18 ms·

Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out

570 points by johns 13y ago

uptown 13y ago
"Then he hit a button, and Flappy Bird disappeared. When I ask him why he did it, he answers with the same conviction that led him to create the game. 'I'm master of my own fate,' he says. 'Independent thinker.'" Good for him. The world needs more people with this attitude.
- adriand 13y ago
  I agree. I love this guy. I bet that very few of us on HN would have done what he did. I certainly wouldn't have. I'm not saying that what he did was right, but it was right for him, and what is impressive to me is that he realized that. That kind of self-knowledge is a wonderful quality to have or develop.
  - cobrausn 13y ago
    Yes, it is difficult to bring oneself to turn off the magic money machine once it starts printing, but keep in mind how much money he made and how much the existing installed copies still make for him. It certainly made the decision easier, I think.
    - batmansbelt 13y ago
      How do the installed copies still make money?
      - phenylene 13y ago
        Ads.
      - drh 13y ago
        The app displays banner ads.
    - yojimbo311 13y ago
      Personally, I think this sentiment cheapens his decision and makes less of what he's really done here. I think what he's done is pretty heroic, at least in modern terms, and something that very few, possibly none, of us would be willing to pull the trigger on. Wether he's made, or is still making, a fortune is besides the point. He made the hard choice and has made it clear to everyone who's asked that he is all the better for it. This more than anything else is a powerful and important example that we may or may not see again. If nothing else he has highlighted the need for more empathy in software. His focus seems to be in bringing joy and entertainment to people and doesn't appear to have any ulterior motive. This is rare and we should be celebrating it rather than dismiss it by the fact that he has been fortunate enough to actually be successful from it (something that is also extremely rare).
      - colechristensen 13y ago
        The 'heroic' attribution is thrown around a lot today, and few deserve it less than a man who decided to no longer offer a silly game for sale as a result of idiot-generated controversy.
    - _nedR 13y ago
      Still would be the hardest decision i ever made in my life, If it was me .. And I would still be agonizing over it today...
  - trevoragilbert 13y ago
    I think to myself that I definitely wouldn't have, and that I would have weather the storm of the press outside my house, and just focused on that great payday (everyday). But from what I've heard, the paparazzi changes everything and it really is life-changing. So hard to say either way.
    - acchow 13y ago
      A software developer/entrepreneur is not a rock star. The paparazzi will disappear and the game be forgotten in a few weeks.
      - mikeash 13y ago
        What made his move puzzling wasn't that he didn't like the attention (I totally get that) but that it seemed obvious that pulling the app would make it worse, not better.
        deletes 13y ago
        Maybe it was worse for a short time, but if the app was still available the craze might still be active, or not, you just can't be sure of that. By removing it he dictated his own terms.
      - SyneRyder 13y ago
        And yet, here we are a few weeks later, and he's in Rolling Stone magazine. The game hasn't been forgotten. He had the #1 game on the iTunes App Store charts, the same store where people now buy music by rock stars. I wouldn't dismiss the comparison too quickly.
      - 72deluxe 13y ago
        Come to think of it, name any recent rock stars... anyone? I can only think of people outside the last 10 years... It seems you can just as easily be forgotten as a rock star.
    - chc 13y ago
      With millions of dollars, you can just get stuff delivered to you for a couple of weeks until the press sees something else shiny. I've been straight-up bedridden for longer than he lasted under the attention of the press, and there is no way it's more restrictive than that. The guy's choice was his to make, but I do not buy that he had no choice.
  - baddox 13y ago
    I guess I don't quite understand. I also believe that I am to some extent "master of my fate," but I would use my authority to choose to leave the game up and keep earning money. I would do so with as much pride and conviction as Dong Nguyen.
    - njharman 13y ago
      Each of you are masters of your own fate. Making a personal choice and not being swayed be each other's choices or anyone else's choices/opinions.
    - dasil003 13y ago
      Which would earn you more envy and less respect.
  - herbig 13y ago
    Turning it off has probably done more to earn him money than keeping it on. It also ends with him saying it's possibly he'd put the game back up. It's possible this is instead just a brilliant marketing ploy.
    - billmalarky 13y ago
      If it is a marketing ploy, it is far from brilliant. Brilliant would have been taking it down for a day then putting it back up. Not keeping it down for weeks while the excitement around the game fades.
      - rhizome 13y ago
        Brilliant would have been taking it down for a day then putting it back up. Not keeping it down for weeks while the excitement around the game fades. Based on what, exactly? This sounds like conjecture. UPDATE: Fine. Taking it down for one day can result in the audience feeling jerked around, him being perceived as unreliable, and any number of other negative connotations. There are also myriad instances of successful relaunches after extended absences, even to the degree that minor appearance tweaks justify a sequel or version bump. Simply put, there are just as many reasons why it wouldn't matter if he waited, if not more, than those supporting it to be "brilliant" for him to only wait a day and disastrous if he didn't.
      - judk 13y ago
        He is doing a damn good job of staying afloat in the gossip news while he works on his next game launch. Amazing that Hacker News, home of the "growth hacker", can't see this.
- legohead 13y ago
  Or he spent money on buying votes for his game and rather than deal with a ToS breach and lose his money, he took it off the market.
  - mark212 13y ago
    I'm not so sure. It would have to use iAd on iOS to do display ads, and Apple would yank that access with a breach of the terms of service. I doubt he's still getting "tens of thousands" of dollars from ad revenue in Android alone.
    - petemc_ 13y ago
      I never saw any ads when I played it on android.
      - 72deluxe 13y ago
        I did, but you probably didn't notice it because it wasn't in your face whilst you played the main game. I think it was shown after you had ditched. Clever. (It was probably because I was always ditching and dying that I saw them; I was pretty hopeless at it, although when I plugged my Xperia S into HDMI, the phone ran noticeably slower so it was significantly easier to play.... just a tip for anyone out there....)
  - neolefty 13y ago
    Please stop repeating rumors with no evidence.
    - legohead 13y ago
      There is plenty of circumstantial evidence to support this theory. Looking at the rating history of the game.
- mpermar 13y ago
  He could also have scheduled a recurrent funds transfer to the charity of his choice. That would have been a lot of karma for the future.
  - GuiA 13y ago
    > "But the hardest thing of all, he says, was something else entirely. He hands me his iPhone so that I can scroll through some messages he's saved. One is from a woman chastising him for "distracting the children of the world." Another laments that "13 kids at my school broke their phones because of your game, and they still play it cause it's addicting like crack." Nguyen tells me of e-mails from workers who had lost their jobs, a mother who had stopped talking to her kids. "At first I thought they were just joking," he says, "but I realize they really hurt themselves." Nguyen – who says he botched tests in high school because he was playing too much Counter-Strike – genuinely took them to heart."
    - ghost_IV 13y ago
      Nevertheless, this was no solution. It is not that those with low willpower will not find other distractions.
  - grecy 13y ago
