Why Vietnam-made Game Flappy Bird is Popular

flappy_birdVietnam-made game Flappy Bird is today's number one app in the iOS App Store in over 100 countries. It already has more than 50 million downloads and it even beat Facebook's Paper app. Anh-Minh Do of Tech in Asia explains the popularity of the game:

It’s so hard that it’s ridiculously frustrating, annoying, and somehow existentially hilarious. It’s so hard it’s funny. In this way, Flappy Bird is punishing. If you take a gander at the reviews on the App Store, you’ll immediately see how much people love to hate it. And this is probably the single biggest reason for its success. People love to torture themselves, and they love to share it. The difficulty of the game is engineered for virality.

Start the conversation

Authors, please log in »

Guidelines

  • All comments are reviewed by a moderator. Do not submit your comment more than once or it may be identified as spam.
  • Please treat others with respect. Comments containing hate speech, obscenity, and personal attacks will not be approved.

Receive great stories from around the world directly in your inbox.

Sign up to receive the best of Global Voices!

Submitted addresses will be confirmed by email, and used only to keep you up to date about Global Voices and our mission. See our Privacy Policy for details.

Newsletter powered by Mailchimp (Privacy Policy and Terms).

* = required field
Email Frequency



No thanks, show me the site