Is it just me or do these companies tend towards having a single massive hit, growing too quickly on the hype and then getting into trouble? Rovio, King, Zynga...
Wasn't Angry Birds Rovio's 54th game or something like that? Suggests that it's almost impossible to predict/curate a huge hit game...
I was really tempted to short KING when they floated.
I don't know why they all make the same mistake of hiring literally a thousand people after their one big hit. Only Mojang seems to have kept small enough to sustain themselves in the long term.
I guess it's not a mistake if you are a highly paid CEO with shares that grow exponentially in value as your firm does. Exit quick or at least sell off some of those shares before it goes to hell and then move on to your next job having "been at the helm of a company with thousands of employees".
Presumably often they are intentionally bloating when they have a hit to attempt to milk it for all its worth while they can, exactly because the big hits are so rare.
> Suggests that it's almost impossible to predict/curate a huge hit game...
It is. Just like whether a startup succeeds, or whether a stock will rise or fall in price. It's all a matter of flinging stuff at walls and if something sticks you got lucky.
That's very common in industries dominated by hits, breakthroughs and inventions like entertainment, biotech or pharmaceutical. When you have a hit, you throw a big portion of the money you make from that at attempts to have another hit before the money runs out.
"Rovio still plans to release an animated Angry Birds film in 2016"
I really fail to see what they are trying to do with this. That game has hardly any "story" behind it and the characters are not really that interesting. I know they're trying to push a brand but all this random stuff they're making around it comes across as bland.
They said they were going to be the next Disney. Maybe they are trying to follow that path with just this one big hit product, and failing to see that it's not really the same time as when Disney managed to build their brands.
Yeah, I see what you mean. I must say I don't know much about the history of Disney, did they push their brand so aggressively at the beginning? or was it more "organic"?
Thinking about that, it is interesting that Disney doesn't make movies with their traditional brand characters any more. Maybe because of those characters lack a bit of depth for a full blown movie? (like Angry Birds)
I grew up with these books (I am Portuguese and we got the Brazilian ones) and the stories have much more depth, and the universe where they live more continuity than you'd might expect. This format is still very popular in France and Germany, for example. But not in the USA. I never quite understood why.
The Disney comics are very much 'slice of life' mixed with comedy; the stereotype I have of US comics is that they're action comics, mostly serious business (and explosions), and not a strong basis for comic comics (geddit).
This book and Don Rosa's works in general are a prime example for love of detail in every aspect, deep characterization of the seemingly flat Disney characters and rigorous background research for the historic embedding (and the embedding in the works of Carl Barks).
Being an art historian and a member of the educated middle-class, she took the liberty to translate Disney comics in a very literary fashion, with multiple references to classic literature. Many of her word and phrase creations have become part of the German language.
# A couple of months ago the French-German rather highbrow TV channel arte screened a documentary that circulated around the internet: The first half of the piece deeply characterized Donald Duck, while the second half applied this characterization to the acceptance of disorientation and personal failure in our society.
I don't speak a word of German so I've not read any of the comics but I love the names "Tick, Trick & Track", do you know if Erika was responsible for those names?
The information in the German web on this is contradictory, so I'm not sure. While two articles mention that she translated them herself, another source says that the publisher decided on the names before she began working.
The nephew's names have been translated quite diversified in general:
English Original: Huey, Dewey, and Louie
Chinese: 路儿，杜儿 和 辉儿
Danish: Rip, Rap og Rup
Finnish: Tupu, Hupu ja Lupu
French: Riri, Fifi et Loulou
Italian: Qui, Quo, e Qua
Dutch: Kwik, Kwek, en Kwak
Swedish: Knatte, Fnatte och Tjatte
Spanish: Hugo, Paco y Luis / Hugo, Diego y Luis / Juanito, Jorgito y Jaimito (from different translations)
This was particularly significant in Italy, where Disney opened their first foreign subsidiary (before WWII) and came to be one of the largest publishers in the country at one point. They even had to open an official "Academy" project to train artists and writers in order to sustain production; most Disney comic books published in Europe and South America were actually produced in Italy, back in the 80s and 90s.
One of the reasons for the popularity of such a format outside the US is the way the comic book market developed after the 60s. In the US, superhero comics built a parallel distribution system with dedicated stores; this system catered to hardcore superhero fans but not to the mainstream. Mainstream comics were mostly relegated to syndicated strips, a format that privileges simple joke-based comedy. Also, in the US most "newsagents" are actually convenience stores with a magazine rack; in Europe, this is very different: every town has (or used to have) a centrally-located, fully-dedicated newsagent stocking as much as it can of every publication under the sun. Press distribution is often regulated by law in much stricter terms than in the US. The typical father going to the newsagent every day to get a newspaper would also buy something like "Glamour" for the wife and "Topolino" (Mickey Mouse) for the kids at least once a week.
The american authors did not write enough stores to fill the demand in Denmark so the Danish publisher had to write additional stories for the weekly magazine in Denmark.
Yes it could, but then again, LEGO is on a completely different scale than angry birds.
With LEGO there was no story, no plot, no purpose, no motivation. Any story with LEGO was imagined by the kid playing with it.
Can the same be said about angry birds? Probably not. There is a vague story (Pigs steal eggs, Birds are angry) but there isn't much room for imagination.
On top of that, LEGO is a cultural phenomenon that has stood the test of time. The same can't be said with Angry Birds (see the article above).
Ultima. Yeah, it flamed out in the end, but from Akalabeth/Ultima 1 to Ultima 7 was an amazing journey of elaboration on a theme. Some other RPGs could be named here. Final Fantasy has certainly seen a lot of elaboration over the years. The recent Wasteland 2 is receiving a decent reception and it is based on a game from the Commodore 64 era that, in terms of bytes, probably fits comfortably into the first couple of frames of the intro movie for Wasteland 2.
It can be done. But all the examples I can name are in genres where narrative is a focus. I've got nothing like Angry Birds I can name.
I understand that many of these movies didn't even create a profit in the sense that it's usually understood; rather they took advantage of German tax law to enable their creators to save more in taxes than the movies cost to make.
I thought the same thing when I first heard of the Lego movie. I'm not nearly as much of an angry birds fan as I am a lego fan, but from that experience I learned to reserve judgement before I see it.
Yeah, you are right. Maybe LEGO was better at letting their brand grow and becoming something more "nostalgic" for all of us? Or is it just that they made a decent movie out of it?.
The difference is that the Lego movie was dreamed up by someone outside Lego (Dan Lin) who then got the Lego company on board, not an exec at Lego deciding that they "need to capture the film adjacency in 2014."
Lego's "problem" with a movie, if anything, is that the field was wide open; Legos can be absolutely anything. So there's space to write a decent movie and the difficult comes from "blank page" syndrome more than lack of possibility.
Angry Birds have the exact opposite problem; like many games, the narrative is paper thin, and that's fine for a game but makes it difficult to adapt into any narrative-focused medium. You'll probably just end up with a bad-Dreamworks-style movie that substitutes snark, sarcasm, and licensed pop music for plot and well-worn stereotypes for character. And it may sell or may make a profit, because they often do, but it'll also sink without a trace after its run is done. And I'll have no interest in it, but some may get some brief enjoyment out of it... though the 2016 timing is awfully suspect if Angry Birds is already fading, the movie needed to be out about six months to a year ago...
While I was working on the original version of The Sims 1, there was some crazy talk about a movie. I dearly hoped that nothing would ever come of it, since it couldn't possibly be anything but terrible. Fortunately it seems to have been canceled!
>Producer John Davis revealed on an interview that he is taking inspiration from John Hughes's 1985 film Weird Science for the movie adaptation.
>"What they realize is that they can scan their world in, because this is the most lifelike, real Sims game ever. As they are playing this, they are all of a sudden realising [that] what they are playing on the game is having an effect on the real world. So in effect, through the game, they are able to control their world. It's wish fulfillment, and obviously it turns against them."
How could that possibly not bomb in the worst possible way?
I imagine they would have had to bury the DVDs in the same hole as the ET cartridges.
