Product on Angry Birds
Rovio
PM on the biggest mobile game in the world: platforms, ads, location, partnerships, and a toys-to-life unlock years before Amiibo.
Product manager on Angry Birds at Rovio: platforms, the ad screen, location, and partnerships.
Angry Birds Magic made the real world an input to the game. It started on NFC Nokia phones, tap two phones together or tap a tagged object and content unlocks. It grew into Magic Places, where being somewhere changed what you got. Then it went physical: a Mattel King Pig figure, then Hasbro's Telepods line, where scanning a toy dropped it into the game. This was years before Amiibo made the pattern mainstream.
The craft was making it feel like magic instead of setup. The toy had to work as a toy. The response had to be instant enough to reward. Parents had to understand it, the business had to close, and the franchise had to come out stronger. A bad version is a code printed on plastic. A good one feels like the object has a secret.
The remit was wide for a first product role, one of the few that reached across the whole company: the platform versions, the in-game ad and cross-promotion screen, location, partnerships, growth bets. I worked with the chief legal officer to stand up Rovio's patenting process and am named co-inventor on two patents. Standing up the digital services unit, ads, identity, location, was the first time I owned identity as a product, a thread I have pulled ever since. The breadth is what got me promoted to run R&D, reporting to the COO.
Gallery
- The Telepods reveal: a physical figure scanned by the camera, teleporting straight into the game.
- The moment that had to feel like magic: the toy on its base, its character now alive on screen.
- Angry Birds Go! Telepods: scan a kart to race it. The pattern extended across the franchise.
- The kart racer the figures unlocked. The toy had to work as a toy, and the game had to work as a game.
- Presenting Magic Places at ReadWriteWeb's 2Way Summit in New York, 2011: the real world as game input.
- In Bad Piggies' special thanks. My piece of it: the Everyplay social-replay integration.