Angry Birds co-creator Peter Vesterbacka visited Ukraine. We asked him about the success of the iconic game, competition in today’s mobile market, and AI

Peter Vesterbacka was one of the key figures at Rovio during the period when Angry Birds transformed from a mobile game into a global brand and an integral part of pop culture. Prior to this, the team had created 51 games, and following the success of Angry Birds, they began experimenting with licensing, partnerships, merchandise, animation, and local campaigns across various countries.

Recently, the former CMO of Rovio visited Kyiv. We spoke with him about what actually drove the success of Angry Birds, why game marketing needs to be planned as early as the concept stage, whether modern studios still need publishers, and how small teams can compete with today’s mobile giants. Additionally, we discussed the impact of AI, the future of mobile gaming, and where the next big hit might come from.

“People in the games industry often become too focused on the technology itself”. On the success of Angry Birds and the fan experience

— What ultimately drove the success of Angry Birds: the gameplay, the characters, the marketing, the timing, or a combination of all these factors?

I would say it was a combination of everything. Whenever you have a major success, it is typically not because of one thing, but because of many factors coming together. With Angry Birds, all of those elements played a role.

It is a little like winning the lottery: you have to get everything right. Getting just one thing right is not enough. With Angry Birds, we simply got many things right.

— Did the company understand what drove that success at the time?

I would say that you can never fully understand or plan everything. However, we took a very analytical approach and tried to understand what it took to create a hit game. The idea was to eliminate luck from every step of the process as much as possible.

Creating a major success and a hit game like Angry Birds still requires some luck, but we tried to make that part as small as possible. It is similar to successful athletes. People often say they are lucky, but they are lucky because they train a lot. In that sense, they create their own luck.

At Rovio, we had made 51 games before Angry Birds. It was not our first, second, or third game. Through that experience, we learned how to make better games, improve our marketing, and do everything better.

— Would you say Rovio’s approach was data-driven at the time?

I would say it was very data-driven for its time. When Angry Birds was released, the industry did not yet have all the analytics tools or even much of the terminology we now use to measure game performance. Today, metrics such as day-one, day-seven, and day-thirty retention are industry standards. Back then, many of these approaches did not exist in a ready-made form.

We developed many of our data-driven practices as part of what we were building. We could not simply buy an analytics solution and start using it. We had to build everything ourselves because hardly anyone else was doing it.

When the original Angry Birds was released, free-to-play was not really an option either. In-app purchases were not yet available. They were introduced first by Apple and later by Google. Many of the features that enabled the freemium model appeared after the original Angry Birds.

Freemium models have since played a major role in shaping today’s games industry, which has become extremely analytical. Many of the most successful free-to-play games are highly efficient monetization systems delivered in the form of games. That represents a fundamentally different philosophy of game development.

There is still a lot we can learn from these models. The games industry also went through a relatively brief but highly influential period centred on crypto, when developers created games specifically for that model. However, I said throughout that period, both before and after it, that the only thing that ultimately matters is creating games people genuinely enjoy playing.

Many crypto games were not enjoyable at all. They often turned playing into a repetitive grind or a chore, without much engaging gameplay.

“Regardless of what happens on the technology side, long-term, sustainable success still depends on building great games”

This is something many people forget, and we have seen numerous examples of businesses that failed to become sustainable because of it. You cannot avoid the need to create fantastic experiences for your audience.

At Rovio, we always talked about the fan experience rather than the user or customer experience. The reason is that you need to create experiences that turn people into fans: people who genuinely love your games and products. It was therefore very important for us to keep asking how we could deliver something amazing for the fans.

— Looking back, can we say that Angry Birds was one of the defining games of the early mobile market? Alongside titles such as Fruit Ninja and Candy Crush, it seems to have been one of the giants of that era.

Yes. At the time, we were defining many new approaches to marketing and other aspects of the business. Angry Birds was also a defining game for the industry as a whole. You could describe it as the “Angry Birds moment” in gaming.

