I told myself I wasn't going to do it. I told myself I wasn't going to give in. After all, I'd just spent 5 days trying to beat level 200 of candy crush (nbd*), and wasn't that enough of a waste of time?
Well...as expected, I downloaded it. I downloaded Flappy Bird.
The point of this blog isn't to brag about how my high score of 97 was achieved within the first 2 days of downloading the app (and probably within only 30 minutes of actual play time), or to brag about how I have the highest score out of all my close friends (next closest is at 72).
Just kidding, it was**
But thats not all I wanted to write about - What surprised me the most were the events of this past week (namely the app being taken down from the app store).
Time to put on the ol' detective hat and get to the bottom of this...Here's what we know:
- The app was making ~$50k in US dollars...A DAY - do the math, and that comes out to roughly (carry the 2) $18 million a year
- Nguyen Ha Dong (Vietnamese creator of this game) was going to pull the app from the app store because he "couldn't take it anymore" (whatever that means)
- Actually, we got some more clarity - he said that he didn't intend for the game to be this addictive (again, whatever that means)
- He ended up pulling the app, and a day after it disappeared, iphones with the app were selling for TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS on ebay
Sherlock: Wait. That's it? That's all we know? My dear Watson, what do you think about this situation?
Watson: I think that this man is an absurd human being, sir
I'd have to agree with the professionals on this one. Literally no logical explanation here. Only thing that I can think of is if he was just trying to develop buzz for his next app??
Seems like a pretty poor financial decision on his end (wasn't the original point to make money on it?)
Anywho - what do you guys think? Is this guy Nguyen blowing smoke up our skirts? Or is he honestly just a good guy who saw that Flappy Bird was ruining marriages and didn't want that to continue?
*but kind of a big deal
**After writing this section, I learned that some kid got a high score of 412. My brag is pretty useless now, but for the record I refuse to believe that he didn't throw in some sort of cheat code.
P.S. I have Flappy Bird on my phone, and if you want to pay me 10k its yours (all pictures of my dog will be included in said phone)
