There are many speculations regarding the cause of the recent global economic recession, but we all know the truth. It was the Angry Birds and their affect on the productivity of the work force. Angry Birds is a true mobile wonder with over 50 million downloads, 80% of users keeping the app installed, and as Peter Verterbacka, the “Mighty Eagle” of Rovio, makers of Angry Birds puts it, that number is without the holiday stats, which broke a record of a million downloads a day.
Another mind boggling statistic about Angry Birds, and you should sit down for this one, is that there are 200 million minutes played a day on a global scale. As Peter put it, that number compares favorably to anything, including prime time TV, which indicates that 2011 will be a big year in the shift of advertisers’ attention from TV to mobile. As a person who is starting a new position at Inneractive, a company that specializes in monetizing mobile apps using advertising, these predictions for 2011 put a smile on my face.
Finally, the Angry Birds recently participated in a peace treaty with the pigs on TV, a video which quickly experienced a viral explosion. You can watch that peace treaty video here.
1. Please tell me about yourself, the team, and how the Angry Birds phenomenon (so much more than a single app) came to be.
“Angry Birds came to be by a very analytical approach. Rovio has been in the business of mobile games since 2003 and has made 50+ games before Angry Birds, most of them work for hire for people like EA, GameHouse, Nokia etc. So the team knows how to make games, for example Bounce for Nokia has been installed on 250M+ devices. The team that created Angry Birds was 12 people, now Rovio is 50 people, quite a change in 12 months.
Anyway, the game was built around the characters that Jaakko Iisalo, our game designer, came up with. The original idea was very different, but everybody loved the birds, so it was decided to build a game around the birds. Over the next 8 months Angry Birds became the game we know today. Hit the appstore Dec 2009, slow start, number one in Finland, then Sweden, number one in UK in April and then things really took off. Have been number one since in both UK and US. Number one in 77 countries. Number one longer than anybody else. 50M+ downloads across platforms.”
2. You must have had some serious experts in various fields on the team when creating Angry Birds. Please share with us the preparation that went into it.
“Everybody on the team has more than 5 years of game making experience, so yes, serious experts;-)”
3. I have tried your games on various platforms including Maemo (Bounce). How do you view the various mobile OSs in regard to the future of mobile technology? Which will prevail?
“Apple will be the number one platform for a long time from a developer perspective, they have gotten so many things right. And they know what they are doing and they call the shots. Android is growing, but it’s also growing complexity at the same time. Device fragmentation not the issue, but rather the fragmentation of the ecosystem. So many different shops, so many different models. The carriers messing with the experience again. Open but not really open, a very Google centric ecosystem. And paid content just doesn’t work on Android.
Besides Apple and Google, it will be interesting to see how long it will take for Nokia to get their act together. MeeGo is clearly the future there, remains to be seen how big and how soon. HP-Palm webOS is a really cool OS and has been a pleasure developing for that one, but the volume is irrelevant for the time being. Everything else is more or less “interesting” right now, ie no real business to be had, at least not yet.”
4. I have heard Angry Birds was the most sold app on the App Store until it was recently surpassed by Cut the Rope. Have you tried Cut the Rope? What did you think?
“Angry Birds has been outselling Cut the Rope all the time except for a brief period of 2 weeks during the launch of Cut the Rope. It’s a great game and it deserves all the success it has had. And the guys that developed Cut the Rope have a long experience in building games, they are not new to games either, so have that in common.
5. How do you explain the wild success of Angry Birds? Luck, good promotion by you, or does all the credit go to the birds and their addictive nature?
A combination of many things. Optimized for touch, great characters, everybody loves the birds. And we like to think that we know a thing or two about how to work together with our fans and community too, ie the future of marketing.”
6. What are the most important steps a developer should take when creating a mobile app? Can you name the first five steps?
“1. Create a great app
2. Get the message out”
7. Your recent Android release was a huge success. Why did you choose Getjar over the Android Market and are you happy you did?
“We didn’t really pick one over the other, but we liked the attitude of the GetJar team, they really worked with us to make the launch a success and a big deal. Not just another game to them. We have been very happy with our results on Android and the fact that we decided to have a multiple storefront strategy. And most of all that we decided to go with a free, ad supported model. 15M+ downloads is a good start too.”
8. How important is the role of social media, specifically Twitter is the success of your apps and your company?
“It’s very important. For us twitter is a great way to keep our finger on the pulse, we very quickly know what our fans think about new features + our fans are great at alerting us about things. We hear about a lot of developments on twitter first. And in our business speed is of essence.”
9. Why did you decide to make the Android version free and is that going to change any time soon?
“Free is the way to go with Android. Nobody has been successful selling content on Android. We will offer a way to remove the ads by paying for the app, but we don’t expect that to be a huge revenue stream.”
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COMMENTARY: I fooled around with Angry Birds recently, and I still don't understand the allure that this iPhone game has, but you can't argue with success--50 million downloads to date and counting. This is the kind of game that kids and grownups both like.
Courtesy of an article dated December 27, 2010 appearing in Tech 'N Marketing
And how does that mean? I do not understand anything.
Posted by: Kaitlyn Wilson | 02/07/2013 at 07:24 AM
Dalton, unfortunately when it comes to games, desktop or mobile, i don't get much enjoyment out of them. after i got through level 10, it was boring as hell.
Posted by: Tommy | 09/12/2011 at 02:29 PM
A mobile application doesn't need to have a lot of features and effects in order for it to stand out. This mobile game is the perfect example. Everybody loves it because it's simple and easy to play.
Posted by: Dalton Wordlaw | 09/12/2011 at 05:55 AM