Analysing the Angry Birds Platform

Rovios’ hit game Angry Birds is an important thing to analyse in the sense they both share common goals. Entertaining young audiences and using animals to relate to children is an important part that both Rovio does aand that the project aims to complete.

Rovios’ success allowed it to profits to exceed 50 million euros, so it clearly is a success story. Given the small similarities in the project, what points can I take from their platform that can give my project thebest possible chance to succeed.

Firstly the platform is very simple. It limits it’s original characters to just six;

Mikael Hed explained: “It has to be easy to pick up and play but hard to master. The “easy to learn” part was really important to us. When you see one screenshot of the game you know what you have to do. Angry Birds is simple, but it still has depth. It has to be so much fun that players want to return to the game over and over again.” – This is something that my website should offer to it’s users. An easy experience can be easily understood as soon as it as seen. The characters should also be a reflection of this, with simplistic characters in various colours and styles.

Next is the pure value of Rovio due to it’s game Angry Birds. This is down to the monetisation of the game. A free version which offers limited levels and also a full version for just $0.99 – it gains a lot more profit from in game purchases and other similar Angry Birds style games such as the Space and Star Wars editions that take on a whole new perspective;

Something that angry birds started in 2010 was the Angry Birds Season, a game that would update with new features and levels during different seasons. This is something that was already relevant to my project and something discussed in my original proposal. During a cultural holiday, additional items can be made available to customise their frogs with.

Another monetisation value Rovio exploited with their hit game are collaborations. Collaborations saw Rovio working to remake it’s game in the style of Star Wars (Seen Above), FOX (Rio), NASA (Space Version, seen above) and physical arcade games as seen below.

This is somewhere I could develop my project, with collaborations with the merchandising and online services for specific purposes related overall entertainment. This would make learning much more interesting, and fun for the children.

Compatibility with all devices was something that important to Rovio as it meant adoption of it’s game on a much larger scale, so it developed it’s game for every possible device on the market. Before long the game was even avaiable on social networks. This is something Essiential for my project as I am trying to encourage users worldwide to use the free service, load speeds and device issues cannot effect the quality of the service, this is vital.

Rovio have stated that 40% of their revenue comes from sales of merchandise from the Angry Birds series. In 2010, they first started selling plush toys online and in retail stores. It is estimated that 1 million shirts and plush toys, respectively, are sold every month.

Original merchandise included game CDs, recipe books, plush toys and the board game produced by mattel.

A further way that Rovio make money is via TV and movies. In 2016, Angry Birds released the Angry Birds movie explaining the story of how the birds and pigs met originally, you can see the trailer below.

The movie had a budget of $73 million but grossed a total of $347 million, making it the best selling game adaptation movie ever made, topping video game adaptations made by Disney.

References:

Click to access rovio.pdf

http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2016/05/23/box-office-angry-birds-is-on-its-way-to-being-the-biggest-video-game-movie-ever/#35df4f626afc

 

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Choosing frogs as the characters?

From a young age children love to explore, with many playing in the garden trying to find wildlife bit with the development of fast food chains and technology, children are growing up living unhealthy lifestyles. Studies show that “Children spend more time viewing television and playing video games on computers than they do being physically active outside”

“In the past decade, the benefits of connecting to nature have been well documented in numerous scientific research studies and publications. Collectively, this body of research shows that children’s social, psychological, academic and physical health is positively impacted when they have daily contact with nature. Postive impacts include the following:

Supports multiple development domains.

Nature is important to children’s development in every major way—intellectually, emotionally, socially, spiritually and physically (Kellert, 2005).

Supports creativity and problem solving.

Studies of children in schoolyards found that children engage in more creative forms of play in the green areas. They also played more cooperatively (Bell and Dyment, 2006). Play in nature is especially important for developing capacities for creativity, problem-solving, and intellectual development (Kellert, 2005).

Enhances cognitive abilities.

Proximity to, views of, and daily exposure to natural settings increases children’s ability to focus and enhances cognitive abilities (Wells, 2000).

Improves academic performance.

Studies in the US show that schools that use outdoor classrooms and other forms of nature-based experiential education support significant student gains in social studies, science, language arts, and math. Students in outdoor science programs improved their science testing scores by 27% (American Institutes for Research, 2005).

Reduces Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) symptoms.

Contact with the natural world can significantly reduce symptoms of attention deficit disorder in children as young as five years old (Kuo and Taylor, 2004).

Increases physical activity.

Children who experience school grounds with diverse natural settings are more physically active, more aware of nutrition, more civil to one another and more creative (Bell and Dyment, 2006).

Improves nutrition.

Children who grow their own food are more likely to eat fruits and vegetables (Bell & Dyment, 2008) and to show higher levels of knowledge about nutrition (Waliczek, & Zajicek, 2006). They are also more likely to continue healthy eating habits throughout their lives (Morris & Zidenberg-Cherr, 2002).

Improves eyesight.

More time spent outdoors is related to reduced rates of nearsightedness, also known as myopia, in children and adolescents (American Academy of Ophthalmology, 2011).

Improves social relations.

Children will be smarter, better able to get along with others, healthier and happier when they have regular opportunities for free and unstructured play in the out-of-doors (Burdette and Whitaker, 2005).

Improves self-discipline.

Access to green spaces, and even a view of green settings, enhances peace, selfcontrol and self-discipline within inner city youth, and particularly in girls (Taylor, Kuo and Sullivan, 2001).

Reduces stress.

Green plants and vistas reduce stress among highly stressed children. Locations with greater number of plants, greener views, and access to natural play areas show more significant results (Wells and Evans, 2003).”

The benifits are clearly impressive. It is important to maintain a connection with wildlife, and therefore I should choose a relatable creature that can be seen worldwide. Therefore the frog, is something that fits this criteria perfectly. With over 4,000 species seen in every continent apart from antartica, it is clearly relatable. They are bright and colourful, which will easily engage children. The childrens toys currently exploit this market in multiple ways by providing things like tadpole growing kits, toys, clothing etc.

Using the frog as the reasoning behnid the site is a perfect analogy for what the site does. With young children signing up to the site at 6 as ‘tadpoles’ they are uneducated and almost blind to what the world has to offer, with a willingness to learn. As they they mature they go through stages of exploration and development with the aim that they will be fully developed children by the time they have used the site to it’s full potential to learn other languages, make connections and explore other cultures by the age of 12.

References:

https://naturalearning.org/sites/default/files/Benefits%20of%20Connecting%20Children%20with%20Nature_InfoSheet.pdf)

http://www.frog-life-cycle.com/types-of-frogs.html

Tadpole’s Life Cycle

Kids store research

For my research into what kids like when it comes to toys I decided to visit some of the big toy chains in London. M&M Chocolate, Nickelodeon, Harrods and Hamleys were the stores I visited, below are the lessons I learnt from the trip.

The M&M Chocolate store was themed in bright colours of the M&Ms. You can see below how they have themed the store around the characters. They are very important as they also relate to differentiating the characters, this is something I should do with my character line.

You can also see how they use the characters and relate them to pop culture within their store;

There is potential to create more expensive luxury items that could be sold in certain stores, these items can be larger versions of the normal versions which are only available to purchase I certain stores. You see a great example of this here;

Accessorizing on the characters and the accessories that go with them could be a great way to capitalize on the characters. I could then even expand my characters into building scene playsets for the different countries and famous landmarks.