When Angry Birds came out, there were still gamers and everyone else. Today, almost everyone plays games, and it is considered completely normal.

I remember the first Christmas after Angry Birds was released. Niklas went home and gave his phone to his mother, as he had done with all our previous games. Usually, she would take a look, say it was nice, and give the phone back. But with Angry Birds, he did not get his phone back for the entire Christmas because his mother kept playing.

Today, that would seem normal. Back then, it was almost unheard of for someone’s mother to play games. That illustrates the impact Angry Birds had.

Even today, although it happens less often now, people still tell me, “I never play games, but I played Angry Birds,” or, “My wife never plays games, but she plays Angry Birds.” Many people started playing games because of Angry Birds. Of course, you could say something similar about Candy Crush, which also had a massive impact and attracted a broad audience.

It was an industry-defining moment because the gaming market became much larger. Smartphones became the dominant gaming platform. More people play games on mobile devices than on all other platforms combined. Mobile fundamentally changed gaming because people can now play whenever they want.

People often ask what will come next. Nobody knows, but I do not think it will be VR. Every year, someone says it will finally be the year of VR or some other technology. People in both the games and technology industries often become too focused on the technology itself and forget why it is needed. They begin looking for problems that fit a particular solution, and that rarely makes sense.

It is difficult to imagine any major change over the next five or ten years that would displace smartphones as the dominant gaming platform. There are developments in XR and related technologies, and they may create some opportunities. Still, although there has been innovation, there has been surprisingly little innovation in gameplay.

I might even say that the last major innovation was Pokémon GO. Its gameplay may not have been extraordinary, but the combination of the brand, mobility, and the Pokémon story created a perfect storm. Since then, we have not seen anything with quite the same impact.

I would put Angry Birds and Pokémon GO in that category. Fortnite may also belong there, but it is still a more hardcore gaming experience. If I stopped someone on the street and asked about Fortnite, many mothers probably would not play it. But they would know Angry Birds and Pokémon GO.

— I would like to ask specifically about marketing. Which marketing decision had the greatest impact on the success of Angry Birds? Beyond the company’s publishing strategy, what else was particularly important?

As with your first question about what made Angry Birds successful, great marketing was not the result of a single decision. It was a combination of many things.

Our approach was to make Angry Birds part of as many moments in people’s daily lives as possible. If you drank coffee, there was Angry Birds coffee. There were soft drinks, games, T-shirts, funny hats, and many other products. We wanted people to encounter the brand constantly, to the point where they could hardly go through a day without seeing it.

It was similar to the visibility of brands such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, or McDonald’s. For us, it was important to maximize the brand’s visibility in every possible form.

This was very different from the traditional Hollywood approach, where a movie receives a major promotional push and is then withdrawn so the brand can rest.

“We never let the brand rest”

We kept doing more and wanted Angry Birds to remain at the top of people’s minds.

We carried out many large-scale campaigns. We launched Angry Birds Space from space, took over Walmart stores, and transformed Seattle’s Space Needle for the launch. We also created partnerships with Star Wars, Transformers, Rio, Green Day, Slash, and numerous other artists and movies.
The goal was to make Angry Birds an everyday part of popular culture. That is why I would put it alongside Pokémon GO. Very few games have had that kind of cultural impact.

We did this intentionally. Our original idea was to keep creating games until we had a hit and then take that hit everywhere. We did not initially know exactly how to accomplish that, so we hired people with experience in consumer products and licensing, and we learned along the way.

I saw a sign here that said, “Be brave like Ukraine.” At Rovio, we were also very brave in the sense that we were not afraid to do completely new things. You need the courage to experiment and must not be afraid of failure. When you try something new, you will often fail. Then you try again, learn, and gradually understand how to make it work. We simply tried a great many things.

Coming from Finland, we love ice hockey, and there is an important lesson in taking the shot. This applies to startups and any other company: if you do not even try, you are already going to fail.

— So it was about establishing a global presence for the brand?

Yes, but it was global and highly local at the same time. We became a leading brand in China because we did many things specifically for the local market. We also created local initiatives in Poland, the United States, and many other countries.