If I can judge from my child and his friends, I can tell you the angry birs brand is just massively popular and that the lack of story is absolutely irrelevant to them (they just care about levels, birds' powers, things they win, etc.) The story, bah, what for ?
Rovio has made a boatload of animated shorts already, most of which are as dumb and flat as you'd imagine them to be, but I still see my kids watching them with interest. Just like Digimon had its audience, Rovio's flick may find their.
In my experience kids will watch almost anything as long as it's colorful, it moves and it makes funny sounds. Surely Angry Birds animated shorts are popular because kids recognize the birds, but I'd say that's hardly a basis for a strong, stable and lasting brand. When some other game with cute characters gets very popular and kids lose interest in Angry Birds games they (and by transitivity: their parents) will also lose interest in Angry Birds animated shorts and Angry Birds merchandise (exhibit A: this news article). It's not like <12 year olds are the best target audience for brand loyalty and disposable income.
Digimon actually had some interesting plot and characterization. Yes, most of it was one- or two-dimensional but the character dynamics between Tai and Matt and his younger brother were actually quite good.
Digimon (first season) had superb characters who were all multi-dimensional. Izzy was adopted and they had a small arc on that and Sora has a trouble relationship with her divorced mom who she lives with. I found this series very interesting as a 10 year old boy.
Thanks, I couldn't remember details on the other characters! despite loving Izzy, I mostly remember him as "the techy nerd" of the group. I also found the series very thought-provoking as a young boy.
"dumb and flat"? Maybe it's just the fact that I have a 5 year old and a 3 year old, so I've become somewhat of a connoisseur of animated shorts, but I've actually been fairly amazed with the quality of most of the animated shorts. With no real dialogue to speak of, there is an awful lot of humor packed into these, and the voice acting combined with the animation in some of the shorts is pretty damn impressive, often conveying a surprising amount of emotion and expressiveness that I would not have expected.
I'll give you dumb possibly, but flat? Watch a good number of them again and see if you still say that.
Digimon's characters were quite deep. Matt vs Tai had the rivalry thing going (especially since Matt represented friendship, despite straying from the path he eventually proved himself to be a very reliable friend). Tai's progression from false-courage (accidentally turning Agumon into SkullGreymon) to true courage (MetalGreymon) is also quite thought provoking.
Its got a relatively straightforward formula. Associate each character with a virtue, and then they told a story about it. (Courage for Tai, Friendship Matt, Knowledge Izzy, Sincerity Mimi, Honesty Joe, Hope TK). The evolution of each character was associated with a physical being (the Digimon) that got stronger as each kid recognized the strength of their virtue.
But the Digimon characters made relationships based on their virtues, in particular Tai (Courage) vs Matt (friendship). The younger sister of Tai (Kari, representing "Light") was good friends with Matt's younger brother TK (Hope). Etc. etc.
There was a _lot_ of character interaction and development.
On the other hand, Pokemon is just straight up milking the series. Real depth of characters can be found in "Pokemon Special" comics however, and some Pokemon games have legitimate villains now.
A friend of mine went to see that movie with his kids, quickly gave up trying to understand what was going on and had a great nap instead. Kids were 7-9-ish, he was 40. I'm pretty sure it was Digimon.
>I really fail to see what they are trying to do with this. That game has hardly any "story" behind it
That hardly troubled tons of other movies that did the same, from Garfield (comic strip, not much of a plot), Prince of Persia (prince saves princess for evil guy, that sums it), to the Lego movie, etc. They can always write a plot involving pigs and birds fighting.
>and the characters are not really that interesting.
They are funny looking enough to sell hundreds of millions of merchandize with them on. And the interesting story wont be in the game, it will be in the movie (if they succeed).
The benefits though are obvious: if they succeed with the movie, they can tap into kids minds like Mickey Mouse, not just like some forgotten in 5 years game fad.
> That game has hardly any "story" behind it and the characters are not really that interesting.
Given that the boardgame Battleship -- which has zero story and no characters -- had a major motion picture based on it (or, at least, branded based on it), I don't see that as a particular problem.
I've been hearing from friends who have worked close at Rovio that the real talent has been fleeing from there for some time now already, and they have been attracting people who are attracted to money, which is never a good sign for sustaining business, as the creativity might be killed in the process.
Not sure if this true, would love to hear some more insight into this from insiders or people who know more.
Might the same kind of hubris that Nokia had when they become #1 and they just couldn't innovate anymore as the diversion between the paycheck of the leaders and the normal workers became too big, and the thought process was "Were number one, why try harder, our product is best!". The same thing can be seen with Rovio, pushing the same shit down throats of people in new packages.
Seems this model of creating success is not just working in the long run, maybe we should be thinking about building sustainable businesses and not just rewarding those running the company in a huge way, creating feeling of envy, hate and other stuff that can be also seen in the whole 99% vs 1% thing going on.
> they have been attracting people who are attracted to money, which is never a good sign for sustaining business,
More accurately, it's not a good sign for a business to attract people not driven by it's primary product. Rovio's product is games, so ideally they would attract games-driven people, not money-driven people. On the other hand, investment banks have been working quite successfully for decades by attracting money-driven people, but then, their main business is money, so...
Have they been successful? They did risky things and pocketed the winnings themselves in good times, with the taxpayer paying the losses when everything came down.
I am not saying banks are not needed, and I am not running around with a tinfoil hat, but saying that investment banks are 'working quite successfully' might be a bit of a stretch.
Up until the most recent crisis, I would say yes. There are a few very old investment firms, e.g. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, that probably haven't required government help many times in the past. This time, it's different, pretty much every big bank required help, as did other big companies (e.g. auto manufacturers), so you can't really say that it was the money-driven people in banks that were the cause of this issue.
No, not at all. It was the handful of very greedy politicians that relaxed the laws that allowed this to happen; "ordinary" traders, quants and managers at big banks had essentially nothing to do with the direction in which the world was headed, they were only there for the execution.
> It was the handful of very greedy politicians that relaxed the laws that allowed this to happen
This breaks down for two reasons. First, politicians relaxed the laws because they were bribed into it by lobbies. That's at least two handfuls of money-driven people at play here.
> "ordinary" traders, quants and managers at big banks had essentially nothing to do with the direction in which the world was headed, they were only there for the execution.
That's people who convinced poor and poorly-educated people to buy houses they couldn't afford. They tampered the accounting books. They outright lied to get more sales, and so on and so forth.
I don't know about you, but I would need to be extremely desperate (as in I can't feed my children) to resort to those tactics in exchange for money. These people were not in great need, and acted in that manner just because they are more money-driven than others who didn't (many of which lost their jobs because of it).
So yes, I honestly think that it was the fault of money-driven people in general from the very top to the street seller.
> Rovio's product is games, so ideally they would attract games-driven people, not money-driven people
Ugh. This sounds like the excuse a boss at EA would give when forcing his employees to work eighty hour weeks. In the real world Silicon Valley companies have been very successful hiring good employees in part by offering massive amounts of compensation. And then there is the other half of Silicon Valley, which feeds off the overworked and undercompensated twentysomethigs following their "passion".
I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. You don't want "money-driven people" in the sense that all they care about is doing the least amount of work required to get paid. You want people that are "games-driven" in the sense that they care about putting out a quality product and making a fun game; because of that, they will work harder and should be paid accordingly.
You are absolutely correct in that using the "passion" excuse to force 80-hour weeks and/or underpay workers is BS. An employee being passionate makes them more valuable, not less.
How do you find the passionate employees and separate them from those driven by money? If you advertise a high salary and a 40 hour week you will get applications from both types of people and they will both say at the interview that they are "passionate" because they know that will get them the job.
So perhaps the paradox is that you get better employees by offering a lower salary?
Its a hard problem, to be sure. You will never know what their motivations are unless you work with them. The best that once can do seems to be looking at their work experience, at the kind of stuff and places they've worked on before and then... taking a leap of faith in thinking that the person will do well.
Passion is highly overrated, I think, and a lot of people define it differently. For some, it means staying at the office for 12 hours everyday including saturday. For others, it means keeping regular hours and contributing good quality work everyday, yet recognizing that one might need to work more (without overtime) when the job demands it. And the manager should know not to make these kind of situations a regular thing and reward the employees accordingly.
