How greed destroyed Angry Birds

Summary

Angry Birds, once a gaming sensation during the early 2010s, quickly rose to fame with its unique characters, compelling storyline, and addictive gameplay. However, the developers, Rovio, eventually took the brand on a downward spiral due to poor strategic decisions. The initial success led to a rapid expansion into sequels, merch, and even movies. Despite a massive fan base and significant revenue, Rovio's aggressive monetization strategies and over-reliance on nostalgia brought upon critical failures, leading to the brand's decline. This trajectory illustrates how mismanagement and greed can dismantle a beloved franchise.

Highlights

• Angry Birds initially captivated audiences with its unique gameplay and storyline in the early 2010s. 🎮
• Rovio's attempt to leverage the game's popularity included launching sequels and merchandise. 🛍️
• An over-saturation of related but uninspired content led to a decline. ⚠️
• Merchandise sales significantly dropped, resulting in workforce reduction at Rovio. 📉
• The Angry Birds movie series, though financially profitable, did little to enhance the brand's integrity. 🎥

Key Takeaways

• Angry Birds started as a unique game with a fun storyline, captivating millions. 🐦
• Rapid success led Rovio to expand into sequels, merchandise, and films. 🌟
• Poor monetary strategies and repetitive gameplay caused fans to lose interest. 💔
• Angry Birds movies were financially successful but critically underwhelming. 🎬
• The game's shift from creativity to cash grabs alienated its fan base. 💸

Overview

In the early 2010s, the gaming world was transformed by a little app called Angry Birds. With its distinctive characters and engaging gameplay, it soared to the top of app store charts, beating out other formidable competitors. Rovio, the company behind the game, seemed unstoppable, churning out sequels, merchandise, and even branching into movies to capitalize on its growing success.

As the brand expanded, however, cracks began to show. The over-reliance on sequels with negligible innovation and aggressive sales strategies started to wear thin with fans. The original charm of Angry Birds started to fade away amidst the multitude of uninspired spin-offs and overwhelming monetization tactics. Rovio's attempts to revive waning enthusiasm through movies and additional merchandise often came across as disingenuous cash-grabs, leaving fans disillusioned.

