作者：Dan Pearson

Rovio首席执行官Mikael Hed在最近采访中表示：“几乎人人都在玩《愤怒的小鸟》，这款游戏的玩家范围极广，几乎覆盖了其他任何游戏的用户群体。”

Mikel Hed(from gamesindustry)

这番言论并不只是体现了这名CEO的狂妄自大——虽然Rovio管理层在一定程度上确实是春风得意。今年5月份，《愤怒的小鸟》系列在多个平台突破10亿次下载量，它是世界上为数不多的大众认知品牌，更别提它在游戏领域的影响力了。

在2011年10月，《愤怒的小鸟》在一天内就吸引了3000万玩家，今年3月份《愤怒的小鸟太空版》击败了Zynga斥资2亿美元收购的《Draw Something》，位居App Store榜首。三天后，《愤怒的小鸟太空版》下载量达1000万次。这样的品牌意味着商机。

《愤怒的小鸟》扭转了Rovio的命运。几周内，这家芬兰公司就从拥有51款极其普通的原创手机游戏，一直默默无闻的发行商，蜕变成全球知名游戏品牌的主人，赚到了多数开发者和发行商可望而不可及的收益。2011年，Rovio从1.06亿美元销售额中获得了6700万美元的利润。

Rovio坦言，这一切的成功部分要归功于运气。他们在正确的时间、正确的地点发行了正确的产品。Rovio表示，能推出成功的产品确实值得庆贺，但登上冠军宝座时，保住第一的位置难度更大，在这个瞬息万变的手机游戏市场中更是如此。

多样化是关键，Rovio在2011年有30%收益来自毛绒玩具等周边产品销售额——加上图书、贴纸、饭盒和卫衣，预计单今年该公司就可创收4亿美元。这项“副业”的影响力不容小觑，Rovio执行副总裁Petri Järvilehto甚至透露，公司内部仅有半数员工直接与游戏产品打交道。

但Rovio针对《愤怒的小鸟》这只下金蛋的鹅还有什么计划呢？

Järvilehto指出：“我想，我们有责任也有义务维持品牌的新鲜度。今年早些时候，我们推出了《愤怒的小鸟太空版》，我们引入了全新的游戏玩法机制及游戏环境。我们需要不断地彻底改造我们的游戏，为粉丝们提供全新的游戏体验。”

“如果我们过于自满，停滞不前，那么情况就危险了。游戏领域和娱乐行业中就都出现了不少类似的经典案例。任天堂20多年来一直致力于更新《马里奥》——他们一直为玩家提供新型的游戏体验，这也是我们《愤怒的小鸟》需要学习的地方——我们需要不断地为玩家制造惊喜。”

Rovio首席执行官Mikael Hed也认同此看法，他清晰表明，虽然拓宽产品种类可以舒缓开发应用产品的压力，然而手机应用仍是公司的业务重心。

Hed解释道：“我们坚信，《愤怒的小鸟》已成为主流品牌，但是如果没有为《愤怒的小鸟》奠定坚实稳定的商业基础，我们将无法预见它的未来发展状态。尤其在我们已向多个不同领域发展的情况下。”

“除此以外，我们围绕《愤怒的小鸟》建立起来的业务，也将有助于我们创建新游戏品牌。”

Rovio旗下新产品《Amazing Alex》发布已有数月时间（游戏邦注：原名《Casey’s Contraptions》，Rovio从Snappy Touch和Mystery Coconut购买了该游戏IP），Hed和Järvilehto不愿过多谈及它的效益，但是他们明确自己有个庞大的计划——Hed透露，公司不会轻视这些游戏品牌。

“我们极其谨慎，当然，若想发展更远，我们就需付出更多努力。我们尤为谨慎。当然，人们会对我们已经完成、已经发布和我们的知名产品抱有期望。这在一定程度上限制了我们的行动。”

“我们公司很注重整个社区的感受。所以我们会极力避免涉足某些领域。比如烟酒——它们就是我们不能养成的恶习。”

Järvilehto补充道：“我们清楚地知道哪些对Rovio游戏有益，怎样制作游戏。在《Amazing Alex》中，你会感受到同《愤怒的小鸟》相同的元素。我们的目标是为了实现较高的易用性，让玩家立即上手玩游戏，但同时也要让游戏逐渐呈现深度。”

“正如我们对《Amazing Alex》所做的那样，我们下了不少功夫考虑如何使用最少的文本制作游戏。因为这一部分会极大地影响到游戏的易用性，尤其是面向全球市场运营游戏的时候。”

“我们的运作方式是这样的，每制作一款游戏就成立一个实时团队，他们的作用是照看这款游戏，为其编写更多内容，制作更多的升级版本——实时团队能够控制未来游戏的发展进程。我们视游戏为服务——当我们制作出一款游戏时，这仅仅意味着一个开端。”

“这也是今后Rovio游戏的运营方式。”

