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Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

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Re: Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

#41

Post by codingdave »

autobahn wrote: post #28

Brings up an interesting thought exercise. Let's say you do start a small mobile game company and your game blows up into a cultural phenomena like Angry Birds. And like all of these things, you know that one day in the indeterminate future, that phenomena will fade, much like Angry Birds has. How do you best handle this? Do you sell early and get out quickly? Do you try to build something larger out of the resources…

Absolutely cash out. Internet fame and popularity is fleeting. Building up 800 employees because of one hit is a huge gamble. You could get another hit... but better odds are that you are just throwing money down the drain. Be happy for what you have, monetize the crap out of it, sell it at the peak if possible, and let it go.

Re: Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

#42

Post by lentil_soup »

corysama wrote: post #31
rokhayakebe wrote: post #16

If game shops operate as movie studios, why don't they simply hire people temporarily. Movie studios cut their staff to marketing, sales, and licensing once their work is completed and released.

Game shop operators have wanted to do that for a long time. The challenge has been that ramping up at a game studio has been a much longer process than ramping up on a movie project. The tools, skills and processes are a lot more consistent between movies than they are between games. It often takes working through a whole game to figure out how to be really effective at a particular studio. In practice, game shops th…

It's also very bad for employees when there are not many other companies around. It works for the movie industry because they have hubs (ie. Hollywood) where you have loads of studios so you can jump between productions without having to move. It's not the same in the games industry.

Re: Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

#43

Post by dpark »

braythwayt wrote: post #15
jonnathanson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you distinguishing between the two? Relevancy is a relative quality. We don't say that something simply is or is not "relevant." It needs to be relevant in relation to something else. Usually some standard or topic. Recency and popular culture are common guideposts to which we peg relevancy. If we choose to peg relevancy to 'current pop culture,' then we could say Angry Birds is less relevant today than it us…

Relevance is measured by influence, popularity by reach at one moment in time. Lots of boy bands are popular, but very few are relevant. I’m not saying that Angry Birds is or isn’t relevant, but there is a distinction between the two ideas that is fairly easy to observe in the wild.

> Lots of boy bands are popular, but very few are relevant.

Relevant to what? Relevant to their fans? Obviously. Relevant to the economy? Probably, since popular boy bands would have a great deal of influence over a lot of spenders. Relevant to culture? Definitely. A popular anything impacts culture.

Popularity pretty much implies some sort of relevance.

Re: Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

#44

Post by vladd »

codingdave wrote: post #41
autobahn wrote: post #28

Brings up an interesting thought exercise. Let's say you do start a small mobile game company and your game blows up into a cultural phenomena like Angry Birds. And like all of these things, you know that one day in the indeterminate future, that phenomena will fade, much like Angry Birds has. How do you best handle this? Do you sell early and get out quickly? Do you try to build something larger out of the resources…

Absolutely cash out. Internet fame and popularity is fleeting. Building up 800 employees because of one hit is a huge gamble. You could get another hit... but better odds are that you are just throwing money down the drain. Be happy for what you have, monetize the crap out of it, sell it at the peak if possible, and let it go.

It has been one of the criticism that gets brought up about the Blizzard CEO - the fact that he won't invest unless the game is exploitable over long periods of time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kotick#Gaming_controver...

However when looking at Rovio and Angry Birds right now, it looks like a really sound strategy.

Re: Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

#45

Post by drzaiusapelord »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #23
tfandango wrote: post #6

I'm not surprised, they have been cranking out the same game over and over again, re-branded and/or adding slightly different abilities without changing the basic game. After playing the Star Wars version for a little while I deleted it because the concept (while initially fun and interesting) had gotten old. They did release something called "Bad Piggies" too which I thought was a fun different game but along the sa…

Interesting that you mention Star Wars, because it's one of the few franchises that has been able to continually reinvent itself over the years, while raking it in from various video games, comic books, furniture etc. Angry Birds tried to do the same. A few years ago you couldn't walk past a park or school without seeing a kid in an Angry Birds shirt or carrying one of those goody stuffed pigs. Only problem is that t…

Except Star Wars is a universe and a huge story, and one which many people connect to. AB is just a dumb game for casuals. I don't think its remotely possible to turn AB into a Star Wars-like franchise. Its amazing to me they've lasted this long or got as big as they got. The casual spending of the lowest common denominator always kinda surprises me.

