Without the development of Angry Birds, it is hard to say where the mobile gaming market would be as a whole right now. The company behind the game, Rovio, absolutely blew up the market and became the first company to prove that mobile apps can truly move a lot of money and provide a great experience for the end user. Too many apps were focused on too much functionality and pizzazz without actually concentrating on the quality of the application. Angry Birds succeeded because it is an extremely well polished game with a rock solid foundation of game play dynamics to back it up.
Unlike a lot of the games out on mobile right now, Angry Birds actually has characters that are likable. This is further proven by the fact that you can go to any mall in America and buy shirts with the eyes, beak and mouth of each particular type of bird. Name another application that has its characters on shirts at most major malls. I sure can’t. The characters in a game are absolutely vital to the success of a game as a whole, and the quirky juxtaposition of the angry birds and the evil, dastardly pigs is just odd enough to spark attention in someone who is being introduced to the game for the first time.
Rovio has shown that they are not a one hit wonder by doing extremely smart things with the one piece of intellectual property that they do have. They released free updates and bonus levels for those who had already bought the game, as well as a standalone holiday game series and they continue to release new episodes every six months or so.
With the release of each new episode they add some new little tweak to the game play to keep the entire game fresh, new and exciting for veteran players. Everyone loves a puzzle but once they have solved it they get bored and Rovio knows this. They have designed some clever gameplay tricks to keep people hooked on the Angry Birds world.
The first is the star rating system and scoring system for each level. Depending on your score you can earn anywhere from one to three stars per level. The higher the score, the higher the stars you earn. While it essentially means nothing, people love to get hooked into these systems and will spend hours and hours just developing the perfect strategy to ace each level.
The next thing that they added was the golden egg. They decided to hide golden eggs throughout the levels which, if unlocked, would let loose even more bonus content for their users. Bonus content and hidden unlockables are staples of addictive gameplay and I have to say that Rovio did as good a job as any mobile app company I have ever seen at implementing these features. They truly understand gameplay and thanks to them the world has yet another amazing game to enjoy with their friends and family.
Angry Birds