Angry Birds

• 1. Introduction

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  On Christmas Day 2011, players around the world downloaded 6.5 million copies of Angry Birds games on that single day. Angry Birds is a franchise created by the Finnish game designer Jaakko Iisalo and owned by Rovio Entertainment. Its premise fits in one breath. A flock of flightless birds defends a nest of eggs from a species of round green pigs, and the player fires the birds from a slingshot. That simple scene grew far beyond a phone screen. It reached cinemas, theme parks, toy shelves and sports shirts. How did a game this small become one of the most downloaded mobile series ever made? What happened to the company behind it when the novelty faded? And why do the birds keep turning up in places no game character was supposed to go?

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• 2. A Sketch and a Rescue

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  Crush the Castle, an Adobe Flash game from 2009, supplied the physics that inspired the first Angry Birds. The new game was conceived while Rovio Entertainment was in a state of bankruptcy. It grew out of a sketch by the designer, and it was released in 2009. Its success rescued the company, and Angry Birds became Rovio's flagship franchise.

  Critics praised the first game for its gameplay and style. Many now rank it among the greatest video games ever made, and it has been inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame.

  The audience grew at a remarkable pace. In 2012, Matt Brian of The Next Web reported that players logged more than 300 million minutes of game time every day across all platforms. As of May 2012, the series counted 200 million monthly active users. By January 2014, the games had reached 4 billion downloads. That total covered Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Rio, Space, Star Wars, Star Wars II and Go!

  The review scores tell a more uneven story. According to the aggregator Metacritic, four games in the franchise scored 80% or higher, while the remaining games landed below 60%.

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• 3. Sequels and Crossovers

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  Angry Birds Halloween arrived exclusively on iOS on the 21st of October 2010, as the first successor to the original game. It was later renamed Angry Birds Seasons. In December 2010 it reached Android devices, together with a Christmas-themed update.

  On the 22nd of March 2011, Rovio released Angry Birds Rio, a tie-in with the film Rio. The Independent reported that it had "the biggest launch ever for Rovio". Rio opened the door to a string of crossovers, including Angry Birds Star Wars in 2012 and Angry Birds Transformers in 2014.

  The pigs finally got their own game on the 27th of September 2012. Bad Piggies was the first spin-off, and it starred the green pigs instead of the birds. Other studios later took the characters into racing, role-playing and tile-matching games.

  On the 16th of July 2015, Rovio announced Angry Birds 2, a direct sequel to the original, with a full release slated for the 30th of July. In 2016, a prequel called Angry Birds Action! added augmented reality and used the character designs from the new film. The series has now passed twenty instalments.

  In August 2023, Sega completed its acquisition of Rovio Entertainment. From the 14th to the 21st of March 2024, the two companies ran a crossover with Sonic the Hedgehog. Angry Birds characters became unlockable in Sonic Dash and Sonic Forces: Speed Battle. Sonic levels, power-ups and cosmetics appeared in Angry Birds Friends, Angry Birds 2 and Angry Birds Dream Blast.

  The birds have since appeared in Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble in 2024. They also turned up in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and Two Point Museum, both in 2025.

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• 4. From Phone to Screen

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  In 2010, Rovio chief executive Mikael Hed imagined a feature film in a stop-motion style, reminiscent of Aardman Animations, the studio famous for Wallace & Gromit. He admitted that such a film was years away. In the meantime, Rovio bought a Helsinki animation studio to make short cartoons for Nickelodeon Extra. The first was a Christmas special called "Wreck the Halls", which debuted in December 2011.

  Angry Birds Toons premiered in March 2013 and ran for three seasons. It reached viewers through Comcast's Xfinity On-Demand in the US, Samsung Smart TVs and Roku set-top boxes. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment handled the DVDs. On the 11th of April 2014, Piggy Tales followed, a stop-motion series about the lives of the Minion Pigs. Angry Birds Stella arrived on the 1st of November 2014 and followed Stella and her friends on their own island.

