Angry Birds undertaking: Rovio Company was on the verge of collapse

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

"All Around are wild boar, save me!" You may not think that the "Angry Bird" (Angry Birds) game since its inception December 10, 2009, has accumulated 75 million of fans worldwide, including British Prime Minister David Cameron, football star Gascoigne, writer Rushdie and other celebrities figure. The beginning of the article for help, it is a "poisoned quite deep" player in the forum described his dream adventures.

At the beginning of March this year, Rovio the game ushered in the Accelpartners and Atomicoventures two venture capital institutions totaling 42 million U.S. dollars in the first round of financing. Petervesterbacka, a company executive, has more opportunity to claim that the game's innovations have shifted from "big platform games" to "mobile platform games".

But what is even more surprising is that the Finnish gaming company, founded in 2003, was on the verge of collapse before the launch of the Angry Birds, so how did these colorful birds really fire the company called "Fire"?

was a game champion.

In 2003, niklashed, a computer department at the University of Helsinki, and two students won a mobile game contest between HP and Nokia in a game called the King of cabbage. Three young people then asked for advice from Peter V Esterbacka, who worked at HP and was the organizer of the contest, "What are we going to do next?" Vesterbacka bluntly encouraged the way, "play the game!"

In 2004, Niklas set up a game studio called Relude, and invited his cousin, M. Ikael H ed, as CEO. They scraped thousands of euros to make a strategy for the studio while Digital chocolate, another game developer, to do some outsourcing game development. At the end of that year, they decided to change their name to Rovio (meaning of "fire" in Finnish) to meet the 1 million Euro angel investment from Mikael's father.

With ample financial support to make Niklas feel "everything is on the right track", he recruited a lot of people with confidence. But at this point, Mikael in the direction of game development and his father (investment successor Rovio Board chairman) disagreed, left the Rovio. This makes the original formulation good strategy began to disintegrate, Rovio gave up the distribution and marketing ability of the training, to undertake more outsourcing projects, for EA, Namco, RealNetworks and other games companies produced the "Need For Speed", "Jumping ball Big adventure" and other games, But the resulting income is hard to support the company's normal operation.

In 2007, Niklas began to be forced to lay off staff and, by 2009, Rovio's size had shrunk from 50 at its peak to 12. "That should be the most difficult time." "You have to think of a new way to save it," Niklas recalls. He asked Mikael's father to return Mikael and ask his father to delegate.

It was also during the period when Mikael left Rovio that another key change occurred ——— 2007, when the iphone came out and the App store was launched. This is certainly good news for Rovio, who have no independent distribution and marketing skills. They can finally through Apple's a ppstore directly face millions of of the end user, and no longer in the traditional way with the handset manufacturers, operators to talk to one another.

In early 2009, Mikael back to Rovio and started a new rescue plan with Niklas, an integral part of the "Apple App Store".

Why is the bird angry?

Mikael after the handover, the company continued to undertake some outsourcing projects to maintain the basic revenue stream, on the other hand, began to organize a dedicated team for the iphone game development. "There's a lot of competition on the iphone platform, and if we succeed there, we can extend it to other devices like smartphone platforms and PCs," he said. "That's how he planned it before the angry bird was really born," he said.

Before designing specific games, they first identified the various behavioral traits of the iphone user and found that "everyone could be an iphone user." "Then make a game that everyone can play!" Mikael Big Hand a wave, decided to give up the past preference of the more complex game script, to do a simple plot, do not need raiders, loading time is shorter, can expand to different devices but the operation is like a special for the iphone design games, Let people even a few minutes of space can easily open to play a few. At the same time, they also need to design a "unique" icon.

In March 2009, Rovio's chief game designer, Jaakko Iisalo, showed the team several styles of game characters that everyone liked at the same time when they showed "an angry bird with no feet and no flying." "All the people are starting to think, why is it so angry?" Such a simple role can make people rich associations, I think this may be its charm. Mikael recalls.

