The original Flappy Bird.
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9 reasons why Flappy Bird has become the latest viral gaming hit

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

Flappy Bird has taken over the No. 1 spot for free games on the iOS and Google Play app stores in the past week. It’s a simple game in terms of graphics, but it has very difficult gameplay. And that has made people play it over and over again (including my own kids) and helped it spread broadly.

Some observers think such a rocket ride as Flappy Bird has seen can only be possible with massive promotion and bots (or promotion through paid, fake user tweets and reviews). But game designer Dong Nguyen of dotGears, a one-man shop in Hanoi, Vietnam, has said the growth has all been organic.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.