In its results for 2012, Rovio said it ended the year with 263m monthly active players, but the lack of a comparable figure in its 2013 results hinted that the number may have fallen. Rovio’s revenues rose by just 2.5% in 2013 to €156m (£128.4m), while stripping out its consumer products income revealed that the income from the Angry Birds games actually fell slightly year-on-year. Juti talks enthusiastically about its mainstream reach – “three to 103 year-olds: very few things in life, probably chocolate and Angry Birds, that have such wide appeal” – but there have been signs that its growth has stalled. The other big challenge for Rovio and Angry Birds in 2014 is staying relevant. For us, free-to-play is a positive thing: it makes it extremely accessible to people around the world.” “That’s where the industry is going: people want to get the game for free, but somehow you need to be able to build the game. “You can totally play the game without having to purchase stuff, but then on the other hand, if you want to purchase stuff, you can,” says Juti. Par for the course in free-to-play games, but a potential eyebrow-raiser for parents whose children are playing – if not quite as big as the sight of a £69.99 kart in the Angry Birds Go! game last year. It will be interesting to see how reactions play out once the game is available, with cartoons, toys, merchandise and books to follow later in the year.īoys and girls? There’s another sensitive topic when it comes to Angry Birds, which is how Rovio balances its appeal to children with the company’s desire to adopt the “free-to-play” business model that’s become so dominant in the mobile games world: giving the games away for free, then selling in-app purchases.Īngry Birds Stella has in-app purchases going up to £37.99 for a chest of 7,500 virtual coins. Having played it, I can testify that it’s not easier than previous Angry Birds games too. A game with strong female heroes that’s played by lots of boys as well as girls sounds pretty progressive, though. A pinkified gaming-ghetto for girls sounds bad. You can look at Angry Birds Stella in two ways. I do think it will attract females as well. But most importantly, we wanted to make a kick-ass game. “It does celebrate women: we have five female heroes and one male, and all the pigs. Juti says that when Rovio had a playable version of Angry Birds Stella on its stand at the recent Comic-Con convention “a lot of guys came to play”, and more convincingly, that just over 50% of people watching the game’s trailer on Facebook have been men. We really want to challenge this, and there is already a bit of a movement around it.” “We want to challenge stereotypes, both on girls – that they only play easy games – and on boys, that they don’t like anything pink. “Just as I hope people don’t think Star Wars is for boys, I hope they don’t say this is just for girls,” she says. Angry Birds Stella risks looking like an attempt to ghettoise female fans: Star Wars, Transformers, karting and RPGs over here for the boys, and something pinker and simpler for the girls over there.īlanca Juti, Rovio’s chief marketing officer, makes the company’s case against this interpretation.
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