bodyType

customContents

entityId

printArticlePageQuery

filter

article

body

urlAlias

articleSectionsContent

articleSeoArticle

articleSourceHeaderArticle

contentSchemaRenderContent

contentSubHeadlineContent

contentHeadlineContent

mainImagePrintArticleArticle

authorBlockPrintArticleArticle

contentSponsorTagContent

articlePianoPaywallContent

scmpYoutubeContent

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

query printArticlePageQuery(
  $entityId: String!
  $customContents: [CustomContentInput]
  $bodyType: BodyFormatTypeEnum
) {
  article(filter: {entityId: $entityId}) {
    entityId
    body(customContents: $customContents, type: $bodyType) {
      json
    }
    urlAlias
    ...articleSectionsContent
    ...articleSeoArticle_3o8td4
    ...articleSourceHeaderArticle
    ...contentSchemaRenderContent
    ...contentSubHeadlineContent
    ...contentHeadlineContent
    ...mainImagePrintArticleArticle
    ...authorBlockPrintArticleArticle
    ...contentSponsorTagContent
    ...articlePianoPaywallContent
    ...scmpYoutubeContent
    ...hooksTrackPageViewArticle
    id
  }
}

fragment articlePianoPaywallContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...hooksPaywallPromiseContent
}

fragment articleSectionsContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  sections {
    value {
      ...helpersCheckIfNewsSectionInFirstIndexSection
      ...entityLink
      name
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment articleSeoArticle_3o8td4 on Article {
  ...hooksArticleSeoArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
  ...helpersGetArticleTypeArticle
  entityId
  publishedDate
  updatedDate
  summary {
    text
  }
  subHeadline {
    text
  }
  body(customContents: $customContents, type: $bodyType) {
    text
  }
  keywords
  sections {
    value {
      name
      id
    }
  }
  topics {
    name
    entityId
    id
  }
  urlAlias
  authors {
    name
    id
  }
  images {
    style(filter: {style: "768x768"}) {
      url
    }
  }
  readingTime
}

fragment articleSourceHeaderArticle on Article {
  urlAlias
  ...entityLink
}

fragment authorBlockPrintArticleArticle on Article {
  ...defaultArticleDateContent
  ...authorNamesArticle
}

fragment authorNameAuthor on Author {
  ...entityLink
  name
  entityUuid
}

fragment authorNamesArticle on Article {
  authorLocations
  authors {
    entityId
    location
    ...authorNameAuthor
    id
  }
}

fragment blockquoteQuoteContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...contentShareWidgetContent
}

fragment checkersCheckContentContainsStarlingImageContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  topics {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment contentHeadlineContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  headline
  socialHeadline
  ...contentHeadlineTagContent
  ...helpersUseContentSponsorContent
}

fragment contentHeadlineTagContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...hooksContentHeadlineTagContent
}

fragment contentNewsletterWidgetContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  topics {
    relatedNewsletters {
      ...helpersMassageToNewsletterItemNewsletter
      id
    }
    id
  }
  sections {
    value {
      relatedNewsletters {
        ...helpersMassageToNewsletterItemNewsletter
        id
      }
      id
    }
  }
  ... on Article {
    relatedNewsletters {
      ...helpersMassageToNewsletterItemNewsletter
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment contentSchemaRenderContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...blockquoteQuoteContent
  ...imageContent
  ...inlineWidgetContent
  ...photoGalleryWidgetContent
  ...scmpYoutubeContent
}

fragment contentShareWidgetContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  entityId
  urlAlias
  shortUrl
  socialHeadline
  headline
}

fragment contentSponsorTagContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...helpersUseContentSponsorContent
}

fragment contentSubHeadlineContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  subHeadline {
    json
  }
  summary {
    json
  }
  ...contentSchemaRenderContent
}

fragment defaultArticleDateContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...hooksArticleDateUtilsContent
}

fragment entityLink on BaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias {
  __isBaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias: __typename
  __typename
  entityId
  entityUuid
  urlAlias
  urlRedirect {
    toUrl
    id
  }
  application {
    entityId
    id
  }
  ... on Section {
    fullSectionPath {
      entityId
      id
    }
    parentSection
  }
  ...helpersAppBarVariantBase
  ...helpersApplicationBase
  ...helpersCheckIsPlusArticle
  ...helpersStyleSectionContent
}

