On February 10, 2014, the legendary game, Flappy Bird–created by Dong Nguyen, a twenty nine year old video game developer–ended its nine month streak of garnering frustration among its app users. Recognized by almost every teenager with a smart-phone, Flappy Bird is legendary for its ability to cause anger, hatred, and love for the app for it’s difficulty in its gameplay. The game consists of one pressing the phone to let the bird flap in between green pipes, and if one accidentally hits the pipe it results in an impending death.

   This game has attracted many users who share both opinions of favor and opinions of extreme distaste. People similar to Chase Yun (10) felt that the game is “a pretty epic game. The simplicity to this game is why I love this game, and the fact that [novices] can not beat me in this game is why I love it so much.” The game relies on a steady finger, and if one can achieve such a task, they can perform strongly on the game. The game creates competition among fellow cohorts trying to achieve the higher score of them all. However some people do not take this game so lightly. West High student, Nina Kulczyk (11) said that she has “played this game before and I found this game utterly pointless. There is no point to the game, and I do not understand why people download and play this game so obsessively.” Others similar to Nina found great distaste in this game. Others instead have mixed feelings regarding this app for example, Ruben Mera (11), “This game frustrates me so hard, which is why I like it. It’s funny watching other people being frustrated to score over ten points, while I am in the upper ninety points.”

   So why exactly did Nguyen take Flappy Birds off the Internet play stores? Some think that the green pipes which the birds attempt to navigate through strike a startling resemblance to the Nintendo’s Super Mario Brother’s pipes, and Nintendo perhaps gave an ultimatum to Nguyen to take off the app or pay them a huge penalty. Or perhaps the extreme frustration has garnered death e-mails from the fans ventilating their frustration onto the game-designer. The truth is we will never know exactly why this game was deleted, but what we can all do is wonder.

   For almost everyone, Flappy Bird creates an atmosphere filled with utter agony but at the same time a sense of fun. Now because the app has flapped away, there is no knowing what will be the next mainstream app. Hopefully, there would be one similar to this brain-hurting game.