Angry Birds grow in mind

Finnish game development company Rovio is on the verge of bankruptcy before proposing the game "Angry Birds". This is a very easy to play games. Angry Birds set the plot on a tropical island in the Pacific Ocean, with the target of "death squads bird" to the green Pig, who stole their eggs.

Today, 75 million people use Angry Birds to kill time, and every day users spend 2 billion minutes on this mobile game. So far, a total of 3 trillion pigs have been smashed in the game. On a weekend in January 2011, YouTube's "Angry Birds Rio" movie trailer was viewed at 500,000, and the official video of the Angry Bird reached 27 million times.

On the anniversary of the release of the game, 2,405 players from 756 cities around the world staged an "Angry Bird Festival" celebration. British Prime Minister David Cameron and American singer Justin Bieber are all fans of Angry Birds.

The game developer Rovio is obviously lucky. But the company's chief executive, Mihal Hede, and his cousin, chief operating officer Nicholas Hede, realized early in 2009 that smartphones would become a huge gaming platform. So they started to build a blockbuster and tried to use the game to build an entertainment empire that extends beyond the iphone. And this, will be Disney 2.0.

Game Save Company

"Angry Birds" is the 52nd game of Rovio, some of the company's games were sold to Namco at a price of millions of (a Japanese gaming company, who had launched "Pac-Man") and the American EA (its "Sims", "Need for Speed", etc.) and other third parties. Rovio was in the lurch of a cash crunch, and the brother Hurd was planning to develop a game of intellectual property.

In the early spring of 2009, game designer Jaco Isalo A sketch of a flock of birds, which is the embryonic form of Angry Birds, and colleagues soon became fond of them. They decided to design a whole game and storyline around the birds.

After 8 months of development and thousands of revisions, Nicholas got his inspiration from the Christmas turkey and completed the game development. The birds have chubby bodies, with exaggerated eyebrows showing an angry expression.

Angry Birds entered the App store in Apple in December 2009, but in the first three months it was mediocre in the English-speaking world. Rovio is not worried: its strategy is to target global markets. Rovio Marketing Director Matt Wilson said: "We decided to start small countries." ”

In the Finnish app Store, "Angry Birds" became the best-selling app after hundreds of purchases. This is true in Sweden and Denmark, as well as in Greece and the Czech Republic. "Britain and the United States now account for 90% of our sales, but we already have 340,000 downloads in small countries, four times times the average number of downloads, before attracting their attention," Wilson said. "They finally found a way to get into a big app store--Chillingo the game's independent distributor. Chillingo has successfully released several games and maintained a good relationship with Apple.

On February 11, 2010, Apple agreed to put "Angry Birds" on the home page of the App Store in the UK, which Rovio a video that has been viewed more than 17 million times. Rovio also created 42 new levels for the game. In addition, Rovio also launched a free version of the "Angry Birds." All this work is done in three days. The game quickly climbed from the App Store's No. 600 to 1th place.

After the success of Apple's App store, the Angry Birds went into the android Market, and the Android version of the game has been downloaded 20 million times. "Angry Birds" became the first apps to enter Apple's Mac App Store in January 2011, with 150,000 copies sold in the first week, successfully sitting on top of the sale. "Angry Birds" after landing an independent cross-platform application store Getjar, a large number of download requests even led to Getjar server downtime. Getjar CEO Iya Laurs said the Getjar platform could withstand three times times the expected download request for a particular app, but the Angry Birds download request reached seven times times the expected.

From 100,000 to 50 million

"The game is very simple," said Mark Griffiths, director of the Institute of International Games at Nottingham Trent University, a professor of psychology. If it's too complicated, people can't go on. The key to addictive is constant reward. The time interval for the "Angry Bird" award has been shortened to a few seconds. ”

The game's designers began to consider this point: "I designed the game at two levels, a star level is to customs clearance for the purpose, this is a leisure mode, and the level of Samsung is determined players." That's why my mother enjoyed the game and I enjoyed the game. ”

Rovio, the company should establish a positive and lasting relationship with users. It's going to keep releasing the latest news to keep people using and talking about the product. The Rovio team tries to answer every question that the player raises through Twitter and email, adding the level of the player's design to the game and discussing with them the new bird character. "People will feel that this is a game company worth watching," Michal said. ”

Rovio not only created an innovative game, but also established an innovative business model. Consumers pay for the first download, and Rovio provides updates to users. In the Android Arena, Rovio found that paid content was unworkable, and took the advertising support model. He can now bring in more than 600,000 pounds a month for Rovio.

In the December 2010, Rovio introduced a new role in the game called "Eagle" (a bird that can be purchased in application and could be cleared at any time), priced at £ 0.89, currently downloading more than 2 million times, while Rovio hardly cost anything. During the Christmas season, "Angry Birds" launched plush toys, can also be purchased directly through the application, the original order of 120,000 pieces, but the final sales volume is 5 times times this, Rovio so the monthly income of more than 600,000 pounds.

In February 2011, Rovio launched the mobile payment system "bad Piggy bank", users can buy products in the game without entering credit card information. Michal says the payment system will also support other games, and developers will get a 85% share of the revenue. "You'll see the Bad piggy bank becoming part of Facebook. ”

Angry Birds now have 20 million paid downloads on the iphone and ipod Touch, and 20 million ad support downloads on the Android platform. In addition, "Angry Birds" and from the "Eagle", Mac App Store and the Palm pre and other platforms revenue.

Michal says 40% of Rovio's income comes from activities that are not directly related to the game, including toys and other licensing deals. Overall, the brand has brought in 50 million euros of revenue, and the game itself costs € 100,000.

Some analysts said that by 2013 mobile applications will reach 970 million potential users, 2015 mobile application Market size will reach 30 billion U.S. dollars. Rovio has gained a favorable position in this market, but it wants more.

Next Disney?

In November 2010, Andrew Starber, who was vice president of Mathematical Entertainment at Fox, contacted Michal-Fox to plan to take a new animated cartoon, Rio, and hoped Rovio would cooperate. A week before the movie, Rovio will launch the Angry bird Rio game, a new game based on the iOS platform. The game is similar to the previous setting, but the pig is gone and replaced by a monkey. The game no longer attacks the piglets, but by breaking the Birdcage, to rescue the rare birds imprisoned therein. This is another big step in the direction of Rovio to the entertainment empire.

To raise the profile, Angry Birds also appeared in the middle of the "Super Bowl" game this year, when the 30-second ad cost was 3 million dollars. Rovio's next target is Facebook, which is said to have a whole new set of scenarios, and the pig will play a more important role.

Later, Rovio plans to use the characters in Angry Birds to create new games, possibly racing or sports games. At the same time, the original "Angry Birds" will be landing Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 game consoles. Michal says they also plan to publish comic books, film and animated serials and movies.

"Angry Birds", it seems, are trying to create an integrated entertainment product, including sales, games, movies, cartoons and comedies, like Disney 2.0. "To see how Disney started, we can see the same pattern today, but at a faster rate," Michal said. It gained recognition through decades of effort, and it took us only a year. ”

But not everyone agrees. Makquevi, an industry analyst, said the angry bird was quick to succeed, but could quickly die as the market was open and consumers focused on time. "After 100 years we may still talk about Mickey Mouse, but no longer talk about Angry Birds," he said. ”

Rovio is clearly a long way from a game company with a strong original work to a publisher who no longer relies on a single game, or even to build a huge entertainment empire. But the brothers have been through a Rovio downturn, and they know how fragile the gaming industry is, and they know they can't skyrocketing.