"The Phenominal Rise and Fall of Flappy Bird"
This topic is facinating for lots of reasons. Were Flappy Bird's story made into a movie, it might fit nicely in the confines of a Vine video. I'm sure that it has been pointed out already that Flappy Bird's game-play is a meta reflection of its own surge in popularity and just as rapid (and to some, frustrating) disappearance. Students that I've talked with were shocked that the game developer would walk away from a reported $50,000 a day. In Dong Nguyen, do we have our first true Artist of the App world?
One possible writing prompt could be:
"Should Dong Nguyen have pulled Flappy Bird from the app store?"
Here are the pertinent articles:1) "Inside the Brief Life and Untimely Death of Flappy Bird" from Wired Magazine
2) "The Life And Sudden Death Of 'Flappy Bird': How A Guy Making $50,000 Per Day Grew To 'Hate' His Own Game" from BusinessInsider.com (This article is interesting because students could use Mr. Nguyen's Twitter posts as text based evidence)
3) "You can't actually sell your Flappy Bird phone on eBay" from cnet.com (This article could be used for a discussion on copyright law. The article contains a link to a primary document from eBay about their listing policies).
4) "The Squalid Grade of Flappy Bird" from TheAtlantic.com (A more in-depth article for advanced readers).
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