At a three-hour talk with students at the Hanoi University of Science and Technology on the evening of November 18, Dong listened more than he spoke.

Ta Hai Tung from the Hanoi University of Science and Technology, who was in charge of coordinating the conversation, described Dong: “He is a humble person who lives in a world of his own. Dong is surrounded by a curtain of mystery. Unlike other successful people, he doesn’t like to appear in mass media. ” Dong was somewhat hesitant to talk about himself.

“For the past 17 years, I only worked with computer screens so I don’t have anything to talk about. I thought I had to exchange some things for my success. What I have exchanged is maturity,” he said.

When asked about the decision to pull down Flappy Bird, Dong said he felt pressure that prompted him to do it.
Five years ago, Rolling Stone magazine wrote about the success of Nguyen Ha Dong and Flappy Bird. Dong earned about $50,000 a day.

Flappy Bird is one of 25 apps listed by CNET as having the biggest influence over the last decade. Dong said he once thought that he would be able to retire when he got $1.1 million. Now, he has more than that amount, but has not retired.
Five years after the removal of Flappy Bird, Dong is now running a company specializing in game development. The company only has two workers, including Dong and a friend, who was also a student at Hanoi University of Science and Technology.

After success with Flappy Bird, people hoped that Dong would repeat the success in the future. However, Dong said the probability rate for a similar success is just 0.1 percent. He revealed that he is developing a game with technology which has never been seen.

Along with the game development, Dong is giving financial support to some students who need money for research and development. The students need to show Dong what they have done, how high the projects’ feasibility is, how much money they need and how they would spend money.

Dong began learning programming at the age of 15. At 17, he began programming games. When he was a second-year university student, he worked for a game company and then began developing a game himself in 2011.

Source: VNA

The Vietnamese app developer wowed some 5,600 followers on his Facebook on November 18 by posting a photo, apparently a screen grab of a mobile game, showing four characters, including Faby, the hero of Flappy Bird.

“I’ve done a lot of attempts to make pixel art characters look good and mordern in today world. And I finally stick with this [sic],” Dong captioned the photo in English.

The background of the game features a row of houses and two utility poles with electrical wires, something typical of streets across Vietnam.

One commenter asked below the photo whether the new game would see four players compete against one another, but Dong, apparently jokingly, responded in Vietnamese that he “has no idea.”

On Monday, the Hanoi-based app developer continued to ‘leak’ another screenshot of the game, showing a flying cow against the same background as in the previous photo. Dong only captioned the screen grab #mycowsoft.

Again, the app developer did not reply to any of the curious comments below the photo.

But the leaks have sown hope among diehard fans of Flappy Bird that they will soon be able to play the next generation of the addictive game.

Dong Nguyen, who turned 32 earlier this month, originally released Flappy Bird in May 2013 but only shot to fame in January 2014, when his game topped the Free Apps chart in the U.S. and Chinese App Store. The mobile game, featuring 2D retro style graphics with pixilated characters, ended January as the most downloaded app on the App Store.

In early 2014, Dong said in an interview with The Verge that the game was earning around US$50,000 a day in revenue through in-game advertising.

When the game became a global phenomenon, Dong abruptly pulled it from both the iOS and Android app stores, dismaying fans around the world.

Flappy Bird has since remained being played as a legacy game by those who were lucky enough to install it on their devices before the discontinuation.

However, on September 20, Dong told his Facebook followers that the original Flappy Bird app was no longer playable on newer iOS versions, from iOS 11 onward.

“Thank you very much for your playing and supports in the last 4 years [sic],” he wrote.

In the post-Flappy Bird era, Dong continues to make mobile games through the game studio .GEARS, which he founded in 2012, but none of them have been able to attract as much fame as Flappy Bird.

Source: Tuoi Tre News