Flappy Bird’s success.

Or at least, it did until Nguyen unexpectedly pulled the plug.

It came suddenly. Twenty four hours before doing so, Nguyen tweeted that he would be removing Flappy Bird from both iTunes and Google Play, something that resulted in even more people downloading it, even though many thought he was bluffing. But he wasn’t, and the game disappeared into thin air. If you look for Flappy Bird on Apple’s App Store or Google Play, you won’t find it anymore – but you will discover that there are now plenty of clones to choose from.

It’s still a mystery as to why Nguyen chose to take down his game, given that it was earning him thousands of dollars every day, but all he would say was that he was overwhelmed with the success. But is the reason as simple as that?

Nguyen has been remarkably elusive since then, but David Kushner from RollingStone finally managed to track him down in Hanoi to make sense of what really happened.

The interview shed light on Nguyen’s past. He came from a poor family, and so his parents weren’t able to buy him a game console when he was a kid, but eventually he got his hands on a cloned Nintendo. From then on, Nguyen was fascinated with playing video games and eventually decided to start creating them. He studied computer science at a university in Hanoi, and landed an internship at Punch Entertainment, a cellphone game maker. When he first got hold of an iPhone, he knew that he needed to create something that was easy to play with one hand, but also something frustrating, so that it would be addictive. So while everyone was out celebrating Reunification Day, the annual holiday marking the end of the Vietnam War, Nguyen worked on Flappy Bird.

When the game finally launched, it wasn’t an instant hit.  It took months before people started to notice the game. And a simple description of the game may have led to its popularity: Fuck Flappy Bird. People got curious, and the rest as they say is history.

So why did Nguyen pull the plug? Some suggested that he was a fraud, or that he was being sued. There were even rumors he might have committed suicide, but the real reason will surprise you.

During the interview, Nguyen showed Kushner his phone which displayed messages he got from different people. Most of them stated how Flappy Bird ruined their lives and that got him thinking. At first he thought people were just joking, but the incessant messages bugged him and resulted in sleepless nights and shying away from the world. Eventually, he knew he just needed to pull the plug to get some peace of mind.

Right now, Nguyen is working on three games: an untitled cowboy-themed shooter, a vertical flying game called Kitty Jetpack and an “action chess game,” called Checkonaut, which will be released this month. When asked what his plans for Flappy Bird were, Nguyen stated that he is still refusing to sell the game, and that there’s a possibility that he would relaunch it at a later date.

The relaunched version of Flappy Bird will not be an updated version, just the same old annoying and addicting game. However, there will be one major difference – next time around, the game will come with a warning: “Please take a break.”

photo credit: Desiree Catani via photopin cc