《愤怒的小鸟》证实了这一理念，Järvilehto表明备受期待的《愤怒的小鸟》主要版本（三部曲版本）将可能在圣诞节前发布，并将提供“高质量起居室游戏体验，最出色的高清主机游戏体验。”

当然，这只是该游戏的推销语言，但这正是Järvilehto的职责所在，但既然已经确认了DLC、Kinect、Move和Streetpass的支持计划，Rovio当然就不会对这个项目偷工减料。由于已经拥有进行试验的良好基础，Petri暗示公司正在开发一些新项目。

“目前，我们很好地平衡了未公布的游戏项目数量——有些项目可能不会按照粉丝们期待的方向发展，但我们也同实时团队着手准备一项重大开发项目。在此我不便详细透露具体数字和详情。”

随着Rovio拓宽视野，他们随时可以转变市场重心，如果有必要的话也可以战略性撤出不断缩水的市场，另辟蹊径。Hed甚至暗示，某天我们可能会看到一个非游戏领域的新品牌，应用将不再是该品牌的主要吸引力，而是一个支持力量——显然这更像是一种传统的营销战略。

green_day_angry_birds(from gamesindustry)

虽然这有可能发生，但Hed并不期待立马实现。

Hed指出：“我们以游戏公司身份开始，也成为这一领域的强者，所以这是适合我们的出发点。”

“我不认为近期内就需要进行这种转变，但我们也在创建公司其他部分的业务，以便我们某天推出一个非游戏领域的新IP”。

“我们并不急于让大众熟知Rovio的名号，我认为Rovio在我们所涉足的行业中已经非常有名了，可能在消费者品牌这一点上做得还不够。只要我们继续推出更多产品，总有一天会有更多人知道Rovio。”

产品并不仅局限于一个单词的意思。Rovio目前已计划向全世界的30多个主题公园进军——这个战略恰好与迪士尼颇有共同之处，也正是这家公司激发Hed去追求更大的成功。

“我们有强大的野心。我们一开始就不断思考，我们可以做哪些大项目。谁知道我们可以走多远呢？我想迪斯尼在创作米老鼠之初并未预料到它能有今天的知名度。我认为每家公司都应树立高远的目标。”

Petri Järvilehto可能感到这种比喻有所不妥，并希望适度降低这种姿态，他解释道：“我们根本不必根据别人在这一领域的成就来衡量我们是否成功。我们应更关注自己所做的事情。我们是一家有志向的公司——我们强烈感觉到自己获得巨大成就，同时我又觉得这还只是起始阶段——未来的我们还有很多事要做。我们开了个好头，希望我们未来能有所成就。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Complacency Kills: Managing the world’s biggest gaming brand

By Dan Pearson

Rovio’s Mikel Hed and Petri Järvilehto talk Angry Birds and Amazing Alex

“Angry Birds has been played by almost everybody,” Rovio’s CEO Mikael Hed tells me, on a crackly conference call to the developer’s home base just outside Helsinki. “The demographic that plays Angry Birds is just so wide that almost every other game will fall into it as well.”

He’s not just displaying the usual executive hubris, either – although there’s a certain, not entirely undeserved self-satisfaction to Rovio’s management team. In May, the Angry Birds franchise, across three separate games and several platforms, tipped the scales over one billion downloads, representing a penetration of the public consciousness shared by very few other brands worldwide, let alone within gaming.

few months before that, in October, 2011 Angry Birds was hitting an audience of 30 million players a day, and in March, Angry Birds Space ousted Zynga’s $200 million investment, Draw Something, from the number one spot in the App Store. Three days later, it had been downloaded 10 million times. This is a brand that means business.

The turnaround in Rovio’s fortunes which came with Angry Birds is well documented. In the space of a few weeks, the Finnish outfit was transformed from a small concern mobile publisher with 51 fairly unspectacular titles under its belt into the owners of a globally recognised gaming brand, one which would go on to earn the company the sort of revenues which most developers, and some publishers, can only dream of. In 2011, when Rovio granted a brief insight into its finances, they had turned a hugely enviable profit of around $67 million from sales of $106 million in 2011.

The catalyst for all that success was, in Rovio’s own admission, partly luck. Right place, right time, right product. Getting the final part of that triumvirate correct is clearly no mean feat, but staying on top of the tree once you’re up there is arguably even harder, especially when you’re in a market as mutable and mercurial as mobile gaming.

Diversification has been key, with 30 per cent of 2011′s revenues generated by licensed goods like the plush toys – expected to pull in $400 million this year alone, plus books, stickers, lunch boxes and hoodies. So pervasive is this ‘side business’, in fact, that Rovio’s EVP of games Petri Järvilehto tells me that only half of the company’s workforce is now directly involved in games at all.

But what are they doing with the golden goose?

“I think it’s our responsibility and duty to keep the brand fresh,” Järvilehto tells me. “If you look at how, earlier this year, we launched Angry Birds Space, where we introduced a completely new gameplay mechanic and environment to play with. We need to be constantly reinventing our games and ourselves, bringing new gameplay experiences, new experiences for the fans out there around the Angry Birds franchise.

