Angry Birds chicks build their nests
Last week, Angry Birds developer Rovio confirmed its plans to reduce staff and restructure the business. The company decided to dismiss 213 employees. Now the priority directions of the company's development will be games, media products and consumer goods. Rovio management also decided to abandon their educational projects.
“Over the past few years, Rovio’s growth and its desire to explore new business opportunities have been incredible. As a result, we started doing too many things at once, ” said Rovio CEO Pekka Rantala.
But difficulties often mobilize, give determination and force to generate bold ideas, to think outside the box, to look for alternative ways of development. The train of thought of some employees went so far that their paths diverged from Rovio: they launched their projects and, perhaps, no longer work for the company. About two such projects will be discussed under the cut.
')
After the closure of the educational direction, the former employees of the company seriously began to work on a new project. The game startup Lightneer is based on natives from Rovio. Lightneer was invented by Lauri Jarvileto and Lauri Kontori - one of the founders of the educational division of Rovio and the former creative director of the company. They hatched their plans for four years.
The startups of the startup were made by Peter Westerbaska and Niklas Head, co-founder of Rovio.
Lightneer CEO Lauri Jarvileto said the company is negotiating a round of seed investment, which should be closed in the next few weeks. The first version of the game will be released in 2016.
“There is no need to gamify the learning process, since games are the learning process. Lauri and I had an idea that we would never have implemented in Rovio, ”says Jarvileto. - “We met in the evenings and just thought about what our game could be.”
A clear picture began to take shape only in June 2015. After that, they showed a prototype of Westerbasske and Head, who readily agreed to finance the project. They also joined the board of directors of Lightneer.
Jarvileto did not disclose the content of the game, but told about another game that they plan to release in the future. This is a kind of card game that allows you to memorize historical events.
Despite the fact that the startup is educational, the games are not designed for any narrow target audience or educational institutions.
In the summer of 2015, other people from Rovio, along with ex- Nokia employees, created their project in the Finnish mobile studio Koukoi Games . On October 27, it was reported that the company raised $ 1 million in investment.
The investor was the Singapore branch of the Frontier Accelerator Fund. The funds will be used to refine the product and promote it on the global market. Guide Koukoi Games hopes that the investor will help the Finnish studio in the future to enter the Asian market.
The first game developed by Koukoi Games is called Crashing Season . This is a 3D runner, and in it the user will be asked to control animals that try not to fall under the shot of a hunter. The release of the game is to be held this year. The studio’s website reports that the team is small and consists of industry veterans who previously worked for Rovio and Nokia. However, specific names are not called.
How high will "fly" new projects - time will tell.
“Over the past few years, Rovio’s growth and its desire to explore new business opportunities have been incredible. As a result, we started doing too many things at once, ” said Rovio CEO Pekka Rantala.
But difficulties often mobilize, give determination and force to generate bold ideas, to think outside the box, to look for alternative ways of development. The train of thought of some employees went so far that their paths diverged from Rovio: they launched their projects and, perhaps, no longer work for the company. About two such projects will be discussed under the cut.
')
After the closure of the educational direction, the former employees of the company seriously began to work on a new project. The game startup Lightneer is based on natives from Rovio. Lightneer was invented by Lauri Jarvileto and Lauri Kontori - one of the founders of the educational division of Rovio and the former creative director of the company. They hatched their plans for four years.
The startups of the startup were made by Peter Westerbaska and Niklas Head, co-founder of Rovio.
Lightneer CEO Lauri Jarvileto said the company is negotiating a round of seed investment, which should be closed in the next few weeks. The first version of the game will be released in 2016.
“There is no need to gamify the learning process, since games are the learning process. Lauri and I had an idea that we would never have implemented in Rovio, ”says Jarvileto. - “We met in the evenings and just thought about what our game could be.”
A clear picture began to take shape only in June 2015. After that, they showed a prototype of Westerbasske and Head, who readily agreed to finance the project. They also joined the board of directors of Lightneer.
Jarvileto did not disclose the content of the game, but told about another game that they plan to release in the future. This is a kind of card game that allows you to memorize historical events.
Despite the fact that the startup is educational, the games are not designed for any narrow target audience or educational institutions.
In the summer of 2015, other people from Rovio, along with ex- Nokia employees, created their project in the Finnish mobile studio Koukoi Games . On October 27, it was reported that the company raised $ 1 million in investment.
The investor was the Singapore branch of the Frontier Accelerator Fund. The funds will be used to refine the product and promote it on the global market. Guide Koukoi Games hopes that the investor will help the Finnish studio in the future to enter the Asian market.
The first game developed by Koukoi Games is called Crashing Season . This is a 3D runner, and in it the user will be asked to control animals that try not to fall under the shot of a hunter. The release of the game is to be held this year. The studio’s website reports that the team is small and consists of industry veterans who previously worked for Rovio and Nokia. However, specific names are not called.
How high will "fly" new projects - time will tell.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/295864/
All Articles