It was about building a global presence while working closely with local culture and creating initiatives that were relevant to each market.

— That sounds difficult because every market has its own local context, including linguistic differences. The approach has to vary from country to country, doesn’t it?

Yes, but what is interesting is that many local ideas can also appeal to a global audience. For example, we created a very successful update for China based on the Mid-Autumn Festival. Almost everyone knows about Chinese New Year, but far fewer people were familiar with the Mid-Autumn Festival.

For audiences outside China, it was fascinating to discover mooncakes and the stories connected with the celebration. We are very familiar with Western and regional stories, but people are always interested in discovering something new.

The same applies to very local and specific elements of Ukrainian history. I have learned a great deal about Ukraine over the past two days, and many of these stories could be interesting to people around the world because they offer an opportunity to learn something new.

We did many things like this. Instead of repeating the same familiar ideas, we introduced elements that felt surprising and different.

“If you have the opportunity, you should do it yourself”. On publishers in modern mobile gaming and resistance to AI

— Let’s move on to another topic. I have a question about Chillingo, as working with the publisher was one of Rovio’s early decisions. Looking at the market today, do mobile game studios still need publishers?

No. I have always said that if you are serious about developing games, you also need to be serious about marketing, branding, and everything around the product.

Many people in the games industry only want to make games and expect someone else to handle the marketing. But if you want to be successful, and this applies not only to games but to any industry, you need to treat all of these elements as part of the same process.

At Rovio, I used to say that everything we did was marketing. You could also look at it the other way and say that nothing we did was marketing, because everything was fully integrated.

Take Angry Birds Rio, for example. It was a major promotion for the movie Rio, but we made that promotion into an excellent game. People were happy to pay for what was essentially marketing. We did not separate the two.

You could say that Angry Birds Rio was simply marketing for the movie, and of course it was. But it was also a fantastic game. For many people, it is still their favourite Angry Birds title because it was so different.

If you work with a publisher because you do not know how to handle marketing, the publisher may do some promotion. But if the game is not successful, they move on.

“So it is debatable how much they really bring to the table”

If you want to control your own destiny and continue making the kinds of games you want to make, you need to handle the marketing and publishing yourself.

From a technical perspective, publishing is now relatively easy. You can release a game on the App Store or Steam. That is the easy part. But if your company lacks marketing skills or talent, you should bring those capabilities in-house.

Marketing is too important to treat it as something that happens after the game is finished. You cannot simply make a game, hand it over to the marketing team, and wish them luck. Marketing needs to be part of the process from the very beginning.

When we created Angry Birds Space, we planned the marketing while developing the game. We were constantly thinking about how to launch it, whether we should work with NASA, and which other partners we should involve.

We did the same with Star Wars. We began planning the marketing at the same time as we started developing the game and the product. Everything was closely integrated.

My personal view is that studios should do this themselves. I generally do not think working with publishers is the best approach. However, sometimes it is necessary. A publisher can provide funding, for example, so the situation is not entirely black and white. But if you have the opportunity, you should do it yourself.

— It is interesting that you say marketing should begin at the same time as work on the game itself.

During the development process, you can also discover new opportunities. You might realise that changing something would allow you to work with McDonald’s or another brand. You could also time the release to coincide with a movie or television series.

We were always looking for partners with large fan communities so we could bring their fans and ours together. Consider Star Wars: it had a huge fan base, Angry Birds had a huge fan base, and when we combined them, the result was very powerful.

That is why it is so important to think about marketing from the beginning. It also helps define who you are building the game for and who is going to play it.

Today, people have countless ways to spend their time. At Rovio, I always said that our competition was Disney because we also wanted to operate across every area of entertainment. I also said that we competed with all of television. The real competition is for people’s time and attention. We want them to spend that time with us rather than with somebody else.

Netflix is a good example today. It offers movies, television series, mobile games, and games for larger screens. There are many opportunities to build a brand and allow fans to engage with it in different ways.

