Flappy Bird Comes Home

The Flappy Bird clones infesting your app store are terrible—a thousand variations that prove how much worse everything else is compared to the original. Dong Nguyen, who made it, pulled the game offline in 2014 when he realized how compulsive it was. He said he didn’t want that responsibility. But Rolling Stone got him talking recently, and he’s had a change of heart. Wants to bring Flappy Bird back. He’s even planning a warning label about taking breaks, which is a touching gesture if you believe that’s the main reason behind his sudden nostalgia. Making fifty grand a day does things to your conscience.

Here’s what’s funny: the clones actually make the case for bringing back the original. Every bad copy shows you how much was working in the real thing—the perfect marriage of simplicity and cruelty. One button. Gravity pulling you down. The certainty you’re about to fail. That’s the whole secret. The addiction isn’t to the game, it’s to that specific feeling. Everything that came after just proved nobody else ever figured out what he’d made.