fragment helpersAppBarVariantBase on BaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias {
  __isBaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias: __typename
  ...helpersCheckIsLiveArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPlusPage
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesPage
  ...helpersCheckIsPostMagazineArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsStyleArticle
  ...helpersSectionContent
  ...helpersStyleSectionContent
}

fragment helpersApplicationBase on BaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias {
  __isBaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias: __typename
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesPage
  ...helpersCheckIsPlusPage
}

fragment helpersCheckIfNewsSectionInFirstIndexSection on Section {
  name
}

fragment helpersCheckIsAmpEnabledArticle on Article {
  entityId
  types {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
  sections {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
  disableOffPlatformContent
  sponsorType
  published
  ...helpersCheckIsPlusArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
}

fragment helpersCheckIsLiveArticle on Article {
  flattenTypeIds
  liveArticle {
    status
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsMainTopicContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  topics {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPlusArticle on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ... on Article {
    paywallTypes {
      entityUuid
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPlusPage on Page {
  urlAlias
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPostMagazineArticle on Article {
  sections {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle on Article {
  sections {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPostiesPage on Page {
  urlAlias
}

fragment helpersCheckIsStyleArticle on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  sections {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersGetArticleTypeArticle on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ... on Article {
    types {
      value {
        entityId
        id
      }
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersMassageToNewsletterItemNewsletter on Newsletter {
  entityId
  name
  alternativeName
  description {
    text
  }
  summary {
    text
  }
  homepageDescription {
    text
  }
}

fragment helpersSanitizeArticleTypeEntityIdsArticle on Article {
  types {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersSanitizeAuthorTypesArticle on Article {
  authors {
    types
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersSanitizedAuthorEntityIdsArticle on Article {
  authors {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersSectionContent on Section {
  fullSectionPath {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersStyleSectionContent on Section {
  fullSectionPath {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersUseContentSponsorContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  topics {
    entityId
    sponsor {
      ...sponsorTagSponsor
      name
      type
      id
    }
    id
  }
  ... on Article {
    sponsorType
  }
  ...helpersCheckIsMainTopicContent
}

fragment hooksArticleDateUtilsContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  createdDate
  publishedDate
  updatedDate
}

fragment hooksArticleSeoArticle on Article {
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPostMagazineArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsStyleArticle
  ...hooksContentHeadlineTagContent
  ...helpersCheckIsAmpEnabledArticle
  entityId
  headline
  socialHeadline
  types {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
  authors {
    entityId
    id
  }
  images {
    generic_og: style(filter: {style: "og_image_scmp_generic"}) {
      url
    }
    styles(filter: {styles: ["og_image_posties_article", "og_postmag", "og_image_style", "og_image_scmp_analysis", "og_image_scmp_explainer", "og_image_scmp_editorial", "og_image_scmp_fact_check", "og_image_scmp_debate", "og_image_scmp_live", "og_image_scmp_obituary", "og_image_scmp_opinion", "og_image_scmp_review", "og_image_scmp_series", "og_image_scmp_generic"]}) {
      url
      style
    }
    type
  }
  urlAlias
}

fragment hooksContentHeadlineTagContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  __typename
  ... on Article {
    types {
      value {
        name
        entityId
        description {
          text
        }
        id
      }
    }
    ...helpersCheckIsStyleArticle
  }
  flag
  sections {
    value {
      name
      id
    }
  }
  ...hooksContentHelperContent
}

fragment hooksContentHelperContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...helpersSanitizeArticleTypeEntityIdsArticle
  ...helpersSanitizeAuthorTypesArticle
  ...helpersSanitizedAuthorEntityIdsArticle
  flag
}

fragment hooksPaywallPromiseContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  entityId
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
}

fragment hooksTrackPageViewArticle on Article {
  entityId
  publishedDate
  headline
  sections {
    value {
      name
      id
    }
  }
  urlAlias
  authors {
    name
    id
  }
  entityUuid
}

fragment imageContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  headline
  ...checkersCheckContentContainsStarlingImageContent
}

fragment inlineWidgetContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...contentNewsletterWidgetContent
}

fragment mainImagePrintArticleArticle on Article {
  images {
    title
    url
    isSlideshow
    size_652x446: style(filter: {style: "652x446"}) {
      url
    }
  }
}

