How Rovio spent five years making The Angry Birds Movie

hey guys we're back at Bobby Emma connects Helsinki I am joined by vilhelm tat of rovio I vaguely heard the name before somewhere thank you what are you guys doing today we are we're here to connect and learn basically this is the third time in Helsing that time here yeah yeah Pocket Gamer has come a long way in 10 years on saying connecting learning exploring new opportunities yeah well we're all familiar with the extraordinary success of angry birds as it as a game as a brand and you've now taken the step into the movie world with quite good results really how was that fantastic amazing it's been a really really great experience the movie which I hope all of the viewers have has seen by now it opened number one in 52 different countries it's it's a worldwide top 10 movie this year number three all-time biggest imported

animated movie in China okay it's not i'm not sure what this number one on itunes now but it was in the US the digital release number one blu-ray in the US opening soon in Europe and I could go on it's really it's already yeah it's really really doing so I mean it's not your first time with the moving picture because you guys have been doing the cartoons bursa TV for a while now how does it differ in terms of scale because this must have been up like a multi-year project we've been working on the movie for what four or five years really so it was green with a long time ago by by our our CEO at the time me Kyle head and David Mizell who who was actually the original founder of Marvel Studios okay he was also the EP on on Iron Man and Iron Man 2 so they were the ones that started the whole project what feels eons ago I think at this stage and I think that pretty much summarizes I

mean we've done short form animation I'm about two minutes long no dialogue production budgets slightly less than and then the movie and that's that's the difference it's a huge team behind a movie like this huge production long production schedules sure and the end result really shows it really it feels like the birds come alive and the whole world come alive in that movie well I mean seem to have been very well received as he described a week in talks for a sequel at the moment is it on the Taylor yeah yeah we announced that we are hang on I think we announced that we are officially thinking about the sequel but okay I guess you can read into that but we could just read the box office returns and then we can infer from there I think that's how it goes it's been a humbling humbling reception to be honest really well I mean it's not your first taste of success obviously you've been doing a lot with the angry birds over the recent years telling me about the way you've kind of to put it in a

nonsense business speak diversify the portfolio but now there are lots of different angry birds games for different genres angry birds epic with the RPG angry birds go with the racer you've recently done a collaboration with the guys behind new star soccer any Birds go right on in soft launch them so fortunately a moment I mean like what are the challenges was trying to put the birds into all these different genres and trying them a different format well I could say that we've taken birds were no bird has gone before right haha from space on yeah we actually we did take exactly the bird to the space station that's true we will launch language space from space we've done a lot of crazy things over the years and we plan to crazy things in the future so I think what we've come to realize is that that angry birds is an IP is quite versatile it does there's not one thing that we have to do with from a game development or game product from the view our

heritage is naturally slingshot that is I guess that's the natural habitat of the birds and a habitat that we consider very important for our future as well in terms of what what we're doing next and we have we have actually a few different angry birds games in soft launch at this moment now I think standard industry practice just says that not all of them might end up in our launch that's just how this industry operates and that that applies to to us as well so we well that's not to say that we're not excited about them we are we feel strongly about for sure I mean soft conscience become so prevalent originally la even if it's just one territory on multiple territories the way to get that feedback and how from rodeos extent of how important is that how much time do you commit to like looking at the data that you get feedback from well naturally I mean we have our own production processes that dictate how much we should give to each

phase of of a game development yeah but that said in soft launch especially if you have a winner you ought to give it the time it deserves you don't want to rush into soft ones too early in but when you do you should execute with passion for during that time okay but especially if you have something that you can see that there's really something here you ought to polish it to the max get it to the masses of that after that with a widow with a reasonable marketing push behind it and and if you're lucky you also get some featuring about that throughout the time but no longer i guess the industry's is grown up quite the business as mature in terms of its its business practice so speaking of which how have you found the transition from like premium to free-to-play obviously it's happened to

everybody everyone's had to make the adjustment including you guys angry birds too and so forth so what were the biggest challenges you came up against my truth to be told is it it was quite a lengthy transition to Romeo we were we were a bit late the I in-app purchase as a technical features as a software feature was introduced by Google and Apple in 2011 and our first free-to-play game came out in December on mobile came out in December 2013 so there was it was appeared in between there which which truth to be told we we were we didn't rush into it no and I I think we could have been a bit quicker on that at the same time it's it's just it's known that that we we were number one in premium and and as a result the cultural shift is quite it's quite big going from from

premium to free-to-play and that translates into processes into game design into all things that have build up game development so if it was it was a there's a large shift for the company and I think the Euro shift was concluded in 2014-15 and now now we are truly operating with a service live operations mindset across across the games amor our biggest games in the portfolio they grow every one as a result of live operations KPI focus on and user acquisition which is which is where we're obviously we're operating in in truly the 2016 and beyond so what speaking of the future what are the big things rovio coming up you've mentioned a potential hang about sequel movies what about the games you have few things a soft launch is there anything that you're working on behind closed doors right now are of course we we have

a few angry birds games as off launch as i mentioned feel good about them all we see we'll see which which games we end up window publishing globally feel really good about them real good about the new IPS we have a soft launch we we have a few tricks up our sleeve when it comes to new new games still at the end of this year movie next year we we've got a lot of efforts on our a perfect strategy mission lot in the last year beginning this year and we're seeing soon the fruits of that labor come out and we're really really excited about about about those things and and we're really excited about about the games where we have in the market and servicing the current fans we have in those games those especially in terms of in terms of the bigger bigger games out there is angry birds too and the birds call nibblers and then

historical favorite is angry birds friends game that came out in 2012 and is still holding very strong is a very active community around it and just a huge fan base and very strong business around with as well okay fantastic well we look forward to seeing what you have up your sleeves to future thank you joining me today thank you so much pleasure to