This infuriating ambiguity seems to have come as a shock to many observers. The reaction from gamers has been one of utter frustration mixed with the hopeless need to continue.
Many players take several minutes just to pass through the first pipe gate, and hours of concerted effort are required to get a score over ten. The interface is simple – just keep tapping the screen to flap the wings – but the game is extraordinarily difficult.
In case you have somehow missed out on the short flight of this fascinating game, Flappy Bird is a free-to-play smartphone title in which the challenge is to guide a cute bird character through a tunnel of pipes, varying its altitude so that it can slip through the gaps. Flappy Bird was despised, at least in part, because of misunderstandings about how the games industry and game creators work. Others have lambasted Nguyen for whining about earning a reported $50,000 a day from the game. “I cannot take this anymore.” Some have seen in this a sort of victory for honest game design.
“I am sorry ‘Flappy Bird’ users, 22 hours from now, I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down,” he tweeted. The minimalist pipe-avoidance sim that scorched to the top of the iPhone free game rankings earlier this year has been removed by its creator, Dong Nguyen.