As to the question of attracting the right kind of people, although it can be faked, the curios ones are usually the best. If the person you're looking at is always asking questions, or making suggestions, not to impress you but to get a genuine understanding of what you do and what you want her to do, that is the best sign of a passionate employee.
How do you tell if the person was motivated by passion or by money in their previous jobs? You could look for people who previously worked for low pay and offer them higher pay, but if they worked for low pay in the past then they are probably willing to work for low pay again.
In the games industry is that if you work a 40 hour week then your game will be delayed or have less content or more bugs than your competitors game who's programmers worked for 60 hours and when your programmers burn out they are easily replaced because so many people want to work in games.
You could also ask the reverse - how can I find an employer who will pay me a good salary, without expecting me to be productive all the time. It sounds kind-of ridiculous, doesn't it. In the end, people work for money, sure, you can motivate them better or worse (e.g. I'm motivated by hard, challenging problems - not necessarily some big, scary, new machine learning research, but could be as simple as finding obscure bugs or optimizing a piece of code - and by always having a bit more on my plate than I can reasonably do), but you should pay them a fair salary either way.
But if you can get developers who are cheaper and of higher quality (because your low pay automatically filters out those with a lack of passion) by offering low salaries then this might explain why game studios with low pay produce better games (assuming this is true in the first place).
> Ugh. This sounds like the excuse a boss at EA would give when forcing his employees to work eighty hour weeks
I don' think that's true at all - I think it's reasonable to ask that people who develop games are really into games... That doesn't mean they should be taken advantage of. You still need to pay them well, or they'll go work for your competition, or start their own company.
There are a lot of talented developers who want to develop games, so employers shouldn't have a hard time finding the right people. It's not like run-of-the-mill business admin software. For that, you actually need to pay people more to get them motivated.
> Rovio's product is games, so ideally they would attract games-driven people, not money-driven people.
You can't really call it a games company any more. Rovio's product is Angry Birds and the income comes mostly from non-game products and selling IP licensing rights.
Rovio employs only a few dozen game developers in their in-house studio, most of their game development is outsourced to 3rd party game studios.
I saw Rovios head of marketing, Peter Vesterbacka, give a talk at the finnish startup conference Slush last month. I could not believe my ears when he made the claim that Rovio makes the best games. Period.
I think part of their problem has been shifting focus away from games. Sure it's great that half of their revenue comes from selling merchandise etc., but I think in the long run people won't want your merchandise if your core products, the games, are not great.
> I could not believe my ears when he made the claim that Rovio makes the best games
I have been making games for over two decades and never seen a company, studio or team that does NOT say that kind of stuff: "our games are the best", "we have the best talent", "this is the best team I have ever been part of", etc. Both internally as well as in public-facing events. I'm all for projecting confidence, encouraging excellence and boosting passion and morale, but sometimes the cognitive dissonance is jarring.
Well no one wants to admit that they hire people that are just good enough and that they make do to ship acceptable products. I mean how would you feel if your company said "we're just average and do an acceptable job".
Personally, I would be OK with that. By definition most companies are "average". The ones that recognize that and try to become better are much more realistic than the ones who already think they are the best...
Rovio made one game the best, and even that was pretty seriously not a great game if you've played that kind of game before.
They happened to hit the right audience with the rise of iPad and iPhone happening at the same time, for mostly those who have not played games before, so kudos for doing it very well.
I think this happens when founders make a tonne of money. Small wins don't whet their appetite anymore and the discussions they are having, with friends, investors, peers and agencies, are all about their existing global success and taking it even further--after all no business with that kind of momentum feels "we're big and this is as big we're gonna be".
When in reality, even the best of games in this genre need only a small core of maybe just 3-5 strong and highly motivated game developers.
To their credit, they juiced their one-hit-wonder as much as any company ever could.
It always surprises me when layoffs are this large. I would have thought the business would slowly scale down to keep up with business cessation. Guess it would be more awkward to fire people one by one for redundancy purposes.
I dunno, I would hate to work for a company where one of my coworkers disappeared every two weeks, and you never know if you'll be next. At least this way after the big layoff those who are still around don't have to be looking over their shoulder quite so frequently wondering if they're the next one to go.
In Finland it isn't that easy to fire people one by one from permanent positions when it's not related to employee's performance. Company can offer good exit packages to ask people to leave (x months of salary), I believe this is what Nokia did at some point. In general it's normal to do big layoff rounds that involve proper announcements and negotiations between company and employee-representatives.
As someone who went through a process of constant threat of redundancy over many years - it is far better for employee morale to just do a bulk redundancy process, rather than dribs and drabs. Living with the prospect of every day not knowing if this was the day you lose your job, when so many friends had already lost theirs, is highly stressful and demoralizing.
If you give people the idea that more firings are coming, you'll also see many of your best performers leave first, because they have the easiest way out.
At least here in Finland it is much, much easier from a regulations perspective for a company to fire a bunch of people all at once rather than just few at a time.
One has to take into consideration that Rovio isn't today just a game company, half or even more of their income comes from franchise products like e.g. angry Birds soda and clothes. I have a friend who works as their soda manager dealing with worldwide agreements with softdrink companies to produce Angry Birds soft drinks, not exactly a job you would find in most game studios.
To you maybe, but what about fans that see it in the stores?
Don't underestimate the imagination and enthousiasm of the younger generation, when it comes to Angry Birds, Minecraft, modern Lego, and franchises like that.
Dismissing a successful business because you're not into it is just a bit shallow-minded (or elitist).
The bottom line is that a single previous success is not indicative of likely future success when creating new things. If you create something like Facebook, that's fine, because you can monetize the core product indefinitely. But when you create a game or a movie or a hit song that has a limited lifespan, there's very little indication that you can do it again. Once you churn out a long sequence of hits like Disney, you can claim to understand the process, but until then you might have just done the right thing at the right time.
I am surprised they employed that many people! What did they all do? They can't all be working on pig noises, bird noises and basic physics simulations can they????
Rovio has been trying for at least a couple of years to break out of their Angry birds rut by developing and/or publishing bunch of different games in various genres. Unfortunately for them it doesn't seem to have gone that well.
Sales primarily. Moving merchandise globally, signing royalty deals and partnering with carries for app bundling deals is the crux of their business.
Software (and other intellectual properties) don't quite have the same supply-side economies. Once the game is done, you can make a sequel or variations with little effort. The rest is just about how many copies/downloads you can move. Or how many partner licenses you can sign. Really, it's all just profit after.
I had one person within Microsoft put it as: On that first CD Microsoft ships, it writes off a few billion dollars in losses. After that every Windows license is just pure profit.
If you have the money, you can hire people that are extremely specialized in specific areas, for example you may have a team of 5 people that is specialized on constantly analyzing and optimizing landing pages, or another one that studies only app usage in the first 3 hours after install, etc. These are not generally teams you would want assemble for a startup, but people who have years of expertise in very specific fields tend to be better at it than generalists for obvious reasons. You can do successful mobile apps wth 3 people, but if you can afford it and if politics/bureaucracy doesn't get much in the way, it can be worthwhile to have a larger team of specialists.
Sounds like a waste of money. If you are making lots of money then it may seem like no big deal. Rovio, can no longer afford it of course. I'd rather hire 5 more developers to work on a new game.
"It isn’t hard to see how they would become the coolest social network within a month or two. Even cooler than Quora. Heheh. After all, a lot more people identify with Angry Birds than identify with other services online (the same exec told me they can’t keep Angry Birds merchandise in stock).
"
> The lifetime of a company has been getting shorter and shorter for centuries.
Really? Because Apple was founded in 1976 and I'm guessing they aren't going anywhere. Google was founded in 1998 and I don't think they're going anywhere.
Your assertion is really flimsy, and I think based on seeing a large number of mismanaged companies that flare up and die quickly and then concluding this is normal or even unavoidable. While it may be common, that doesn't mean it's what has to happen.
Rovio took their success and drove it into the ground. They absolutely saturated the market, coming out with new Angry Birds games and tie ins almost constantly and flooding store shelves with very low quality (and in my area, often dingy) plush animals, further lowering public perception of their brand.
