How did Angry Birds: the story of the designer and programmer Rovio
In 2003, three students from the University of Helsinki took part in the Nokia and HP competition for the development of mobile games at Assembly and won with the project King of the Cabbage World. Then they founded Relude, and the game was sold to Sumea Studios. The team worked on games on J2ME, developed Burnout, Need for Speed ​​and SWAT. In 2005, Relude received the first round of investment from a business angel and changed its name to Rovio Mobile.
In 2009, Rovio had money to create one game. And they did it! Like Square with “Last Fantasy”, Rovio made Angry Birds, which ensured the company's profits in the following years.
Jaakko Iisalo in 2009 was the only designer of Rovio. Since the company had money for one game, Jaakko began to prepare options. He always managed to draw animals, so he sat down at the computer and drew a group of birds with beaks, a round body and evil eyebrows - this is how he realized the idea of ​​angry birds that destroy things.
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The first version was very different from the now famous Angry Birds, recalls Iisalo . The bird had to be pressed so that it jumped and attacked simple structures. Even by the time the prototype was created, there was no catapult in the game - the birds just jumped, for example, onto the castle.
“When we gave the game to people, they did not understand what to do. A recognizable mechanism was needed to launch the birds. I immediately thought of a slingshot, but it was too obvious, too simple a solution, so we tried a number of other things, even with a sling. But just at the sight of a slingshot, the players immediately understood what to do, ”says Iisalo.
After that, it was necessary to invent enemies. Yaakko Iisalo painted pigs from the age of ten. All the characters had to be very simple, so for each of the birds the main color was chosen. The main feathered character was red - therefore green was chosen for the enemies. Green pigs were supposed to steal eggs from birds and take cover behind constructions.
Three months after Angry Birds appeared on the App Store, Apple gave developers a small banner on the store's main page - and the game went viral. At first, people came to the office and said that they downloaded the toy a million times.
“When Shigeru Miyamoto, designer of Super Mario Bros, was asked what game he would like to make - he called Angry Birds,” adds Yaakko Iisalo.
Programmer Tuomo Lehtinen (Tuomo Lehtinen) worked on the mechanism in the game, allowing you to launch balls, and added blocks that these balls crashed into. Then the developers got the birds from the designer and the picture began to take shape. But there was a problem with the aiming mechanism - the birds did not fly to where users wanted. The players needed to know why they miss.
Structures from the blocks should not be too easy to collapse and too much fluctuate from the blows. It was also necessary to consider the distance from the slingshot to the castle structure - an increase in this distance increased the game time and made it more interesting.
The whole team of developers played the game in the office, they even had a list with the records of each of them.
After some time, the game became the first in Finland. “But this market is so small that it was enough for us to just tell friends about the game and ask to download it, and we would have already come out on top,” says Lehtinen. In Sweden, the game came out on top thanks to an interview with skier Ana Parson, in which she said she was playing Angry Birds to relax before the competition.
In April 2010, the game topped the US charts. Now it was necessary to come out on top in the global App Store. It turned out at Angry Birds after a couple of months. And in August 2010, the game entered a new platform - on Android.
As part of Angry Birds, many versions of the game were released, including those based on movies and cartoons - Seasons, Rio, Star Wars, Transformers, Space. “I remember how we drank champagne and celebrated a million, and then ten million downloads. Then these were huge numbers. And now we have our own movie. Who would have thought that a mobile game could become so big? It's awesome, ”says Lehtinen.
The first trailer for the animated film Angry Birds appeared on September 23, 2015 .
Trailer in Russian:
In 2009, Rovio had money to create one game. And they did it! Like Square with “Last Fantasy”, Rovio made Angry Birds, which ensured the company's profits in the following years.
Jaakko Iisalo in 2009 was the only designer of Rovio. Since the company had money for one game, Jaakko began to prepare options. He always managed to draw animals, so he sat down at the computer and drew a group of birds with beaks, a round body and evil eyebrows - this is how he realized the idea of ​​angry birds that destroy things.
')
The first version was very different from the now famous Angry Birds, recalls Iisalo . The bird had to be pressed so that it jumped and attacked simple structures. Even by the time the prototype was created, there was no catapult in the game - the birds just jumped, for example, onto the castle.
“When we gave the game to people, they did not understand what to do. A recognizable mechanism was needed to launch the birds. I immediately thought of a slingshot, but it was too obvious, too simple a solution, so we tried a number of other things, even with a sling. But just at the sight of a slingshot, the players immediately understood what to do, ”says Iisalo.
After that, it was necessary to invent enemies. Yaakko Iisalo painted pigs from the age of ten. All the characters had to be very simple, so for each of the birds the main color was chosen. The main feathered character was red - therefore green was chosen for the enemies. Green pigs were supposed to steal eggs from birds and take cover behind constructions.
Three months after Angry Birds appeared on the App Store, Apple gave developers a small banner on the store's main page - and the game went viral. At first, people came to the office and said that they downloaded the toy a million times.
“When Shigeru Miyamoto, designer of Super Mario Bros, was asked what game he would like to make - he called Angry Birds,” adds Yaakko Iisalo.
Programmer Tuomo Lehtinen (Tuomo Lehtinen) worked on the mechanism in the game, allowing you to launch balls, and added blocks that these balls crashed into. Then the developers got the birds from the designer and the picture began to take shape. But there was a problem with the aiming mechanism - the birds did not fly to where users wanted. The players needed to know why they miss.
Structures from the blocks should not be too easy to collapse and too much fluctuate from the blows. It was also necessary to consider the distance from the slingshot to the castle structure - an increase in this distance increased the game time and made it more interesting.
The whole team of developers played the game in the office, they even had a list with the records of each of them.
After some time, the game became the first in Finland. “But this market is so small that it was enough for us to just tell friends about the game and ask to download it, and we would have already come out on top,” says Lehtinen. In Sweden, the game came out on top thanks to an interview with skier Ana Parson, in which she said she was playing Angry Birds to relax before the competition.
In April 2010, the game topped the US charts. Now it was necessary to come out on top in the global App Store. It turned out at Angry Birds after a couple of months. And in August 2010, the game entered a new platform - on Android.
As part of Angry Birds, many versions of the game were released, including those based on movies and cartoons - Seasons, Rio, Star Wars, Transformers, Space. “I remember how we drank champagne and celebrated a million, and then ten million downloads. Then these were huge numbers. And now we have our own movie. Who would have thought that a mobile game could become so big? It's awesome, ”says Lehtinen.
The first trailer for the animated film Angry Birds appeared on September 23, 2015 .
Trailer in Russian:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/390943/
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