My family left me. I have no one. The only thing that lives in me is Flappy. I dream about this bird that looks like a chicken nugget.

Everything there is to say about Flappy Bird as an addictive, yet painfully frustrating game has already been said. Evidence of this can be found in the reviews of the game on the iOS App Store. In light of this, I’m not going to talk about Flappy Bird the game. Instead, I’m going to talk about Flappy Bird the phenomena.

Flappy Bird was made by a man named Dong Nguyen, who I’m not completely convinced isn’t an identity made up as a marketing stunt or perhaps experiment, by a larger entity. He lives in Hanoi, Vietnam, and for about a week was the creator of three of the top ten most downloaded free apps on the iOS App Store, and raking in about $50k a day in ad revenues.

The story of a man who lives in Vietnam, publishes indie games on the app store under his own name and becomes a worldwide phenomena in a matter of weeks is appealing in all the most viral ways possible. Now that he’s apparently pulling the game from the app store because it “ruins his simple life,” the story has reached a new level of pressworthiness. He seems so earnest.

Flappy Bird has been criticized for copying a lot of it’s art from Nintendo, particularly the green pipes. Nintendo’s been struggling recently, as their CEO vowed to take a %50 percent pay cut citing a %30 drop in profits. Even under these circumstances, the company still refuses to release their legendary titles on iOS or any other third party platform. You’d think a struggling company would pay some attention to a game that copies their style bringing in $50k a day.

So far, Nintendo hasn’t really done anything about it. Nguyen himself tweets that he’s not shutting down Flappy Bird for any legal reasons. What’s Nintendo’s next move? The answer to this question doesn’t really matter. The interesting part about this story is that there is a single man, creating games in his free time, who lives in Vietnam, and is currently being brought up in board meetings and strategy talks at a multibillion dollar company.

Armed with a computer, an internet connection and a little freedom, anyone can create something that affects the strategy of multibillion dollar companies and evokes a strong emotional response from millions of people. Of course it’s not as easy as it sounds, but just the fact that it’s possible is enough to offer hope to creators everywhere.