  The experiments kept coming. Real Angry Birds premiered on Nat Geo Wild on the 12th of July 2015. In June 2018, Angry Birds BirLd Cup went onto YouTube, with the Everton players Wayne Rooney, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Tom Davies and Cenk Tosun officiating. A long-form series, Angry Birds: Summer Madness, was first planned for Netflix in 2021 and came out in January 2022. It shows Red, Stella, Bomb and Chuck as teenagers at summer camp, with the Mighty Eagle as their teacher. In May 2024, Angry Birds Mystery Island reached Amazon Prime Video and Amazon Kids+, following a new group of Hatchlings.

  The Angry Birds Movie opened on the 20th of May 2016, distributed by Sony Pictures. It gave the characters limbs and voices for the first time. Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reilly directed it in their directorial debut, and Jon Vitti wrote the screenplay. Rovio also hired David Maisel, a former executive producer of Marvel Studios films such as Iron Man, to oversee its features. The teaser trailer had been poorly received.

  The sequel arrived in 2019, directed by Thurop Van Orman, the creator of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. It departed from the games by having birds and pigs end their rivalry and join forces against a larger threat. It earned 73% on Rotten Tomatoes, which made it one of the best-reviewed video game adaptations ever.

  On the 6th of June 2024, Rovio announced The Angry Birds Movie 3. DNEG Animation and Sega Sammy Group are producing it without Sony, and Paramount Pictures is scheduled to release it on the 23rd of December 2026.

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• 5. Toys, Books and Parks

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  Rovio opened its first official Angry Birds shop in Helsinki on the 11th of November 2011, at 11:11 a.m. local time. The company said the next store would likely be in China, which it considered the game's fastest-growing market. More than 10 million Angry Birds toys have been sold. In 2012, branded merchandise brought in 45% of Rovio's revenues.

  Mattel released a board game called "Angry Birds: Knock on Wood" in May 2011. In 2012 it made Hot Wheels cars of Red, the Blues, Chuck and a Minion Pig. Hasbro made the best-known toy line, Telepods. Players scanned a small QR code on a figure with a device camera to "teleport" that character into the game. In 2016, Lego released six construction sets based on The Angry Birds Movie.

  The printed pages were just as varied. In 2011, Rovio published a cookbook called Bad Piggies: Egg Recipes. On the 20th of March 2012, National Geographic published the paperback Angry Birds Space: A Furious Flight Into The Final Frontier. IDW Publishing announced Angry Birds Comics in March 2014, written by Paul Tobin. A comic strip based on the movie ran on GoComics from the 3rd of August 2017 to the 20th of September 2018.

  Olvi began making Angry Birds soft drinks in early 2012. The first two flavours were Tropic and Paradise. By September, Lagoon and Space Comet had joined them.

  The first Angry Birds attraction was unauthorised. In September 2011, the Window of the World theme park in Changsha, China, let visitors fire stuffed birds from a large slingshot at green balloons standing in for pigs. Rovio considered licensing it. In 2012, the Särkänniemi adventure park in Finland opened the official Angry Birds Land, on the 28th of April. Thorpe Park in the UK opened its own version in May 2014, which ran until the end of the 2023 season. In June 2013, Rovio and NASA opened Angry Birds Space Encounter at the Kennedy Space Center.

  Other venues followed. Angry Birds World opened in April 2019 at Doha Festival City. A park in Malaysia closed on the 5th of April 2021, after six years, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The most recent addition was a miniature golf course at American Dream Meadowlands in New Jersey, which opened on the 1st of October 2020.

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• 6. Brand Partnerships

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  Between 2011 and 2017, Rovio released a run of promotional versions of the original game, most of them Flash-based. Each had exclusive levels. Chrome and Google+ editions sat alongside ones for Fazer's Tyrkisk Peber Volcano, Nesquik cereal, Wonderful Pistachios and PepsiCo's Tazos. There were also editions for Cheetos, Telepizza, Fuji TV and Intel's Ultrabook, and a Philadelphia Eagles edition. Some were restricted to China, such as the McDonald's version and a Coca-Cola version linked to the Chinese Olympic team.

  The characters also starred in advertising for other companies. In March 2011, they began appearing in ads for Microsoft's Bing search engine. At the 2011 South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, Nokia projected the characters onto a downtown building to promote its N8 handset. A T-Mobile ad filmed in Barcelona that June featured a real-life version of the game in a city plaza. Nokia also used the game in Kuala Lumpur, to promote an attempt at a world record for the most people playing one mobile game.

