'Flappy Bird' racks up $50,000 PER DAY in ad revenue

kARTechnology

kARTechnology

Sony " VA" "IO"
The enigmatic and oppressively difficult mobile game Flappy Bird has turned into quite the cash cow for Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen. In an interview with The Verge, Nguyen revealed that the game, which has been sitting atop the App Store and Google Play Store charts for nearly a month, is earning on average $50,000 a day from in-app ads.

If you're only now hearing of Flappy Bird, the game goes as follows: you tap the screen to propel a tiny, pixelated bird upwards. If you hit any of the green pipes in your way as you fly towards some unknowable, unreachable finish line, the game is over. The goal is simply to accumulate the highest score possible. The catch? You'll very likely spend an hour even reaching a score of five. The app has been downloaded 50 million times, and has accumulated over 47,000 reviews in the App Store — as many as apps like Evernote and Gmail. Mobile games studios generally spend months coding up deliberately addictive and viral titles, but Nguyen did it by spending a few nights coding when he got home from work.

"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," Nguyen says. "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." The app is compatible with Apple's Game Center and Google's Google Play Games, so it's easy to compare scores with friends. You can also, of course, share your scores on Facebook and Twitter, a feature which some have attributed its success to.

In my own manic pursuit of higher scores, I often longed for an in-app purchase to turn off the game's distracting ads — because as any Flappy Bird veteran knows, even something as involuntary as blinking can send you spiraling into doom. But Nguyen says he has no plans to change or even update the game. "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 "I will think about a sequel but I'm not sure about the timeline." In the meantime, Nguyen has a few other hit games on his hands.

""Flappy Bird has reached a state where anything added to the game will ruin it...""

Super Ball Juggling has also been hovering in the App Store's top ten, as has Shuriken Block. Neither game as perfectly balances difficulty and fun as Flappy Bird, but it's become clear that Nguyen has a knack for bite-sized arcade titles. The games' mechanics are inspired by Nintendo titles Nguyen played as a child, and even by some of the characters therein. Flappy Bird's titular bird was inspired by Cheep Cheep in Super Mario Bros, as are its iconic green pipes. Adding advertisements to the mix was his modern spin on the titles. "I want to make an ads-based game because it is very common in the Japanese market — minigames are free and have ads," Nguyen says. The formula seems to be working — Nguyen's tiny dotGears gaming studio is cleaning up. The company has amassed hundreds of thousands of dollars from games that take just one tap to play.

DotGear's now-famous titles only spiked in popularity in November, 2013. Flappy Bird, for one, launched all the way back in May, 2013. Nguyen can't figure out exactly why the games took off, but plans to keep on building new ones: his next project is a fresh take on the popular "Jetpack" genre of mobile games. Nguyen's games have an odd resemblance to the pick-up-and-play appeal and frenetic speed of games like WarioWare. It might not be long before you can fill a home screen with bite-sized dotGears titles that will make you pull your hair out. But then you'll come back for more.
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SOURCE :
Indie smash hit 'Flappy Bird' racks up $50K per day in ad revenue | The Verge

I think every one should make some stupid game and soon after 6 months we will become rich $$$
 
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lywyre

lywyre

Cyborg Agent
That was reported 5th Feb. On 8th Feb, Nguyen pulled the game off the stores because it was addictive. Now Play store and App store are both fighting Flappy clones.
 
flyingcow

flyingcow

Shibe
yeah man thats old news...the reason why he pulled the game isnt disclosed^...he just tweeted he couldnt take it anymore...
but people say that he received death threats and people were emailing him his house address etc.
 
Desmond

Desmond

Destroy Erase Improve
Staff member
Admin
I wish he did not remove it, it was a pretty decent game. Good that I downloaded it before he pulled it off.

Apparently, he could not take the pressure and the harassment. Pressure from game companies offering him a deal despite the fact that he did not want to go commercial and harassment from the users.
 
flyingcow

flyingcow

Shibe
^yeah he wanted to live a "simple" life...
it was a decent game i agree...i dont know why people hate it so much...it didnt even make me angry
people over react...whats your high score :p?
 
Anorion

Anorion

Sith Lord
Staff member
Admin
there was a lot of harsh criticism from the gaming community. it's a good game, if only because it is short and difficult. he wanted to make a bit-sized game, and succeeded.
Flappy Bird Is Making $50,000 A Day With Mario-Like Art [UPDATE 3]
originally titled "Flappy Bird Is Making $50,000 A Day Off Ripped Art." Given that the word "ripped" can be interpreted as "lifted," I've decided to change the headline for the sake of clarity. Before scrutinizing the two pipes side by side, I believed that Flappy Bird's art was directly taken from Mario—however, when examined, it's clear that Flappy Bird's pipe is a new albeit unoriginal drawing. The similarities are apparent, as I originally noted, but "ripped" may have been too harsh a word.
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Desmond

Desmond

Destroy Erase Improve
Staff member
Admin
Yes, "ripped" is too harsh a word considering that there are tons of Mario clones out there. It is therefore not fair to single this one out as a Mario ripoff. Also, only the pipes looked similar to those from Mario, but the game as a whole has nothing to do with it.
 
ashs1

ashs1

Padawan
My high score is 13..I could've tried a bit more, but then, i realised, I love my Xperia L & didn't want to smash it. :p
 
SaiyanGoku

SaiyanGoku

kamehameha!!
mine is 55 :hyper:

*www.thinkdigit.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=13663&d=1392924062
 

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Anorion

Anorion

Sith Lord
Staff member
Admin
he tweeted too famous, tired of attention. peace of mind.. probably that is from when he realized he was late for the verge interview because he was meeting the prime minister? some speculative reasons include conscience, not ready to deal with fame, harsh criticism from within the industry, accusations of gaming the charts, not wanting to be remembered by this game, making a smart exit because it was a hyper-inflated trend that was anyway going to die out as quickly as it started, purposely increasing the value of game considerably by taking this step. guess there are more,
 
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