With Angry Birds, we had animation, soft drinks, games, merchandise, and many other products. Fans could interact with the brand through a wide range of experiences.

We can learn a lot from Japan, particularly from the way Japanese companies build brands around characters. Korea is also worth studying. Many new intellectual properties there are first tested through webtoons because they are relatively inexpensive to produce.

This allows companies to test whether a character is successful and resonates with fans. If it does, they might then create a game, an animated series, or something else. New concepts can be tested very quickly, whereas building a game still takes considerable time and may require a substantial investment.
It therefore makes sense to begin building a fictional universe in a faster and less expensive format. If the concept does not work, you do not need to make the game.

There are many new developments like this, and we can learn a great deal by observing different markets. One thing Rovio did very well was understanding what was happening in Korea, the United States, Japan, and elsewhere.

— You mentioned that Angry Birds was Rovio’s 52nd game. Today, mobile studios increasingly rely on rapid prototyping: they test many concepts and quickly abandon the ones that do not work. How do you distinguish between a weak concept and a promising game that simply needs more iteration?

I think it depends greatly on the type of game. It is somewhat similar to the example of testing intellectual properties through webtoons.

The industry goes through different waves. There was the hyper-casual wave, for example, which was entirely about testing numerous ideas and developing them very quickly.

One development that will bring a major change not only to the games industry but to the world as a whole is AI.

“We are moving towards a phase in which humans may no longer write individual lines of code”

That is also where the games industry is heading.

There is always a great deal of controversy in the games industry, and some people are completely opposed to AI. However, the industry has always used AI, including for non-player characters. In that sense, it is not entirely new.

Virtually every game studio now uses AI because it makes it possible to create many things much faster and more effectively. It allows us to produce more with fewer resources.

In the very early days of mobile gaming, games were extremely inexpensive to make. Development became more expensive with the arrival of smartphones, and today mobile games can cost as much to produce as games for any other platform.

AI could change this by allowing small teams to create remarkable things. We should therefore view it not as a threat, but as an opportunity for a few creative people or a small creative team to build something extraordinary.

It can democratise game development and enable more innovation because creating a major game may no longer require a large studio.

When it comes to iteration and deciding whether a concept is promising, AI will allow us to test many more ideas with much larger groups of people. We will also be able to use it to create synthetic players and player bases. We are only beginning to see what will become possible.

I recently saw an example of this while visiting a studio in Tokyo during the cherry blossom season. One of the people there had designed Pikachu, and the team was working on a new Pokémon-like franchise. I called my friend Juhani, who had built our back-end systems at Rovio and is now developing a company called Icon AI. I asked whether he had a few minutes to speak with the team in Tokyo.

We connected through Google Meet and, in approximately ten minutes, created Sakura Invaders, a clone of Space Invaders. Our AI agents built the game from scratch. It was fully playable, visually polished, and had all the necessary elements. The agents then began playing the game themselves, iterating on it, and gradually improving it. We went from nothing to a complete playable game in around ten minutes.

Space Invaders is, of course, a relatively simple game, but the example still demonstrates that intelligent and creative people can now build impressive things extremely quickly.

AI is creating extraordinary new opportunities for creative people. Naturally, it can also be used to produce a hundred terrible versions of Space Invaders.

However, if you look at history, new technologies often develop this way. When the iPhone first appeared, the App Store was full of ridiculous applications, including apps that simply made farting sounds, because there was not yet much better content available.

Over time, the quality improved, and people learned how to use the technology properly. I expect the same to happen with AI. We will see better games and a great deal of innovation produced by much smaller teams. From my perspective, this is a very positive development.

— Will the use of AI create a lasting competitive advantage for a studio? As you mentioned, the market is already being flooded with cheap, low-quality games. How long can that advantage last?

I think AI changes what is important. Small creative teams and talented individuals will be able to build amazing things because the main differentiator will no longer be how a game is created, but what is created.

AI is a tool that makes us more productive. It is similar to having Word or Excel: the tools allow people to produce something, but they still have to decide what to create.

