Whether you have played it or not, in the last couple of weeks you have probably heard of the game "Flappy Bird". It has been the number one downloaded game on iOS and Android for a few weeks. But the real shocker came when the game's creator, Dong Nguyen announced via twitter that he "Cannot take it anymore" and would remove Flappy Bird from the stores 22 hours from Saturday."Cannot take it anymore", like you are probably thinking, I thought, "Really, how much misery could this game have caused this guy to say something like that about a little app?" Especially since Nguyen claimed to be making more than $50,000 a day from in-app advertising from the game. After I thought that no one can really be miserable from making that much money, I began to think, in contrast to Greg Kumparak in his post, that this is a way to bring about a surge of app downloads.
Humans tend to value things more when you can no longer get them, and even I, who wanted nothing to do with this game, downloaded it right before it was taken off the app store. Keep in mind, that anyone who has downloaded the app for now, can keep it even though its not available for download. And Nguyen will keep making money off the ads in the game. He has also become famous from his stunt, gaining thousands of more followers on Twitter. So after all this, Nguyen is still making boatloads of money, people keep playing Flappy Bird as best they can, and soon another Internet story will come about and make us angry all over again.
Original Article posted by Greg Kumparak on February 9, 2014.
I was hoping someone would blog about this! I think all I saw this week on Twitter was about how everyone has a love/hate relationship with Flappy Bird. I downloaded the game to see what the hype was about, and personally I don't see why it's such a big deal - the game is kind of boring. I think I fell into the creator's trap, though, because it is cool to have a game on your device that no one can download anymore.
ReplyDeleteThat really is a great marketing strategy. I wonder if he will create an app based off of flappy bird, but with different twists. When I was in middle school I played the game called "Line Birds" constantly. It was almost identical to Flappy Bird which makes me wonder why my beloved app never took off. Either way; kudos to Nguyen!
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