The history of flappy bird has been followed curiously by fans around the world. But the creator Dong Nguyen has kept a low profile not giving the media a chance to photograph him or write about him. He did succumb to a Rolling Stone interview, saying that he did not want any publicity from the game.
As the story goes, in April 2013 a Dong, who is Vietnamese developed one of the most addictive video games ever created- 'The flappy bird.' The point of the game was to go through barriers while flying and flapping wings of a small bird. An obstacle to get a better score were green pipes in the way of the 'flying flappy' to keep the user from scoring higher points.
The object of the game was to not only fly the bird between the pipes but to also make the bird fly as high as it could by tapping the screen quickly and in turn making the bird flap its wings and so calling it Flappy Bird.
Dong Nguyen,28, had a day job was programming location devicda for taxis in Hanoi, Vietnam when he accidentally invented his flappy bird game.
In just a month, IOS App Store brought the game live to its base. And soon it was on Google Play for Android phones. Though flappy birds initially became lost among the zollipnns of apps available online and then on February 2014 flappy bird went viral.
Flappy Bird topped the charts in more than 100 countries and dowloaded 50 million times, which means Dong was earning about $50,000 a day or thereabouts.
With the peak of Flappy mania, the mystery of Nguyen remained. Apart from a tweet every now and then, Nguyen did not really say much about his amazing story. He constantly avoided the press and no one was able to get a photograph of him either. That was when it all started. Nguyen became a con man, a fraud, and people called him a thief. Bloggers joined in and accused him of stealing his artwork from Nintendo. One gaming site went as far as to write a headline that said 'Flappy Bird Makes $50,000a Day from Ripped Art'.
Tracing the history of February 9th, Dong told the world that he's done with Flappy Bird and that he's sodrry: He tweeted 'I am sorry 'Flappy Bird' users, 22 hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down as I cannot take this anymore'.
Not many people would say that aboit a video game bot Dong felt that it contributed to obsessive behavior and brought out anxiety in flappy bird players.
The message about cancelling flappy bird ran more than 145,000 times and shortly after the game was not to be seen online.
Although the original name of the game cannot be used at the App store, the second version of flappy bird is on its way and is said to be even more addictive.
Then everyone was curious about who Dong Nguyen was? ...and his motive for the taking the game down. Some gamers and developers thoight it was an attempt more attention to the already promjnent game that ranked mucch higher than Angry Bird, another popular game around the 'bird' motif.
Dong Nguyen told Rolling Stone he he had created the game for fun and how it became so pupular in a very short time.