If you give average people better tools, you will usually get average results, although those results may reach a much higher level than before. I can now create music with AI, but that does not mean it will be great music.

People who truly understand what they are doing, however, can create remarkable things. They can delegate much of the heavy work to AI agents and focus on developing distinctive, high-quality experiences.

We will still see many poor games, just as we did in the early days of the iPhone and smartphones. Some low-quality games and applications succeeded simply because there were few better alternatives.

Even around the time Angry Birds was released, many mobile games were console games adapted for phones. The controls were often poor, and the games were not designed properly for mobile devices. Today, developers understand how to build specifically for touchscreens.

The same will happen with AI. As people become more experienced with tools such as Claude, Codex, and other AI systems, the development process will change completely.

“The competitive advantage will no longer come from the number of people on a team or the mechanics of producing a game. It will come from creating great games and great gameplay”

Before the iPhone, during Rovio’s early years, large companies such as EA and Gameloft often measured success by the number of games they released. One company might announce that it had produced 478 games that year, while another would say it had released 520.

But the number of games did not matter. During the Nokia era, a phone might come with 50 EA games installed, but that did not mean any of them were good. Users had very little choice because app stores did not yet exist. Other people decided which games they would receive.
AI will produce a similar situation. There will be a huge number of average games, but truly great games will still rise to the top and people will find them.

There will be a lot of low-quality content and many unremarkable products. At the same time, the overall quality will continue to improve. We will see exceptional games because exceptional people will be able to create them, alongside a much larger number of average ones.

— What about this issue from the player’s perspective rather than the developer’s?

I think the question is ultimately whether it matters how something was made if it provides an amazing experience.

I understand the negative reaction when people see that something was made with AI, particularly when the result is average and does not offer a great experience. But it does not really matter whether something was created by a human or by AI if it is not good.

With the best games, songs, or other creative works, people may not even know how they were made. We already see this in the music industry, where some successful songs are created entirely with AI and listeners do not realise it.

The important thing is to create fantastic experiences. When you achieve that, people may not even notice that AI was involved.

AI also allows us to create highly personalised experiences. We could theoretically design an individual experience by hand for one person, but it is impossible to do that manually for a million or a billion people. With AI, we can create something specifically for each player and take their personal circumstances into account. That allows us to deliver experiences that are genuinely unique to individual players.

When people discuss innovation in games, they often mention titles such as Angry Birds or Pokémon GO, along with a few other examples. I think it will take some time, but developers will eventually stop using AI merely to reproduce what they already do today. They will begin using it to create things that were previously impossible, whether for economic, technical, or other reasons.

This is a transitional phase. People will gradually learn how to use the technology.

There are still players who say they will never play free-to-play games because they consider the model harmful, or that they will never accept advertisements. These groups are often very vocal, but relatively small.

I often use advertising as an example. Many people say they hate ads. But when you give them the option to pay to remove them, almost nobody pays. That shows that the people speaking most loudly are not always representative of the majority.

The same may apply to people who strongly oppose AI. They are usually a small but vocal minority. Most players will not care how a game was made if it is a great game. They will simply play it.

I am therefore very optimistic about AI. I understand that many people are concerned about their jobs and other consequences. There is a saying that you may not be replaced by AI, but you may be replaced by a person who knows how to use AI.

We cannot stop technological development. We can always argue that we should avoid a particular tool and continue doing things the way we did in the past, but the world does not work that way.

“For independent studios that understand what they are doing, this is a very promising time”. On finding an audience and staying competitive

— Live ops can extend a game’s lifespan, but they can also turn development into an endless content treadmill. How can a studio keep players engaged over the long term without making constant content production unsustainable? It can become an exhausting marathon.

I think AI can help with that. There is always a temptation to keep producing more of the same indefinitely, and sometimes that may work. But people get bored easily. If the experience feels identical every day, it may not be a successful long-term strategy.

Live ops can be done well or badly, and players will recognise the difference. The best companies will handle them properly and will not set the quality bar too low. Studios should remain ambitious and continuously provide new and engaging content.

