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When Angry Birds 2 was launched at the end of July in 2015 it received mixed reviews. Both Pocket Gamer and IGN applauded the game for gorgeous graphics and vastly improved level design while faulting Rovio for employing the Candy Crush like lives mechanic and randomized levels.
"Ever-shifting levels and limited lives take a lot of the fun out of smashing pigs with birds in Angry Birds 2."
- Review of Angry Birds 2 on IGN
Looking at the downloads, the launch of Angry Birds 2 was a massive success. By the end of 2015 the game had racked up close to 50M downloads. On the revenue side, things nevertheless looked much gloomier as the game had generated “only” roughly 10 million dollars.
After the initial launch, Angry Birds 2 declined and had stable relatively low revenues for few months. The growth was achieved through the launch of several key features that all built on top of each other. Post launch there hasn't been any significant spikes of installs, indicating that the growth of revenue is sustainable. In addition to launching key features, the game has been updated rigorously with new levels.
Instead of keeping up the course of just adding more levels, the Stockholm studio behind Angry Birds 2 went to work. The updates in 2016 introduced several core mechanics such as leveling up of Birds and the Slingshot, Daily Challenges and Player vs Player Arena while at the same time keeping the rigorous level content cadence up and running.
With each update, the game’s revenue peaked to new heights without declining to the previous lows. Today Angry Birds 2 is a perennial top 50 grossing game and it’s only because of the top-notch updates, which have successfully introduced mid-core elements to a super casual game.
The History, and my experience, of Angry Birds’ Monetization
Long, and in mobile game years very long, time ago my powerful team of five and I took on a challenge. We wanted to show that we could convert Angry Birds from a classic paid game into a free-to-play game. We argued that by doing so, we would not only increase the game’s revenue but also increase engagement and retention.
I made an argument that by turning a paid game into a free game we could increase revenues and engagement. My powerful team of five proved this argument with three critical changes, which led to a sustained increase in revenues.
Back in 2012 going free-to-play was considered a revolutionary endeavor at Rovio. The paid games, such as Angry Birds Space and Angry Birds Star Wars did close to dozen(s) of millions of dollars on their launch weeks alone and the only free-to-play game, Angry Birds Friends, was delivering hefty weekly revenues despite significantly underperforming when looking at KPIs such as the revenue per daily active player. To sum it up, in 2012 everything was better the great and no-one wanted to break the formula.
“One dollar for a game is enough. We don’t want to be Zynga.”
- former SVP of Games of Rovio
Half way through 2012 new games emerged. First Natural Motion’s CSR Racing (read CSR's deconstruction here) broke all the grossing records. Then Supercell, located only a few miles away from Rovio HQ, launched Clash of Clans (Clash of Clan's deconstruction here) and Hay Day (and Hay Day's deconstruction here) which both parked permanently on the top of the grossing charts for 5 years (!!!). The combination of new top grossing free-to-play hits and the worse than expected performance of Bad Piggies and Angry Birds Space 2 opened the minds of the leadership to enable my team to experiment with free-to-play mechanics.
Not to mention the fact, that there was half-a-dozen of Angry Birds SKUs with a small team on each creating about 30 levels every month basically at a loss since the games they were adding the levels to had no monetization other than the one dollar price, which players had paid years ago.
Due to all the facts above, my game team of six was given the ok to experiment with Angry Birds Rio and make our case that we could improve retention, engagement, and monetization without hurting the ratings/fans. Our approach to achieving these goals was simple. It had to be because there’s only so much you can do with such limited resources.
The replayability of each level increased with the introduction of Star-gated levels. Suddenly earning more Stars mattered as you were able to unlock few more levels with them.
Firstly, we increased the replayability of each level. We knew that players primarily wanted more levels to play but that was also the bottleneck of production. It took a day to create a level and about two minutes for a player to beat it.
The solution was to introduce mastery. By earning Stars, players would unlock specific Star-gated levels. For each episode of 30 levels, we added only 3 additional Star Levels which player would unlock after their collected 30, 60 and 90 stars. In other words, we incentivized the player to replay levels until they three-starred all levels.
After getting players to crave more Stars, we introduced boosters that made it easier to get those coveted stars.
Secondly, we added a monetization mechanic. After introducing the mastery and encouraging players to three-star all the levels, we introduced four different boosters. Create demand than offering a solution. We weren’t allowed to use lives-mechanic. It was considered as a too punishing of a game mechanic. Rovio was, and still is, a fan driven company that will put the interest of their customers ahead of the short-term business interest.