“If we were complacent and didn’t do that, that would be dangerous. Complacency kills. There are several great examples of that in the gaming sphere, as well as the wider entertainment industry. Look at how Nintendo has managed to keep Mario fresh for over 20 years – they keep bringing new types of gameplay experience to the players, that’s something we feel we have to do with Angry Birds as well – we need to always surprise and delight the player.”

CEO Mikael Hed agrees, making it clear that, whilst broadening the product offering has helped take some of the pressure off the apps which started it all, they’re still the central pillar of the business.

“I’d say that we’re fairly confident that Angry Birds has become such a mainstream brand and phenomenon that we can’t foresee a future where can’t base a very solid and sustainable business on Angry Birds,” Hed explains. “Especially as we’ve also diversified to so many areas.

“In addition to that, the business that we’ve built around Angry Birds means that it’s very easy to build up new franchises as well.”

The new boy in Rovio’s portfolio, Amazing Alex, has been available for a couple of months, having been purchased lock stock as Casey’s Contraptions from Snappy Touch and Mystery Coconut. Neither Hed nor Järvilehto will discuss the sort of numbers it’s doing, but they clearly have big plans for it – Hed tells me that the company doesn’t take on any franchise lightly.

“We are very very careful, of course, and the further we go the more effort we need to put into that, essentially. We are very very careful. Of course there are expectations based on what we’ve already done, what’s already out there and what we’re known for. To some extent that limits what we can do.

“We’re very much a company that caters to the entire family. There are certain areas that we’d steer clear of quite strongly. Obvious examples are tobacco and alcohol – vices in general are something which we couldn’t be associated with.”

“We certainly have a very clear vision on what we feel is right for a Rovio game, how we approach games” adds Järvilehto. “With Alex I think you can see a lot of common elements with the way that Angry Birds was presented. We aim to have extremely high accessibility, anyone should be able to pick up and play the game instantly, yet there should be more depth to the experience than first meets the eye.

“Then, as you can see with what we did with Alex – we spent a huge amount of effort thinking about how we could make that sort of game with the minimal use of text. That’s one of the components which affects accessibility in a big way, especially when you’re operating in a global market.

“Essentially the way we work it is that whenever we ship a game we set up a live team for the game and their function is to look after that specific game, create more content, more updates – the live teams control the road map for the future of the game. We very much see games as service – when we ship a game, that’s the beginning for us.

“That’s something you can expect from any Rovio game going forward.”

That philosophy is certainly being borne out with Angry Birds itself. Järvilehto tells me that the long awaited console versions of Angry Birds, released as a trilogy pack, will be hitting the shelves “well prior to Christmas”, providing “essentially the highest quality compilation versions of the games which have been completely recreated from the ground up to be the best possible living room experience, the best possible high-definition console experience.”

It’s sales shtick, of course, this is his job, but with plans for DLC, Kinect, Move and Streetpass support all confirmed, Rovio certainly isn’t skimping on the resources for the project. And, because solid gold foundations are a nice starting point for experimentation, Petri hints at some new projects in the works.

“Right now we have a pretty good balance with the number of projects which we haven’t announced – some of them are going in directions which the fans might not expect, but we also have great development set up with our live teams. I can’t comment on the exact numbers in any more detail.”

With its new breadth of vision, Rovio is perfectly poised to shift focus as and when it needs to, pivoting away from any shrinking markets and moving towards growth. Hed even hints that, someday, we might be seeing a new brand broached in a sphere which isn’t gaming, where the app is a support effort rather than the main attraction – ironically a much more traditional marketing plan.

Whilst that’s possible, Hed doesn’t see it on the immediate horizon.

“We started as a games company and we remain a very strong games company, so it’s a very natural starting point for us,” Hed points out.

“I don’t see that changing in the near term, but we’ve also built every other part of our company so that it’s possible to one day introduce new IP through other media than games.

“We haven’t been in too much of a hurry to bring the company name to the public. I think in the industries we work in we’re very well known, then perhaps the consumer brand less so. As we continue doing more products our name will become more well known.”

Products is hardly the word. Amongst its other projects, Rovio currently has plans for around 30 theme parks world wide – a market which it would have in common with a company which has inspired Hed to strive for ever greater success.

“We have big ambitions. We’re constantly thinking about what, from our starting point, is the biggest thing we can do. Who knows how far we can take that? I don’t think Walt Disney knew, when he created Mickey Mouse, just how popular that would become. I think every company should have very high ambitions.”

Petri Järvilehto, perhaps sensing a little audacity in that comparison, is keen to play it down a little, but not too much.

“We don’t necessarily measure our success by what other people are doing in the field” he explains.

“We like to focus on the things we’re doing. We are an ambitious company – there’s a strong feeling that we’ve achieved a lot of great things but at the same time that’s only the beginning – there’s so much more that we need to be doing in the future. We’re off to a good start but let’s see what we can build from this.” （source:gamesindustry）