“If people love the game and its world, the studio almost has a responsibility to continue developing them”

t is also a missed opportunity not to build on an established fan base. Studios should give fans what they want and what they deserve.

As with marketing, live ops should be considered part of the entire experience rather than a separate process.

— As established mobile audiences become harder and more expensive to reach, where will the next wave of growth in mobile gaming come from? Will it be driven by new regions, new player segments, new platforms, new types of games, or new genres?

That is a very difficult question to answer. People who claim they know how to create hit games are usually not being honest, because nobody really knows. The same applies to hit movies, songs, or any other successful creative product. These are hit-driven industries, and it is extremely difficult to predict what will succeed.

At the same time, I do not think we are yet using all the capabilities of mobile devices. There is still a great deal of untapped potential, particularly in social experiences. People enjoy doing things and playing together, but there is still too much friction in making those experiences work smoothly.

This does not necessarily require new technology. There is already considerable opportunity at the intersection of mobile and social experiences.

Pokémon GO is a very interesting example. Its success was connected to the brand, its story, and its world, but the game also made walking around feel natural and meaningful. At its peak, people travelled to specific locations because certain Pokémon could be found there. It demonstrated the power of games and stories to influence people’s behaviour and have a real impact on the world.

I believe there is still room to create entirely new gaming experiences, and I am somewhat surprised that we have not seen more innovation considering everything mobile devices can already do.

My guess is that the next major wave of growth will involve more social interaction, location-based features, and possibly greater use of the sensors already built into our devices.

It will also be extremely important for games to stand out and differentiate themselves through strong brands and characters. Pokémon GO succeeded because it was Pokémon. The gameplay itself was not necessarily extraordinary, but the product brought many different elements together successfully.

“I see no reason why gaming could not become an even larger industry”

The pandemic was very beneficial for the games industry because people had few other ways to spend their time, which led to enormous growth. Since then, the industry has struggled somewhat as people have returned to spending more time outside.

But that also creates an opportunity, particularly for games built around social interaction, location, and mobility.

Nintendo experimented with similar ideas through the Nintendo 3DS and passive-play features. You could carry the device around, and games such as Nintendogs and others would interact with nearby players or continue certain activities in the background.

That approach did not become mainstream because most people did not carry a Nintendo device with them all the time. But almost everyone carries a smartphone. I am surprised that these ideas have not been adopted more widely on mainstream mobile platforms. There is a great deal of potential for passive experiences that take advantage of the fact that people always carry these devices with them.

It remains very difficult to predict exactly where the next major success will come from. But I am convinced that someone will eventually create the next big thing by combining all the right elements, much like getting every number right on a lottery ticket.

— You have already touched on this topic, but I still need to ask: can a small studio build a global mobile hit today? What advantages can it use that major companies such as Playrix, Plarium, or Gameloft cannot? Is it speed, focus, creativity, or a greater willingness to take risks?

I think AI could become a major enabler for smaller studios and teams that know what they are doing.

Large companies inevitably have a great deal of internal friction. If you work at one of the major studios, it is not easy to simply decide to make a game and release it. Smaller teams can move much faster, which creates a significant opportunity for them.

It is similar to what happened when smartphones transformed the mobile market. Small studios, and even teams consisting of a single person, were able to create global success stories.

There is absolutely nothing preventing a small studio from competing globally, regardless of where it is based. It could be in Kyiv, Finland, or anywhere else in the world. There is no reason it cannot compete with anyone.

I believe AI can help make that possible. If you have a great idea, AI can help you develop it further and turn it into something with a major impact.

The same applies to marketing. Studios can use AI and creative thinking not only during development but throughout the entire process.

AI may allow smaller teams to accomplish much more with fewer resources. If they learn how to use it effectively, it could remove a significant part of the advantage that large companies currently have.

For independent studios that understand what they are doing, this is a very promising time.

Підписуйтеся на Telegram-канал @gamedev_dou, щоб не пропустити найважливіші статті і новини