Flappy Bird, Frustrating Yet Fun

By Jissele Wright

There’s all sorts of apps, for anything and everything, especially for games. Angry Birds, Candy Crush, Temple Run; you name it. The formula for becoming number one on the market seems to be simple, addictive, and free. And it just so happens that Flappy Bird falls under all of these categories.

Created by Dong Nguyen with the Vietnam based developer .GEARS Studios, Flappy Bird became available May of last year, but only became successful recently. The game involves moving a paraplegic bird through an obstacle course of pipes that have a strong resemblance to those in Mario Bros. Depending on your score you can win a bronze, silver, or even platinum medal. The leaderboard says that there exists more than eighteen million users and the best of the best have reached the score of 9,999. On both the Google Play and Apple App stores, Flappy Bird received four stars, being downloaded more than ten million times on Google Play alone.

The game’s addictive quality comes from the fact that it’s so painfully easy, yet for some reason, you keep hitting those blasted pipes. Once you fail, you try again, and again. That’s the trap that Nguyen created to drag people in. While it may seem silly, Flappy Bird is a great way to kill time, almost an ode to the pointlessness of human existence. But that’s all come to an end; Nguyen recently removed the game from the app stores and tweeted “I cannot take this anymore.” If you never played the infuriating and pointless Flappy Bird, now you never can. If you downloaded it, flap on.

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