Even if you haven't played Angry Birds, you've probably heard of this game. It would seem that nothing special is in its principle, but in just a couple of years, it has become the most popular game in the world, and by now, the number of its downloads has already exceeded 1 billion. We tell you how the developers, who released more than fifty failed games, managed to think of the heroes who conquered the whole world.
Failure after failure
In 2005, some Finnish student friends, inspired by winning a mobile app contest organized by Nokia, founded Rovio Mobile.
- They wanted to create games for mobile phones, but in the end, they simply translated popular games into Java versions since no one was interested in their developments.
- Over 5 years, Rovio Mobile has created 51 games, some of them commissioned by Nokia, but none of them made it to the top. The only more or less successful project of the company was a game with balls, which collected about 2 million downloads.
- In the late 2000s, the studio decided to retrain the market of smartphones. However, the problem was that the creation of such games was much more expensive than for the usual push-button mobile phones, and Rovio Mobile had almost no money at that time. About 40 thousand euros remained on the company's account – this could only be enough for one game.
Why Birds?
The first step was to decide on the main character of the future game. After analyzing AppStore statistics, the developers concluded that the main characters determine the success of the game. However, in the end, the birds appeared almost by accident. The fact is that the chief designer of Rovio Mobile just loved to draw birds. One day, he decided to experiment with the shape, making a flock of birds fat and wingless, like penguins.
The whole team liked the sketches. According to the developers, they caused both sympathy and bewilderment at the same time. To enhance the strangeness, it was soon decided to paint the birds red.
Why Pigs?
Having decided on the characters, the company began to think about the mechanics of the future game. The best idea turned out to be a variation, in which birds would shoot down intricately built obstacles. However, the question arose: why would they do it? Then, it was decided to find opponents for the birds, with whom they would wage war.
The dark side was supposed to be occupied by someone who caused outright antipathy in everyone. After some deliberation, the choice fell on the pigs. In addition to the general attitude towards pigs as dirty animals, at that time, the swine flu was raging in the world and the choice of these characters became a kind of reference to it. That is why the pigs in the game are green and have a sickly look. Well, the developers justified the anger of the birds by the fact that the pigs stole their eggs to feed the pig king with scrambled eggs.
The launch of the game
Bringing the game to reality took about eight months. Due to a lack of funds, many items of expenditure had to be cut. Therefore, the company did not have money for voice acting, and to record the sounds that the characters would make, the developers just got drunk and started grunting into the microphone.
There was also not enough money for focus groups, so relatives and friends of the team were involved in testing Angry Birds. Rovio CEO told how he let his mother, who couldn’t stand mobile games, play Angry Birds. He thought she would put the game aside in five minutes, but an hour later, she was still playing.
December 10, 2009, Angry Birds appeared in the AppStore, and, by the first anniversary, was installed on 50 million smartphones. Its appearance on Android was expected more than any other game in history, and on the first day after its release, it was downloaded more than a million times. The developers of Rovio Mobile have never needed funds again. And now, you can play online and enjoy the game.