    He said he was overwhelmed with guilt from all the people who's lives were going down the drain because of his game. Simply taking all that money and giving it away doesn't change that. The end does not justify the means.
    - mpermar 13y ago
      Those people's lives will go down with the next game then whether is FarmCrush, or Angryville, or CandyBirds. It does not matter. So... well... better give the money to a good cause imho.
      - grecy 13y ago
        Cool, I'm happy that is your opinion and thoughts. The OPs actions are governed by his opinion and thoughts, and he chose what he wanted to do. You saying he should do what you want is absurd.
- sdegutis 13y ago
  Disagreed.
codecondo 13y ago
The featured photo for this story is very strong, and it answers more questions than the story itself ever will :)
thret 13y ago
"I pictured how people play," he says, as he taps his iPhone and reaches his other hand in the air. "One hand holding the train strap." That's the main insight.
pfisch 13y ago
I heard it was just a reskin of a premade game he got off an asset store. Is that not the case? This article made it sound like it was an original idea, but I thought it was just that one button to go up, no button to go down flash game. Is that not what it is?
- wlesieutre 13y ago
  Slight variation (which may have been done before) where you tap instead of holding. Your upward bounce has a predetermined strength that makes minor course corrections impossible. It's definitely an added challenge. Re: Asset store reskin, I have no idea. But FWIW I hadn't heard that accusation before.
- pervycreeper 13y ago
  What asset store would that be? The article explains how the game was designed.
- abruzzi 13y ago
  The basic gameplay has been around for a long time. My old palm pilot had a similar game called "cave". The a article however talks about him designing the graphics, sound, physics, etc.
  - rasz_pl 13y ago
    He designed Mario pipes? WOW!
- Geee 13y ago
  It's original. There weren't any games that work exactly like it.
  - interstitial 13y ago
    Except for the one with a fat yellow bird with tiny wings, with the same game mechanic of a 2D scroller, flapping through holes defined by green cactus instead of Mario World tunnels, it's original.
elwell 13y ago
three he's working on simultaneously: an untitled cowboy-themed shooter, a vertical flying game called Kitty Jetpack and an "action chess game," as he puts it, called Checkonaut, one of which he'll release this month Don't say the names of his to-be-released games; someone might grab the app names now. (Unless they're already approved but hidden; though Apple usually doesn't allow "in-progress"/beta app submissions)
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  They're likely preliminary titles anyway.
- fnayr 13y ago
  He can save the names for 180 days (plus more) for iOS. But it's still not smart because hundreds of games with similar titles might start launching before his.
  - diminoten 13y ago
    Something tells me he doesn't give a hoot.
- level 13y ago
  Sounds a little like Jetpack Kitty. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jetpack-kitty/id567551748?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jetpack-kitty/id567551748?mt...
  - iLoch 13y ago
    I imagine it being more like Papi/Doodle Jump, but with constant upwards velocity, and perhaps some instability in moving left and right to dodge objects.
elwell 13y ago
I'm reminded of a time in elementary school when I opened a Pokémon booster pack to discover a Charizard. I thought it was the best day of my life, but all my friends wanted to trade me for it, and I began to hate my Charizard card. I even had a nightmare in which Charizard blew fire at me. Alas, fame and fortune are quite the deception.
- netcan 13y ago
  That is possibly one of the geekiest analogies I have ever heard. Fly that flag!
- da_maire 13y ago
  I had a Charizard card, but I bought it from a local hobby store for some insane price with birthday money. I don't remember how old I was, elementary school I think, all the adults in my life told me it was a terrible decision but I had poor impulse control, wasn't one to listen to anyone, and my parents tended to let me learn my own lessons, so I ended up buying the card anyway. Ultimately all the card collectors at school worshipped me for having a Charizard, it was totally worth it and the lesson I took from it all ended up being 'don't listen to your parents' combined with 'money will buy you happiness' or something along those lines.
  - _cbb1 13y ago
    I am millenial like yourself. I got the praise and worship from my other classmates for owning a charzard the difference from my story and yours is that I opened up the booster pack and found one. I ended up listening to my parents, saved the $75 dollars, and was ultimately happy. Until some kid actually stole my binder and I lost it all. The moral of my story is "don't trust anyone"
danso 13y ago
Ah dangit, another famous Nguyen (along with Dat Nguyen) who I'll be asked if I'm related to. It's especially interesting and cool that he's still in Vietnam, and I'm not surprised that was a heavy factor in just waking away...$50,000 a day, even a year, is a lot of money. My uncle was making less than that (a year) in Saigon and yet could still afford to rent a massive house with courtyard, 2 servants and a nanny, and a SUV with a driver. (BTW, dong is the name of Vietnam's currency, something that is probably worth a lot of jokes in the Vietnamese media) Also, becoming a viral success (regardless of quality of the game) from Vietnam is a much different and rarer accomplishment than doing it from America (or any place where the world's media is more attuned to). Kudos to him!
- MarkTee 13y ago
  Ha, when I was a kid there was a criminal in my city named Nguyen Thanh (I think he might have been on the run or wanted for a warrant or something). One day I was playing an online game and saw somebody who had "nguyenthanh" as their username. I freaked out and ran to my dad, excited to tell him that I'd cracked the case. Much to my dismay he explained to me that those were 2 of the most common names in Vietnam.
imjk 13y ago
"Nguyen wanted to make games for people like himself: busy, harried, always on the move. "I pictured how people play," he says, as he taps his iPhone and reaches his other hand in the air. "One hand holding the train strap." He'd make a game for them." I found myself playing in this exact manner many times while riding the subway. Even when I would go just one or two stops, it was convenient way to spend the time squeezing in a few games of Flappy Bird without worrying about concentrating too hard on any one game, or being concerned about getting cutoff in any one round by having to leave or dodge a bystander.
Ryel 13y ago
Just to clarify, Dong Nguyen is still alive... right? The article is a little fuzzy - "In the wake of Flappy Bird's demise, rumors spread. Nguyen had committed suicide."
- sixQuarks 13y ago
  Didn't you read the article? He committed Japanese ritual suicide, in front of 100 broken iphones sent to him by irate players.
- wpietri 13y ago
  Did you miss that this was an interview?
  - Ryel 13y ago
    I only know he is still alive because I've followed the Flappy Bird story. I just shared this story with 3 people who only know OF him, all 3 of them replied with their condolences and then we found consolation in his humor about CounterStrike. As a reporter I would think there should be some importance in leaving zero room for misintepretation regarding somebody's well-being. Is that wrong?
    - Jtsummers 13y ago
      If you include the next few sentences it's clear that there was no suicide: In the wake of Flappy Bird's demise, rumors spread. Nguyen had committed suicide. Nintendo was suing him. He'd received death threats. His refusal to speak fueled the speculation even more. It's a list of the rumors that were going around, and is terminated by a statement about his refusal to speak (at the time) which strongly implies that the suicide rumor was, well, just a rumor.
      - Ryel 13y ago
        I see the flow you're talking about but IMO that second sentence is just too big and too bold. The paragraph seems to drop that bomb, inch away and then come back to discredit it rather than just spitting it out like, "rumors begun to spread that Dong had..." Anyway, no sense in nit-picking but I would like to see a couple words rearranged. I really think he's a good guy and he seems to be someone worthy of the industry's admiration. We need many, many more people like him in this world. (from what I know about him)
