Experimental Technology
R&D
50+ prototypes across AR, procedural generation, new inputs, and the open web. R&D pushed until the novelty became play.
I led R&D inside Rovio's games unit: a 50+ prototype program across new platforms, inputs, and surfaces.
Angry Birds looks simple because the simplicity is engineered, physics, timing, the failure-and-restart rhythm, all tuned to be understood in seconds. That was the bar I held R&D to: "technically interesting" counts for nothing until a person can feel why it is fun.
Procedural generation is the clearest case. The engineering team had judged an Angry Birds level generator infeasible; I built one and proved it. Generating valid levels is easy. Generating good ones is the work: a level has to respect difficulty, pacing, readability, and the game's grammar, so it feels authored. Procedural systems need taste encoded in them, not just rules.
The same instinct at the opposite scale: at a demo party I turned a wall of monitors, dozens by dozens, into one programmable display. The problem changes completely, you are designing for a room, a crowd, distance, and synchronization, and the setup has to disappear into the effect.
Most of the program hunted for new ways into a game. An AR prototype where the level's tower rose out of a marker on the table. A Bluetooth toy any game in the portfolio could recognize. An exercise game played by leaning side to side in front of a propped-up iPad. Most never shipped, which is the job: a prototype earns its keep by answering a question.
And we brought Angry Birds to the open web as a real place to play, back when a web game meant a banner ad. New platform, same test: does the game feel like it already lived there.
Gallery
- Generating valid levels is easy. Generating good ones, respecting difficulty, pacing, and the game's grammar, is the work.
- Enough good variation that nobody hand-authors every piece: production leverage, not infinite content.
- Assembly 2012: a wall of monitors driven as one programmable display. Designing for a room and a crowd, not a person and a screen.
- My Assembly talk on bringing Angry Birds to the open web, when a web game still meant a banner ad.