Why is “Flappy Bird” so successful?

Flappy Bird is a free puzzle game. It was developed in Vietnam and published by GEARS Studios, a small independent game developer which is also located in Vietnam.  Flappy Bird was released in May last year. In the first two months, it only had 1000 downloads in total and received some moderately positive reviews. However, by the end of January 2014, it ranked in the top of the “free” category of the American, British, and Chinese iTunes App Stores. It brought in $50,000 in advertising revenue every day since last Thanksgiving Day.

Flappy Bird does not contain beautiful graphics and bright visual effects. At first glance, Flappy Bird looks like an old JAVA game.  Its graphics, gameplay and objective are based in simplicity. The objective of the game is to fly a bird without hitting pipes.  The game gets more difficult as your bird flies further.  However, if your bird hits a pipe, then the game is over. 

The keys to success:

There is no barrier to entry. Flappy Bird is free to download and free to play. It is only a 2.2MB app. The game is familiar.  When gamers play Flappy Bird they feel like they are playing Angry Bird.  Everyone can understand and play it.  There is no action in the game; players only need one finger to play it. The game never ends; every level has different pipes and obstacles.  The scoring system in Flappy Bird is very good. You either compete against your own high score or you challenge the scores shared by your friends on Facebook, WeChat, Instagram or other social media. Some avoidable obstacles cause Game Over; however, players are encouraged to try again by the speed and simplicity of doing so. Flappy Bird with longer attempts, like the game Temple Run which is endless running, require more time at start up and a potentially greater investment. 

Yesterday, Dong Nguyen announced that he will remove Flappy Bird from the Android and Apple app stores on Feb 9^th, 2014. He said that he could not take all the attention and criticism anymore. So, he deleted the most popular game from both marketplaces.