Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by notNow » Wed, Aug 26, 2015, 5:32 PM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #45

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 al…

For all the intents and purposes, I agree with you re your evaluation of Angry Birds. AB is definitely not on par with Star Wars. Heck, it's not even on equal footing with Super Mario or Pac Man but I am inclined to have a different take on AB merchandise or paraphernalia in general. I think that certain items in that may have collectible qualities and could fetch a good amount of cash some 30 - 50 years down the road from now when they will be sold for future generations who would appreciate the nostalgic appeal of these items derived from this once successful game from late 2000s.

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

#102

Post by nosuchthing » Wed, Aug 26, 2015, 5:43 PM UTC

kedean wrote: post #93

0x0 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the early days of the App Store, people solved this problem by publishing two apps, a free "lite" edition and a for-pay "full" edition. Not sure why this isn't used more. Maybe because it's a hassle to migrate data (game progress, saves, etc) between apps, but I thought at least in modern iOS versions, multiple apps can share a common bundle ID prefix.

Part of the problem with that is that nobody wants to pay for the full edition, which goes back to the classic problem with demos of freeloaders who just keep playing the demo. The solution that Nintendo stumbled on is to limit the number of uses to a demo, after which the demo is no longer playable. Unfortunately, this would require absolute cooperation from the app store, be decried as a terrible practice by many,…

If nobody wants to pay for the full edition after trying a demo version, I would assume the game is not engaging enough to warrant desire to spend a few dollars on it..?

There's a lot of games out there, and most of them are just cranked out rehashes or predictable and dull.

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

#103

Post by nosuchthing » Wed, Aug 26, 2015, 5:51 PM UTC

sosborn wrote: post #100

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh. Greedy idiots are ruining mobile gaming. There are virtually no good games anymore as they all are designed to require in app purchases, they are not designed to be great games, just to con stupid people out of money. Gaming on mobile is dead because of this, yet continues to make money due to such scams.

Is it greedy to want to keep the lights on?

It's greedy to design systems that manipulate children into becoming psychologically addicted to fruitless casino games.

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

#104

Post by swillis16 » Wed, Aug 26, 2015, 5:53 PM UTC

fasteddie wrote: post #89

icebraining wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about trial versions? Are they supported by the app stores already? Seems like they'd solve the psychological problem.

Conversion on anything trial-like, is going to be very small, and likely worse than even an upfront purchase because you will hit some people who are satiated with a small amount of trial gameplay or people who decide not to buy after playing. Keep in mind that the best premium apps have lifetime revenues in the low tens of millions, and the best F2P are in the billions.

This reminds me of some reading/watching I've done in the past about how video game demos can actually hurt sales in the long run[1] which sounds very similar to what you've stated.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us6OPbYtKBM

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

#105

Post by Reedx » Wed, Aug 26, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

sosborn wrote: post #100

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh. Greedy idiots are ruining mobile gaming. There are virtually no good games anymore as they all are designed to require in app purchases, they are not designed to be great games, just to con stupid people out of money. Gaming on mobile is dead because of this, yet continues to make money due to such scams.

Is it greedy to want to keep the lights on?

One hit like Angry Birds and you can keep the lights on virtually forever. Assuming you don't get so greedy in the first place and immediately bloat the company.

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

#106

Post by notNow » Wed, Aug 26, 2015, 6:01 PM UTC

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…

It always surprised me that these people treat their mobile game studio as a going concern when this business has all the features of the lottery where you enter repeatedly till you win big and when you do you get the cash and take off with no more time and money spent on buying lottery tickets and "optimizing" your chances to win.

I guess this could be attributable to the gambler mentality where they believe that the fact of past winnings is indicative of more and bigger winnings in the future but I think that AB were rather prudent albeit rather late that they cut their losses and laid off people to buy them some time.

Will they get out before it's too late? This remains to be seen.

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

#107

Post by noir_lord » Wed, Aug 26, 2015, 6:05 PM UTC

caligastia wrote: post #90

When the first game came out, it was written in Lua and they had embedded a runtime in the iOS application - interesting that Apple at first forbade that practice, to the point of scanning libraries for interpreters. It then became the #1 iOS game - goes to show, allowing companies to bring their own language to the platform allows for unexpected successes. Hopefully Apple learned from that lesson. All the same, 800…

> Facebook for a website..

That might be the greatest understatement I've seen for a while.

It's technically true but it really doesn't paint any kind of picture.

Facebook is a website in the same way that the Library of Congress is a 'place that stores stuff'.

I'm not a huge fan of Facebook as a company but I admire the engineering talent that goes into dealing with 1.5 billion active monthly users, the incredible problems of adding even tiny features at that kind of scale.

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

#108

Post by kedean » Wed, Aug 26, 2015, 6:05 PM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #94

kedean wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem with that is that nobody wants to pay for the full edition, which goes back to the classic problem with demos of freeloaders who just keep playing the demo. The solution that Nintendo stumbled on is to limit the number of uses to a demo, after which the demo is no longer playable. Unfortunately, this would require absolute cooperation from the app store, be decried as a terrible practice by many,…

I've always been happy to pay for the full edition. Unfortunately, most phone games are absolutely terrible. I think that's why the trials fail: it's really, really hard to make a great game. It's the same problem with trying to turn any creative pursuit into a predictable business.

I really think it's more than that for many people. The game Jetpack (Joyride) for instance, offers a paid version. I do not know a single person who purchased it, but I know lots of people who were extremely into the free one. Same with Fruit Ninja, and Peggle.

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

#109

Post by nols » Wed, Aug 26, 2015, 6:14 PM UTC

josu wrote: post #63

We need Uber for software developers. The gaming industry is looking more and more like the movie industry. Long term contracts no longer make sense. The industry needs to adapt.

Like Upwork (formerly Elance and Odesk)?

Hiring contractors instead of employees isn't that uncommon, and now we're even seeing the startup studio become more popular as a business model.

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

#110

Post by GrinningFool » Wed, Aug 26, 2015, 6:20 PM UTC

hesdeadjim wrote: post #67

0x0 wrote: post #46

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 upfron…

Unfortunately the market doesn't support selling a premium game at prices that allow anyone other than a small studio to keep the lights on. We've been in the game since the beginning so I've seen the transition from selling a game at $4.99, then $2.99, then $0.99, and finally free with IAP. Despite being very successful we didn't enjoy that trend, but instead just adapted to it. It's purely a response to the mobile…

That's a shame. If I have a trial version and like the game, I'm happy to pay $3 or $5. If it's a comprehensive, open-ended game, I've paid up to $10 (haven't seen anything priced higher).

In the race to the bottom, everyone loses.