I tried Angry Birds 2 and was super impressed by the production quality and butter smooth graphics.<p>Too bad the entire gameplay is a 100% miss: You have to wait or pay to retry levels after a while. This goes completely against everything that defines angry birds gameplay, which for me is to instantly re-start the level if I'm not satisfied with the first bird shoot.<p>Absolutely ruins it.<p>I'd much rather pay $X upfront for unlimited gameplay. Now it just feels like they're trying to cheat me out of real money every 15 minutes feeding some kind of virtual slot machine. :(
I'm not surprised, they have been cranking out the same game over and over again, re-branded and/or adding slightly different abilities without changing the basic game. After playing the Star Wars version for a little while I deleted it because the concept (while initially fun and interesting) had gotten old. They did release something called "Bad Piggies" too which I thought was a fun different game but along the same theme but that didn't seem to take off.
Brings up an interesting thought exercise. Let's say you do start a small mobile game company and your game blows up into a cultural phenomena like Angry Birds.<p>And like all of these things, you know that one day in the indeterminate future, that phenomena will fade, much like Angry Birds has.<p>How do you best handle this? Do you sell early and get out quickly? Do you try to build something larger out of the resources you now have?<p>I'd be tempted to cash out early and just enjoy the fruits of my success.
The important chart missed is the Grossing rank for Angry Birds 2, which has been hovering at about #50 grossing since launch. It was not going to be a megasuccess like the first Angry Birds, or even a low-tier modern freemium title. (for reference, Fallout Shelter, a game that was highly experimental for Bethesda, is currently at #32 overall Grossing)<p>It probably doesn't help that there have been <i>more than 5</i> Angry Birds games already and people are sick of the gameplay. I'll give Rovio credit for trying to diversify from physics based games (Fight, Epic, Stella, Rovio Stars, etc.).
The article paints Angry Birds 2 as a paid app losing out to freemium apps, but when I downloaded it, it was a free app with way too many freemium parts. I deleted it shortly after, as I'm not interested in freemium mobile apps.
My 5yo son still plays some of the Angry Birds games on iPad (we have them all) and I was impressed with the production values of Angry Birds 2. 800 employees and offices in 9 countries sounds like a lot though, hopefully slimming down and releasing some new games will keep them going.<p>Movie - remains to be seen, but I've watched countless AB cartoons with my son and I'm not sure there is enough depth/meat in the characters, they don't really have personalities or even names you remember. Rovio has ambitions to be the next Disney but you really need memorable/interesting characters for that.
I never understood the appeal of the original game; it was just not interesting for me to fire birds to destroy ever more elaborate pigs' structures. I found Tiny Wings to be a much more pleasant game about birds: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_Wings" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_Wings</a><p>Maybe I am just less angry than most people? It would be nice to not lose touch with the other people if I hope to make something with mass appeal some day.
When the first game came out, it was written in Lua and they had embedded a runtime in the iOS application - interesting that Apple at first forbade that practice, to the point of scanning libraries for interpreters. It then became the #1 iOS game - goes to show, allowing companies to bring their own language to the platform allows for unexpected successes.<p>Hopefully Apple learned from that lesson.<p>All the same, 800 employees for a game seems excessive, but then we have 5000 employees at Facebook for a website..
The key lesson here is that entertainment companies are closer to gambling than outsiders realize. That is, to turn an entertainment company into a viable long term business you need to diversify and reduce risk of new title launches. That's why we see the large game companies producing sequels as opposed to launching new IP or game concepts.<p>A mobile company that understands this model is tell tale games.
This is such an assumptive title. Angry Birds is still very popular with children. This is like saying that Mario is no longer relevant because Super Mario Galaxy sold less than New Super Mario Bros. Wii.<p>It makes me wonder if TechCrunch has a stake in seeing Rovio fail when I read clickbaity headlines like this.
Rovio seemed to be building a content distribution network within their apps (toons.tv). I was somewhat surprised they didn't move further into that direction.
They had the brand and merchandising, just not enough personality to create a Loony Toons-like experience.
If game shops operate as movie studios, why don't they simply hire people temporarily. Movie studios cut their staff to marketing, sales, and licensing once their work is completed and released.
Well, from a game perspective, Angry Birds 2 is pretty good. It gets rid of a lot of the annoyances in the first series of games. It's much easier to knock down small parts of buildings now.
Quite frankly they shouldn't of been as popular as they were. They stole gameplay from existing flash games and threw an "angry bird" skin on it.
Sounds like a case of too many eggs in one basket. Why didn't they diversify more into the micro transaction space with a different game I wonder?
We need Uber for software developers. The gaming industry is looking more and more like the movie industry. Long term contracts no longer make sense. The industry needs to adapt.