fragment photoGalleryDialogContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  __typename
  ...contentShareWidgetContent
}

fragment photoGalleryWidgetContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...photoGalleryDialogContent
}

fragment scmpYoutubeContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  entityId
  urlAlias
  publishedDate
}

fragment sponsorTagSponsor on Sponsor {
  name
  type
  images {
    url
  }
}


sections

types

disableOffPlatformContent

sponsorType

published

headline

socialHeadline

authors

images

publishedDate

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

keywords

topics

readingTime

authorLocations

entityUuid

MCT INTERNATIONAL

Last April, Dong Nguyen, a quiet 28-year-old who lived with his parents in Hanoi, Vietnam, and had a day job programming location devices for taxis, spent a holiday weekend making a mobile game. He wanted it to be simple but challenging, in the spirit of the Nintendo games he grew up playing. The object was to fly a bug-eyed, big-lipped, bloated bird between a series of green vertical pipes. The quicker a player tapped the screen, the higher the bird would flap. He called it Flappy Bird.
The game went live on the iOS App Store on May 24. Instead of charging for Flappy Bird, Nguyen made it available for free and hoped to get a few hundred US dollars a month from in-game ads.

But with about 25,000 new apps going online every month, Flappy Bird was lost in the mix and seemed like a bust - until, eight months later, something crazy happened. The game went viral. By February, it was topping the charts in more than 100 countries and had been downloaded more than 50 million times. Nguyen was earning an estimated US$50,000 a day. Not even Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg became rich so fast.
Yet as Flappymania peaked, Nguyen remained a mystery. Aside from the occasional tweet, he had little to say about his incredible story. He ducked the press and refused to be photographed. He was called a fraud, a con man and a thief. Bloggers accused him of stealing art from Nintendo. Gaming site Kotaku wrote in a widely clicked headline, "Flappy Bird Is Making $50,000 A Day Off Ripped Art."
On February 9, at 2.02am Hanoi time, a message appeared on Nguyen's Twitter account. "I am sorry 'Flappy Bird' users," it read, "22 hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down. I cannot take this anymore." The message was retweeted more than 145,000 times by the disbelieving masses. How could someone who hit the online jackpot suddenly pull the plug? But when the clock struck midnight the next evening, the story came to an end. Nguyen, as promised, took Flappy Bird offline. In his wake, he left millions of jilted gamers, and one big question: who was this dude, and WTF had he done?
Two weeks after the demise of Flappy Bird, I'm taxiing past pagodas and motorbikes to the outskirts of Hanoi, a crowded, run-down metropolis filled with street vendors selling pirated goods, to meet with Nguyen, who has agreed to share with me his whole story for the first time. With the international press and local paparazzi searching for him, Nguyen has been in hiding - fleeing his parents' house to stay at a friend's apartment, where he now remains. Although dotcom millionaires have become familiar in the United States, in Vietnam's fledgling tech community they're all but unheard of. When the country's first celebrity geek, a boyish, slight guy in jeans and a grey jumper, walks hesitantly up and introduces himself, he measures his words and thoughts carefully, like placing pixels on a screen.
"I was just making something fun to share with other people," he says, with the help of a translator. "I couldn't predict the success of Flappy Bird."
Growing up in Van Phuc, a village outside Hanoi that is famous for silk-making, Nguyen (pronounced "nwin") never imagined being a world-famous game designer. Though his father owned a hardware store and his mother worked for the government, his family couldn't afford Game Boys for him or his younger brother. Eventually, they were able to purchase a Nintendo, which, like most electronics in Vietnam, was available only in cloned form. Marvelling at the power of controlling a character onscreen, Nguyen spent his free time obsessively playing Super Mario Bros.