Finally, we added a drip of boosters, which increased retention and conversion.
Thirdly, we added a daily bonus to drive retention and to get players experimenting on boosters. The daily bonus was a simple roulette that rewarded the player with one of the four different boosters.
This simple update, combined with turning the game from paid to free resulted in Angry Birds charging to the top of downloads charts and subsequently climbing into top 100 grossing up from an unranked position. Increased installs led to increased player base and that again let to multiplied ad revenues. The update was a success and these simple yet effective solutions were adopted across all the Angry Birds games on mobile.
What’s So New About Angry Birds 2?
There were several skeptical looks cast on the title of the game, Angry Birds 2. And that’s understandable because when you play the game for the first time, it does feel like a classic Angry Birds game. I mean, you have a slingshot, you have the different birds and you have the pigs. What’s so new about this game?
Well, those of you who stuck longer than first 20 level, know that this game is truly worthy of its “2”.
Not only does Angry Birds 2 look better, it has also multi-stage randomized levels. The image above shows the same level at two different tries. As you can see, the design of the Pigstructure has changed.
Firstly, and obviously, the graphics and the overall UX is much improved. For example, when you put a bird on the slingshot and stretch it, a zoomed in image of the bird in the slingshot appears. And when you aim at the pig, and image of the pig in shaking in stress will appear. Oh, and the fast-forward mechanic, which is something all the Angry Birds should have.
Secondly, the levels in Angry Birds 2 are multi-staged. Instead of destroying of pig structure per level, player destroys several structures in a row. This is a great design change combined with the Bird Cards design, where a player doesn’t see all the birds she has for the level but instead draws new ones as the level progresses. This design makes the levels more exciting as you don’t know what structure comes next or what birds will you have to tackle the challenge. Choosing which bird to use and which to save makes the levels, in my opinion, more fun.
Thirdly, the levels are randomized to an extent. What I mean is, as you restart the level, the structures will be different than it was during previous try. This is a major improvement that allows dynamic tuning of the levels. Theoretically, if a player is progressing too fast through the levels, the structures should get more challenging causing a player to replay the levels or pay for boosters and extra birds. Dynamically tuned levels – and the expertise of tuning them based on player behavior – is King’s core competence and ‘secret sauce’.
Fourthly, Angry Birds 2 features multiple progress paths, which in order create several currencies and sinks.
There’s the player’s account level, which grows as the player collects stars by completing levels. The account level is used to gate features such as the Daily Quests, Daily Challenge, and the Arena mode. Account level incentivized the player to replay levels till they are three-starred.
Every bird can be upgraded in the game, you just need the right colored Feathers. A lot of right colored Feathers.
Then there are the birds, which player can level up by collecting different colored Feathers found in the Chests. Leveling up birds increases the destruction points they generate upon collision. Points not only allow to get that coveted three-star-rating but they also contribute to getting the additional bird to sling. There’s the power bar on each level that gets filled based on a number of destruction points player causes. When the bar fills up, the player receives another bird card. Genius!
Players can level up their Slingshot by collecting a hat collection. Leveled up Slingshot generates more destruction points.
In Angry Birds 2, the player can level up the slingshot itself. To level up the slingshot player first needs to unlock all the birds, which requires beating first 44 levels. Then player needs to purchase hats for each of the birds. Hats are purchased with Black Pearls, which are found in gacha chests. There are several different hats for each bird making the collection highly repeatable and thus increasing the overall demand for Black Pearls.
Players can send gifts to each other in Angry Birds 2. Sounds boring but it's actually well implemented. To send a gift, a player has to first find it on a level and catch it with a bird. So you actually work for a prize that you can't keep. This type of donation makes you feel generous.
Finally, there are the social features. By collecting the game to your Facebook account you will see all of your playing friends on the King-style level map and on the level-specific leaderboards. There are also friend gifts, which player can collect from levels and send to their friends. Player can’t gift lives though, which is against the benchmarks.
When you look at the laundry list of all the new features and compare it to the classic Angry Birds games, you can only agree the game more than deserves its “2”. The game looks better, plays better and offers a wide variety of totally new features and game modes. But most importantly, Angry Birds 2 monetizes like a best-in-class puzzle game.
#1 Monetization Mechanic – Premium Currency
Angry Birds uses hard currency in form of Gems instead of relying on direct purchases. As most of you know, hard currency beats direct purchases due to four key reasons:
1.
