NEW LEVEL ACHIEVED: I visited the Rovio Studios in Helsinki (Finland)

July was a month full of good stuff! I started my second post-doctoral research in my new academic house, PUC (São Paulo). I’m studying the acquisition of digital goods and social belongings using the game Marvel Snap as the main subject.

For the project’s kickoff, I traveled to Europe to achieve some missions. First, I was talking with some specialists from Paneurópska Vysoká Škola (Bratislava) about my project’s theme. And, to complete this first step, I’ve already interviewed some people for the initial clues of my project.

However, the second mission achieved was an epic win: last week I visited Rovio Studios in Helsinki. Of course you know Rovio, it’s the studio behind the Angry Birds game. My Brazilian friend Cenildon Muradi (a.k.a. Thunder) works in the studio and made this visit possible.











The place is awesome and, of course, ludic. But, I want to highlight that spending one day in Rovio Studios was a master class of game design, business models, and marketing.

I’m returning to Brazil full of ideas to write in my project. I’ll post news very soon here.

Keep following!

#GoGamers

The new Angry Birds game is a master class on hyper casual game design

I have already discussed this subject here and here, but, from time to time, I like to bring it up again just to remind myself of the huge potential of hyper casual games in the contemporary scenario.

The inspiration for this text was the new Angry Birds mobile game named "Dream Blast". Created by Rovio Studio, the game is an excellent example of how it is possible to create an interesting gaming experience using hyper casual game design. 



The game mechanics consist of a very simple touch-screen gesture where you must destroy two or more connected balls of the same color. If you destroy four or more balls, you will create a red bird. If you create two red birds side by side they will become a yellow bird; and, finally, if you create two yellow birds side by side you will create a big black bird. Each one of them, when touched, explodes in a different way destroying more or less of the scenario. 

The interesting part of the gaming experience comes from how the levels show interesting and varied challenges just by using a touch movement in the screen. The video below shows the intro and some of the main features of the gameplay:



Obviously, Dream Blast uses a business model based on virtual coins that the player can earn by playing or just buying them from the game store. 

Another interesting point of this subject is: how platforms like Google Stadia and Apple Arcade will change the "ecosystem" of the hyper casual games. Will they attract this kind of players to simple experiences with multiscreen possibility? But that’s a subject for another post.

#GoGamers