My life has been filled with multiple turning points — critical, life-altering events that redirect the path I walk. There was the time I turned my life around on a choir tour to Europe during my junior year of high school. There was the time I almost left Elizabethtown College after my second day here but returned like a phoenix rising from the ashes. There was the time I beat the odds and took home the Mr. Etown crown, as if to say, “Anyone can be king.” But towering over all of these momentous events is one crucial, pivotal moment in my life: the night I downloaded Flappy Bird.
“This can’t be that hard,” I thought to myself. That was before I went five consecutive rounds of scoring zero points. Maneuvering that idiotic-looking, horribly-drawn excuse for a bird between two pipes that were clearly copied straight from Super Mario Bros. is — believe me — much harder than it looks. But if I could score 53 million points in Temple Run, I was not about to let an even simpler game leave me with the miserable sting of defeat. So I persevered, and by the end of day one with Flappy Bird, I had scored a respectable 52 points. This, however, was only the beginning.
Within three days, I flapped my way to 188 points. No one could stop me — I was determined to be the best at this game. As soon as I found a free moment in my day, I would try my hand at Flappy Bird, my forbidden love. For a while, I thought that my score was unmatchable, until I caught wind of some particularly talented and addicted players who had reached over 200 points. And a week later, by the time I had passed the 200-point margin, some other Etown students had reached nearly 300. I was distraught.
Suddenly, I began to reconsider some of my choices. How many hours did I pour into some cheap Helicopter rip-off just for bragging rights? How many times had I tapped my phone screen to propel my feathered friend to the top of the high score list — all in vain? How many conversations did I cut short with the increasingly common proclamation of, “Don’t talk to me — I’m playing Flappy Bird!?” Flappy Bird has turned my entire life upside-down. When I look in the mirror each day, I see someone different (and cry a little bit, knowing that I still haven’t grown since high school.) I just want to delete the darned thing from my phone. But I can’t. And if I do, there is no going back.
On Feb. 9, Flappy Bird was removed from the App Store. Creator Dong Nguyen tweeted the day before, “I am sorry Flappy Bird users, 22 hours from now, I will take Flappy Bird down. I cannot take this anymore.” We can only guess the meaning behind his cryptic statement. Regardless of Nguyen’s message, the foul demon that is Flappy Bird has been exorcised from the Internet. But the game’s demonic presence lives on in the circuitry of my iPhone, and I cannot bring myself to cast it away.
Due to Flappy Bird’s removal from the App Store, phones that still have the game on it have been posted for exorbitant selling prices on sites such as Ebay. The prospect of riches, however, is not why I refuse to delete Flappy Bird from my phone. Flappy Bird’s cheap-looking design and simplistic interface belie — and I would argue, contribute to — the game’s entertainment value and addictive nature. I have decided to keep Flappy Bird because it is fun.
Oftentimes, games with a simple concept and endearing presentation tend to reach the highest degrees of fame and fan following. Take a look at Candy Crush, the big hit of 2013 — it’s like a repackaged version of Bejeweled, except with candy, power-ups, more candy, a couple new twists and, of course, enough candy to make a dentist cry. So before you question why such an inane game has hooked smartphone users everywhere, just remember that Flappy Bird is hardly unique in its winning formula.
I can rave all I want about Flappy Bird’s ruining my life, which it actually hasn’t, in case sarcasm is a foreign language to you, but I cannot deny the game’s pick-up-and-play entertainment value. The challenge comes with staving off the game’s addictive nature. Granted, I may have a bit of an addictive personality, but the game itself is hardly to blame for my overplaying it.
The game doesn’t inject nicotine into my finger every time I tap the screen, as likely of a scenario as that seems. I made the mistake of letting the game soak up my free time, and there is no sense in blaming a collection of codes and pixels for this.
If you still have Flappy Bird on your phone, why delete it? Learn to appreciate the game in small doses, and try to wean yourself off it if you’re addicted. That’s what I’m trying to do, so withhold your judgment if you see me hurl my phone across the room — it’s a gradual process. If you never downloaded the game, deleted it or simply don’t have access to it, then some might call you the luckiest of all. Maybe check out the online parody game, Squishy Bird, in which you control the pipes from Flappy Bird in an attempt to squish the titular avian menace.
But whether you’re flapping with the rest of us or soaring above the hype, please remember — and remind your friends: It’s just a game.