Ultimately, Rovio's missteps, particularly its focus shift from creativity to revenue extraction, led to the brand's noticeable decline. As an iconic piece of pop culture from its heyday, Angry Birds today remains more a tale of potential squandered rather than achieved greatness. The recent acquisition by Sega might change the narrative, but the true comeback of Angry Birds remains as uncertain as ever.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: The Rise of Angry Birds 'The Rise of Angry Birds' explores the prominence of Angry Birds as one of the most popular apps during the early 2010s. It highlights how almost every version of the game topped the app charts, distinguishing itself from other popular games like Doodle Jump and Fruit Ninja through its unique characters and immersive storylines. The chapter delves into how Angry Birds had the potential to evolve into a cultural icon akin to Mario or Sonic. However, despite a robust fanbase, the brand eventually squandered its momentum, preventing it from reaching its full potential.
• 01:00 - 02:00: The Fall Begins The chapter "The Fall Begins" discusses the decline of a once-successful company, which lost its way by producing subpar sequel games, bad movies, and other failed products, tarnishing its brand. The narrative traces the roots of this downfall to 2009, when a video game company named Roio faced bankruptcy after releasing 50 unsuccessful games over a six-year period. The chapter appears to set the stage for explaining how the company's fortunes turned for the worse under the leadership of a senior game developer named Jaco Islo.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Desperation and Diversification The chapter titled 'Desperation and Diversification' discusses the origin story of the popular game 'Angry Birds.' It starts with a simple drawing of colorful round birds without limbs, which were depicted being launched at a stack of blocks. This concept was so well received by the team that it laid the foundation for the development of the game. An individual described how the idea of a flock of angry birds attacking buildings came to him while he was at home one night. He then created a picture based on this idea, which he presented to his bosses, who were enthusiastic about it, leading to the creation of the game.
• 03:00 - 04:00: The Angry Birds Movie and Further Decline The chapter discusses the development of the Angry Birds game, specifically the decision to incorporate pigs as the game's enemy. This choice was influenced by the swine flu epidemic happening at the time. The pigs, designed to be small, green, and round, stole the birds' eggs, prompting the birds to retaliate by using a slingshot to launch themselves at the pigs' block structures. The game featured five main birds: the Red Bird, the Yellow Bird, the Blue Bird, the Bomb Bird, and the White Bird.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Milking the Franchise The chapter titled 'Milking the Franchise' delves into the origins and initial struggles of the Angry Birds game. Initially, the company behind Angry Birds was on the brink of closure and had resources to develop just one more game, which they launched in December 2009. The game featured 63 levels and was priced at 99 cents. Despite these efforts, the game experienced a sluggish start, with minimal downloads in the first three months. Recognizing the need for better marketing, the company secured a small promotional banner on the App Store, which catalyzed the game's viral success. Within three months of this promotion, Angry Birds began its rise to global popularity, marking the start of a new era for the company.
• 05:00 - 06:00: The Original Games Disappear In this chapter, the focus is on the rise of Rovio with their hit game Angry Birds, which became extremely popular first in the UK and then in the US. The game was unique, silly, and addictive, prompting Rovio to abandon other projects to focus entirely on Angry Birds. Recognizing the untapped potential of app store games due to the growing popularity of smartphones, iPads, and iPod touches, Rovio saw an opportunity to dominate the market and sought to establish itself as one of the biggest gaming companies globally.
• 06:00 - 07:00: A New Direction and Continued Struggles The chapter titled 'A New Direction and Continued Struggles' discusses Rovio's efforts to elevate Angry Birds, drawing inspiration from the successes of Mario and Sonic. They begin by enhancing game features such as sound effects and music. To maintain player interest, Rovio decides to release new themed levels periodically, which are incrementally more challenging, ensuring sustained engagement without necessarily increasing costs.
• 07:00 - 08:00: Angry Birds Today and Future Outlook The chapter covers the evolution of Angry Birds and its future potential. It highlights the introduction of new characters, such as the boomerang bird and Terrence, the big red bird. It also touches on the introduction of in-app purchases with the Mighty Eagle, which was a significant addition allowing players to conquer difficult levels and providing a new and creative character. Following the success, they launched 'Angry Bird Seasons,' a holiday-themed variant, showcasing the brand's adaptability and innovation.

