Appillionaires: Secrets from Developers Who Struck It Rich on the App Store

Chapter 10: Angry Birds

The elastic of the catapult groans under pressure. Suddenly it snaps furiously back, releasing a small bird high into the blue sky of the Pacific Ocean. Faster and higher the bird climbs, now just a speck above the island below. For a moment it seems suspended in space. Then slowly, delightfully, it reaches the peak of its trajectory and begins to fall to the ground, tracing an elegant arc through the air.

Smash! The bird collides with a wooden castle on the island’s surface. The beams of the castle wobble and creak. For a moment it looks like the structure will hold, but then the bird tumbles down the outer wall, knocking out a vital support beam. The castle shudders and collapses, instantly killing its inhabitants: two green pigs.

The bird squawks for a moment — perhaps shocked by its involuntary slaughter of the pigs — it then sheds a few feathers and, without any particular fanfare, gently explodes.

This surrealist fantasy is a description of the game Angry Birds, one of the best-selling titles in the history of videogames. It’s an astonishing achievement for a game that its creators, Rovio, initially regarded as a flop in the App Store’s biggest markets.

A Global Hit

Recently, the Guinness Book of World Records has recognized Angry Birds as the top paid app store game; it has been downloaded over 250 million times and continues to average an unfathomable 1 million downloads every single day. Rovio claims to have data that demonstrates gamers across ...