Written by Brianna Duarte / Staff Writer
As students walk past each other in the hallways of Bishop Amat, they can overhear frustrated conversations regarding an app that has occupied 3.5 megabytes on their phones and tablets. Students are seen in small groups with their friends as one of them attempts to play the game on their smartphone, only to fail. Some students yell or spew profanities at their phones. The cause of this frustration is a relatively new game called Flappy Bird.
The increasingly popular app was pulled down from the market Feb. 9 after having been downloaded at least 50,000 times.
The app was released in May 2013, but didn’t gain its infamous popularity until earlier this year with people tweeting how frustrating the game is and the addiction to it. Flappy Bird quickly rose to the number one spot on both the iTunes App Store and Google Play.
“I heard a lot of people talking about this game called Flappy Bird and I thought that maybe I should download it,” said senior Jessica Leal.
Some people, however, don’t think much of the game.
“I just never got on the bandwagon. It looked kind of annoying,” said senior Xela Quintana. “This stupid little thing can barely fly and it has to go through these green tubes and the slightest touch just brings him down. It seemed kind of lame,”
The game was especially known for its frustration amongst users.
“I played it and every time I lost,” said Leal. “I just felt like throwing my phone at the wall.”
The game’s creator, Dong Nguyen, tweeted that he decided take the app down because it was doing damage to his life.
“I am sorry ‘Flappy Bird’ users, 22 hours from now, I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down. I cannot take this anymore,” Nguyen said in his tweet.
Many people thought at first that he may have been taking down the game over legal issues. The artwork in the game is extremely similar of the classic Super Mario Bros. games. However, Nguyen denied the claim in another tweet.
“It is not anything related legal issues. I just cannot keep it anymore,” he wrote in a follow up tweet.
Some users had mixed reactions to Nguyen’s decisions, but some people were actually glad with the removal.
“I cared only because everyone stopped talking about it,” said Quintana. “It wasn’t even a complicated game, the graphics were basic and the obstacle was tapping a finger.”
Nguyen stated that he would still be making games, despite his decision to remove Flappy Bird. Since he took the game down, there have been many copycat games created and one recent game called Iron Pants, that has the same objective.
“I kept the app on my phone just because I didn’t want to lose it, but I don’t really play it as much,” said senior Andrea Lizarraga.
Other students decided to simply delete the app entirely, being fully aware that they will never be able to download it again.
“I deleted the game right after I heard that he took it down from the App Store and I was happy because then I wouldn’t be tempted to buy it again,” said Leal.