I'd argue that if Rovio had been more judicious with their successful IP, that public interest in it wouldn't have disappeared so completely.
You seem to be arguing that the fade was unavoidable since Angry Birds is just a game where you launch birds at pigs with a sling shot. But that doesn't mean the follow up games needed to be. Super Mario Bros was just a game where a guy jumps on things. Now I'm not really saying that Angry Birds was necessarily an IP with as much legs as Mario, but I think they burned it down.
Rovio chose the short term, maximum immediate profit path, and now we're seeing the result of that. Zynga did the same thing. When you go all in immediately, and don't think about what is best for your long term, you burn out public interest in whatever you have to offer. When you don't take the time to make what you're putting out compelling, people will start to conclude everything you have to offer is just going to be more of the same. And they'll be sick of it.
This is not the only path available, and asserting that it is just the way things are now is ridiculous.
Really? What other paths are available for game companies? Any examples?
Take Nintendo and Mario/Zelda/Metroid franchises. You spend years developing quality titles that you rotate through to avoid saturating the market. Probably the easiest way to do that is to actually develop more than a single franchise, but still, throwing as many slightly modified versions of your original game at app stores as fast as possible is definitely not the way to build a long term business.
Look at Nintendo or Blizzard or Capcom or any other gaming company that hasn't simply flared up and burned out like some of the recent mobile developers who didn't know how to handle their success.
Don't just take your one IP and drive it into the ground like Rovio did with Angry Birds. Diversify. But do so thoughtfully. If you release a bunch of crap, that will dilute your brand as well.
Blizzard (WoW, SC, Diablo), Microsoft (Halo), Nintendo (Mario), Pocketwatch Games (Monaco), the makers of Towerfall, DoubleFine. That's just off the top of my head as somebody who isn't very current with the game scene. I've included a mix of big companies, medium ones and smaller indie ones. There are other paths.
Blizzard has milked the WoW cow for all it's worth. And all three series you've listed were created in the 1990's, so not exactly a beacon of innovation.
I'm not sure how your point relates to the topic being discussed.
Blizzard has kept WoW going strong for a decade, releasing expansions (not sequels) every two years. Diablo is on it's third iteration since debuting in 1996.
These are examples are a game developer taking a different path than releasing as many titles as possible as fast as possible.
Not concerned about innovation here. I was listing companies that have made a lasting career of videogames, which is what the parent was asking for.
And while Blizzard has milked WoW for a lot, I don't think they're done. They're planning for another decade at least and I don't doubt they'll do it, profitably.
Finally, yes the series were created in the 90's but they've updated them with thoughtful sequels with good content. SC2 is not just a reskin of SC in the way parent comments are describing the Angry Birds franchise.
I love their games, but I wouldn't really describe DoubleFine as a success right now; they've burned through a lot of community goodwill recently, and additionally had to lay off 16 people after an unannounced project was cancelled.
I wasn't trying to list currently successful companies, rather companies that have stood the test of time. Despite the goodwill they've burned through and the layoffs, I think they will continue to exist and make games for a while.
Good point - Apple as we know it was essentially re-founded in 1997 when SJ took over. Wasn't there an almost immediate and total overhaul of their product lines and direction?
> Bad example, as Apple almost died back in the 90's.
They did almost die, but that's why it's a great example. Why did they almost die? Because they started shitting out bad products. Why did they turn around? Because they re-evalutaed and looked at the products they were offering and reduced the number of them in order to focus more on those few products.
> Also, using a company founded in 1998 (16 years old) as a counter example to the parent argument who's scope was "centuries" is not ideal.
The scope of "centuries" is a joke. He didn't cite any examples, and "business" in the 1400's isn't really relevant or meaningful in 2014. My examples were to illustrate how absurd his "centuries" comment was by pointing that two of today's largest companies are very young (I haven't done a count but I'd be surprised if any/many of the top 100 companies were much more than one century old.)
It's also selection bias. We tend to remember companies more if their names are still in use.
Borland was founded in 1983. By 2008, the only value left in it was its trademarks. So those were purchased, and now that company "still exists", in the sense that a few of its old names are being used to conduct business in the same industry. It was killed by gross mismanagement at the executive level.
Eastman Kodak was founded in 1888 and practically invented consumer-grade photography with the Brownie. But by 2012, the only thing left of value was its patents and trademarks. It even built a digital camera as early as 1975, which makes it look a lot like it was killed by being run over by its own car. But the trademark is still in use.
Beatrice Foods, founded in 1894, died in 1984. RCA was founded in 1919, and died in 1986. Compaq: 1982-2002. TWA: 1930-2001. General Foods: 1895-1990. MCI: 1983-2006. Pan Am: 1927-1991. Montgomery Ward: 1872-2001. American Motors: 1954-1983. Woolworth's: 1879-1997. Tower Records. Polaroid. Zenith. Circuit City. Borders. Blockbuster Video.
A business will tend to operate under the name of the oldest trademark that it can pass off with a straight face. That doesn't make it the same company. It may be that the new business entity picked up the lovely old facade out of the bargain bin and just slipped it on like a mask.
Make no mistake. Rapidly changing technology has made the international business environment brutal for companies of any age. Protected niches are being pried open and picked clean by the suits who happened to bankroll the lucky garage full of nerds. The fraction of workers that can count on stable, decades-long employment is dropping like a parachute in a vacuum chamber (or like a stone, if you prefer). And those are the people that cause their companies to retain their essential culture and character.
Companies aren't just dying faster. The ones that survive are forced to change so rapidly that actual death might be a less shocking development. It isn't really surprising that Roxio blazed out after its one-hit wonder. What is surprising is that it took so long for them to settle back down to the baseline.
I'm a game developer. I'm not sure what I would do if I were to have a huge success. You speak as if it was obvious what they were supposed to have done.
I'm not trying to be a smart ass. I would really like to know what you think Rovio should have done. Hopefully with your advise I'll know what to do if I ever have such a huge success.
> I'm not trying to be a smart ass. I would really like to know what you think Rovio should have done. Hopefully with your advise I'll know what to do if I ever have such a huge success.
Yes you are trying to be a smart ass. But you're wielding sarcasm like a 5 year old with a chainsaw.
I already outlined what they should have done; not flood the market with sub-standard crap until everyone's sick of them. Pretty obvious if you're not blinded by greed.
I think it boils down to, they're a company that is very good at making games. From a casual outside observer's point of view, they seemed to think they could jump straight into being very good at animation and merchandising. They made, what, 30 or 40 games before angry birds was a hit? They didn't seem to have the same level of commitment to 30 or 40 iterations of animation, or merchandising.
It's fine to expand into new markets, companies do it all the time. You probably don't want to bet the farm on something you're not very very good at though, unless it's threatening your survival. Western union moving from the telegraph to money transfer is a pretty iconic example.
Compare to Mojang (survivor bias warning...) they're still pretty small. I haven't played it, but Scrolls is supposed to be really fun. Haven't heard anything bad about Cobalt either. I was very excited for x10k or whatever the space programming game was. They did a ton of merchandising, but they didn't do it in house (as far as i can tell). They took the check from lego and let the big toy maker do their thing.
Do what you think is best, but even if there's some non-game thing that makes sense, ask yourself if you really want to go head to head with Hasbro or Pixar. Really understand what you're getting yourself into.
Honestly, I think there's something to be said for taking the money and walking away. It's not what any CEO wants to do, and it's probably not what investors want either - but it's management's duty to do what's in the shareholders' best interests, even against the wishes of those same shareholders.
If you've had a one-off hit that you know is a one-off hit, maybe the best thing to do is to sell off sequel/merch rights to the highest bidder or any employees who want to continue, then wind up the company. Of course, that judgement is the hard part. Maybe they really did believe they could continue making games that would be just as big.
Talk about using anecdotal evidence and outliers to prove a point. Most studies, which don't focus on mega-corps like Apple and Google, but rather look at small, medium, and large businesses do show evidence of companies having a short lifespan, much like the product cycle itself.
I apologize for not citing sources, but the research is out there, and I don't have time at the moment to find them.