bsenftner 13y ago
As a long term developer of entertainment software, I totally agree with his point of view about the impact one's software has upon the lives of the user. The general acceptance goes that the crazies and depressed will be triggered by something and its not your fault if something provocative you worked on triggers an incident. That's what the group think tells us, but in ones personal reality it's not that easy to shrug off. Over the decades I've been on the teams of high profile games and films with medium levels of violence. After each title is released, I'd receive a half dozen or so "fan" emails from people who obviously researched the dev team and was reaching out. On the games with medium levels of violence, of the half dozen fan emails only one would be praise, the others would be serious hate mail. That kind of stuff throws you, even if you suspect pretty strongly that the sender is probably 8 years old. Yeah, I can totally see why he pulled the plug. He's got enough momey, and he's not greedy. What he want's most is clearly freedom, and fame was taking that away. Yeah, I'd pull the plug too.
- conesus 13y ago
  To be fair, I run a news reader and you wouldn't believe some of the hate mail I receive. I just assumed he received much more of it and not enough of the positive mail. Also, when you're at the business end of a press blitz, you get overwhelmed and can make irrational decisions that you might come to regret.
  - robflynn 13y ago
    It was the same for me when I was project lead for Gaim/Pidgin. I was lead for something like 6 years and I eventually got tired of the hate. Sure, there was plenty of praise, too. But the harassment eventually became annoying. It hit it's breaking point when someone folks managed to figure out my cell phone number and would call me at all sorts of hours (3am once!) to "tell me about their ideas." I changed my cell number but it eventually happened again. Most of my interactions with users were positive, though. But, the various legal issues, hateful folks, and my day job suddenly taking more time I decided to give it up and pass it on to someone else. I had already become mostly observational/maintenance on the project in my last year there anyways. Slight digressions aside, I was fairly young when I got with the project and it was surprisingly to me how angry some people could be for no reason at all.
brador 13y ago
No mention of the massive publicity boost from the Youtube let's play video of Flappy Bird by that strange Norwegian guy with millions of subscribers?
- ChrisClark 13y ago
  Which was a really big help, but by the time it was on that Youtube channel it was already #1 on the App Store. It really was word of mouth that got it there. There are whole articles analyzing the Flappy Bird rise. I didn't bookmark any though, but they all seemed to conclude it was the perfect storm of viral awareness, it just spread by word of mouth perfectly.
- vetler 13y ago
  Who's this strange Norwegian guy?
  - MarkTee 13y ago
    I believe he's talking about PewDiePie, who's actually Swedish.
    - wgx 13y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/user/PewDiePie https://www.youtube.com/user/PewDiePie
      - codr 13y ago
        I'd seen the name of course, but had never seen him. Weird.
    - owenwil 13y ago
      I've never understood why people think this guy is interesting. He's just a socially awkward dude that makes loud, strange noises and acts like a child when he plays games. Meh.
      - 13y ago
applecore 13y ago
Unfortunately, by removing Flappy Bird from the App Store, he opened the door for shitty clones to reach the top of the charts. This arguably made the lives of users worse. He also passed up the opportunity to make millions of more dollars in merchandising.
- jaxytee 13y ago
  Shitty clones would've been made irregardless of him removing the app from the store.
  - Chronic26 13y ago
    False. Clones appeared because of the now open market. If Flappy Bird still existed, the clones would be discouraged due to the presence of the incumbent Flappy Bird.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- dTal 13y ago
  Flappy Bird is itself a shitty clone - an imperfect copy of it runs even odds of being a better game.
- _alastair 13y ago
  At least it's given the world a new alternative to 'a to-do list' in demonstrating new technologies/languages/etc. There are ones for various different gaming frameworks: https://github.com/uralozden/flappy-bird https://github.com/uralozden/flappy-bird https://github.com/ellisonleao/clumsy-bird https://github.com/ellisonleao/clumsy-bird The ZX-81: http://bobs-stuff.co.uk/quack.html http://bobs-stuff.co.uk/quack.html and so on. To my shame, I made a version that you play by flapping your arms: http://experimenting.alastair.is/flappyarms http://experimenting.alastair.is/flappyarms
  - drawkbox 13y ago
    Flappy Arms, nice one, might be fun on Kinect as well. Flappy Bird has become an experimentational platform of its own.
mesuvash 13y ago
Nothing but #respect. It's hard to see people who give up fortune for what they consider right thing(atleast from his perspective).
- bglazer 13y ago
  I think he's still making money from the in-game ads in already downloaded copies of Flappy Bird. Still cool. "Independent thinker". I like it.
- asharpe 13y ago
  yes, especially as he doesn't want to sell it and let someone else deal with the crap. Shame that people want to cut down others who are successful
United857 13y ago
Another plausible reason that I've not seen reported is that if he was indeed pulling in $50k/day, that makes you a target in Vietnam (average monthly salary $185). In that part of the world, being rich without having the right connections/protection can be very, very dangerous.
- ronaldx 13y ago
  Do you have a source for this? I've only heard this said on HN and I doubt that it is significantly dangerous to be rich.
  - United857 13y ago
    I've lived/worked/travelled in Asia for several years and still regularly visit family and friends. Sadly Vietnam (and China, etc) don't really adhere to the rule of law except on paper, bribes and corruption are normal and it's really about the connections you have. You really have to live there to appreciate that -- not just on a holiday for a week.
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    It's hard to get any source that would satisfy your question. Let me put it this way. You are poor. Your family is poor. Everyone around you is poor. When you are financially in trouble, you ask someone to lend you money. In Asian culture, you don't start asking bank for money. You ask your friends, relatives and neighbors for help. Now you are famous. Making $50,000 a day. Everyone is going to come after you and ask for help. You don't want to because who wants to be debt collector? But you have to because they are your relatives, friends and neighbors. You are in a dilemma and you don't know what to do about it. Also, regardless of where you live, when you are rich you and your family becomes kidnappers' target. In countries like Vietnam making $50,000 a day makes you a millionaire to the people who are just making a few dollars a day... He was happy with the initial revenue but he then realize his publicity would have cost him relationship with other people and that's what money can't undo for him. He just can't.
    - keule 13y ago
icanhasfay 13y ago
Just something itching me wrong about purposefully making a game excruciatingly difficult and then getting so emotionally affected by their reactions to that difficultly that you are distraught.
- mindstab 13y ago
  he was affected by their addiction and its affects on their lives, which the difficultly played a part in the cycle of.
stevejohnson 13y ago
Does anyone have the source for the Romero quote on the third page? John Romero, co-creator of the game Doom, says Flappy Bird is "a reaction against prevailing design the way grunge was a reaction to metal."
- pgrote 13y ago
  Odd. I cannot find a source for it on Google, twitter, his personal site or facebook.
  - stevenwei 13y ago
