How many of you have played Angry Birds in one version or another?

If you have access to it now, start playing!(That’s right, you’re being allowed to play games in a lesson!)

Institutional issues

Angry Birds is a strategy puzzle video game developed by Finnish computer game developer Rovio Mobile. Inspired primarily by a sketch of stylized wingless birds, the game was first developed for Apple's iOS on December 2009. Since that time, over 12 million copies of the game have been purchased from Apple's App Store, which has prompted the company to design versions for other touchscreen-based smartphones, such as those using the Android operating system, among others.

Available platforms (selected)

iOS Android PSP/PlayStation 3 Mac OS X Windows Windows Phone 7 BlackBerry Tablet OS Facebook

Revenue streams

Rovio is investigating ways to expand the Angry Birds brand, including merchandise, television shows and movies. The game's official website offers plush versions of the birds and pigs for sale, along with T-shirts featuring the game's logo and characters. In May 2011, Mattel released an Angry Birds board game, entitled "Angry Birds: Knock on Wood". Over 10 million Angry Birds toys have been sold thus far. Rovio opened the first official Angry Birds retail store in Helsinki on November 11, 2011 at 11:11am local time.

In-App Purchasing and the audience

Pay to play the ‘Mighty Eagle’ sub-game – it extends the life of the product.Iphone users can connect to the game centre to register high scores.Connect to Twitter and Facebook.Free versions of the game are available but are only a few levels.A number of updates are free to existing users (new levels etc).

Other companies that produce games for mobiles and social networking that use in-app purchasing include…

Zynga (the ‘With Friends’ series – words, hanging, scramble etc and ‘Farmville’)

Trivial Technology (Card games such as Cribbage, Gin Rummy etc)

Angry Birds and Social NetworkingSynergy

• In early 2010, Rovio began developing a variant of Angry Birds for Facebook. The project became one of the company's largest, with development taking over a year. The company understood the challenges of transplanting a game concept between social platforms and mobile/gaming systems.

• In a March 2011 interview, Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka said, "you can’t take an experience that works in one environment and one ecosystem and force-feed it onto another. It's like Zynga. They can’t just take FarmVille and throw it on mobile and see what sticks. The titles that have been successful for them on mobile are the ones they’ve built from the ground up for the platform.”

• The Facebook version was expected to incorporate social-gaming concepts and in-game purchases and was scheduled to enter beta-testing in April 2011; the game became officially available on Facebook in February 2012.

• Future improvements planned for the game include the ability to synchronize the player's progress across multiple devices; for example, a player who completes a level on an iOS device could log into their copy of the game on an Android device and see the same statistics and level of progress.

• There is also Facebook exclusive content - "Surf and Turf," the Angry Birds Facebook-exclusive episode .

Cross media convergenceMikael Hed, CEO of Rovio Mobile, has envisioned a feature film in the stop-motion animation style of Aardman Animation. To that end, Rovio has purchased a Helsinki-based animation studio to prepare Angry Birds short cartoons on Nickelodeon, the first of which was a Christmas special named "Wreck the Halls" that debuted in December 2011.

Rovio also hired David Maisel, former executive producer of Marvel Studios films such as Iron Man and Thor, to head up production of feature-length films. Hed acknowledges that such a film would be years away, and that Rovio must keep the characters relevant until then, by producing sequels or new ports of the original game. In March 2012, Rovio announced plans for an Angry Birds attraction due to open in summer 2012 at the Särkänniemi adventure park in Finland.

Expanding the Angry Birds universe

Rovio officials hinted that a "sequel“ to the game would be told from the pigs' point of view…

This game turned out to be ‘Bad Piggies’