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Game Over for Flappy Bird!

Game maker Dong Nguyen warned that he was going to remove the ad-based tapping game from app stores on Saturday.  

Flappy Bird was removed from app stores on Sunday, just hours after its creator warned that the popular game's demise was nigh.

The free smartphone game for iOS and Android took the mobile market by storm, reportedly earning $50,000 in ad revenue each day. Flappy Bird had been download upwards of 50 million times and earned 47,000 reviews on the App Store.

After Flappy Bird secured the No. 1 spot on the App Store and Google Play Store late last month, several media outlets attempted to explain our fascination with the ad-based tapping game, which sported a pixelated art style inspired by Super Mario Bros. However, all that attention proved too much for Dong Nguyen, the app's creator.

Nguyen tweeted Saturday that he would remove the game from the app stores on Sunday, saying that he was overwhelmed by the game's success:  

Nguyen went on to tweet that he would continue to make games but that Flappy Bird was not for sale. The Hanoi-based game maker is reportedly working on a simple take of the jetpack endless runner, made popular by games like Jetpack Joyride.

Confessions Of A Flappy Bird Addict

Just a quick game. It only takes a second. I, I need to beat my high score. That stupid bird. DAMMIT! Ok this time I’ll do better. DAMMIT! Alright the ad distracted me. F*CKKKK! I was doing so good. NOOOooo!

I don’t know why I want to play FlappyBird. Why it’s the first thing that pops into my mind during the cracks between day-to-day life, whenever something is hard or I have a moment to wait. But I just need to hear the sweet sound of those coins racking up, like playing Mario as a kid. Nothing else matters as long as I stay between the pipes.

I mean, I’ve played others before. Yet after so many smooth difficulty curves there’s something so seductive about Flappy Bird. It humiliates me, but I like it. It’s the dominatrix of mobile games.

The beauty is there’s no commitment. I don’t have to wait to see if I succeed. No investment lost if I fail. The reinforcement so utterly immediate, I crave the constant judgement. There’s no months of worry about a performance review like at work. There’s no necessary consideration about whether I saved enough lives to beat the boss like in other games.

Each pipe passed washes away all the sins before it.

Each time I start over, there’s no baggage to carry, no permanent record to weigh me down. Just that score, and the lust to exceed it. To beat my friends. To beat myself. To conquer something frustrating the rest of the world.

But to what end? Where am I flapping to? Will I one day float out past the sea of pipes and arrive at that distant city in the clouds? My Bespin paradise?

No. There is no congratulations. No secret ending. No cute victory animation to watch when it’s over. The pipes are infinite. There was no puzzle. No narrative. No point. It was designed to occupy our attention in the name of entertainment. For some, it delivered that escape. But there is no satisfaction. A new high score begets desire for a new high score. All we get is anotherdopamine hit.

Perhaps that’s why Flappy Bird’s creatorDong Nguyen tweeted “I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down. I cannot take this anymore.” The only way to win is not to play, and he knows we can’t quit on our own.  

Story by Josh Constine (@joshconstine)