Flappy Birds

Flappy Bird is a 2013 mobile game, developed by Vietnam-based developer Nguyễn Hà Đông (Dong Nguyen) and published by .GEARS Studios, a small, independent game developer also based in Vietnam. The game has a side-scrolling format and the player controls a bird, attempting to fly between rows of green pipes without coming into contact with them. The developer created the game over several days, using a bird protagonist which he had designed for a cancelled game in 2012.

The game was released on May 24, 2013 but received a sudden rise in popularity in early 2014. It was criticized for its level of difficulty and alleged plagiarism in graphics and game mechanics, while other reviewers found it addictive. At the end of January 2014, it was the most downloaded free game in the iOS App Store. During this period, its developer claimed that Flappy Bird was earning $50,000 a day from in-app advertisements.

Flappy Bird was removed from both Apple's App Store and Google Play by its creator on February 10, 2014, due to guilt over what he considered to be its addictive nature. The game's popularity and sudden removal caused phones with it pre-installed to sell for high prices over the Internet. Games similar to Flappy Bird became popular on the iTunes App Store in the wake of its removal, and both Apple and Google have removed games from their app stores for being too similar to the original. The game has also been distributed through unofficial channels on multiple platforms.

Gameplay
Flappy Bird is a side-scrolling mobile game featuring 2D retro style graphics. The objective is to direct a flying bird, which moves continuously to the right, between each oncoming set of pipes without colliding with them, which otherwise ends the game. The bird briefly flaps upward each time the player taps the screen. If the screen is not tapped, the bird falls due to gravity. The player is scored on the number of pipe sets the bird successfully passes through.

There is no variation or evolution in gameplay throughout the game as the pipes always have the same gap between them and there is no end to the running track, having only the flap and ding sounds and the rising score as rewards. However, some subtle elements of the gameplay design make the game easy to learn but hard to master, a technique used in many games to make them more interesting.

Development
Flappy Bird was created and developed by Dong Nguyen in the span of two to three days. The character was originally designed in 2012 for a cancelled platform game. Nguyen claims that no part of any of his games was designed to be impossible.

Nguyen believes that modern Western games are overly complex. His company, .Gears Studios, describes its games as "heavily influenced by retro pixelated games in its golden age. Everything is pure, extremely hard and incredibly fun to play."

Release
Flappy Bird was originally released on May 24, 2013, with support for the iPhone 5. The game was subsequently updated for iOS 7 in September 2013. In January 2014, it topped the Free Apps chart in the U.S. and Chinese App Stores, and later that month topped the same section of the UK App Store where it was touted as "the new Angry Birds." It ended January as the most downloaded App on the App Store. The Android version of Flappy Bird was released to the Google Play store on January 30, 2014. In early 2014, The Verge reported the game was earning around $50,000 a day in revenue through its in-game advertising.

Discontinuation
On February 8, 2014, Nguyen announced on Twitter that the game was to be removed from both Apple's App Store and Google Play, writing: "I am sorry 'Flappy Bird' users, 22 hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down. I cannot take this anymore." He went on to say that taking down the game has "nothing to do with legal issues". The game was removed from both Apple's App Store and Google Play exactly on cue.

Following the removal, many media outlets reported several merchants on eBay were offering phones which had the app pre-installed for US$1499 or more, with some receiving bids of over $90,000;  however, the listings were removed for violating eBay's rule stating smartphones must be restored to factory settings before being sold.

In an exclusive interview with Forbes, Nguyen cited the game's addictive nature for its cancellation, stating: "Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed. But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it's best to take down Flappy Bird. It's gone forever." Nguyen said that the guilt he felt over the game was affecting his sleep, and that his conscience was relieved after he took the game down.

Legacy
The removal has spawned remakes and parodies of the game, such as Sesame Street's Flappy Bert and Fall Out Boy's Fall Out Bird. CNET reviewed seven "Flappy copycats" for iOS two days after the original game's removal, describing the options as "pretty bleak", but singling out the underwater Splashy Fish as the closest approximation of Flappy Bird.

Shortly after the game's removal, security researchers warned that some versions of Flappy Bird and its imitators available on alternative Android app stores have been found to contain malware that can lead to unauthorized charges to a user's phone bills. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Android users should “download apps and games only from the Google Play store, which means not downloading any games that claim to be Flappy Bird.”

Nguyen's other games Super Ball Juggling and Shuriken Block ranked at 6th and 18th respectively on the App Store during early February 2014.

Reception
Flappy Bird received generally mixed reviews from critics, with a Metacritic score of 52/100 based on seven reviews. The app was criticized by the Huffington Post, which described it as "insanely irritating, difficult and frustrating game which combines a super-steep difficulty curve with bad, boring graphics and jerky movement". The game's difficulty has been a source of ire for many users, with one user stating that it took him half an hour to achieve a score of five points. It is slightly easier on Android than on iOS, according to its creator.

However, a more positive review came from Jenifer Whiteside of Amongtech.com, who suggested that Flappy Bird could eclipse Candy Crush Saga as the most popular mobile game of 2014 due to its addictiveness, Candy Crush's age, and the hype surrounding it.

Controversies and criticism
When questioned at the time by Chocolate Lab Apps, a website for app developers, Nguyen claimed to have used no promotional methods in the marketing of Flappy Bird. He credited the sudden rise in the game's popularity in early 2014 to possibly "luck". However, online marketer Carter Thomas suspected that the developer had used bots to cause its success. When questioned on this by The Daily Telegraph, Nguyen said: "I respect all other people [sic] opinions. I won't give any comment to this article. I'd like to make my games in peace." However when Newsweek inquired about the matter Nguyen tweeted "It doesn’t matter. Don’t you think?...If I did fake it, should Apple let it live for months."

The game was also criticized by Kotaku, a video games blog, for its open use of Mario artifacts, referring to it as "ripped-off art". However, it has since published a correction, stating that "Flappy Bird's pipe is a new albeit unoriginal drawing".

According to some Vietnamese newspapers, including Thanh Niên and BBC Vietnamese, Flappy Bird is very similar to a game released in 2011 (two years before Flappy Bird) called Piou Piou vs. Cactus, from the gameplay (by tapping on the screen) to the main character design (a small yellow bird with big red beak) to the obstacles (green cacti and pipes). It is reported that several French newspapers like 20 Minutes and Metronews accused Flappy Bird of being a clone. The reporter from Thanh Niên Online tried playing Piou Piou vs. Cactus and confirmed that the similarities between the two games are astonishing.

The French developer of Piou Piou vs. Cactus, known as Kek, told Pocket Gamer that he too noticed that Flappy Bird is "very similar" to his earlier game, but when he contacted Nguyen about it, Nguyen claimed that he did not know anything. Technology editor Patrick O'Rourke of canada.com also charged that Flappy Bird is "almost a complete ripoff" of Piou Piou vs Cactus, as well as that its primary gameplay mechanic is a "rip off" from a game called Helicopter Game, and that it heavily borrowed sound effects from Super Mario Bros. games.

Some players alleged that Flappy Bird's removal was due to a legal challenge from Nintendo over perceived visual similarities to Mario games, an allegation denied by a Nintendo spokesman to The Wall Street Journal. Lawyers in Vietnam also denied allegations that Nguyen had to remove the game due to violating new laws on Internet use in the country.