Who is buying all this stupid swag? Where is it now? I guess its all in landfills after wearing an AB t-shirt or a backpack a few times and getting tired of the novelty. I wish society could have a conversation about novelty and waste. I don't think future generations will judge us kindly.

Meanwhile, I have so much Star Wars stuff in my home, much of it decades old. Comics, old toys in boxes, etc. I think there's a difference between things we value and things that just have a temporary novelty. Sure, I'll die and it'll end up in a landfill also, but it lasted much longer than all the AB t-shirts I saw for sale, pretty much everywhere. Hell, there was an AB vendor outside the Colosseum in Rome a few years ago. This shit is completely out of control.

Re: Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

#46

Post by 0x0 »

I tried Angry Birds 2 and was super impressed by the production quality and butter smooth graphics.

Too bad the entire gameplay is a 100% miss: You have to wait or pay to retry levels after a while. This goes completely against everything that defines angry birds gameplay, which for me is to instantly re-start the level if I'm not satisfied with the first bird shoot.

Absolutely ruins it.

I'd much rather pay $X upfront for unlimited gameplay. Now it just feels like they're trying to cheat me out of real money every 15 minutes feeding some kind of virtual slot machine. :(

Re: Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

#47

Post by harmegido »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #23
tfandango wrote: post #6

I'm not surprised, they have been cranking out the same game over and over again, re-branded and/or adding slightly different abilities without changing the basic game. After playing the Star Wars version for a little while I deleted it because the concept (while initially fun and interesting) had gotten old. They did release something called "Bad Piggies" too which I thought was a fun different game but along the sa…

Interesting that you mention Star Wars, because it's one of the few franchises that has been able to continually reinvent itself over the years, while raking it in from various video games, comic books, furniture etc. Angry Birds tried to do the same. A few years ago you couldn't walk past a park or school without seeing a kid in an Angry Birds shirt or carrying one of those goody stuffed pigs. Only problem is that t…

| because it's one of the few franchises that has been able to continually reinvent itself over the years.

There are literally hundreds of such franchises. Just look at this summer's blockbuster lists. And in video games, there are plenty of examples of franchises that have lasted 15+ years (CoD, Madden, etc).

It's just very difficult to know if a franchise will have staying power. Many sequels are tried, only some succeed.

Re: Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

#48

Post by vvanders »

autobahn wrote: post #28

Brings up an interesting thought exercise. Let's say you do start a small mobile game company and your game blows up into a cultural phenomena like Angry Birds. And like all of these things, you know that one day in the indeterminate future, that phenomena will fade, much like Angry Birds has. How do you best handle this? Do you sell early and get out quickly? Do you try to build something larger out of the resources…

I think Notch is one of the few to handle this well. He supports other indie devs that look promising rather than trying to bottle the lightning a second time.

Re: Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

#49

Post by untog »

autobahn wrote: post #28

Brings up an interesting thought exercise. Let's say you do start a small mobile game company and your game blows up into a cultural phenomena like Angry Birds. And like all of these things, you know that one day in the indeterminate future, that phenomena will fade, much like Angry Birds has. How do you best handle this? Do you sell early and get out quickly? Do you try to build something larger out of the resources…

The thing I don't understand about making something larger is that you're ruining the circumstances of your original success. Not say that you were definitely successful because you had a small team, but I don't see any evidence that having a bigger team makes you more likely to produce a hit.

As other have said, I'd cash out and get to working on the next game. Of course, that's all very well for me, Mr. Fictional Founder - my employees might have other opinions.

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