Now, to get this out of the way: I am a Rovio fan, and I have been for much, much, much longer than most. I have published their very first game – Darkest Fear – and I have published a few of their pre-Angry Birds titles after that. So do not accuse me of Rovio-phobia; there is none…
So, I hope you will understand that I was pretty excited when they announced their first post-Angry Birds title, Amazing Alex. Alas, am I excited? No, not really. Now, don’t get me wrong: it is a beautifully balanced, nicely polished game. Nothing wrong with that. But is it really something über-special? As in Angry-birds-we-will-show-them-special? Erm, I think not.
You say though that they are on #1 in 30+ countries and on #2 in 30+ more (or so the Mighty Eagle tells me over Facebook and Twitter). You say that this amounts to an astonishing success, an impeccable launch. And, yes, I agree. But, aside of the impressive launch power and impeccable marketing and all, is it great? I think not. And, yes, I am disappointed. Rovio has been one of my favourite studios, long before Angry Birds. It is why I have been behind them with previous games, why I tried to push them when their talent had not been amplified by their awesome and unprecedented success of Angry Birds. But… Someone who wants to replicate Walt Disney needs to do better. Folks, you have to follow Mickey with Donald. Is Alex Donald? I think not…
I do hope – sincerely – that they will pull it of. Not because my day job at RIM requires me to stay in their good books, but because I believe that the birth of a new creative powerhouse outside of old-school Hollywood is a seriously good sign for the world, and last but not least because Michael, Peter, Andrew et al are really good people! But I do not think Alex is nearly as amazing as Donald Duck is (or Bugs Bunny for that matter) and I am hoping they will bring it with future iterations!
Come on, my Mighty Eagle and other birds: we really could do with a new Disney; it’s been way too long…
Alexander Bosika
Good post Volker. I think it’s hard to really keep hitting the grand slam. While setting the bar high to be synonymous with Disney is generally a good thing, sometimes, like a private firm going public too early, it becomes a distracting force. What used to be a “fun” creative thing, becomes a business thing, driven my metrics (downloads, shares, media snippets) and that my friend is a very very hard thing to work with.
I’ve seen far too many smaller entities become engrossed in the magic of success that they don’t ever recover.
Imagine the pressure faced by Christopher Nolan to make each successive Dark Knight film. The first one was easy. It was a reboot. The second one was stress-fully harder because it was a reboot of an extremely famous villain. Famous like Donald Duck. The third — magically difficult with a new villain (to older generations). Did he succeed? Yes, I think so. Each film connects to the other in one long story.
In game development…it’s a hit and miss. Sometimes, the very ingredient to the success are repeatable and in some cases, not repeatable. I like the Rovio guys too and the Mighty Eagle is a good guy. Has heart.
But with so much “app noise”, trying to maintain the same level of intensity is just impossible.
Alexander Bosika
MobileMonday Toronto, Co-Founder
http://www.alexanderbosika.com
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