However, the first edition of Angry Birds is quite different from the game now played by 75 million people. In the first version of the game, when you touch a certain color of the bricks, the opposite color of the birds will fly over to smash the bricks, all the birds do not have "special skills", replaced by when the bricks are destroyed will appear to increase the strength of the bird eggs.

In later versions, the "Let The Birds Fly" way to press and hold the bird to the brick direction, and finally joined the Slingshot to pull back. Those who turn green because of the outbreak of "swine flu" are also added elements, as the reason for the birds smashed bricks. In the game, players have to Rovio team reflected, "they do not understand why the gentle pigs will make the birds so angry," eventually the Rovio team came up with "because these green pigs steal the Birds eggs" background story.

Making money for the "Bird Kingdom"

In the "Angry Birds" in the beta, Mikael found an interesting phenomenon, players often take advantage of only a few minutes of free, open the game to play, a play is more than 10 minutes, and his side will often attract a lot of onlookers. This makes m ikael feel extremely excited, "feel this time really to become"!

However, for the first time Rovio to do marketing on the App Store, marketing director Mattwilson is still wary of making marketing strategies. "We realized early on that it would not be easy to get into the English-speaking countries, so we decided to start from a small country," he said. In the Finnish app Store, "Angry Birds" became the best-selling app after only hundreds of purchases. This is true in Sweden, Denmark, and then Greece and the Czech Republic.

February 11, 2010, Apple finally agreed to put "Angry Birds" in the UK, a PP store in the week home. Rovio took the opportunity to make a small video, uploaded to Y outube, and added 42, also developed a free download of the trial version, with the corresponding point of time to launch the market. The game quickly climbed from the No. 600 position to the top in the App store. By April 2010, it had become the first place in the App Store in the US, and was starting to get ready to enter the Android market.

In a ppstore, the profit model of Angry Birds is that consumers pay for the first download, while R Ovio provides users with updates. But in the Android Market, Rovio saw that paid content was unworkable, and turned to advertising support mode. At present, the advertising support model can bring Rovio more than 600,000 pounds per month income.

Last December, Rovio added the "Eagle" element to the game ——— a bird bought and opened at an app store, priced 89 pence, currently downloading more than 2 million times, and more importantly Rovio almost no cost. In addition, since last Christmas, "Angry Birds" has developed plush toys, can also be bought directly through the App Store. The resulting income is also more than 600,000 pounds per month. According to the industry's forecasts, the current R Ovio revenue close to 50 million pounds.

The road of Rovio's "enrichment" has not been terminated. At the end of March, R Ovio will work with the "Ice Age" film production team, with the new 3D animated film "Rio Adventure" launched the "Rio Big Adventure version of Angry Birds." "Angry Birds" will also log on to the Facebook platform in May, "followed by W ii,x box and PS3, we will also design new games for the characters (such as driving or sports), and then make a TV show and film." For Mikael, his goal is to create a Disney-like "Bird Kingdom".

Business ID

Venture Company: Rovio

Founder: Niklas Hed,mikael Hed

Start-up Time: August 2010

Place of business: Finland

Financing: 1 million euros angel investment at the time of creation; this March, Accel and Atomico Ventures two venture capital institutions totaling 42 million U.S. dollars in the first round of financing

Profit model: First download fees, props fees, advertising support mode, film, plush toys and a series of anime derivatives

Narration

The Bubble ball hits,

The bird must be "careful"!

"Bubble Ball" (Bubble Ball) is an understanding puzzle game made by a 14-year-old American developer. The player wants to give the ball the design line, lets it arrive at the end, the prop will become various with the level recommendation, the player with the finger drags the above prop to take out uses, but the click Prop may transform its initial placement angle.

The game, which was released last December 29 in the App Store, created 400,000 downloads a day, two weeks later, and kicked off the "Angry Birds" Free edition of the app for a free title. However, Angry Birds still sit on top of the pay-for-game rankings.

Nan du reporter Ding Intern qiong comprehensive report