The indie developer of Flappy Bird has created a smash viral hit that you may have heard about by now.
Nguyen Ha Dong, who developed the game based out of Hanoi, Vietnam, told TechCrunch he’s a one-man show and he just got lucky with this game:
In an interview with TechCrunch via email, Dong says he’s the sole creator at .GEARS. He explains that the programming in Flappy Bird took 2-3 days to complete, and he reused artwork from other titles. “.GEARS is not a company,” he notes. “It is just myself now but I have to use term ‘we’ to prepare for changes in the future. Before ‘Flappy Bird’, none of my games have 1/100th of that popularity.”
Dong says Flappy Birds is getting 2-3 million downloads per day on iOS and Android, with no paid promotion, solely rising on organic growth, currently at the number one spot in the App Store in 96 countries around the world (including Canada) according to App Annie.
We were hesitant to download Flappy Birds but succumbed to the game during a Super Bowl party. After experiencing it first hand, the game seriously has some entertainment value. Let’s just say it was fun watching Denver Broncos fans find themselves immersed into a Flappy Birds competition since the game on the field was such a dud for them.
Flappy Birds is free, simple to play but very hard to get a high score which makes it fun to compete with against friends. The green pipes in the game are literally ripped off from Mario Bros. and for mindless entertainment in short bursts, the game does have some value. As of today, I’m still trying to beat my ‘pathetic’ high score of 12 (hey, I’m in double digits!):
From the developer’s standpoint, the ad banner supporting the game is getting non-stop impressions which surely is helping him make bank.
Some have doubted the success of Flappy Birds since it’s pretty unbelievable for one solo dev to have three games in the Top 10 of the App Store at the same time (Super Ball Juggling is #4 in Canada, while Shuriken Block is #9).
What do you think? Have you started playing Flappy Birds? What’s your high score? Click here to download the game, it’s free.