How greed destroyed Angry Birds Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 angry Birds was easily one of the most popular apps during the early 2010s in fact almost every single Angry Birds game was the most popular app back in the early 2010s it was the staple of the upand cominging app game economy unlike most other popular games like Doodle Jump or Fruit Ninja Angry Birds really stood out because of its unique characters and immersive storyline it basically created this whole entire universe it was literally on its way to becoming the next Mario or Sonic but then the brand completely ruined its own momentum after years of dedicated fans
• 00:30 - 01:00 and success the company completely diverted into becoming a cheap sellout and milking the brand horrible sequel games bad movies awful attempted products the brand became a disgrace of what it used to be and it's probably only a couple years away from its inevitable death so how did it get this bad let's cut the and get right into it so this all starts in 2009 when a video game company called Roio is right on the verge of bankruptcy over the course of 6 years they created 50 games none of which were successful but then senior game developer Jaco Islo
• 01:00 - 01:30 came to them with this little drawing that he made it was of these color birds that were super round but had no arms and no legs and in the drawing they were being thrown at these stack of blocks they liked it so much that they decided to make a game revolving around it and that drawing was the foundation for Angry Birds just some night I was at home and I got the idea of this flock of angry birds like ramming through uh like buildings and I made a picture out of it and uh I showed that to our bosses and they loved the the game was going to
• 01:30 - 02:00 have the birds be thrown at the block structures with a slingshot but the game needed an enemy around this time the swine flu epidemic was spreading pretty hard so they decided to make the enemy pigs jako happened to have a picture of these small green pigs that were round and also had no arms and legs and they were the enemy the story line of the game would be that the pigs stole the bird's eggs and that the birds would get revenge on the pigs by throwing themselves at their block structures there were five main birds the red bird the yellow bird the blue bird the bomb bird and the white bird each of which
• 02:00 - 02:30 having their own special abilities and hence the Angry Birds game was born now the company had enough money to produce one last game before calling it quits so they were betting everything they had on this one last shot they officially hit the app store in December of 2009 the game had 63 levels and cost 99 cents to download and at first the app was a complete flop for 3 months barely anybody downloaded it roio realized that they needed to promote the game better so they were able to get a small banner on the App Store this was all they needed because eventually the app would go super viral in just 3 months it hit
• 02:30 - 03:00 number one on the UK app store and a couple months later hit number one in the US the game was a hit it was very unique silly and addictive roio decided to drop every single other project that they were working on and solely focus on Angry Birds they saw the potential to possibly become one of the biggest gaming companies in the world and soon enough they would do that app Store games were still a pretty new thing as phones iPads and iPod touches were becoming pretty popular now so it was a really untapped market so there was plenty of room to dominate it nintendo
• 03:00 - 03:30 had Mario Sonic had Sega and now Roio was going to have Angry Birds and they would do everything they possibly can to take this to the top they started with small improvements on the game like better sound effects and having a [Music] soundtrack but to expand the game was going to take a little bit more than that they decided to add new levels frequently to the game every couple of months they would drop a new set of levels through updates each of them having a different theme and being slightly more challenging this was a solid way to keep users engaged and cost
• 03:30 - 04:00 no extra money they would also add new characters like how the boomerang bird or big Terrence the big red bird the first time Roio ever added an inapp purchase was with the mighty eagle it was essentially an option to beat a very very hard level yes it was a slight cash grab but it still introduced a new character in a very creative and unique way the Mighty Eagle was this very mysterious cool character and essentially was a way to beat those levels that were just too damn hard with all the success they decided to drop another Angry Birds game a year later called Angry Bird Seasons it was essentially a holiday themed version of
• 04:00 - 04:30 Angry Birds and they would drop new levels around the holiday season by the end of 2010 Angry Birds had over 50 million downloads it was at this point that Roio knew that it was going to be the future so they went allin 2011 was the year that Roio did anything they can to put Angry Birds everywhere they acquired a $42 million investment from a capital firm to really expand on the brand they dropped a version of Angry Birds onto Facebook which took them years to make which was a real movie themed version of the game that was going to help promote the movie and also promote Angry Birds this was a big deal
