We all know what Angry Birds are and apparently it is so famous that you can see shops all over the country selling its soft toys, key chains and collectibles. This mobile phone game is played by millions all over the world on their smart phones and just recently it even can be played on Google in High Definition.
In the article titled ‘Angry Birds: 200m downloads are the tips ofthe mobile gaming iceberg’ written by Stuart Dredge, he explained how the Angry Birds phenomena is going strong and the recent Angry Birds Rio which was inspired by Rio the movie has generated about 35million downloads. Researches did by Distimo and Newzoo on seven countries such as USA, UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands has brought conclusions that more than 63 million users of the iPad, iPhone and/or iPod Touch downloads about 2.5 games a month.
Since it is so well-known and everyone can play it since it is free, surely the design of the game is created to be user-friendly so that no one will have trouble when playing it. It uses a simple start page, visual imagery and sound effects also to attract users to download the game (Walsh 2006).
How did it get so famous? Rovio, the creators of Angry Birds has used viral marketing in order to promote this mobile phone game. The six principles of viral marketing are giving away products or services, providing effortless transfer to others, scaling easily from small to very large, exploiting common motivations and behaviours, utilizing existing communication networks, and taking advantage of other’s resources (Wilson 2005). To relate this to Rovio in promoting Angry Birds, they provide the game for free that is why many people are able to download it, it is also easily found to download in the Android market or Apps Store, it started from mobile applications to now a game that can be played in Google, since most people are looking for a mobile phone game that can entertain them for hours by downloading this game they can be entertained, when people who played this game loves it then they will share it among their family and friends and through social networks and this will help to spread the Angry Bird game, and since Rovio has partnered with Google, they can now use Google to gain more downloads and fans.
References
- Dredge, S 2011, ‘Angry Birds: 200m downloads are the tips of the mobile gaming iceberg,’ Guardian.co.uk 19 May, viewed on 12 June 2011, < http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2011/may/19/iphone-game-stats> .
- Walsh, M 2006, ‘The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts,’ Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 24-37.
- Wilson, R 2005, The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing, Web Marketing Today, viewed on 12 June 2011, http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles.htm .
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