Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen has created a new cash cow for himself. Flappy Birdis not just currently sitting at the top of the list on Apple App Store and Google Play, but has been generating on average of $50,000 per day from in-app ads. The Flappy Bird game was launched back in May 2013.
Unless you have been living in cave, Flappy Bird is a game which requires players to tap on the screen to flap the wings of a tiny and pixelated bird to avoid those pipes that act as hurdles. If you hit any of those green pipes, the game is over. Now you may think that it sounds easy but personally after trying the game out, one can simply spend over an hour just to successfully fly past 5 of those fat pipes. The app has been downloaded 50 million times, and has accumulated over 47,000 reviews in the App Store up to date.
While other successful mobile game titles on the App Stores spent months to develop it, Nguyen did it by spending a few nights coding after he got home from work. The app works with Game Centre and Google Play Access, allowing players to compete and compare scores with friends, including the ability to share scores via Twitter and Facebook.
According to an interview with Nguyen with The Verge, he said “The reason Flappy Bird is so popular is that it happens to be something different from mobile games today, and is a really good game to compete against each other. People in the same classroom can play and compete easily because [Flappy Bird] is simple to learn, but you need skill to get a high score.”
Nguyen has no plans to change or even update the game at the moment. “Flappy Bird has reached a state where anything added to the game will ruin it somehow, so I’d like to leave it as is” he says. A sequel may be forthcoming but not at this time. When asked why he added ads to the game, “I want to make an ads-based game because it is very common in the Japanese market — mini games are free and have ads,” was his response.