• 04:30 - 05:00 for the company because it was their very first collaboration with a major film company and it worked it got over 10 million downloads in its first 9 months and they also still continued to regularly update Angry Birds and Angry Birds Seasons by the end of 2011 the game got over half a billion downloads roio made 10 times the amount of money they made last year and their staff grew from 20 to over 220 it was time to step it up pretty soon they would drop their next game Angry Bird Space which had all these crazy space scenes and this game got a ton of hype and quite
• 05:00 - 05:30 literally was the fastest growing app ever getting over 50 million downloads in 35 days that same year they even dropped a Star Wars version of the game which was also a huge hit the games were just getting better and better but it wasn't just on mobile phones that they wanted to expand the brand to they wanted to go beyond that they dropped a version of Angry Birds on the PlayStation device and on the PS3 they dropped a version for Windows for the Nintendo DS they even dropped the game on like non-gaming devices like on the Nook Color e-reader that was made by Barnes & Noble which was like this book
• 05:30 - 06:00 device the game was just really growing that badly the games were doing phenomenal numbers but Roio saw an opportunity to make money that was just outside of games as a whole too merch merch was the real cash cow when it came to Angry Birds on their website they sold tons of clothing and accessories but the real seller was the plush toys these were in toy stores everywhere and all the kids and fans wanted their hands on them including me who spent way too much money on them one of the hugest sales was also the line of toys that they did with the Star Wars games including telepods which was like their
• 06:00 - 06:30 own version of Skylanders essentially you could buy these figures and it would help you unlock special characters in the game was really successful and this was just a few examples of all the stuff that they dropped the merch alone counted for 45% of all the sales that they were making and it might sound like they were milking the franchise and they were but it was in the good way they were just simply giving the fans more and more of what they wanted fans love the games and love buying the merch so it was a win-win and for ROIO it was especially a huge win because they officially reached over a billion
• 06:30 - 07:00 downloads by the end of 2012 and just 3 years from the game initially launching they now became an unforgettable influence worldwide suddenly everyone was aware and addicted to this game big news media companies were talking about it late night TV show hosts were talking about it even the blockbuster movie G.I joe Retaliation made a joke about it big celebrities like Kevin Durant and Justin Bieber were praising the app there was even a religion made after the game by 2013 Angry Birds was unstoppable but then 2014 happened now in the beginning of 2014 Angry Birds had
• 07:00 - 07:30 reached over 2 billion downloads which was a crazy mark but at the same time Angry Birds was exposed as being a leaky app as apparently it was collecting personal data like sexual orientation and location and apparently they were given this data to the NSA and the GCHQ the person who made this accusation was Edward Snowden you know the guy that exposed the government for having all of those secret surveillance programs yeah that guy roio tried to deny that they were giving any of this information away but did admit that their advertisers
• 07:30 - 08:00 might be doing so it got to the point where the app was actually quite literally hacked where the name was defaced to say spying birds but this was the least of their worries because as a whole in 2014 Roio's profits severely decreased that year their revenue dropped by 73% the reason well their game was getting a little tiring it was a solid game but when you really think about it it was just the same thing over and over and over again what made franchises like Mario and Sonic last so long was because they constantly create innovative new games that are completely
• 08:00 - 08:30 different but Angry Birds would just repeat the same game over and over again with different themes and honestly people were starting to get pretty tired of it roio was getting desperate and they realized that somehow they were going to have to innovate their game otherwise they were done for now initially they did try a bunch of different games that were different styles from the Angry Birds formula some good some not so good they dropped Bad Piggies which was a game completely revolved around the pigs where you design these contraptions to get them to the finish line it was a genius and very creative game that did pretty well they dropped Angry Birds Go which was
• 08:30 - 09:00 essentially a racing game around the Angry Birds characters it was low-key a ripoff of Mario Kart but also did pretty well they dropped the game Angry Birds Epic which was like this RPG combat game which did 50 million downloads its first year they then dropped Angry Birds Stella which was completely dedicated to the Stella character i guess this was an attempt to get more female fans and this one did 30 million downloads its first year then they dropped Angry Birds Transformers which was the sliding shooter game which was not really as good to be honest it wasn't nearly as impressive as their other collaborations
• 09:00 - 09:30 there was some slight decrease in popularity but overall the games were still doing lots of numbers and people were still playing them so if that's the case then why was there such a big drop in revenue well that's because the merch sales were going down severely the merch sales went down by 43% which is pretty bad even though they were still updating the apps dropping new games and even opening Angry Bird theme parks the sales were still going down keep in mind merch did take up nearly half of their profits so this was really concerning roio had to fire 110 of its employees because the
