Angry Birds is a Finnish game from Rovio Entertainment.

How it all started

Rovio started in 2003 when the developers, young students, won a game development contest and decided to start their own game company. The programmers developed 51 games, all of which were very good, but were very hard to distribute.

The developers thought many times about giving up and closing the company, which was on the verge of bankruptcy, but eventually decided to start again.

Why are they angry?

Angry Birds was founded in early 2009, when Rovio only had 12 employees and the rest had to be laid off.

Lead game designer Jaakko Iisalo sketched the Angry Birds looking like balloons with no legs or wings. The team stared at the picture for a long time, with doubts in their minds.

“There was something special about these characters,” says Rovio founder Mikael. “These birds have no legs and they can’t fly.” And they’re so angry. We all started thinking about what made her so angry. A very simple character, we all thought and thought… It was a bit of magic.”

What does swine flu have to do with it?

So developers have spent a lot of time wondering why the bird is so angry. Then they came up with a simple idea: Maybe someone stole the eggs?

At the time, there was a lot of news about swine flu. So Rovio developers came up with the main villain: the bird’s eggs were stolen by pigs.

Now that they had the idea, all they had to do was come up with an interesting gameplay.

The birth of a masterpiece

A budget of 25,000 euros was allocated for development, and the team started the project. He was cute and funny, so the developers treated him like a favorite hobby.

Angry Birds took about six months to develop and was based on the gameplay of the popular game at the time, Crush the Castle. During this time, the company released four more games, but the developers knew that everyone’s favorite bird game would be something special.

Every time the developers tested a feature, they would unwittingly get “stuck” in the game for at least another 15 minutes. It’s ridiculous but true: The founding mother played the Angry Birds pilot so often that she burned a Christmas turkey.

Angry Birds enter the market

The game wasn’t an instant hit, however: it hit the App Store in December 2009, but received a lukewarm response in the US and UK. But Rovio decided to focus on smaller countries. The game quickly rose to the top in its native Finland, then became popular in Sweden and Denmark, before “conquering” Greece and the Czech Republic. With downloads reaching 40,000, larger markets began to become interested in the game.

This is a success!

On February 11, 2010, Angry Birds became Game of the Week in the UK App Store. Then a milestone occurred! Angry Birds went from #600 to #1 on the games list. In April 2010, the game was also #1 in the US App Store.

Rovio was making a lot of money from App Store downloads and Android advertising.

As of 2013, over 30,000 Angry Birds products have been released and sold in 500 locations around the world.

Angry Birds is more than just a game. This is a great story of self-confidence, hard work and well-deserved success. With over 3 billion downloads, Angry Birds has become one of the most popular games of all time.

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