Flappy Bird, a game that tests your patience and reflexes in just seconds, is currently dominating both the App Store and Google Play. The game is infamously difficult, so much so that it often drives players to frustration. Yet despite (or perhaps because of) its difficulty, it has skyrocketed in popularity.
Behind this sudden success is Nguyen Ha Dong, an independent developer from Hanoi, Vietnam, who now has three games in the App Store’s top 10. What makes this even more remarkable is that there’s no cross-promotion between the games, each has gone viral on its own. Flappy Bird stands out for its old-school, 8-bit graphics and incredibly simple gameplay: tap the screen to keep a small bird flying through a series of pipes that look suspiciously like those in Super Mario Bros. That’s it, no complex story, no advanced features.
Despite (or because of) its simplicity and maddening difficulty, the game is surprisingly addictive. Players who manage to score in the double digits are practically legends. The challenge itself seems engineered to push people into telling their friends about it. Buttons like “Rate” and “Share” make it easy to spread the game, often with messages like, “This sucks! You have to try it.” Many players describe their obsession with the game in extreme terms, some saying it ruined their life, while others admit they can’t stop playing no matter how infuriating it gets.
The developer, Dong, remains something of a mystery. He runs a one-man studio called .GEARS, based in Vietnam. According to the studio’s website, their goal is to create short, intense arcade games inspired by retro gaming, games that are “pure, extremely hard and incredibly fun.” Dong has been making games for about four years but mostly kept a low profile. He’s declined interviews and expressed discomfort with media attention.
In an email interview with TechCrunch, Dong revealed that he developed Flappy Bird in just 2–3 days and reused assets from previous projects. While .GEARS is currently just him, he uses “we” to anticipate future growth. None of his earlier titles came close to Flappy Bird’s viral fame.
So while the world is raging, or laughing, over this maddening little game, its quiet creator is watching from the sidelines, as stunned as everyone else by its success.