>Because Apple was founded in 1976 and I'm guessing they aren't going anywhere. Google was founded in 1998 and I don't think they're going anywhere.
I'd bet everything I have that you'll be wrong. Look at any list of "top companies" over decades or centuries, and you'll see that, almost exclusively, they eventually disappear, via bad business, takeovers, whatever. There are so many massive, "successful" companies that you've probably never heard of because they no longer exist.
That said, not sure why people are ragging on Rovio so badly. These guys absolutely crushed it.
Dunno it it's 'success' but it may be sensible management. Things like Angry Birds are always going to be boom and bust. Hiring when there's lots of cash and laying off when there isn't may be kind of sensible. Though banking the money and not hiring loads of people may have been better.
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Reading up a bit they are less one hit wonder than you might think. Mikael and Niklas Hed, the guys who set up and have mostly run Rovio were designing and coding games since they were 12, and after founding the company in 2004 produced 51 games before Angry Birds. The company went from startup to 50 employees and then back to 12 by 2009 when they hit hard times. Post Birds they have gone to 800 employees and now I guess down to 700. They still made $37m profit in their last reported year (2013).
Having a one hit wonder is success. Forming a company around it to milk that brand is also a good strategy. But it would be naive to think every one hit wonder can be converted to a long term business strategy. Some can and some can't. But its just more difficult. You can't blame every company that fails for that - its the nature of the business.
>Rovio's expansion into animation and merchandising continued to hit its profits hard, leading to today's 110 redundancies.
I wouldn't say they grew the company too fast. I can definitely see why merchandising would have been a huge hit on profits.
With the amount of angry birds garbage I saw in stores in my area, compared against the number of people that would possibly want said garbage, well...it was just a waste of money.
It's like some old executive thought it would be a great idea to expand into merchandising, as if this were still the 80s or 90s where people bought rooms full of that kind of useful shit.
Anyone who has looked at the income inequality mountain that has appeared since then knows that the people who would buy that kind of crap can't afford to. Though, it doesn't surprise me that the kind of executive who would be able to make a decision like expanding into merchandising would be upper class and completely out of touch with how little people want their garbage and would have seen it as a complete waste of money.
"The lifetime of a company has been getting shorter and shorter for centuries."
Um: the concept of a joint-stock corporation is a recent phenomenon, for the most part. Though the concept dates back to 1250 and Société des Moulins du Bazacle (a milling company), for the most part they're a creation of the Industrial Revolution, dating to 1800, and until the late 19th century, companies were of limited scope and lifetime in many areas, including the United States.
What has been happening over the course of the 20th century is that various measures of corporate performance, vitality, and stability have been declining, among them the residence time of companies on measures such as the Dow 30 Industrials (the "Dow Jones Average"), Fortune 500, and similar indices. That's accelerated notably since the 1960s, as referenced in Deloitte and Touche's "Center for the Edge" study "The Shift Index".
> "The lifetime of a company has been getting shorter and shorter for centuries."
> Um: the concept of a joint-stock corporation is a recent phenomenon, for the most part.
"Company" is a far more general term than "joint-stock corporation"; they are not even approximately equivalent. Its true that joint-stock corporations as a common form of structuring a company is a fairly recent phenomenon, but generalities about companies aren't limited to the period where joint-stock corporations were a common way of organizing them.
The discussion concerned Apple and Rovio. Both are joint-stock companies.
Rather than discuss what you aren't talking about, how about if you describe what you do have in mind, and the form(s) of corporate structure involved, and what time periods.
I think you'll still find that prior to the Industrial Revolution, there were relatively few companies of any significant description. Sole proprietorships and the like, and a very few royal charters. 90% of all production was directly agricultural.
I remember paying for Angry Birds to remove the ads, then one day sitting down to play only to find that the ads had returned. Hit game or not, too many moves like that point to cultural problems not easily fixed with money alone.
Rovio are one hit wonders. Not trying to be cynical or hate upon them, that's just how it worked out. They got lucky with Angry Birds, but failing to produce any new IP was their downfall. It's like a movie studio releasing the same movie over and over again expecting it to break box office records and be profitable. Sure people might go and see the first two sequels, but eventually people will grow tired and stop caring. This is what happened with Angry Birds. They had some great licencing deals, one of those being Star Wars and made a heap of money off of merchandise.
This is the problem with most app companies these days. They build a successful app, it is popular for a few months and then people stop caring. Draw Something, Words With Friends, Flappy Bird, the list goes on. People have short attention spans.
Would Nintendo still be around today if they kept on making sequels to Super Mario? Probably not. Rovio tried to squeeze Angry Birds too hard and lost. All they did was continually rebrand the same game with the same mechanics and changed a few of the game assets.
Except Nintendo DOES keep making sequels to Mario, and they keep selling. The difference is they release every few years, and fill in the gaps with other stuff. Not a new angry birds clone with new graphics every 3 months.
Yeah and the big difference is that the new Mario or Zelda is going to Innovate in new ways that nobody else has done before. Think Super Mario Galaxies, Zelda Ocarina Of Time, Windwaker and so on. Always new gameplay mechanics and most importantly, fun!
Although the newest Zelda on the Wii was kinda meh, haven't played it though yet so hard to say.
Maybe I worded too loosely. What I meant was, Nintendo are not simply making the same sequel to a game like Mario, even though some of the original game mechanic is there, they have always in my opinion made each Mario game better than the last (like they have for Zelda and other games). They add in new features and other innovative gameplay mechanics that make it feel like more than just another Mario or Zelda game.
The issue with Rovio is exactly how you described it, a new Angry Birds game with new graphics but the same mechanics, the same storyline and basically nothing new.
The gaming market is pretty dynamic and it is very hard to keep up with your competitors. People do play games but I don't know many people who keep playing the same game every day. Angry Birds came up with different versions of the game but the game dynamics never changed. You were still shooting pigs with birds, be in space or on mother earth. Some how these game companies have lots of loyal followers. I visited NASA (Cape Canaveral) last month and there they have a separate section in the NASA facility to attract kids with Angry Birds (Space version). Pat on the back (pun intended) for people investing so heavily in these gaming companies, when everyone knew that there is going to be another game coming out soon which will rock for few years before dying.
Rovio was one of the few big mobile gaming companies that favored the cheap, not free pricing model for games. When that model collapsed, they got hurt by it.
Still, i'm very impressed that they were able to take a hit that could have evaporated in a few months, and turn it into a pretty solid IP. Angry Birds might not be as big as a Disney brand or something, but it's still doing good and can support movies and merchandising. In the long run, those characters and creative IP could far outlive the game itself.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 193 ms ] threadWasn't Angry Birds Rovio's 54th game or something like that? Suggests that it's almost impossible to predict/curate a huge hit game...
I was really tempted to short KING when they floated.
Maybe I'm too cynical.
It is. Just like whether a startup succeeds, or whether a stock will rise or fall in price. It's all a matter of flinging stuff at walls and if something sticks you got lucky.
I really fail to see what they are trying to do with this. That game has hardly any "story" behind it and the characters are not really that interesting. I know they're trying to push a brand but all this random stuff they're making around it comes across as bland.
Thinking about that, it is interesting that Disney doesn't make movies with their traditional brand characters any more. Maybe because of those characters lack a bit of depth for a full blown movie? (like Angry Birds)
I grew up with these books (I am Portuguese and we got the Brazilian ones) and the stories have much more depth, and the universe where they live more continuity than you'd might expect. This format is still very popular in France and Germany, for example. But not in the USA. I never quite understood why.
I grew up with the weekly Donald Duck comics, <3.
# As an example of deep Disney comics, Don Rosa's Magnum Opus "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" should be pointed out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_and_Times_of_Scrooge_M...
This book and Don Rosa's works in general are a prime example for love of detail in every aspect, deep characterization of the seemingly flat Disney characters and rigorous background research for the historic embedding (and the embedding in the works of Carl Barks).
# Another person benefiting the popularity of Disney comics in Europe was the German translator Erika Fuchs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erika_Fuchs
Being an art historian and a member of the educated middle-class, she took the liberty to translate Disney comics in a very literary fashion, with multiple references to classic literature. Many of her word and phrase creations have become part of the German language.
