About
Flappy Bird is a mobile game in which the player controls a flying bird by touching the screen to flap its wings and navigate between a series of pipes without any contact.
Origin
Flappy Bird was created by Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen[5] and released by dotGears Studios on Apple’s iOS app store[1] on May 24th, 2013. In the game, the player assumes the role of a pixelated flying bird and must guide it safely through a series of obstacles while keeping it afloat by pressing on the touch screen.
Spread
On November 17th, 2013, Redditor Bronxsta included Flappy Bird in a list of “masochistic” iOS games submitted to the /r/iosgaming[2] subreddit. On January 17th, 2014, Redditor Transizzleator submitted a post urging viewers to “help Flappy Bird take off” to the /r/gaming[3] subreddit. On January 27th, YouTuber PewDiePie uploaded a video in which he plays Flappy Bird (shown below), which gathered more than 5.4 million views and 45,000 comments in the next week.
On January 30th, the game was released on the Google Play[10] store. By the following day, the game had reached the top downloaded spot on both Google Play and the Apple App Stores.[4] Also on January 31st, the iPhone app company Chocolate Lab Apps[7] published an interview with Nguyen about Flappy Bird’s success, who claimed he did not promote the game at all. Meanwhile, the tech blog Bluecloud Solutions[6] published an article speculating that Flappy Bird used bots to artificially augment its App Store rank, pointing out the strange sudden rise in popularity of Nguyen’s apps and several similarly-worded reviews left on the Flappy Bird store page (shown below).
On February 1st, the tech news blog Tech Crunch[8] published an article about Flappy Bird, noting that his other games “Super Ball Juggling” and “Shuriken Block” had reached the App Store’s #2 and #6 spots respectively. On February 2nd, Redditor ducksizedhorses submitted a post comparing Flappy Bird to the flash game titled “Helicopter Game” to the /r/gaming[9] subreddit, where it accumulated upwards of 14,600 up votes and 770 comments in the first 24 hours. The same day, Redditor H00PSHER posted a screenshot of a Flappy Bird game with edited Nyan Cat-themed textures to the /r/teenagers[12] subreddit (shown below, left). On February 3rd, Redditor VirtualWhopper posted a Flappy Bird image macro with the caption “You don’t win / You just eventually delete the app” to the /r/gaming[13] subreddit (shown below, right).
Search Interest
External References
[1]iTunes- Flappy Bird
[2]Reddit – Die Succeed Die Again
[3]Reddit – Please help Flappy Bird take off
[4]Venture Beat – Flappy Bird Hits #1
[5]Twitter – @dongatory
[6]Blue Cloud Solutions – Flappy Bird Smoke and Mirrors
[7]Chocolate Lab Apps – How to make Flappy Bird
[8]Tech Crunch – The Developer Behind Flappy Bird
[9]Reddit – We had our own Flappy Bird
[10]Google Play – Flappy Bird
[11]Reddit – Soon enough kids will call this the Flappy Bird pipe
