I am getting uncomfortably attached to Wired (UK), it’s becoming my gospel. The magazine’s recent piece on the success of the mobile game Angry Birds coincided with some work I’ve been doing on games dev strategies. I’ve pulled together a list of lessons from Rovio, the game’s developers, taken straight from that article, that one might consider when launching a mobile game…
- Answer every email, tweet, etc.
- Respond to fan feedback with updates.
- Design a game for everyone, young and old.
- Make something with international appeal, and get big in countries with smaller app markets (not US, UK, etc.) first before hitting the big ones.
- Appeal to different levels of gamers by having an easy version of the game (eg. pass the level) and concurrent harder versions (eg. pass the level with maximum points).
- Build and release fast and cheap (Angry Birds is Rovio’s 52nd title).
- People love physics games.
- Providing rapid and constant iterations of small rewards is a fundamental game mechanic (think slot machines, not weekly lottery).
- The ‘overnight’ success of Angry Birds took eight years, so work from your long-term interests and personal goals to stay passionate.
- Profile the users of each platform (eg. Rovio identified iPhone users as everyone, not a niche at all).
- Test concepts on real people (eg. your mum).
- Success in smaller app stores is a good preemptive sign of impending success in The App Store.
- ‘Near misses’, where the players can see where they went wrong, is another effective game mechanic.
- Games should be easy to play from the start, with no instructions needed.
- Intuitively train people to use their handsets in new ways.
- Facebook requires very different models to mobile apps, being more social and collaborative in nature.
- Design brands that could work on multiple platforms (eg. films, comics, merchandise).
- After having a hit game, build distribution and multi-platform capability.
- Connect every detail of the game: back-stories, styles, etc. – aiming to create a ‘virtuous circle’.
It’s worth stating the obvious at this point, that there are no guaranteed paths to success, and if someone replicated the Angry Birds model precisely with a better game – and there are much better games – they would be more likely to fail than succeed. For entrepreneurs, failure is the norm and luck is inescapable. But more of that later. Funnily enough, that’s what this month’s Wired is all about.
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