# A couple of months ago the French-German rather highbrow TV channel arte screened a documentary that circulated around the internet: The first half of the piece deeply characterized Donald Duck, while the second half applied this characterization to the acceptance of disorientation and personal failure in our society.
# The traveling exhibition "Duckomenta": http://www.duckomenta.de/content/engdex.htm
The nephew's names have been translated quite diversified in general:
English Original: Huey, Dewey, and Louie
Chinese: 路儿，杜儿 和 辉儿
Danish: Rip, Rap og Rup
Finnish: Tupu, Hupu ja Lupu
French: Riri, Fifi et Loulou
Italian: Qui, Quo, e Qua
Dutch: Kwik, Kwek, en Kwak
Swedish: Knatte, Fnatte och Tjatte
Spanish: Hugo, Paco y Luis / Hugo, Diego y Luis / Juanito, Jorgito y Jaimito (from different translations)
Turkish: Cin, Can ve Cem
One of the reasons for the popularity of such a format outside the US is the way the comic book market developed after the 60s. In the US, superhero comics built a parallel distribution system with dedicated stores; this system catered to hardcore superhero fans but not to the mainstream. Mainstream comics were mostly relegated to syndicated strips, a format that privileges simple joke-based comedy. Also, in the US most "newsagents" are actually convenience stores with a magazine rack; in Europe, this is very different: every town has (or used to have) a centrally-located, fully-dedicated newsagent stocking as much as it can of every publication under the sun. Press distribution is often regulated by law in much stricter terms than in the US. The typical father going to the newsagent every day to get a newspaper would also buy something like "Glamour" for the wife and "Topolino" (Mickey Mouse) for the kids at least once a week.
http://www.b.dk/kultur/danskere-laver-anders-and-til-hele-ve...
"in 2014 it was read by 1.6 million Dutch citizens above the age of 13 [...] In 2008 it was the most read magazine among Dutch students (10%)."
There is not much particular about that 10%; it is about even with the "1.6 million Dutch citizens above the age of 13".
Part of the appeal is that it has new stories specially written for the Dutch comic. It also has cameo appearances of real life persons. It is not uncommon to see a newsreader, sports star, politician or criminal with a name that resembles that of a real Dutch person appear in a comic. Getting that done to you is a badge of honor. Google tells me Mark Zuckerberg even made it that far: http://duckipedia.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/mark-zuckerberg-i..., as did the Beatles (http://duckipedia.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/de-bietjes/) and Madness (http://duckipedia.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/madness-in-de-gal...)
Click around for other examples. Apparently, Carl Barks did that, too, with Brigitte Bobo (http://duckipedia.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/brigitte-bobo/)
With LEGO there was no story, no plot, no purpose, no motivation. Any story with LEGO was imagined by the kid playing with it.
Can the same be said about angry birds? Probably not. There is a vague story (Pigs steal eggs, Birds are angry) but there isn't much room for imagination.
On top of that, LEGO is a cultural phenomenon that has stood the test of time. The same can't be said with Angry Birds (see the article above).
It can be done. But all the examples I can name are in genres where narrative is a focus. I've got nothing like Angry Birds I can name.
If by "turned out well" you mean "turned a profit", probably quite a few.
If by "turned out well" you mean "created a film that was critically well-received or generally regarded as a timeless classic", probably not.
If LEGO the movie is a flop, that in no way relates to the success of LEGO product.
LEGO has been selling bricks for decades and their volumes just continue to increase.
Many people have been growing up with LEGO for over 50 years and have emotional ties to it.
Angry Birds was a successful money-grab but it's hardly even in the same league as truly popular video games (PacMan, Tetris, Super Mario...).
Angry Birds have the exact opposite problem; like many games, the narrative is paper thin, and that's fine for a game but makes it difficult to adapt into any narrative-focused medium. You'll probably just end up with a bad-Dreamworks-style movie that substitutes snark, sarcasm, and licensed pop music for plot and well-worn stereotypes for character. And it may sell or may make a profit, because they often do, but it'll also sink without a trace after its run is done. And I'll have no interest in it, but some may get some brief enjoyment out of it... though the 2016 timing is awfully suspect if Angry Birds is already fading, the movie needed to be out about six months to a year ago...
http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/The_Sims_%28film%29
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1482462/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims#Other_media
>Producer John Davis revealed on an interview that he is taking inspiration from John Hughes's 1985 film Weird Science for the movie adaptation.
>"What they realize is that they can scan their world in, because this is the most lifelike, real Sims game ever. As they are playing this, they are all of a sudden realising [that] what they are playing on the game is having an effect on the real world. So in effect, through the game, they are able to control their world. It's wish fulfillment, and obviously it turns against them."
How could that possibly not bomb in the worst possible way?
I imagine they would have had to bury the DVDs in the same hole as the ET cartridges.
I'll give you dumb possibly, but flat? Watch a good number of them again and see if you still say that.
Digimon's characters were quite deep. Matt vs Tai had the rivalry thing going (especially since Matt represented friendship, despite straying from the path he eventually proved himself to be a very reliable friend). Tai's progression from false-courage (accidentally turning Agumon into SkullGreymon) to true courage (MetalGreymon) is also quite thought provoking.
Its got a relatively straightforward formula. Associate each character with a virtue, and then they told a story about it. (Courage for Tai, Friendship Matt, Knowledge Izzy, Sincerity Mimi, Honesty Joe, Hope TK). The evolution of each character was associated with a physical being (the Digimon) that got stronger as each kid recognized the strength of their virtue.
But the Digimon characters made relationships based on their virtues, in particular Tai (Courage) vs Matt (friendship). The younger sister of Tai (Kari, representing "Light") was good friends with Matt's younger brother TK (Hope). Etc. etc.
There was a _lot_ of character interaction and development.
On the other hand, Pokemon is just straight up milking the series. Real depth of characters can be found in "Pokemon Special" comics however, and some Pokemon games have legitimate villains now.
That hardly troubled tons of other movies that did the same, from Garfield (comic strip, not much of a plot), Prince of Persia (prince saves princess for evil guy, that sums it), to the Lego movie, etc. They can always write a plot involving pigs and birds fighting.
Plus, there's the existing Angry Birds cartoon series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angry_Birds_Toons
>and the characters are not really that interesting.
They are funny looking enough to sell hundreds of millions of merchandize with them on. And the interesting story wont be in the game, it will be in the movie (if they succeed).
The benefits though are obvious: if they succeed with the movie, they can tap into kids minds like Mickey Mouse, not just like some forgotten in 5 years game fad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XreVL3Q0Gyk
I think that may be for a game rather than a movie but anyway.
Given that the boardgame Battleship -- which has zero story and no characters -- had a major motion picture based on it (or, at least, branded based on it), I don't see that as a particular problem.
Not sure if this true, would love to hear some more insight into this from insiders or people who know more.
Might the same kind of hubris that Nokia had when they become #1 and they just couldn't innovate anymore as the diversion between the paycheck of the leaders and the normal workers became too big, and the thought process was "Were number one, why try harder, our product is best!". The same thing can be seen with Rovio, pushing the same shit down throats of people in new packages.
Seems this model of creating success is not just working in the long run, maybe we should be thinking about building sustainable businesses and not just rewarding those running the company in a huge way, creating feeling of envy, hate and other stuff that can be also seen in the whole 99% vs 1% thing going on.
More accurately, it's not a good sign for a business to attract people not driven by it's primary product. Rovio's product is games, so ideally they would attract games-driven people, not money-driven people. On the other hand, investment banks have been working quite successfully for decades by attracting money-driven people, but then, their main business is money, so...
I am not saying banks are not needed, and I am not running around with a tinfoil hat, but saying that investment banks are 'working quite successfully' might be a bit of a stretch.
Yes you absolutely can. /ot
Yeah...
> It was the money-driven people in general that were the cause of this issue.
there, fixed it ;)
> It was the handful of very greedy politicians that relaxed the laws that allowed this to happen
This breaks down for two reasons. First, politicians relaxed the laws because they were bribed into it by lobbies. That's at least two handfuls of money-driven people at play here.
