One Year of Flappy Bird: How a Little Game From Vietnam Became a Fleeting Global Sensation
This article is for subscribers only.
Flappy Bird may have seemed like an overnight hit that flew atop the pop-culture zeitgeist before the app's creator developed stage fright and pulled it offline. In reality, the comically frustrating game debuted a year ago in total obscurity, and not even Dong Nguyen, the Hanoi native behind the phenomenon, has been able to explain its meteoric rise.
Tomorrow is the anniversary of Flappy Bird's release on the App Store. It took about seven months for practically anyone to find it. In December, Flappy Bird cracked the top 1,500 free games in the U.S. for the first time, according to researcher App Annie. Over the next month or so, the game shot up the U.S. ranks before the rest of the world — led by Canada, Australia and Japan — caught on.