    Perhaps the source is the article itself (i.e. he was contacted by the author)?
    - bbrizzi 13y ago
      That's probably the case. The author of the article is David Kushner, writer of "Masters of Doom", so he probably knows Romero pretty well.
  - beachstartup 13y ago
    john romero is the source. the reporter called him, and got a quote. i can't believe i'm explaining this to someone right now.
  - i386 13y ago
    Its called journalism.
- stevejohnson 13y ago
  To the snarky replies in this comment subtree: that passage read as if it was referring to some other piece or statement by Romero, which I'd be interested in reading further if it existed. The comparison is apt. Intuitively, this doesn't seem like a good way to quote someone you called up specifically for this article.
rottyguy 13y ago
"Growing up in Van Phuc, a village outside Hanoi famous for silk-making, Nguyen (pronounced nwin) never imagined being a world-famous game designer." As Nguyen is a very popular Vietnamese name, I'd thought to bring this up.. It is not pronounced with an 'N'.. wikipedia has the correct pronunciation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguyen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguyen
- zhemao 13y ago
  The "southern pronunciation" on that Wikipedia page clearly has an N sound at the beginning.
DanBC 13y ago
Is there a cultural bias in the HN comments? Some of the asian social networks are ferocious, much worse than the twitter witch hunts we sometimes see in the US. The Human flesh search engine doesn't sound like something I'd want to be on the wrong end of. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_flesh_search_engine http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_flesh_search_engine
Destitute 13y ago
Does anyone know what language he coded the game in? It's kind of a feat in itself that he ported it (by himself) to Android rather quickly. Is he using some sort of wrapper?
- megablast 13y ago
  It is not a complicated game. Would not have been to hard to do it natively.
DigitalSea 13y ago
I wish the game industry as a whole was a lot more like Dong, instead of being all about the money. He gave up 50k a day, no doubt if the app had stayed in the store it might have even climbed higher before peaking and slowly coming back down. That one line in the interview when asked why he took his game down, "I'm master of my own fate" says it all about the type of guy Dong is: a decent one. Sure he's still making money from the people that downloaded it, but he's not being greedy and I respect that. He put the well-being and privacy of himself and his family above the crazy amounts of money he was making. He made his money and he is grateful, he didn't try and push it as far as he could have. Heck, he had so many offers from people wanting to buy the game, he could have easily commanded a six-figure sum for the IP alone, but didn't. He just decided to take it down and leave it at that. The world needs more people like Dong.
blazespin 13y ago
I think rolling stone is having a tuff time differentiating between a meme and a world famous video game.
mrb 13y ago
"Nguyen was earning an estimated $50,000 a day. Not even Mark Zuckerberg became rich so fast." False. Zuckerberg became rich faster. Facebook was founded in February 2004. As of February 2014 Zuckerberg's personal wealth is estimated at $31.6 billion. So, during these 10 years, his wealth increased on average by $8.7 million per day. But I guess the point is moot anyway since RollingStone is comparing apples to oranges (earning != wealth).
- unreal37 13y ago
  He went from $0 in the bank to $1,000,000 in the bank in the span of a few weeks. That's pretty fast by any standard. Starting from 0.
HNaTTY 13y ago
This was an interesting writeup, but I can't help but think that removing Flappy Bird at the height of popularity was anything less than the shrewdest of PR moves. He continues to get all the ad dollars from existing installs, and has achieved legendary status, assuring that any new games he may release get a lot of coverage and positioning him at the top of the heap. It's really genius!
judk 13y ago
Dong Nguyen is doing an awesome pivot from a throwaway fad app into a celebrity.
argumentum 13y ago
> the young programmer stood out for his speed, skills and fierce independent streak. "Dong didn't need a supervisor," Truong says. "He wasn't comfortable with it. So we said he did not have to report to anyone. Years ago, when I heard of someone being spectacularly successful at something I "could have done" should I have chosen to I chalked it up to luck & circumstance. Two prominent examples come to mind: Facebook and Groupon. Funny thing is, every time I actually looked into the story behind such phenomena (or met the individuals involved), I would find there's always more than meets the eye. There's some obsession, some genius (often bordering on insanity), some talent or character trait or propensity behind what seems to be just "luck". Safe to say, I no longer believe in luck. Of course, there's randomness, which sometimes favors you and other times acts against your interests. But what people call "luck" is what you make of this randomness. I don't know Dong Nguyen. I've never met him or talked to him. I don't know what makes him tick, or tap or flap. I have little to say about why he pulled his app, except that it likely had nothing to do with money or fame or success. I can say, however, that there's likely more than meets the eye.
- userbinator 13y ago
  > I don't know what makes him tick, or tap or flap. Great way of saying it.
AnitoKid 13y ago
Awesome article! And I kid you not!
kimonos 13y ago
I totally understand his point. Good luck to him.
JacobAldridge 13y ago
Single page http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-flight-of-the-birdman-flappy-bird-creator-dong-nguyen-speaks-out-20140311?print=true http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-flight-of-the-b...
SilverSurfer972 13y ago
So what will happen if his next game hit the top ten again? Shut it down? Why not put his game for charity or just stop releasing games if he really care about how his game affects the players?
Fuxy 13y ago
Great to hear he's doing OK. There's just one recommendation i can give him develop a thicker skin you can't change your game for every person blaming external things for their own incompetence. My office is net to the call center if you ever hear the stupid shit people say you will realize you can't take anything to heart. Do your thing man and ignore people complaining that their life was ruined by you in some way they will blame everybody except themselves.
felipelalli 13y ago
TL;DR "13 kids at my school broke their phones because of your game, and they still play it cause it's addicting like crack."
josefresco 13y ago
Did anyone else find it odd that he's working on new games, that will (if successful) potentially have the same negative impact on the lives of the people who play and Nguyen himself? I don't think Nguyen needs a reason to pull the app, and I respect his right to change his mind but I find it funny that we all seek some sort of wisdom when in fact there might not be any. Shit got crazy and he pulled the game, the end. Doesn't make for a compelling story, and creates no "guiding mantra" for other game developers, but for me it's just as meaningful.
jacquesm 13y ago
We had a guy commit suicide on cam in the early days of our website. It was terrible. I was asleep in NL, nobody thought of calling us, just an email that went unseen for the better part of the night. Then in the morning I woke up to a site that was pulled off the air by the hosting provider (ev1) to lessen the chances of copycat acts or other mishaps. Looking back through the chat snippets that people had mailed from that cam it looked like a bunch of assholes had actively pushed the guy to do it. We figured out where he lived and sent the police to his home, they took the guy down and after that ev1 restored service to our machine but for the longest time I felt like simply leaving it off. It's no fun at all when your creations get away from you in ways that you did not foresee. There is a lot more backstory to this which I'm not going to relate here for obvious reasons, and that wasn't even the lowest point of running a consumer oriented website for 15 years and counting, go figure.

