www.bahrainthismonth.com March 2014 81 Elma Bartholomew If you haven’t already flung your phone onto a highway trying to get over your shameful score on this addictive game, then aren’t you amongst the lucky few! Assuming you were living under a rock for the past few weeks, let me explain what Flappy Bird is. Deceptively simple, this retro-style game demands one simple task — tap the screen! That’s all you’ve got to do to get a hideous bird made of eightbit colour graphics pass through Mario-inspired pipes — for as long as you shall live. That’s right…there’s no end to the game. It goes on for as long as you can keep the bird afloat; you hit a pipe and it dies. When Indie developer Dong Nguyen one day decided to unleash ‘the game of the devil’, little did he know about the effects a maze of pipes would have on mankind. Originally launched in May 2013, Flappy Bird only topped the charts in January. It was around Christmas that all hell began to break loose. Not to be too dramatic, but the game, also known as the apocalypse, was reported to cause suicidal thoughts and the destruction of millions of gadgets. And the Vietnamese-based developer, who was said to be raking in around US$50,000 per day through in-game advertising, crumbled under pressure and decided to take it down. Has the untimely death of Flappy Bird made a difference? Yes and no. Well, for those of us who have already been sucked in, it’s simply a matter of time before we get bored. On the other hand, the prices of smartphones that have the game preinstalled have skyrocketed. Also, several copycats have surfaced in time to reap profits. The most interesting result of Flappy Bird’s disappearance is the petition to Mr President to bring back the insanely popular app. Besides his requests to ‘deport Justin Bieber’ and ‘pardon Edward Snowden’, the petition creator, who identifies himself as DS, reasons with Obama to revive the game because it is an addiction like no other. In a world obsessed with money, I suppose the hardest part of this ordeal is trying to understand why a man who had his life ‘sorted out’ would do such a thing? Bringing back the spotlight to Nguyen, why sympathise with someone who is supposed to have choked on the vitriol? Isn’t it odd that his other games with similar simplistic themes are still available for download? Would he take them down as well if they received as much flack as Flappy Bird did? Nguyen’s tweets make you want to believe that he is an ordinary guy, who simply wanted to get rid of the attention. However, with our minds being conditioned to think that money is everything, it’s hard to avoid drawing conclusions that deny any possibility of normalcy. Personal best: 26 downtimeintro Rise and Fall 82 x Gadgets - 86 x Music - 88 x Computer games - 89 x Websites - 90 x Apps - 91 x Movies Also this month An Hour at a Time 12 Hours shows an analogue clock with colour-coded sections indicating upcoming events on your calendar. Each event corresponds to the hours it occupies on the clock face. Money Talks Level Money gives you a detailed look at your spending habits. More importantly, it focuses on how much disposable money you’ve got on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
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