Creator of the extremely popular Flappy Bird, Dong Nguyen says he is considering re-releasing the addictive screen tap game.
Dong Nguyen, the creator of Flappy Bird, suddenly removed the game from iOS and Android app stores last month. The move was criticized by millions of user, but for Nguyen, it was a relief from all the massive media attention he and his game got. After a month of silence, Nguyen told Rolling Stone in a multi-page interview that he is considering bringing back the widely popular and highly addictive smartphone game, but with a warning to "take a break."
Flappy Bird was a simple graphic game that users played by tapping the screens of their phones. Gamers needed to cross as many pipes possible to achieve the highest score. While the game appeared to be a simple one, it was extremely difficult to master, Nguyen noted. After being dormant for almost five months, Flappy Bird quickly rose to the number one spot on both mobile app stores and was reportedly generated $50,000 every day in ad revenue.
Nguyen told the magazine that his decision to finally put Flappy Bird to rest came due to countless rants from users complaining about the negative impact the game was having on their lives. Som users admited breaking their phones, while other said they lost their jobs.
"At first I thought they were just joking but I realize they really hurt themselves," Nguyen said, who is not new to the world of game addiction as he was devoted to Counter Strike during his high school days.
The Vietnamese independent developer opened up about how his passion for games and game designing started. He told the magazine that his first game love was Super Mario Bros. and GameBoy. Nguyen built his first chess game at the age of 16 and joined a Hanoi game studio, Punch Entertainment when he was 19 years old. Reasoning his decision to remove the Flappy Bird from app stores, he called himself the master of his own fate and an independent thinker.
Nguyen is reportedly making tens of thousands of millions in ad revenue from the game. Mobile users downloaded the game more than 10 million times in 22 hours after the announcement of killing the game was made via Twitter. Ever since, clones of the game clones been endless, with at least one new Flappy Bird clone hitting the App Store at an average of every 24 minutes.
Currently, Nguyen said he is doing what he is best at, making new games for mobiles. Three new games, including an untitled cowboy-themed shooter, a jetpack endless-runner variant called Kitty Jetpack and a chess game called Checkonaut, are lined up with plans to release one this month.
As for Flappy Bird's future, Nguyen did not rule out the option of re-releasing the game, as he is considering a rebirth for an official Flappy Bird.
