Flappy Bird, Addictive Game or Pure Genius?

Stephen Jiron
The Paw Print

I had seen the game a few weeks back mentioned in memes. I had seen how people had described it as impossibly difficult and, after having heard enough, I decided it was time to see what all the fuss was about.
I downloaded Flappy Bird. (I’ll try to keep the bird puns to a minimum). It was on a weekend that I had nothing better to do. It’s a simple game; you press the screen and the bird flaps once. No sensitivity as to how hard you press. His flaps are all identical and get you the same amount of elevation. I spent probably something like 2 hours posting a 20 pipes passed. Thinking about people on these sites complaining that they couldn’t pass six, I decided that 20 would sate my ego, and I had seen enough with that I uninstalled the game and went about my life. The stories of people hurting each other over the game continued.
I paid it no mind assuming it was akin to whenever the new Madden comes out there are always loons who were far too competitive and get in ridiculous fights over a game.
A few days later, my brother’s girlfriend posted a challenge to my brother and her friends on Facebook; she had 45 pipes passed.  I thought I got 20 in one day and, based off the difficulty of the game, I figured she had to have worked pretty hard to get 45. I thought that with another session I could surpass her and send this game south for the winter.
So I threw my hat in the ring. I re-downloaded the game and that next day I soared to my personal best at 43. I have work and school so I had to make base camp at 43 and would make the final record setting push the next opportunity I had.
She posted another challenge two days later: 109 pipes. And with that I was once again free from Flappy Bird. I decided 109 was insurmountable, with that I crowned her queen and uninstalled it for the last time.
Scrolling through my newsfeed mere days later I saw a tweet from the maker of Flappy Bird, Dong Nguyen, had decided to pull his creation from the App Market.
Saying last week, “I am sorry ‘Flappy Bird’ users, 22 hours from now; I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down. I cannot take this anymore.” He went on to say, “It is not anything related to legal issues, I just cannot keep it anymore.” Reportedly he stood to make $50,000 a day off advertising alone. Now if you have the game already downloaded nothing changes for you. Keep playing it to your heart’s content, pulling it from the Play Store simply made it so no new people could get it, but maybe someone should tell all the crazies that because now Nguyen is receiving death and suicide threats on twitter. You can usually see it coming, what things you shouldn’t invest too much time in.
Whether it be a doomed endeavor, a possible mate, or in this case an addicting game.  But it happens to the best of us; we do it anyway. The best thing you can do is pick yourself up dust yourself off and stay the course.