![]() For each episode of 30 levels, we added only three additional Star Levels which player would unlock after their collected 30, 60 and 90 stars. By earning Stars, players would unlock specific Star-gated levels. It took a day to create a level and about two minutes for a player to beat it. We knew that players primarily wanted more levels to play but that was also the bottleneck of production. Suddenly earning more Stars mattered as you were able to unlock few more levels with them.įirstly, we increased the replayability of each level. Replayability of each level increased with the introduction of Star-gated levels. It had to be because there’s only so much you can do with such limited resources. Our approach to achieving these goals was simple. Not to mention the fact, that there was half-a-dozen of Angry Birds SKUs with a small team on each creating about 30 levels every month basically at a loss since the games they were adding the levels to had no monetisation other than the one dollar price, which players had paid years ago.ĭue to all the facts above, my game team of six was given the ok to experiment with Angry Birds Rio and make our case that we could improve retention, engagement, and monetisation without hurting the ratings/fans. ![]() The combination of new top grossing free-to-play hits and the worse than expected performance of Bad Piggies and Angry Birds Space 2 opened the minds of the leadership to enable my team to experiment with free-to-play mechanics. Then Supercell, located only a few miles away from Rovio HQ, launched Clash of Clans ( Clash of Clans deconstruction here) and Hay Day (and Hay Day's deconstruction here) which both parked permanently on the top of the grossing charts for fuve years (!!!). First NaturalMotion’s CSR Racing ( read CSR's deconstruction here) broke all the grossing records. To sum it up, in 2012 everything was better than great and no one wanted to break the formula. The paid games, such as Angry Birds Space and Angry Birds Star Wars did close to dozen(s) of millions of dollars on their launch weeks alone and the only free-to-play game, Angry Birds Friends, was delivering hefty weekly revenues despite significantly underperforming when looking at KPIs such as the revenue per daily active player. My powerful team of five proved this argument with three critical changes, which led to sustained increase in revenues.īack in 2012 going free-to-play was considered a revolutionary endeavour at Rovio. I made an argument that by turning a paid game into a free game we could increase revenues and engagement. We argued that by doing so, we would not only increase the game’s revenue but also increase engagement and retention. We wanted to show that we could convert Angry Birds from a classic paid game into a free-to-play game. The history, and my experience, of Angry Birds’ monetisationĪ long, and in mobile game years very long, time ago my powerful team of five and I took on a challenge. Today Angry Birds 2 is a perennial top 50 grossing game, and it’s only because of the top-notch updates which have successfully introduced midcore elements to a super casual game. With each update, the game’s revenue peaked to new heights without declining to the previous lows. The updates in 2016 introduced several core mechanics such as leveling up of Birds and the Slingshot, Daily Challenges and Player vs Player Arena while at the same time keeping the rigorous level content cadence up and running. ![]() ![]() Instead of keeping up the course of just adding more levels, the Stockholm studio behind Angry Birds 2 went to work. In addition to launching key features, the game has been updated rigoroulsy with new levels. Post-launch there hasn't been any significant spikes of installs, indicating that the growth of revenue is sustainable. The growth was achieved through the launch of several key features that all built on top of each other. On the revenue side, things nevertheless looked much gloomier as the game had generated roughly “only” $10 million.Īfter the initial launch, Angry Birds 2 declined and had stable, relatively low revenues for few months. By the end of 2015 the game had racked up close to 50 million downloads. Looking at the downloads, the launch of Angry Birds 2 was a massive success. "Ever-shifting levels and limited lives take a lot of the fun out of smashing pigs with birds in Angry Birds 2." Both Pocket Gamer and IGN applauded the game for gorgeous graphics and vastly improved level design while faulting Rovio for employing the Candy Crush-like lives mechanic and randomised levels. When Angry Birds 2 was launched at the end of July in 2015 it received mixed reviews. This article was originally published on Deconstructor of Fun. Michail Katkoff is Studio Lead at FunPlus.
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