  Finnair taped Angry Birds figures to an Airbus A340 and held a tournament on a flight to Singapore. In India, Parle put a trading card in each packet of its wafers in November 2013. In February 2016, Cadbury India packed small figurines and tattoos into Cadbury Gems and Surprise balls.

  Sport proved just as welcoming. Finnish Formula One driver Heikki Kovalainen wore an Angry Birds helmet in the 2012 season. That year the Lotus F1 Team carried the logo on the nosecone of each car, and his fellow Finn Kimi Raikkonen wore a cap with the Angry Birds Space logo. Hockey Bird, designed by Toni Kysenius and Rovio, was the official mascot of the 2012 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championships.

  In 2017, Everton F.C. signed a deal with Rovio. From the 2017-18 Premier League season, the Angry Birds logo appeared on the left sleeve of the club's shirt.

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• 7. Cultural Echoes

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  The Israeli comedy show Eretz Nehederet, whose title translates as "a Wonderful Country", put the Angry Birds into peace negotiations with the pigs. The sketch satirised recent failed Israeli-Palestinian peace attempts. It went viral worldwide and drew coverage from Haaretz, The Christian Science Monitor and The Guardian.

  American hosts Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart and Daniel Tosh all joked about the game on their shows. In the 30 Rock episode "Plan B", the guest star Aaron Sorkin tells Liz Lemon, "Our craft is dying while people are playing Angry Birds and poking each other on Facebook". He then offers her a tip for a better score.

  In February 2011, journalist Jake Tapper mockingly introduced Senator Chris Coons as the "Angry Birds champion of the Senate" at the National Press Club's annual dinner. Former British prime minister David Cameron plays the iPad version. The author Salman Rushdie says he is "something of a master at Angry Birds". Basketball star Kevin Durant plays other NBA stars, though he is wary of cheating.

  Sports crowds joined in. In August 2011, the Milwaukee Brewers played the Angry Birds theme during pre-game introductions of their arch-rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals. The reference was aimed at the former Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa, who was known for hitting opposing batters with pitches.

  The 2013 film G.I. Joe: Retaliation has the villain Zartan playing the game while waiting for world leaders to answer his threats. Family Guy sent Peter into a level after a failed skydive, and Robot Chicken also parodied it. The game's mechanics inspired imitators such as Angry Turds, and Chicks'n'Vixens, a beta for Windows Phone with chickens and foxes.

  The odd corners of religion and education took it up too. Giridhari Dasa of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness in Brazil wrote a five-part essay, "Angry Birds Yoga - How to Eliminate the Green Pigs in Your Life". Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka tweeted, "Very cool! I can see Angry Birds Yoga becoming a worldwide craze;-)".

  Rovio also launched Angry Birds Playground with the University of Helsinki, aimed at kindergarten-age children and based on the Finnish national curriculum. In 2015 Sanna Lukander, a former Rovio vice president, founded the spin-off Fun Academy, which operates in 9 countries.

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• 8. Retired and Disputed

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  In 2019, Rovio delisted several early games, including Angry Birds and Angry Birds Seasons, from app stores. The company said it could not update them to modern standards. Players pushed back, and Rovio promised remakes. The first, Rovio Classics: Angry Birds, was built in Unity and released for iOS and Android on the 31st of March 2022.

  In February 2023, the remake left Google Play and was renamed Red's First Flight on the App Store. Rovio said it was outranking its other Angry Birds games in search results, which hurt them.

  During the Gaza war, graphic ads supporting Israel appeared in Angry Birds and other children's games. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it had told advertisers to block them for viewers under 18. Rovio then banned the ads by hand.

  In January 2014, documents revealed that Angry Birds had been treated as a "leaky app". The US National Security Agency and Britain's GCHQ were reported to have gathered user data through it, including location and sexual orientation. Edward Snowden's claims said the app was leaky. According to The Register, the data flowed through in-game advertising code, such as that of Millennial Media. Rovio denied giving information to intelligence agencies, but did not rule out that its advertisers might.

  On the 29th of January, hackers hijacked the Angry Birds website through a DNS attack and replaced it with the words "Spying Birds". Rovio said it caught the defacement within minutes. The Syrian Electronic Army tweeted that "a friend" of theirs had carried out the attack.

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