Why Everyone Is Still Flapping the Bird

The iPhone and Android app “Flappy Bird” has recently gained massive popularity, and people from every corner of the globe are flapping the bird. The game consists of a small animated bird who the player must maneuver between green mario-esque pipes; a task which proves to be absurdly difficult for any first time player. The extreme difficulty of Flappy Bird is in partly what has led to its recent success; the app makes a whopping $50,000 in revenue daily for the Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen, who has successfully created a game that appeals to our basic human sense of determination. The appeal of visible progress is why even people with high scores of 20, 15, or 10 just keep on flapping that bird.

“If I had to describe Flappy Bird in one word, I would choose something like ‘perseverance, heart, or determination,” said Aidan Reilly, a Champaign high schooler with an astonishing high score of 318. “That’s what flapping the bird is really all about. Sure, you’ll hit thousands of pipes along the way; I didn’t hit 318 in one day’s work. But you’ve got to fight through it. You’ve got to flap that bird like it’s the last flap of its life.”

Reilly’s mindset and attitude towards the game are what keep the bird flapping day in and day out. People like him put all their heart, effort, and skill into becoming the best bird flapper in their communities.

One competitive bird-flapper is a student at Urbana High School; Senior Max Dragoo stated he downloaded the app simply to spite Reilly, but the score of 318 still stands. “It’s the kind of thing that you can see yourself improve at,” said Dragoo. “Each day you get a few pipes further, and the daily progress is what keeps people playing.”

While the rest of the world shouts at their phone screens, Dong Nguyen is sitting pretty. He discovered the key to an addicting game; enough progress to make the player come back for more.