570 points by johns 13y ago

"Then he hit a button, and Flappy Bird disappeared. When I ask him why he did it, he answers with the same conviction that led him to create the game. 'I'm master of my own fate,' he says. 'Independent thinker.'" Good for him. The world needs more people with this attitude.

adriand 13y ago
I agree. I love this guy. I bet that very few of us on HN would have done what he did. I certainly wouldn't have. I'm not saying that what he did was right, but it was right for him, and what is impressive to me is that he realized that. That kind of self-knowledge is a wonderful quality to have or develop.
- cobrausn 13y ago
  Yes, it is difficult to bring oneself to turn off the magic money machine once it starts printing, but keep in mind how much money he made and how much the existing installed copies still make for him. It certainly made the decision easier, I think.
  - batmansbelt 13y ago
    How do the installed copies still make money?
    - phenylene 13y ago
      Ads.
    - drh 13y ago
      The app displays banner ads.
  - yojimbo311 13y ago
    Personally, I think this sentiment cheapens his decision and makes less of what he's really done here. I think what he's done is pretty heroic, at least in modern terms, and something that very few, possibly none, of us would be willing to pull the trigger on. Wether he's made, or is still making, a fortune is besides the point. He made the hard choice and has made it clear to everyone who's asked that he is all the better for it. This more than anything else is a powerful and important example that we may or may not see again. If nothing else he has highlighted the need for more empathy in software. His focus seems to be in bringing joy and entertainment to people and doesn't appear to have any ulterior motive. This is rare and we should be celebrating it rather than dismiss it by the fact that he has been fortunate enough to actually be successful from it (something that is also extremely rare).
    - colechristensen 13y ago
      The 'heroic' attribution is thrown around a lot today, and few deserve it less than a man who decided to no longer offer a silly game for sale as a result of idiot-generated controversy.
  - _nedR 13y ago
    Still would be the hardest decision i ever made in my life, If it was me .. And I would still be agonizing over it today...
- trevoragilbert 13y ago
  I think to myself that I definitely wouldn't have, and that I would have weather the storm of the press outside my house, and just focused on that great payday (everyday). But from what I've heard, the paparazzi changes everything and it really is life-changing. So hard to say either way.
  - acchow 13y ago
    A software developer/entrepreneur is not a rock star. The paparazzi will disappear and the game be forgotten in a few weeks.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      What made his move puzzling wasn't that he didn't like the attention (I totally get that) but that it seemed obvious that pulling the app would make it worse, not better.
      - deletes 13y ago
        Maybe it was worse for a short time, but if the app was still available the craze might still be active, or not, you just can't be sure of that. By removing it he dictated his own terms.
    - SyneRyder 13y ago
      And yet, here we are a few weeks later, and he's in Rolling Stone magazine. The game hasn't been forgotten. He had the #1 game on the iTunes App Store charts, the same store where people now buy music by rock stars. I wouldn't dismiss the comparison too quickly.
    - 72deluxe 13y ago
      Come to think of it, name any recent rock stars... anyone? I can only think of people outside the last 10 years... It seems you can just as easily be forgotten as a rock star.
  - chc 13y ago
    With millions of dollars, you can just get stuff delivered to you for a couple of weeks until the press sees something else shiny. I've been straight-up bedridden for longer than he lasted under the attention of the press, and there is no way it's more restrictive than that. The guy's choice was his to make, but I do not buy that he had no choice.
- baddox 13y ago
  I guess I don't quite understand. I also believe that I am to some extent "master of my fate," but I would use my authority to choose to leave the game up and keep earning money. I would do so with as much pride and conviction as Dong Nguyen.
  - njharman 13y ago
    Each of you are masters of your own fate. Making a personal choice and not being swayed be each other's choices or anyone else's choices/opinions.
  - dasil003 13y ago
    Which would earn you more envy and less respect.
- herbig 13y ago
  Turning it off has probably done more to earn him money than keeping it on. It also ends with him saying it's possibly he'd put the game back up. It's possible this is instead just a brilliant marketing ploy.
  - billmalarky 13y ago
    If it is a marketing ploy, it is far from brilliant. Brilliant would have been taking it down for a day then putting it back up. Not keeping it down for weeks while the excitement around the game fades.
    - rhizome 13y ago
      Brilliant would have been taking it down for a day then putting it back up. Not keeping it down for weeks while the excitement around the game fades. Based on what, exactly? This sounds like conjecture. UPDATE: Fine. Taking it down for one day can result in the audience feeling jerked around, him being perceived as unreliable, and any number of other negative connotations. There are also myriad instances of successful relaunches after extended absences, even to the degree that minor appearance tweaks justify a sequel or version bump. Simply put, there are just as many reasons why it wouldn't matter if he waited, if not more, than those supporting it to be "brilliant" for him to only wait a day and disastrous if he didn't.
    - judk 13y ago
      He is doing a damn good job of staying afloat in the gossip news while he works on his next game launch. Amazing that Hacker News, home of the "growth hacker", can't see this.
legohead 13y ago
Or he spent money on buying votes for his game and rather than deal with a ToS breach and lose his money, he took it off the market.
- mark212 13y ago
  I'm not so sure. It would have to use iAd on iOS to do display ads, and Apple would yank that access with a breach of the terms of service. I doubt he's still getting "tens of thousands" of dollars from ad revenue in Android alone.
  - petemc_ 13y ago
    I never saw any ads when I played it on android.
    - 72deluxe 13y ago
      I did, but you probably didn't notice it because it wasn't in your face whilst you played the main game. I think it was shown after you had ditched. Clever. (It was probably because I was always ditching and dying that I saw them; I was pretty hopeless at it, although when I plugged my Xperia S into HDMI, the phone ran noticeably slower so it was significantly easier to play.... just a tip for anyone out there....)
- neolefty 13y ago
  Please stop repeating rumors with no evidence.
  - legohead 13y ago
    There is plenty of circumstantial evidence to support this theory. Looking at the rating history of the game.
mpermar 13y ago
He could also have scheduled a recurrent funds transfer to the charity of his choice. That would have been a lot of karma for the future.
- GuiA 13y ago
  > "But the hardest thing of all, he says, was something else entirely. He hands me his iPhone so that I can scroll through some messages he's saved. One is from a woman chastising him for "distracting the children of the world." Another laments that "13 kids at my school broke their phones because of your game, and they still play it cause it's addicting like crack." Nguyen tells me of e-mails from workers who had lost their jobs, a mother who had stopped talking to her kids. "At first I thought they were just joking," he says, "but I realize they really hurt themselves." Nguyen – who says he botched tests in high school because he was playing too much Counter-Strike – genuinely took them to heart."
  - ghost_IV 13y ago
    Nevertheless, this was no solution. It is not that those with low willpower will not find other distractions.
- grecy 13y ago
  He said he was overwhelmed with guilt from all the people who's lives were going down the drain because of his game. Simply taking all that money and giving it away doesn't change that. The end does not justify the means.
  - mpermar 13y ago
    Those people's lives will go down with the next game then whether is FarmCrush, or Angryville, or CandyBirds. It does not matter. So... well... better give the money to a good cause imho.
    - grecy 13y ago
      Cool, I'm happy that is your opinion and thoughts. The OPs actions are governed by his opinion and thoughts, and he chose what he wanted to do. You saying he should do what you want is absurd.
sdegutis 13y ago
Disagreed.