• 09:30 - 10:00 drop was just that bad it was so bad that the original CEO of ROIO since 2009 stepped down that year roio realized to somehow make as much money off the Angry Birds franchise as possible to save the company and the brand and this began the slow unfortunate transition into milking the series and becoming a complete corporate sellout the desperation started to show in 2015 with the drop of some very odd games they dropped Angry Birds Pop which was like this very weird Candy Crush ripoff this game got decent reception but only got 10 million
• 10:00 - 10:30 downloads its first year they dropped Angry Birds Fight which was this player v player game but also only got like 10 million downloads its first year then they straight up dropped Angry Birds 2 which was a sequel to the original that no one asked for now this game would be the epitome of what completely destroyed the series but I'm going to get back to that because it plays a very big role and you'll see what I mean overall the games did okay and Roio did reach 3 billion downloads that year but there was a much more noticeable decline from the previous years the momentum was clearly starting to slow down and the
• 10:30 - 11:00 problem with these games was that there wasn't really being that much added to the storyline or the characters as a whole they were just attaching the Angry Birds theme to a bunch of really cheap game apps so much so that Roio eventually had to fire 260 of their employees the original creator of Angry Birds left that year and the new CEO that took place also left after only one year the company was just becoming a complete hole roio's latest attempt to try and milk the Angry Birds series would be through an attempt that no one has ever really thought of before now
• 11:00 - 11:30 originally when the game launched Angry Birds was pretty active on their YouTube channel where they would post literal walkthroughs for all the levels this way they could give players some hacks but as time went on they started to post more highquality animated shorts on there and they would even post the trailers for the new video games coming and these videos would get tens of million views with some of them getting over a 100red million completely organically in 2011 they even had their own Christmas special briefly air on Nickelodeon and with the growth of the brand they started to post more and more of these types of videos eventually
• 11:30 - 12:00 creating their own web series called Angry Birds Tunes now originally these videos were quite literally only a couple seconds long and were posted weekly but as it got more and more popular they created more and more spin-offs posting much more frequently on the channel these videos were a big hit especially amongst the YouTube children section of YouTube and they eventually got over 7 million subscribers but even though this show was successful and their games were doing well it didn't really transition that well to merch sales in the long run over the years so Ro decided to make a huge investment to hopefully revive the
• 12:00 - 12:30 brand and that was through the Angry Birds movie now this movie was in the works for several years ever since 2012 they always envisioned making a movie but the development of it and the vision for it got pretty shaky when Roville was experiencing all of these issues when they were laying off all their employees the only departments that were spared were the ones who were working on this movie so essentially they were betting it all on this film and production-wise this thing was pretty stacked they had a budget of $80 million for the production and they quite literally made their own
• 12:30 - 13:00 animation studio for it and there were like a ton of names involved on the back end of this the founding chairman of Marvel was involved there were big executives from Illumination and from Lucasfilm who were working on it and that didn't even include the cast which had tons of huge names to promote the movie they did a bunch of collaborations like with McDonald's Ziplock Panasonic they even dropped a whole line of Lego sets roia was essentially putting all of their chips into this round and when the movie dropped in 2016 it actually did pay off because box office wise it did
• 13:00 - 13:30 really really well it hit over $350 million across the box offices which gave them a $72 million profit it was the sixth highest grossing video game movie ever and possibly the highest grossing movie ever made from Finland and that's also not including all the money they made from all of these promotions and collaborations but there was just one problem the movie kind of sucked for one they designed the characters of the movie in these very strange anthropomorphic styles that was pretty uncomfortable to look at it kind of really took away the uniqueness of
• 13:30 - 14:00 the original characters as a whole the movie was really generic in terms of its plot it had this bland slapstick animation style that honestly you would see in all of those types of movies like Sing or Secret Life of Pets you know what I'm talking about it was just this super dumbed down kids film and it was really forgettable it really did no justice for the characters or for the storyline and honestly ruined a lot of it for the people who loved the game the worst one was possibly what they did to the Mighty Eagle because honestly they made him look like such a joke but honestly it didn't really matter
