Flappy Bird is Coming Back!

Flappy Bird may soon arrive… again.

By now we all know the story. Flappy Bird was the number one app for most of January and February 2014. It became a craze, and people lost their minds trying to play the game. Flappy Bird became so successful it brought reportedly brought in $50,000 a day in ad revenue. But then its creator, Dong Nguyen, rather abruptly took the popular game off the market. Nguyen said that Flappy Bird would never return, stating he couldn't handle the pressure from its irate game players.

 It seems that Mr. Nguyen spoke too soon. This past Wednesday, in an article on mashable.com, Samantha Murphy Kelly wrote that the Twitter account of Flappy Bird's creator had some buzz-worthy activity. Responding to his followers, Dong Nguyen wrote in several replies that he is re-releasing Flappy Bird and it "will not be the original game [but] a better one." The cryptic game developer, when asked for a release date, tweeted only that the game would be released soon.

I think the entire ordeal surrounding Flappy Bird is overdone. We've all heard about the game repeatedly, and I think part of the hype was the fact that Flappy Bird was taken down at its peak. Even if Flappy Bird was truly taken down for the reasons asserted by Mr. Nguyen, it's a brilliant marketing strategy. Taking away the most popular game in the iTunes App Store at the height of its popularity doesn't make people disinterested - it makes them more determined to play the game. Now, this 'new and improved' version of Flappy Bird has to be spectacular. It has to blow everyone's mind because we're all expecting it to live up to the hype that was placed on its infuriating predecessor. It seems Flappy Bird’s reign of frustration isn’t done quite yet.