codecondo 13y ago

The featured photo for this story is very strong, and it answers more questions than the story itself ever will :)

thret 13y ago

"I pictured how people play," he says, as he taps his iPhone and reaches his other hand in the air. "One hand holding the train strap." That's the main insight.

pfisch 13y ago

I heard it was just a reskin of a premade game he got off an asset store. Is that not the case? This article made it sound like it was an original idea, but I thought it was just that one button to go up, no button to go down flash game. Is that not what it is?

wlesieutre 13y ago
Slight variation (which may have been done before) where you tap instead of holding. Your upward bounce has a predetermined strength that makes minor course corrections impossible. It's definitely an added challenge. Re: Asset store reskin, I have no idea. But FWIW I hadn't heard that accusation before.
pervycreeper 13y ago
What asset store would that be? The article explains how the game was designed.
abruzzi 13y ago
The basic gameplay has been around for a long time. My old palm pilot had a similar game called "cave". The a article however talks about him designing the graphics, sound, physics, etc.
- rasz_pl 13y ago
  He designed Mario pipes? WOW!
Geee 13y ago
It's original. There weren't any games that work exactly like it.
- interstitial 13y ago
  Except for the one with a fat yellow bird with tiny wings, with the same game mechanic of a 2D scroller, flapping through holes defined by green cactus instead of Mario World tunnels, it's original.

elwell 13y ago

three he's working on simultaneously: an untitled cowboy-themed shooter, a vertical flying game called Kitty Jetpack and an "action chess game," as he puts it, called Checkonaut, one of which he'll release this month Don't say the names of his to-be-released games; someone might grab the app names now. (Unless they're already approved but hidden; though Apple usually doesn't allow "in-progress"/beta app submissions)

vezzy-fnord 13y ago
They're likely preliminary titles anyway.
fnayr 13y ago
He can save the names for 180 days (plus more) for iOS. But it's still not smart because hundreds of games with similar titles might start launching before his.
- diminoten 13y ago
  Something tells me he doesn't give a hoot.
level 13y ago
Sounds a little like Jetpack Kitty. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jetpack-kitty/id567551748?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jetpack-kitty/id567551748?mt...
- iLoch 13y ago
  I imagine it being more like Papi/Doodle Jump, but with constant upwards velocity, and perhaps some instability in moving left and right to dodge objects.

elwell 13y ago

I'm reminded of a time in elementary school when I opened a Pokémon booster pack to discover a Charizard. I thought it was the best day of my life, but all my friends wanted to trade me for it, and I began to hate my Charizard card. I even had a nightmare in which Charizard blew fire at me. Alas, fame and fortune are quite the deception.

netcan 13y ago
That is possibly one of the geekiest analogies I have ever heard. Fly that flag!
da_maire 13y ago
I had a Charizard card, but I bought it from a local hobby store for some insane price with birthday money. I don't remember how old I was, elementary school I think, all the adults in my life told me it was a terrible decision but I had poor impulse control, wasn't one to listen to anyone, and my parents tended to let me learn my own lessons, so I ended up buying the card anyway. Ultimately all the card collectors at school worshipped me for having a Charizard, it was totally worth it and the lesson I took from it all ended up being 'don't listen to your parents' combined with 'money will buy you happiness' or something along those lines.
- _cbb1 13y ago
  I am millenial like yourself. I got the praise and worship from my other classmates for owning a charzard the difference from my story and yours is that I opened up the booster pack and found one. I ended up listening to my parents, saved the $75 dollars, and was ultimately happy. Until some kid actually stole my binder and I lost it all. The moral of my story is "don't trust anyone"

danso 13y ago

Ah dangit, another famous Nguyen (along with Dat Nguyen) who I'll be asked if I'm related to. It's especially interesting and cool that he's still in Vietnam, and I'm not surprised that was a heavy factor in just waking away...$50,000 a day, even a year, is a lot of money. My uncle was making less than that (a year) in Saigon and yet could still afford to rent a massive house with courtyard, 2 servants and a nanny, and a SUV with a driver. (BTW, dong is the name of Vietnam's currency, something that is probably worth a lot of jokes in the Vietnamese media) Also, becoming a viral success (regardless of quality of the game) from Vietnam is a much different and rarer accomplishment than doing it from America (or any place where the world's media is more attuned to). Kudos to him!

MarkTee 13y ago
Ha, when I was a kid there was a criminal in my city named Nguyen Thanh (I think he might have been on the run or wanted for a warrant or something). One day I was playing an online game and saw somebody who had "nguyenthanh" as their username. I freaked out and ran to my dad, excited to tell him that I'd cracked the case. Much to my dismay he explained to me that those were 2 of the most common names in Vietnam.

imjk 13y ago

"Nguyen wanted to make games for people like himself: busy, harried, always on the move. "I pictured how people play," he says, as he taps his iPhone and reaches his other hand in the air. "One hand holding the train strap." He'd make a game for them." I found myself playing in this exact manner many times while riding the subway. Even when I would go just one or two stops, it was convenient way to spend the time squeezing in a few games of Flappy Bird without worrying about concentrating too hard on any one game, or being concerned about getting cutoff in any one round by having to leave or dodge a bystander.

Ryel 13y ago

Just to clarify, Dong Nguyen is still alive... right? The article is a little fuzzy - "In the wake of Flappy Bird's demise, rumors spread. Nguyen had committed suicide."