• 14:00 - 14:30 because money-wise it was a huge win for Roio because it gave them one of the most profitable years yet and in turn their movie helped promote their games and their merch etc so they were going to ride this ship till it sank the games that they dropped from here on out were strictly in the theme of the anthropomorphic characters from the movie angry Birds Action Angry Birds Evolution Angry Birds Match they were really trying to force the style of this new characters down the throats of the fans but it just wasn't working it was just so forced and the games just weren't that good the movie itself
• 14:30 - 15:00 wasn't really good enough to have all these dedicated fans follow it forever but Roio saw the dollar signs and still went in that direction they were still really trying to launch the merch and force it as hard as possible to really get in those sales and milk this cow so much so that the year after the movie came out they used some of the profits to build a new studio in London this was to help expand some multiplayer online games but it closed down after just one year from just how horribly it did roio essentially dug themselves into this hole of having to hopelessly milk the
• 15:00 - 15:30 Angry Bird series for what it turned into so they decided to go even harder with it and in 2019 this would really start to come to bite them back in the ass now as you'd imagine immediately from the success of the first movie they already started to work on a second one the movie had a lot of the same people working on it and had the same exact formula as the first movie because if the same thing works the first time obviously it's going to work the second time and there are also famous YouTube stars like David Dori and Jojo Seiwa to really appear to those young whippers snappers now this movie had a smaller budget of the original film by a decent amount with only $65 million as a whole
• 15:30 - 16:00 the movie profited around $10 to $20 million which is a decent amount but a very very big decrease from what the first movie did rove blamed this underperformance on a lack of marketing budget as well as also an overcredit marketplace but they weren't really doing that much to help themselves either although to be honest the movie actually did get better critical review than the first movie but only by a slight amount this wasn't exactly a good movie it was just a slightly less shittier movie than the first one but this movie was not as successful as Roio
• 16:00 - 16:30 hoped it would be they were really betting everything they had on this style and this direction but this was not the worst decision they made that year by far because that exact same year they randomly out of nowhere just decided to remove every single original Angry Birds game from the app store the original Angry Birds Angry Birds Season Angry Birds Rio Angry Birds Star Wars Angry Birds Space every single game that they dropped before 2014 just randomly vanished no warning no explanation no nothing so the fans were pissed and confused because the very thing that made them attracted to the brand in the
• 16:30 - 17:00 first place suddenly just left it wasn't until nearly 3 years later that they decided to give some sort of explanation as to why they did that they claimed that it was too difficult to maintain and update old apps so they decided to get rid of them now how true that is I'm not sure but it kind of sounded like so what's the real reason well I have a theory it's obvious that they decided to push the new games to be as profitable as possible well it's probably most likely because they really wanted to push Angry Birds 2 why well
• 17:00 - 17:30 that's because the app is flooded with inapp purchases this game is designed in a way that basically forces you to pay money to play you can only play a certain amount of levels before having to wait to play again and if you don't want to wait then you have to buy certain credits if you lose a certain amount of levels you also have to wait too the levels are a lot harder which incentivizes you to buy these special abilities to get you past the levels it's flooded with all these ads and just overall a bunch of stuff the app is essentially just one gigantic cash grab
• 17:30 - 18:00 and it's probably a lot more profitable to basically make people paid money every now and then rather than just having them pay one time for the game it's a huge disgrace and a huge downgrade from the original app that made people love the game in the first place it's just so bad and in 2021 they did bring back the original game sort of they basically made an entire new app called Angry Birds Originals Reloaded but the only way that you could play this game is by literally subscribing to Apple Arcade you can't download it for free or for 99 cents like with the
• 18:00 - 18:30 original no no no no no no so once again completely selling out and being a complete cash cow all over again but they were making money which was the only thing that really mattered to them the game still gets plays and there are still fans of the series obviously but not nearly to the extent of what it used to be the hype has completely died down and people really seem to only like Angry Birds for the nostalgia not really for what they offer nowadays most people don't really care for what they're dropping next unless they're super young or simply only cling on to the nostalgia of it in 2023 Rove completely sold to
• 18:30 - 19:00 Sega ironically one of the companies that they were trying to compete against for $776 million and recently they actually announced that a third Angry Birds movie is coming soon the potential of the brand coming back is extremely unlikely as many of the original founders and people who made the app so great are long gone now and most likely they're ashamed of what it's become so now it's just sad to see them try and milk the game for every single