> "ordinary" traders, quants and managers at big banks had essentially nothing to do with the direction in which the world was headed, they were only there for the execution.
That's people who convinced poor and poorly-educated people to buy houses they couldn't afford. They tampered the accounting books. They outright lied to get more sales, and so on and so forth.
I don't know about you, but I would need to be extremely desperate (as in I can't feed my children) to resort to those tactics in exchange for money. These people were not in great need, and acted in that manner just because they are more money-driven than others who didn't (many of which lost their jobs because of it).
So yes, I honestly think that it was the fault of money-driven people in general from the very top to the street seller.
Ugh. This sounds like the excuse a boss at EA would give when forcing his employees to work eighty hour weeks. In the real world Silicon Valley companies have been very successful hiring good employees in part by offering massive amounts of compensation. And then there is the other half of Silicon Valley, which feeds off the overworked and undercompensated twentysomethigs following their "passion".
You are absolutely correct in that using the "passion" excuse to force 80-hour weeks and/or underpay workers is BS. An employee being passionate makes them more valuable, not less.
So perhaps the paradox is that you get better employees by offering a lower salary?
Passion is highly overrated, I think, and a lot of people define it differently. For some, it means staying at the office for 12 hours everyday including saturday. For others, it means keeping regular hours and contributing good quality work everyday, yet recognizing that one might need to work more (without overtime) when the job demands it. And the manager should know not to make these kind of situations a regular thing and reward the employees accordingly.
As to the question of attracting the right kind of people, although it can be faked, the curios ones are usually the best. If the person you're looking at is always asking questions, or making suggestions, not to impress you but to get a genuine understanding of what you do and what you want her to do, that is the best sign of a passionate employee.
In the games industry is that if you work a 40 hour week then your game will be delayed or have less content or more bugs than your competitors game who's programmers worked for 60 hours and when your programmers burn out they are easily replaced because so many people want to work in games.
I don' think that's true at all - I think it's reasonable to ask that people who develop games are really into games... That doesn't mean they should be taken advantage of. You still need to pay them well, or they'll go work for your competition, or start their own company.
There are a lot of talented developers who want to develop games, so employers shouldn't have a hard time finding the right people. It's not like run-of-the-mill business admin software. For that, you actually need to pay people more to get them motivated.
You can't really call it a games company any more. Rovio's product is Angry Birds and the income comes mostly from non-game products and selling IP licensing rights.
Rovio employs only a few dozen game developers in their in-house studio, most of their game development is outsourced to 3rd party game studios.
I think part of their problem has been shifting focus away from games. Sure it's great that half of their revenue comes from selling merchandise etc., but I think in the long run people won't want your merchandise if your core products, the games, are not great.
I have been making games for over two decades and never seen a company, studio or team that does NOT say that kind of stuff: "our games are the best", "we have the best talent", "this is the best team I have ever been part of", etc. Both internally as well as in public-facing events. I'm all for projecting confidence, encouraging excellence and boosting passion and morale, but sometimes the cognitive dissonance is jarring.
They happened to hit the right audience with the rise of iPad and iPhone happening at the same time, for mostly those who have not played games before, so kudos for doing it very well.
When in reality, even the best of games in this genre need only a small core of maybe just 3-5 strong and highly motivated game developers.
To their credit, they juiced their one-hit-wonder as much as any company ever could.
Duff Beer could have some staying power from its Simpsons connection, but Angry Birds soda is just not compelling.
Don't underestimate the imagination and enthousiasm of the younger generation, when it comes to Angry Birds, Minecraft, modern Lego, and franchises like that.
Dismissing a successful business because you're not into it is just a bit shallow-minded (or elitist).
Software (and other intellectual properties) don't quite have the same supply-side economies. Once the game is done, you can make a sequel or variations with little effort. The rest is just about how many copies/downloads you can move. Or how many partner licenses you can sign. Really, it's all just profit after.
I had one person within Microsoft put it as: On that first CD Microsoft ships, it writes off a few billion dollars in losses. After that every Windows license is just pure profit.
We might be over-milking this one as a society at that point. I would put my money on... something else, specifically just not more Angry Birds.
"It isn’t hard to see how they would become the coolest social network within a month or two. Even cooler than Quora. Heheh. After all, a lot more people identify with Angry Birds than identify with other services online (the same exec told me they can’t keep Angry Birds merchandise in stock). "
They pulled in 400M+ of revenue out of a game where you launch birds at piggies using a slingshot. I think they did some things right.
The lifetime of a company has been getting shorter and shorter for centuries.
Mobile applications, games especially, are the new extreme in that development. These companies have a very limited lifetime.
It is only natural that companies in this industry expand rapidly, face the limits of their growth, and then start shrinking.
The idea of lifetime employment is long gone. After Rovio dies, theres a Supercell or a Mahjong spewing up somewhere else.
Really? Because Apple was founded in 1976 and I'm guessing they aren't going anywhere. Google was founded in 1998 and I don't think they're going anywhere.
Your assertion is really flimsy, and I think based on seeing a large number of mismanaged companies that flare up and die quickly and then concluding this is normal or even unavoidable. While it may be common, that doesn't mean it's what has to happen.
Rovio took their success and drove it into the ground. They absolutely saturated the market, coming out with new Angry Birds games and tie ins almost constantly and flooding store shelves with very low quality (and in my area, often dingy) plush animals, further lowering public perception of their brand.
I'd argue that if Rovio had been more judicious with their successful IP, that public interest in it wouldn't have disappeared so completely.
You seem to be arguing that the fade was unavoidable since Angry Birds is just a game where you launch birds at pigs with a sling shot. But that doesn't mean the follow up games needed to be. Super Mario Bros was just a game where a guy jumps on things. Now I'm not really saying that Angry Birds was necessarily an IP with as much legs as Mario, but I think they burned it down.
Rovio chose the short term, maximum immediate profit path, and now we're seeing the result of that. Zynga did the same thing. When you go all in immediately, and don't think about what is best for your long term, you burn out public interest in whatever you have to offer. When you don't take the time to make what you're putting out compelling, people will start to conclude everything you have to offer is just going to be more of the same. And they'll be sick of it.
This is not the only path available, and asserting that it is just the way things are now is ridiculous.
Really? What other paths are available for game companies? Any examples?
Take Nintendo and Mario/Zelda/Metroid franchises. You spend years developing quality titles that you rotate through to avoid saturating the market. Probably the easiest way to do that is to actually develop more than a single franchise, but still, throwing as many slightly modified versions of your original game at app stores as fast as possible is definitely not the way to build a long term business.
Don't just take your one IP and drive it into the ground like Rovio did with Angry Birds. Diversify. But do so thoughtfully. If you release a bunch of crap, that will dilute your brand as well.
It's not rocket surgery.
Blizzard has kept WoW going strong for a decade, releasing expansions (not sequels) every two years. Diablo is on it's third iteration since debuting in 1996.
These are examples are a game developer taking a different path than releasing as many titles as possible as fast as possible.
And while Blizzard has milked WoW for a lot, I don't think they're done. They're planning for another decade at least and I don't doubt they'll do it, profitably.
Finally, yes the series were created in the 90's but they've updated them with thoughtful sequels with good content. SC2 is not just a reskin of SC in the way parent comments are describing the Angry Birds franchise.
Bad example, as Apple almost died back in the 90's.
Also, using a company founded in 1998 (16 years old) as a counter example to the parent argument who's scope was "centuries" is not ideal.
They did almost die, but that's why it's a great example. Why did they almost die? Because they started shitting out bad products. Why did they turn around? Because they re-evalutaed and looked at the products they were offering and reduced the number of them in order to focus more on those few products.
> Also, using a company founded in 1998 (16 years old) as a counter example to the parent argument who's scope was "centuries" is not ideal.
The scope of "centuries" is a joke. He didn't cite any examples, and "business" in the 1400's isn't really relevant or meaningful in 2014. My examples were to illustrate how absurd his "centuries" comment was by pointing that two of today's largest companies are very young (I haven't done a count but I'd be surprised if any/many of the top 100 companies were much more than one century old.)
So I guess you'll be saying the same thing about Google and Apple in a few hundred years, rendering your argument moot?