sixQuarks 13y ago
Didn't you read the article? He committed Japanese ritual suicide, in front of 100 broken iphones sent to him by irate players.
wpietri 13y ago
Did you miss that this was an interview?
- Ryel 13y ago
  I only know he is still alive because I've followed the Flappy Bird story. I just shared this story with 3 people who only know OF him, all 3 of them replied with their condolences and then we found consolation in his humor about CounterStrike. As a reporter I would think there should be some importance in leaving zero room for misintepretation regarding somebody's well-being. Is that wrong?
  - Jtsummers 13y ago
    If you include the next few sentences it's clear that there was no suicide: In the wake of Flappy Bird's demise, rumors spread. Nguyen had committed suicide. Nintendo was suing him. He'd received death threats. His refusal to speak fueled the speculation even more. It's a list of the rumors that were going around, and is terminated by a statement about his refusal to speak (at the time) which strongly implies that the suicide rumor was, well, just a rumor.
    - Ryel 13y ago
      I see the flow you're talking about but IMO that second sentence is just too big and too bold. The paragraph seems to drop that bomb, inch away and then come back to discredit it rather than just spitting it out like, "rumors begun to spread that Dong had..." Anyway, no sense in nit-picking but I would like to see a couple words rearranged. I really think he's a good guy and he seems to be someone worthy of the industry's admiration. We need many, many more people like him in this world. (from what I know about him)

bsenftner 13y ago

As a long term developer of entertainment software, I totally agree with his point of view about the impact one's software has upon the lives of the user. The general acceptance goes that the crazies and depressed will be triggered by something and its not your fault if something provocative you worked on triggers an incident. That's what the group think tells us, but in ones personal reality it's not that easy to shrug off. Over the decades I've been on the teams of high profile games and films with medium levels of violence. After each title is released, I'd receive a half dozen or so "fan" emails from people who obviously researched the dev team and was reaching out. On the games with medium levels of violence, of the half dozen fan emails only one would be praise, the others would be serious hate mail. That kind of stuff throws you, even if you suspect pretty strongly that the sender is probably 8 years old. Yeah, I can totally see why he pulled the plug. He's got enough momey, and he's not greedy. What he want's most is clearly freedom, and fame was taking that away. Yeah, I'd pull the plug too.

conesus 13y ago
To be fair, I run a news reader and you wouldn't believe some of the hate mail I receive. I just assumed he received much more of it and not enough of the positive mail. Also, when you're at the business end of a press blitz, you get overwhelmed and can make irrational decisions that you might come to regret.
- robflynn 13y ago
  It was the same for me when I was project lead for Gaim/Pidgin. I was lead for something like 6 years and I eventually got tired of the hate. Sure, there was plenty of praise, too. But the harassment eventually became annoying. It hit it's breaking point when someone folks managed to figure out my cell phone number and would call me at all sorts of hours (3am once!) to "tell me about their ideas." I changed my cell number but it eventually happened again. Most of my interactions with users were positive, though. But, the various legal issues, hateful folks, and my day job suddenly taking more time I decided to give it up and pass it on to someone else. I had already become mostly observational/maintenance on the project in my last year there anyways. Slight digressions aside, I was fairly young when I got with the project and it was surprisingly to me how angry some people could be for no reason at all.

brador 13y ago

No mention of the massive publicity boost from the Youtube let's play video of Flappy Bird by that strange Norwegian guy with millions of subscribers?

ChrisClark 13y ago
Which was a really big help, but by the time it was on that Youtube channel it was already #1 on the App Store. It really was word of mouth that got it there. There are whole articles analyzing the Flappy Bird rise. I didn't bookmark any though, but they all seemed to conclude it was the perfect storm of viral awareness, it just spread by word of mouth perfectly.
vetler 13y ago
Who's this strange Norwegian guy?
- MarkTee 13y ago
  I believe he's talking about PewDiePie, who's actually Swedish.
  - wgx 13y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/user/PewDiePie https://www.youtube.com/user/PewDiePie
    - codr 13y ago
      I'd seen the name of course, but had never seen him. Weird.
  - owenwil 13y ago
    I've never understood why people think this guy is interesting. He's just a socially awkward dude that makes loud, strange noises and acts like a child when he plays games. Meh.
    - 13y ago

applecore 13y ago

Unfortunately, by removing Flappy Bird from the App Store, he opened the door for shitty clones to reach the top of the charts. This arguably made the lives of users worse. He also passed up the opportunity to make millions of more dollars in merchandising.

jaxytee 13y ago
Shitty clones would've been made irregardless of him removing the app from the store.
- Chronic26 13y ago
  False. Clones appeared because of the now open market. If Flappy Bird still existed, the clones would be discouraged due to the presence of the incumbent Flappy Bird.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
dTal 13y ago
Flappy Bird is itself a shitty clone - an imperfect copy of it runs even odds of being a better game.
_alastair 13y ago
At least it's given the world a new alternative to 'a to-do list' in demonstrating new technologies/languages/etc. There are ones for various different gaming frameworks: https://github.com/uralozden/flappy-bird https://github.com/uralozden/flappy-bird https://github.com/ellisonleao/clumsy-bird https://github.com/ellisonleao/clumsy-bird The ZX-81: http://bobs-stuff.co.uk/quack.html http://bobs-stuff.co.uk/quack.html and so on. To my shame, I made a version that you play by flapping your arms: http://experimenting.alastair.is/flappyarms http://experimenting.alastair.is/flappyarms
- drawkbox 13y ago
  Flappy Arms, nice one, might be fun on Kinect as well. Flappy Bird has become an experimentational platform of its own.

mesuvash 13y ago

Nothing but #respect. It's hard to see people who give up fortune for what they consider right thing(atleast from his perspective).

bglazer 13y ago
I think he's still making money from the in-game ads in already downloaded copies of Flappy Bird. Still cool. "Independent thinker". I like it.
asharpe 13y ago
yes, especially as he doesn't want to sell it and let someone else deal with the crap. Shame that people want to cut down others who are successful

United857 13y ago

Another plausible reason that I've not seen reported is that if he was indeed pulling in $50k/day, that makes you a target in Vietnam (average monthly salary $185). In that part of the world, being rich without having the right connections/protection can be very, very dangerous.

ronaldx 13y ago
Do you have a source for this? I've only heard this said on HN and I doubt that it is significantly dangerous to be rich.
- United857 13y ago
  I've lived/worked/travelled in Asia for several years and still regularly visit family and friends. Sadly Vietnam (and China, etc) don't really adhere to the rule of law except on paper, bribes and corruption are normal and it's really about the connections you have. You really have to live there to appreciate that -- not just on a holiday for a week.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  It's hard to get any source that would satisfy your question. Let me put it this way. You are poor. Your family is poor. Everyone around you is poor. When you are financially in trouble, you ask someone to lend you money. In Asian culture, you don't start asking bank for money. You ask your friends, relatives and neighbors for help. Now you are famous. Making $50,000 a day. Everyone is going to come after you and ask for help. You don't want to because who wants to be debt collector? But you have to because they are your relatives, friends and neighbors. You are in a dilemma and you don't know what to do about it. Also, regardless of where you live, when you are rich you and your family becomes kidnappers' target. In countries like Vietnam making $50,000 a day makes you a millionaire to the people who are just making a few dollars a day... He was happy with the initial revenue but he then realize his publicity would have cost him relationship with other people and that's what money can't undo for him. He just can't.
  - keule 13y ago

icanhasfay 13y ago

Just something itching me wrong about purposefully making a game excruciatingly difficult and then getting so emotionally affected by their reactions to that difficultly that you are distraught.

mindstab 13y ago
he was affected by their addiction and its affects on their lives, which the difficultly played a part in the cycle of.

stevejohnson 13y ago

Does anyone have the source for the Romero quote on the third page? John Romero, co-creator of the game Doom, says Flappy Bird is "a reaction against prevailing design the way grunge was a reaction to metal."

