The story of Angry Birds: Rovio's game number 52

Why is Angry Birds game number 52?

Because Rovio, the Finnish company that made Angry Birds, had already made 51 games before it¹². Most of them were contract work for big companies like EA and Namco, and some sold millions of copies for those clients¹. The problem was that the success stayed with whoever ordered the game.

This is a "started small" story, and it is worth reading with three warnings:

• Angry Birds was not made with AI. It is from 2009.
• The people who made it already made games. It was a company with programmers and designers, not one person alone.
• It is a case that worked out. Rovio itself went through 51 games without a hit of its own, and most game companies never get one.

How do you play Angry Birds?

You pull a slingshot with your finger, choose the power and the angle, and let go¹. The bird flies into structures of wood, stone and ice where green pigs are hiding. The story fits in one sentence: the pigs stole the birds' eggs¹.

The fun is in the physics, the way things fall on screen as they would in real life. A tower that wobbles, a plank that slides, a pig that only falls on the third try. According to the game's designer, every level has one key shot to land, and two layers: finishing the level with one star, for casual play, and getting three stars, for people who want to dig in¹. He said he designed the game so his mother could enjoy it, and so could he¹.

Who created Angry Birds?

Rovio belongs to cousins Niklas and Mikael Hed¹. Niklas had been programming since he was a boy: at 12, a childhood friend says, he was already making a ball move on the screen¹. While studying computer science, in 2003, he and two friends won a game competition, and from that came a company called Relude, which later became Rovio, "bonfire" in Finnish¹².

The idea for the birds came from Jaakko Iisalo, a Rovio designer since 2006¹. But the game was made by the company's team, while the company made other games to pay the bills.

How much did it cost and how long did it take?

About €100,000 and around eight months¹². Mikael Hed set aside a budget of €25,000, and the final cost was four times that¹.

It was not full-time work. The team worked on Angry Birds when there was time left over: in the six months of work on the game, Rovio delivered four other contract games¹. In Niklas's words, Angry Birds was what they did whenever they had slack time¹.

How did Angry Birds start?

It started in a company in crisis. In 2008, according to Niklas Hed, he had to lay off 20 friends³. In early 2009, Rovio was close to bankruptcy and had dropped from 50 to 12 employees¹.

But there was something new: the iPhone and Apple's app store. Before, a small company had to negotiate with each phone maker. Now one store was enough to reach the whole world¹. The cousins decided to make their own iPhone games, with a list of rules: work for anyone, have no tutorial, load fast so you could play for just one minute, and have an icon that stood out in the store¹.

Iisalo started pitching ten ideas at a time, already drawn as if they were the game screen. In the two months before, there had been hundreds¹. One afternoon in March 2009, he showed an image of round birds, with no feet and angry faces, walking toward a pile of colorful blocks¹. According to Niklas, people who saw the picture found it magical¹.

What changed between the first idea and the game?

Almost everything. In the first version, there was no slingshot and no pigs: each bird had a color, and touching a block of the same color made the bird fly up and destroy it¹. Launching the birds came later, first by swiping a finger toward the structures, and only then with the slingshot¹.

The pigs came in to give a reason for the destruction. They started as featureless blobs; when swine flu hit the news, they became sickly-looking green pigs¹. Testers still did not understand why the birds attacked such quiet animals, so the team came up with the story of the stolen eggs¹.

The game was almost dropped. Niklas said the way the bird flew and bounced did not feel natural, and that the team considered going with another game³. It took eight months and thousands of changes to reach release¹.

Was Angry Birds a hit right away?

No. The game came out on Apple's store in December 2009 and, in its first three months, did poorly in English-speaking countries¹. Rovio went after smaller countries: in Finland, a few hundred purchases were enough to reach number one, and then came Sweden, Denmark, Greece and the Czech Republic¹.

With 30,000 to 40,000 downloads in those countries, Rovio approached Apple together with Chillingo, a company that published games from other studios¹. Angry Birds became game of the week on the UK store and jumped from around 600th place to first. In April 2010, it reached number one in the United States¹.

Niklas says he knew it had worked one Christmas, when he saw his mother, who did not play any games, let the turkey burn because she could not put the game down¹. According to Mikael, the "overnight" success took eight years¹.

What happened next?

In early 2011, Wired magazine counted 20 million paid downloads on iPhone and 20 million ad-supported downloads on Android, and more than €50 million earned by the brand, counting games and products like plush toys¹. According to Rovio, Angry Birds was the first mobile game to pass 1 billion downloads, in 2012⁴.

The "5 billion downloads" that show up in many news stories are not just Angry Birds. In April 2022, Rovio said all of its games combined, since 2009, had passed 5 billion⁴. It is the company's own number.

The other side

Angry Birds is not the story of someone starting from zero. Rovio had programmers, designers and 51 games made, and even so it only got it right after almost going under. It was also lucky with timing: the iPhone store was new. For every company that reached game number 52, many closed before. Making many attempts does not guarantee a hit.

What does this story teach someone who wants to make a game?

This part is our reading. What stands out most is not the billions of downloads, but the path: hundreds of discarded ideas, one image people liked, and months changing the game based on what testers said. The pigs, the slingshot and the story of the eggs came from testing, not from the first idea.

Angry Birds had no AI at all. The heavy work there was programming and redoing the game with every change, with a team paid to do it. Today, AI can write a good part of that code from what you describe, and someone who does not program can test a small idea without a company behind them (our reading). What stays with you is Iisalo's part: having ideas, showing them to someone, listening and deciding what changes. See what AI does and what stays with you, what your first game should be and other famous games that started small.