Bubble Ball bounces boy to the big leagues
Governor Herbert stands with Robert Nay at the STEM media campaign launch on Jan. 30, 2014. Courtesy photo
Governor Herbert and Robert Nay speak at Larsen Elementary about Nay's "Sight Words and Spelling Practice" app on Jan. 30, 2014. Courtesy photo
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to create a No. 1 mobile device app. In fact, as proven by Spanish Fork teen Robert Nay, it doesn’t even really take an adult. Nay was just 14 years old when a friend’s dad encouraged him to try his hand at game coding, a suggestion that would lead him down a path to unexpected and unprecedented success.
“Initially I didn’t know if I could make one, but I decided to try,” Nay said of his experience. “I had done some Web development and other coding previously, so I was familiar with many of the concepts, but Bubble Ball was my first mobile app.”
Though just in the eighth grade, Nay, with the support of his parents, worked tirelessly on concepts and ideas for his game, adding elements he enjoyed from other games and deciding the best ways to make his game more entertaining. The result? Bubble Ball — a simple physics puzzle game Nay assumed his family and friends might enjoy. Bubble Ball found its way to a much larger audience than that, however, quickly toppling the hit slingshot game Angry Birds from the top of the Apple App Store’s top free games list and taking its place as the No. 1 app.
“I was very surprised,” Nay said of his game’s nearly overnight success. “I had no idea that it would be downloaded so many times. I was expecting friends and family to play my game, and for it to get maybe several hundred downloads. I didn’t know what to do when I saw that it had over 100,000 downloads in the first week!”
With that kind of quick success, it isn’t surprising that people took notice. Soon after his app released, Nay found himself featured on such national media as the “Huffington Post,” “Good Morning America” and the “Wall Street Journal,” garnering a place in “Forbes’ ” “30 under 30 for 2011” and “CNN Money’s” “8 Kid Entrepreneurs to Watch”
“I was quite astonished that [Robert’s app] made it to No. 1,” said Robert’s mother, Kari Nay, in a recent email interview. “Bubble Ball was an app he made for fun, because he enjoys programming. On the other hand, I was very happy for him that it did so well. Its success has given him many opportunities and I feel very grateful for that. Robert has had the chance to correspond with young people all over the world and help them with their dreams of creating their own apps.”
Though several years have passed since Nay’s first app released, he certainly hasn’t turned in the towel on game coding and app creation. Just last year he was approached by Thanksgiving Point and once again dove into the world of Bubble Ball to create an updated app just for them, before working with a teacher at Larsen Elementary in Spanish Fork to create a new app to assist the students there with spelling practice.
“I thought it was exciting yet scary when Thanksgiving Point came to me about the possibility of making an app to help promote their new Museum of Natural Curiosity,” Robert said, regarding his experiences. “I’d never done a project like this for someone else, but Thanksgiving Point was great to work with, and I had a lot of fun developing the app … I [also] created ‘Sight Words and Spelling Practice’ for Angela Eckhardt, a Kindergarten teacher at the elementary school I went to,” he said. “She told me what she wanted the app to do, and gave me various activities and ideas. I developed the ideas into an app and got feedback from her. The app helps Kindergarten or first-grade students learn their sight words or spelling words with activities like word tracing, spelling, matching and bingo.”
Now, at just 17, Robert has three successful apps under his belt, and has been acknowledged across the country for his success in doing something he loved. Because of that, Nay said his advice to everyone else is to just tackle their dreams.
“I’d encourage people — young people especially — to find something worthwhile they want to do, and to try it,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting this much success with Bubble Ball, and I don’t know why my app was downloaded so many times. But even if my app hadn’t been downloaded so much, I still would have learned a lot and had the fun experience of making the app.”
According to Kari, it’s that positive attitude that has really opened the doors of opportunity for her son, and kept his progressing.
“Most recently Robert was a featured guest at the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) media campaign kickoff at Neil Armstrong Academy in West Valley City on Jan. 30,” Kari said. “The purpose of the campaign is to inspire students to study hard and do well in STEM subjects so they can be the innovators of the future and be prepared to fill the excellent job opportunities Utah offers in these fields. Utah Governor Gary Herbert had Robert talk about his apps and the success of Bubble Ball. I have been excited to see that Robert is a role model for what young people can achieve in these fields. I hope it will inspire everyone.”
To check out Robert’s latest educational app and get more information on both versions of Bubble Ball, visit the Nay Games website at www.naygames.com.