pgrote 13y ago
Odd. I cannot find a source for it on Google, twitter, his personal site or facebook.
- stevenwei 13y ago
  Perhaps the source is the article itself (i.e. he was contacted by the author)?
  - bbrizzi 13y ago
    That's probably the case. The author of the article is David Kushner, writer of "Masters of Doom", so he probably knows Romero pretty well.
- beachstartup 13y ago
  john romero is the source. the reporter called him, and got a quote. i can't believe i'm explaining this to someone right now.
- i386 13y ago
  Its called journalism.
stevejohnson 13y ago
To the snarky replies in this comment subtree: that passage read as if it was referring to some other piece or statement by Romero, which I'd be interested in reading further if it existed. The comparison is apt. Intuitively, this doesn't seem like a good way to quote someone you called up specifically for this article.

rottyguy 13y ago

"Growing up in Van Phuc, a village outside Hanoi famous for silk-making, Nguyen (pronounced nwin) never imagined being a world-famous game designer." As Nguyen is a very popular Vietnamese name, I'd thought to bring this up.. It is not pronounced with an 'N'.. wikipedia has the correct pronunciation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguyen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguyen

zhemao 13y ago
The "southern pronunciation" on that Wikipedia page clearly has an N sound at the beginning.

DanBC 13y ago

Is there a cultural bias in the HN comments? Some of the asian social networks are ferocious, much worse than the twitter witch hunts we sometimes see in the US. The Human flesh search engine doesn't sound like something I'd want to be on the wrong end of. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_flesh_search_engine http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_flesh_search_engine

Destitute 13y ago

Does anyone know what language he coded the game in? It's kind of a feat in itself that he ported it (by himself) to Android rather quickly. Is he using some sort of wrapper?

megablast 13y ago
It is not a complicated game. Would not have been to hard to do it natively.

DigitalSea 13y ago

I wish the game industry as a whole was a lot more like Dong, instead of being all about the money. He gave up 50k a day, no doubt if the app had stayed in the store it might have even climbed higher before peaking and slowly coming back down. That one line in the interview when asked why he took his game down, "I'm master of my own fate" says it all about the type of guy Dong is: a decent one. Sure he's still making money from the people that downloaded it, but he's not being greedy and I respect that. He put the well-being and privacy of himself and his family above the crazy amounts of money he was making. He made his money and he is grateful, he didn't try and push it as far as he could have. Heck, he had so many offers from people wanting to buy the game, he could have easily commanded a six-figure sum for the IP alone, but didn't. He just decided to take it down and leave it at that. The world needs more people like Dong.

blazespin 13y ago

I think rolling stone is having a tuff time differentiating between a meme and a world famous video game.

mrb 13y ago

"Nguyen was earning an estimated $50,000 a day. Not even Mark Zuckerberg became rich so fast." False. Zuckerberg became rich faster. Facebook was founded in February 2004. As of February 2014 Zuckerberg's personal wealth is estimated at $31.6 billion. So, during these 10 years, his wealth increased on average by $8.7 million per day. But I guess the point is moot anyway since RollingStone is comparing apples to oranges (earning != wealth).

unreal37 13y ago
He went from $0 in the bank to $1,000,000 in the bank in the span of a few weeks. That's pretty fast by any standard. Starting from 0.

HNaTTY 13y ago

This was an interesting writeup, but I can't help but think that removing Flappy Bird at the height of popularity was anything less than the shrewdest of PR moves. He continues to get all the ad dollars from existing installs, and has achieved legendary status, assuring that any new games he may release get a lot of coverage and positioning him at the top of the heap. It's really genius!

judk 13y ago

Dong Nguyen is doing an awesome pivot from a throwaway fad app into a celebrity.

argumentum 13y ago

> the young programmer stood out for his speed, skills and fierce independent streak. "Dong didn't need a supervisor," Truong says. "He wasn't comfortable with it. So we said he did not have to report to anyone. Years ago, when I heard of someone being spectacularly successful at something I "could have done" should I have chosen to I chalked it up to luck & circumstance. Two prominent examples come to mind: Facebook and Groupon. Funny thing is, every time I actually looked into the story behind such phenomena (or met the individuals involved), I would find there's always more than meets the eye. There's some obsession, some genius (often bordering on insanity), some talent or character trait or propensity behind what seems to be just "luck". Safe to say, I no longer believe in luck. Of course, there's randomness, which sometimes favors you and other times acts against your interests. But what people call "luck" is what you make of this randomness. I don't know Dong Nguyen. I've never met him or talked to him. I don't know what makes him tick, or tap or flap. I have little to say about why he pulled his app, except that it likely had nothing to do with money or fame or success. I can say, however, that there's likely more than meets the eye.

userbinator 13y ago
> I don't know what makes him tick, or tap or flap. Great way of saying it.

AnitoKid 13y ago

Awesome article! And I kid you not!

kimonos 13y ago

I totally understand his point. Good luck to him.

JacobAldridge 13y ago

Single page http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-flight-of-the-birdman-flappy-bird-creator-dong-nguyen-speaks-out-20140311?print=true http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-flight-of-the-b...

SilverSurfer972 13y ago

So what will happen if his next game hit the top ten again? Shut it down? Why not put his game for charity or just stop releasing games if he really care about how his game affects the players?

Fuxy 13y ago

Great to hear he's doing OK. There's just one recommendation i can give him develop a thicker skin you can't change your game for every person blaming external things for their own incompetence. My office is net to the call center if you ever hear the stupid shit people say you will realize you can't take anything to heart. Do your thing man and ignore people complaining that their life was ruined by you in some way they will blame everybody except themselves.

felipelalli 13y ago

TL;DR "13 kids at my school broke their phones because of your game, and they still play it cause it's addicting like crack."

josefresco 13y ago

Did anyone else find it odd that he's working on new games, that will (if successful) potentially have the same negative impact on the lives of the people who play and Nguyen himself? I don't think Nguyen needs a reason to pull the app, and I respect his right to change his mind but I find it funny that we all seek some sort of wisdom when in fact there might not be any. Shit got crazy and he pulled the game, the end. Doesn't make for a compelling story, and creates no "guiding mantra" for other game developers, but for me it's just as meaningful.

jacquesm 13y ago

We had a guy commit suicide on cam in the early days of our website. It was terrible. I was asleep in NL, nobody thought of calling us, just an email that went unseen for the better part of the night. Then in the morning I woke up to a site that was pulled off the air by the hosting provider (ev1) to lessen the chances of copycat acts or other mishaps. Looking back through the chat snippets that people had mailed from that cam it looked like a bunch of assholes had actively pushed the guy to do it. We figured out where he lived and sent the police to his home, they took the guy down and after that ev1 restored service to our machine but for the longest time I felt like simply leaving it off. It's no fun at all when your creations get away from you in ways that you did not foresee. There is a lot more backstory to this which I'm not going to relate here for obvious reasons, and that wasn't even the lowest point of running a consumer oriented website for 15 years and counting, go figure.