Nick's Tech/Multimedia Marketing Mash

Xin Zhang makes an excellent case for the merits of Angry Birds in her blog post about its recent success and marketing strategies. Until my recent eye-opening experience I would have had a strongly opposing view  on it. Given that I’m familiar with news and happenings in regards to technology I’d already heard about Angry Birds many times and, frankly, was not too impressed. I’ve been playing flash games for years and had encountered games similar to Angry Birds multiple times. They were all free, some were more entertaining or had more depth to them and most of all they weren’t just copying a pre-exsisting idea and making it seem to be their own. In short, I didn’t like Angry Birds and made a point of revealing its flaws whenever someone brought it up. In my mind it didn’t deserve all the praise and was just a attention-grabbing latecomer. Although I still feel that way in some respects about Angry Birds (unoriginal and not deserving of so much praise) my views have softened somewhat in light of its contributions to mobile gaming in general.

About a week ago when I was rushing to school from my home in North Vancouver (as I often end up doing as I find it difficult to wake up in the mornings) I was waiting anxiously for the 99 at West 10th and MacDonald when I overhead a very intriguing conversation between a group of girls. One of them was talking about a new game that she’d just got that she had been playing.

“It’s called Angry Birds.” she said “You slingshot these birds to knock over wooden blocks and kill green monsters. It’s actually really fun!”

The other girls giggled at the thought of such a silly game.

“It’s fun killing things?” asked one of the girls with a frown, seeming to have trouble figuring out how such a thing could be enjoyable.

“Well you don’t really kill them. They sort of disappear…” said the first girl.

“Oh,” said the girl who had asked the question “sounds kind of fun.”

It was such an eye-opening conversation for me, because, before that point I was looking at the game and its success from the viewpoint of someone who was familiar with gaming and had been playing games for many years. To people like that group of girls, Angry Birds was a friendly introduction to gaming that they probably wouldn’t have had otherwise. It provided a gentle way for them to get acquainted with the possibilities offered by this sort of interactive entertainment.

Later on, another of the girls described one of the games her guy friend played and they discussed that. It was just so amazing to see people talking about video games from such a fresh perspective. I’ll never think of simple, derivative games like Angry Birds the same way again.
As always, value is in the eye of the beholder, and, obviously, not everyone sees the same way I do.

I’ll leave you guys with some entertaining Angry Birds themed videos, :).