Angry Birds is back with a vengeance
Since its release in 2009, the Finnish gaming company Rovio has built an Angry Birds theme park, capitalized on Angry Birds merchandise, and created numerous spin off games like Angry Birds Star Wars, Angry Birds Rio and Angry Birds Space.
With its bird slingshot and beef with pigs, Angry Birds blew up the mobile gaming structure and expanded into a cultural phenomenon. Farhad Manjoo, tech columnist at the New York Times, explains its success was because “they got the game mechanics, right and it was addictive and it was fun. It hooked you, so you kept playing because every free moment was an opportunity to play.”
It remains to be seen if Angry Birds can continue that excitement in the current mobile market, which Manjoo maintains is not only “a lot more crowded in the game space. But it’s just also more crowded in apps. There’s many, many more apps. There’s more stuff to do on your phone that you can goof off with.”
While Manjoo believes it has a huge marketing advantage because of its cultural influence, there is still uncertainty surrounding the release of Angry Birds 2 due to the nature of sequels — a follow up to a blockbuster film won’t necessarily repeat the same success.
Plus, with Rovio aggressively pushing Angry Birds outside the mobile market in merchandise, movies and Disney-like experiences, the question remains if Angry Birds 2 is an attempt to continue the excitement around the franchise or if it’s just trying to kill two pigs with one bird.
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