"Not going anywhere" means still here.
Borland was founded in 1983. By 2008, the only value left in it was its trademarks. So those were purchased, and now that company "still exists", in the sense that a few of its old names are being used to conduct business in the same industry. It was killed by gross mismanagement at the executive level.
Eastman Kodak was founded in 1888 and practically invented consumer-grade photography with the Brownie. But by 2012, the only thing left of value was its patents and trademarks. It even built a digital camera as early as 1975, which makes it look a lot like it was killed by being run over by its own car. But the trademark is still in use.
Beatrice Foods, founded in 1894, died in 1984. RCA was founded in 1919, and died in 1986. Compaq: 1982-2002. TWA: 1930-2001. General Foods: 1895-1990. MCI: 1983-2006. Pan Am: 1927-1991. Montgomery Ward: 1872-2001. American Motors: 1954-1983. Woolworth's: 1879-1997. Tower Records. Polaroid. Zenith. Circuit City. Borders. Blockbuster Video.
A business will tend to operate under the name of the oldest trademark that it can pass off with a straight face. That doesn't make it the same company. It may be that the new business entity picked up the lovely old facade out of the bargain bin and just slipped it on like a mask.
Make no mistake. Rapidly changing technology has made the international business environment brutal for companies of any age. Protected niches are being pried open and picked clean by the suits who happened to bankroll the lucky garage full of nerds. The fraction of workers that can count on stable, decades-long employment is dropping like a parachute in a vacuum chamber (or like a stone, if you prefer). And those are the people that cause their companies to retain their essential culture and character.
Companies aren't just dying faster. The ones that survive are forced to change so rapidly that actual death might be a less shocking development. It isn't really surprising that Roxio blazed out after its one-hit wonder. What is surprising is that it took so long for them to settle back down to the baseline.
I'm not trying to be a smart ass. I would really like to know what you think Rovio should have done. Hopefully with your advise I'll know what to do if I ever have such a huge success.
Yes you are trying to be a smart ass. But you're wielding sarcasm like a 5 year old with a chainsaw.
I already outlined what they should have done; not flood the market with sub-standard crap until everyone's sick of them. Pretty obvious if you're not blinded by greed.
And what sort of authority are you? How many multi-hundred-million-dollar companies have you run that you make it sound so easy and obvious?
I'm not forcing you to read my opinion, if you don't like it, move on.
I think it boils down to, they're a company that is very good at making games. From a casual outside observer's point of view, they seemed to think they could jump straight into being very good at animation and merchandising. They made, what, 30 or 40 games before angry birds was a hit? They didn't seem to have the same level of commitment to 30 or 40 iterations of animation, or merchandising.
It's fine to expand into new markets, companies do it all the time. You probably don't want to bet the farm on something you're not very very good at though, unless it's threatening your survival. Western union moving from the telegraph to money transfer is a pretty iconic example.
Compare to Mojang (survivor bias warning...) they're still pretty small. I haven't played it, but Scrolls is supposed to be really fun. Haven't heard anything bad about Cobalt either. I was very excited for x10k or whatever the space programming game was. They did a ton of merchandising, but they didn't do it in house (as far as i can tell). They took the check from lego and let the big toy maker do their thing.
Do what you think is best, but even if there's some non-game thing that makes sense, ask yourself if you really want to go head to head with Hasbro or Pixar. Really understand what you're getting yourself into.
If you've had a one-off hit that you know is a one-off hit, maybe the best thing to do is to sell off sequel/merch rights to the highest bidder or any employees who want to continue, then wind up the company. Of course, that judgement is the hard part. Maybe they really did believe they could continue making games that would be just as big.
I apologize for not citing sources, but the research is out there, and I don't have time at the moment to find them.
> I apologize for not citing sources, but the research is out there,
You have got to be kidding me, dude.
I'd bet everything I have that you'll be wrong. Look at any list of "top companies" over decades or centuries, and you'll see that, almost exclusively, they eventually disappear, via bad business, takeovers, whatever. There are so many massive, "successful" companies that you've probably never heard of because they no longer exist.
That said, not sure why people are ragging on Rovio so badly. These guys absolutely crushed it.
How many other computer companies from that era, are still around?
Victor computers? Osborne? IMSAI? Tandy/Radioshack computers? Cromemco? Symbolics LISP machines?
How can we call massive layoff success... if you reached that point it's because of mistakes, not success.
Dunno it it's 'success' but it may be sensible management. Things like Angry Birds are always going to be boom and bust. Hiring when there's lots of cash and laying off when there isn't may be kind of sensible. Though banking the money and not hiring loads of people may have been better.
[edit] Reading up a bit they are less one hit wonder than you might think. Mikael and Niklas Hed, the guys who set up and have mostly run Rovio were designing and coding games since they were 12, and after founding the company in 2004 produced 51 games before Angry Birds. The company went from startup to 50 employees and then back to 12 by 2009 when they hit hard times. Post Birds they have gone to 800 employees and now I guess down to 700. They still made $37m profit in their last reported year (2013).
I wouldn't say they grew the company too fast. I can definitely see why merchandising would have been a huge hit on profits.
With the amount of angry birds garbage I saw in stores in my area, compared against the number of people that would possibly want said garbage, well...it was just a waste of money.
It's like some old executive thought it would be a great idea to expand into merchandising, as if this were still the 80s or 90s where people bought rooms full of that kind of useful shit.
Anyone who has looked at the income inequality mountain that has appeared since then knows that the people who would buy that kind of crap can't afford to. Though, it doesn't surprise me that the kind of executive who would be able to make a decision like expanding into merchandising would be upper class and completely out of touch with how little people want their garbage and would have seen it as a complete waste of money.
Um: the concept of a joint-stock corporation is a recent phenomenon, for the most part. Though the concept dates back to 1250 and Société des Moulins du Bazacle (a milling company), for the most part they're a creation of the Industrial Revolution, dating to 1800, and until the late 19th century, companies were of limited scope and lifetime in many areas, including the United States.
What has been happening over the course of the 20th century is that various measures of corporate performance, vitality, and stability have been declining, among them the residence time of companies on measures such as the Dow 30 Industrials (the "Dow Jones Average"), Fortune 500, and similar indices. That's accelerated notably since the 1960s, as referenced in Deloitte and Touche's "Center for the Edge" study "The Shift Index".
http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1y3z3n/the_shif...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/01/25/shift-in...
Speaking of a decline over "centuries" really isn't appropriate due to the tremendously changed nature of firms over this period.
> Um: the concept of a joint-stock corporation is a recent phenomenon, for the most part.
"Company" is a far more general term than "joint-stock corporation"; they are not even approximately equivalent. Its true that joint-stock corporations as a common form of structuring a company is a fairly recent phenomenon, but generalities about companies aren't limited to the period where joint-stock corporations were a common way of organizing them.
Rather than discuss what you aren't talking about, how about if you describe what you do have in mind, and the form(s) of corporate structure involved, and what time periods.
I think you'll still find that prior to the Industrial Revolution, there were relatively few companies of any significant description. Sole proprietorships and the like, and a very few royal charters. 90% of all production was directly agricultural.
You mean like other over valued IPOs like Twitter and Facebook, that in time will also fade away?
This is the problem with most app companies these days. They build a successful app, it is popular for a few months and then people stop caring. Draw Something, Words With Friends, Flappy Bird, the list goes on. People have short attention spans.
Would Nintendo still be around today if they kept on making sequels to Super Mario? Probably not. Rovio tried to squeeze Angry Birds too hard and lost. All they did was continually rebrand the same game with the same mechanics and changed a few of the game assets.
Although the newest Zelda on the Wii was kinda meh, haven't played it though yet so hard to say.
Technically Super Mario 64 is some sort of sequel, but it's clearly an entirely different game.
The issue with Rovio is exactly how you described it, a new Angry Birds game with new graphics but the same mechanics, the same storyline and basically nothing new.
Still, i'm very impressed that they were able to take a hit that could have evaporated in a few months, and turn it into a pretty solid IP. Angry Birds might not be as big as a Disney brand or something, but it's still doing good and can support movies and merchandising. In the long run, those characters and creative IP could far outlive the game itself.