iPhone Game Players Jump for Doodle Jump
From prime-time sitcoms to late night TV to a fashion accessory for pop stars, Doodle Jump is everywhere, CBS News Correspondent Jeff Glor reports.
"It's addicting," one New Yorker said.
So what is it?
"It's just a very lovable little character," Igor Pusenjak, Doodle Jump's creator, said.
It's the brainchild of Pusenjak and his brother Marko Pusenjak, immigrants from Croatia. Last April, they had an idea inspired by their own, well, doodling.
Their four-legged cartoon creation is always jumping up, guided by players' hands, avoiding the bad monsters and UFOs and reaching the good trampolines.
Fifteen months later, it's a cultural craze, and Igor Pusenjak said it's made him a lot of money.
The game just passed the 5 million download mark for Apple's iPhone, and since the brothers get 70 percent of profits that's $3.5 million.
"There's this rags-to-riches story with developers where they can be on their own, not with a company, and create an application and that application can turn into Doodle Jump," Boy Genius Report's Jonathan Geller said.
As for advice on excelling at the game, Igor Pusenjak recommends slow movements. Players lose if Doodle falls, hardly what the Pusenjak brothers have done. Their rise is considered a success story spurred entirely by smartphone applications.
"There's a gold rush mentality with the App Store now because it's giving people access to something they didn't have before," Geller said.
By now, more than 225,000 iPhone apps have been downloaded a cumulative five billion times. Doodle might be the most famous app of all.
"We've had marriage proposals for Doodle," said Igor Pusenjak. "I don't think Doodle has responded yet because he's looking for his princess somewhere up there."
Doodle's heading straight up and taking its founders along for the ride.