By the age of 16, Nguyen had learned to code his own computer chess game. Three years later, while studying computer science at a university in Hanoi, he placed in the top 20 of a programming competition and got an internship with one of the city's only game companies at the time, Punch Entertainment, which made mobile phone games. Son Bui Truong, Nguyen's former boss, says the young programmer stood out for his speed, skill and fierce independent streak.
"Dong didn't need a supervisor," Truong says. "He wasn't comfortable with it. So we said he did not have to report to anyone."
Nguyen soon tired of churning out the company's sports games. When he later got his hands on an iPhone, he became fascinated by the possibilities of the touch screen. Few games, however, captured the simple power of the Nintendo games of his youth. Angry Birds was too busy, he thought.
"I don't like the graphics," he says. "It looked too crowded."
Nguyen wanted to make games for people like himself: busy, harried, always on the move. "I pictured how people play," he says, as he taps his iPhone and reaches his other hand in the air. "One hand holding the train strap." He'd make a game for them.
As we talk into the night, hordes of agile pedestrians deftly dodge the Hanoi traffic, screens flickering in their hands like fireflies.
"When you play a game on a smartphone," he says, with an ever-present cigarette dangling from his lip, "the simplest way is just tapping."
Last April, Nguyen was tapping his iPhone at home while the rest of Hanoi was celebrating Reunification Day, the annual holiday marking the end of the Vietnam war. Instead of joining the throngs outside, he spent the weekend in his bedroom at his parents' house creating a little game for fun, as a poster he'd drawn of Mario gazed down on him.
Nguyen had already made and released a mobile game, Shuriken Block, earlier that month. The object was to stop a cascade of ninja stars from impaling five little men on the screen. This seemed simple enough - the one-word instruction read "tap". Tap the falling star at the right moment and it would bounce away. But Nguyen understood the mantra of game design that Nolan Bushnell, creator of Pong and founder of Atari, described as "easy to learn and difficult to master". More recently, independent gamemakers had taken this to extremes with the so-called masocore genre - games that are masochistically hard. Shuriken Block was deceptively ruthless. Even the nimblest player would have trouble lasting a minute before the men were spurting pixilated blood. Nguyen was pleased with the results but the game languished in the iOS store.
For his new game, Nguyen realised a way to go even simpler: let the player tap anywhere. All he needed was an idea to build it around. The year before, he'd drawn a pixilated bird on his computer that riffed on Nintendo fish, called Cheep Cheeps. He drew green pipes - a homage to Super Mario Bros - that the bird would have to navigate. He modelled the game on one of the most masocore analogue creations ever: paddleball. The toy was a simple design - just a wooden paddle with a string attached to a rubber ball. But players would be lucky to bounce the ball more than a few times in a row.
Like paddleball, he limited his game to just a couple of elements - the bird and the pipes - and resisted the urge to inundate the action with new elements as the player progressed. He tuned the physics so that the bird was fighting gravity so hard that even the slightest wrong tap would kill it. Since the deaths would be so frequent, Nguyen wanted to make them entertaining. He tried having the bird explode in a bloody pulp or bounce across the ground before settling on a face plant. He then sifted through hundreds of sounds before settling on a kung fu-style thwack to make the bird's demise even funnier. (The first question he asks me about the game is if it made me laugh.)
"The bird is flying along peacefully," he says, with a chuckle, "and all of a sudden you die!"
Before the last flag waved on Reunification Day, Nguyen had gone on Twitter and posted a screen shot of his "new simple game". Other than a couple of tweets, Nguyen says he put no marketing behind the launch. And, like so many games released into the flood, Flappy Bird flopped. The first mention of the game on Twitter didn't come until five months later, on November 4, when someone posted a three-word review. "F**k Flappy Bird," it read.
Trying to divine why stuff goes viral is like trying to fly the bird: you end up face-down on the ground. But "F**k Flappy Bird" captured the essence of the appeal. The highly addictive Flappy Bird was like a snot-nosed kid paddleballing you in the face. It was begging to be spanked. And you couldn't resist or stop playing.
By the end of December, players had swarmed social media to commiserate, compete and complain about breaking their phones in frustration. Twitter erupted with Flappy Bird testimonials, eventually hitting more than 16 million messages. One called it "the most annoy-ing game yet I can't stop" and another said it was "slowly consuming my life". As word spread from Reddit to YouTube, playgrounds to office parks, Flappy Bird rose to the top 10 of the US charts by early January. Finally, with no promotion, no plan, no logic, on January 17, Flappy Bird hit No1. A week or two later, it topped the Google Play store, too.
