I was on my way to a postponed Chinese New Year gathering when I suddenly pulled out my phone to ask my friend whether he knew about Flappy Bird. Excitedly, he launched the app to show me the score and started talking about what high scores his colleagues had gotten. Before we even noticed, we started playing it on the subway. A few minutes later, after numerous frustrated groans because the stupid bird kept dying, we decided to stop playing and talk about it.
We talked about how this game got viral, how consumers don’t have any idea what they really want until something came along to hit them and how the developer could have made even more money from the amount of impressions he’s getting with in-app purchases (wouldn’t you like an additional life when your bird died?).
Yes I am very much an addict too
But just a little more than 4 hours before this post is published, the developer of Flappy Bird (@Dongatory) [please don’t send him any more hate messages, seriously] posted a series of tweets highlighting that he’s taking the game down 22 hours later because he can’t “take it anymore”.
It could be rather baffling at first to see what he can’t “take” but on a second thought, it is understandable to feel the heat from so many threats, vulgarities, scoldings, or just plain insults from random people all over the world, for an indie developer who has never expected his game to be downloaded over millions of times on two of the most popular mobile platforms.
Warning: Extreme NSFW language and no human decency ahead
Maybe this would put into perspective what he can’t take anymore. That or he’s actually receiving cease and desist letters from Nintendo, although he said it’s not for legal reasons but do you really believe it? Or simply it’s just a strategy to get people to rush to download in the final 22 hours to get a huge revenue bump while he prepares for his next launch.
@richxiong 