"Seeing the game on top, I felt amazing," Nguyen recalls. Like everyone else, he was shocked by its meteoric rise - and the avalanche of money that would be wired into his bank account. Even with Apple and Google's 30 per cent take, Nguyen estimated he was clearing US$50,000 a day. Before long, Shuriken Block and a new game he had submitted called Super Ball Juggling joined Flappy Bird in the top 10. But other than buying a new Mac and taking his friends out for rice wine and chicken hot pot, Nguyen wasn't much for indulging.
"I couldn't be too happy," he says quietly. "I don't know why." Remarkably, he hadn't even bothered to tell his parents, with whom he lived. "My parents don't understand games," he explains.
As news hit of how much money Nguyen was making, his face appeared in the Vietnamese papers and on television, which was how his parents learned their son had made the game. The local paparazzi soon besieged their house and he couldn't go out unnoticed. While this might seem a small price to pay for such fame and fortune, for Nguyen, the attention felt suffocating.
"It is something I never want," he tweeted. "Please give me peace."
But the hardest thing of all, he says, was something else entirely. He hands me his iPhone so I can scroll through some messages he's saved. One is from a woman chastising him for "distracting the children of the world". Another laments that "13 kids at my school broke their phones because of your game, and they still play it cause it's addicting like crack". Nguyen tells of e-mails from people who had lost their jobs, a mother who had stopped talking to her children.
"At first I thought they were just joking," he says, "but I realise they really hurt themselves."
Nguyen - who says he botched tests in high school because he was playing too much Counter-Strike - took them to heart.
By early last month, the weight of everything - the scrutiny, the relentless criticism and accusations - felt crushing. He couldn't sleep, couldn't focus, didn't want to go outdoors. His parents, he says, "worried about my well-being". His tweets became darker and more cryptic. "I can call 'Flappy Bird' is a success of mine," read one. "But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it." He realised there was one thing to do: pull the game. After tweeting that he was taking it down, 10 million people downloaded it in 22 hours. Then he hit a button, and Flappy Bird disappeared. When I ask him why he did it, he answers with the same conviction that led him to create the game.
"I'm master of my own fate," Nguyen says. "Independent thinker."
In the wake of Flappy Bird's demise, rumours spread. Nguyen had committed suicide. Nintendo was suing him. He'd received death threats. His refusal to speak fuelled the speculation even more. To fill the massive hole left by Flappy Bird, imitators rushed to cash in. By the time I visit, the top three free iPhone apps are Flappy rip-offs - Flappy Wings, Splashy Fish, even a game based on Miley Cyrus. At the time of writing, a Drake game called Tiny Flying Drizzy is No1 at the App Store and, according to a study, a new Flappy clone pops up every 24 minutes.
"People can clone the app because of its simplicity," Nguyen says, "but they will never make another Flappy Bird." Indeed, for those who crave the real thing, phones with Flappy Bird installed have been listed for up to US$94,000 on eBay.
But the absence has also spawned a reappraisal. Kotaku apologised for its allegations of plagiarism. John Romero, co-creator of the game Doom, says Flappy Bird is "a reaction against prevailing design the way grunge was a reaction to metal". Bushnell compares it to his own hit, Pong. "Simple games are more satisfying," he says.
As for Nguyen, the millions of people who downloaded Flappy Bird are still generating tens of thousands of dollars for him. He's finally quit his job and says he's thinking of buying a Mini Cooper and an apartment. He just got his first passport. For now, though, he's busy doing what he loves most: making games. Over tea, he shows me the three he's working on simultaneously: an untitled cowboy-themed shooter, a vertical flying game called Kitty Jetpack and an "action chess game", as he puts it, called Checkonaut. Each sports his now-familiar style: simple play, retro graphics and hard-core difficulty.
Since taking Flappy Bird down, he says, he's felt "relief". "I can't go back to my life before, but I'm good now." As for the future of his flapper, he's still turning down offers to purchase the game. Nguyen refuses to compromise his independence. But will Flappy Bird ever fly again?
"I'm considering it," Nguyen says. He's not working on a new version, but if he ever releases one it will come with a "warning", he says: "Please take a break."
Rolling Stone Magazine
 


Clipped wings: the truth behind Flappy Bird

Dong Nguyen in a Hanoi coffee shop. Photo: AFP

Flap happy.

Magazines

PostMag

Just months after Flappy Bird went viral, its creator decided to shoot it down, leaving behind millions of disbelieving gamers. David Kushner finds out why Vietnam's 'first celebrity geek' pulled the plug on an app that was earning him US$50,000 a day


Just months after Flappy Bird went viral, its creator decided to shoot it down, leaving behind millions of disbelieving gamers. David Kushner finds out why Vietnam's 'first celebrity geek' pulled the plug on an app that was earning him US$50,000 a day.
