Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Saturday December 06 2014, @06:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the from-angry-birds-to-angry-people dept.

From Wired:

Rovio has confirmed that 110 people will lose their jobs as the Angry Birds maker also shuts down its game-development studio in Tampere. The layoffs, first announced in October, amount to about 14 percent of the company's workforce.

It had been expected that Rovio would make 130 people redundant but after a round of consultations this number has now been reduced. Rovio said that as a result of the redundancies "several positions" have been opened for internal applications. The actual number of employees out of work will depend on how many new internal positions are filled.

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Saturday December 06 2014, @01:28PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday December 06 2014, @01:28PM (#123195) Journal

    Angry Birds had good physics and they did a great job making it playable and fun on the mobile platform. It's hard to do, which is demonstrated by how few games become that popular against the tens of thousands of entrants out there. But then the MBAs, like locusts, are drawn to the good work of others and proceed to kill it. You get the Angry Bird stuffed animals, the Angry Bird lunch boxes, Star Wars Angry Birds (the perfect mating of two marketing whores if ever there was one), ad nauseum. You see it now with Candy Crush, which has become riven with up-sell hooks.

    It would be wonderful in the 21st Century if the end-stage of these things was to put the engines in the public domain, so that new programmers can learn from the old and innovate from there to come up with new, fantastic things that increase the human bounty. This Slash-and-Burn capitalism is so 18th Century.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2) by hubie on Saturday December 06 2014, @02:38PM

    by hubie (1068) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 06 2014, @02:38PM (#123204) Journal

    I think this is just the natural progression of high demand products. When something gets really hot and demand dramatically rises, a company needs to expand development or production to meet that demand. They hire on staff, build factories, open retail stores, whatever. This, of course, adds to their overhead costs whereby they need to raise more money by selling more stuff, jacking up production, etc. In the 19th century a company like Budweiser had to build more breweries in order to cover their costs, but to pay for the factories they had to expand into new markets. Or take Justin Bieber (please). He must have a small army working for him to in order to keep him meeting demand. In Bieber's case the whole product is himself, and he's made enough money that he doesn't need to work another day in his life and he can just walk away and disappear. It is a little harder for a big company to do the same. I wonder how many people were working for Rovio when Angry Birds first caught fire.

    In addition to the need to raise money, there of course is the desire to make money over and above what you need. I would bet in the market for "free" mobile games, because there are so many copycat games on the market, there is probably a pretty strong negative relationship between price and sales. When you expand into the merchandise business, I wonder what your profit margins are. In Rovio's case where you are riding a hot fad, I could see the plushie sales going great until it hits a sudden wall when people get saturated and think "meh." That is how I recall the Beanie Baby craze ending; just as fast as it popped up.

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday December 06 2014, @05:40PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday December 06 2014, @05:40PM (#123241) Journal

      I think this is just the natural progression of high demand products. When something gets really hot and demand dramatically rises, a company needs to expand development or production to meet that demand.

      The high demand product was ready. There was no development to be done on it. If anything, they should have put developer power into new games which then would have been ready when the Angry Birds hype ends (which was 100% expectable).

      And production? We're speaking about software here. Not only that, we are speaking about software that is downloaded. So you don't even have to produce distribution media. Moreover, it is downloaded from servers other people run. So you don't even have to put work into keeping the servers running/upgrading them to handle the demand.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 2) by quacking duck on Saturday December 06 2014, @03:22PM

    by quacking duck (1395) on Saturday December 06 2014, @03:22PM (#123215)

    But then the MBAs, like locusts, are drawn to the good work of others and proceed to kill it. You get the Angry Bird stuffed animals, the Angry Bird lunch boxes, Star Wars Angry Birds (the perfect mating of two marketing whores if ever there was one), ad nauseum.

    A little OT, but this is exactly why I respect Bill Watterson so much. He created what many consider the most popular daily comic strip (beating even Peanuts in many of the "top X" lists found by Google), fought for and won the right to break from the formulaic Sunday strip boxes to make them more interesting works of art... and then ended Calvin & Hobbes without ever succumbing to the intense pressure to merchandise it beyond the collection of books. No toys, no TV shows or movies.

    Granted it's easier to do when you're a 1-person operation, unlike Rovio which even at the start must have had different people doing the development and the art, but it's still very rare to hear of people maintaining their personal integrity and values in the fact of huge amounts of money being shoved in their face.

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday December 08 2014, @03:15PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday December 08 2014, @03:15PM (#123742) Journal

      it's still very rare to hear of people maintaining their personal integrity and values in the fact of huge amounts of money being shoved in their face.

      And I think we as a species must redesign our incentive structure to do that, to reward integrity and socially positive decisions, or we will not last.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 1) by Gertlex on Saturday December 06 2014, @04:39PM

    by Gertlex (3966) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 06 2014, @04:39PM (#123224)

    Was it the quality by itself that really did it? I am inclined to think it was more like FlappyBird; viral and simple.

  • (Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Saturday December 06 2014, @04:49PM

    by Kilo110 (2853) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 06 2014, @04:49PM (#123230)

    Out of curiosity, do you even know what is taught in an MBA program?

    • (Score: 2) by emg on Saturday December 06 2014, @08:17PM

      by emg (3464) on Saturday December 06 2014, @08:17PM (#123285)

      As far as I can tell from how MBAs behave in the real world, it would appear to be 'how to bump up the share price so you can cash out your stock options and leave for another job before the company goes bust.'

      When an MBA takes over a company built by engineers, you can be pretty sure it's on the fast train to Hell.

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday December 08 2014, @03:08PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday December 08 2014, @03:08PM (#123741) Journal

      I got my degree in Economics at the University of Chicago and took many classes at the Business School, so yes, I do know what is taught at MBA programs. More than that, I know the attitude and culture that are also taught, but not by the coursework. After I graduated I first worked in the hedge fund industry and then in banking, which constitute the acme of that MBA attitude and culture, so I have more first-hand experience with it than just in academia.

      There are many from those industries and that attitude and culture who think it's butch to consign masses of people to poverty, misery, and death for a couple extra basis points of return. Most from that attitude and culture would destroy something beautiful and good without a moment's hesitation if it put another Porsche in the garage of their third home. It is an attitude and culture of profound sociopathy and dysfunction that will drown us all.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 06 2014, @05:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 06 2014, @05:19PM (#123238)

    You don't think the merchandising makes them money? I think that's actually a Rovio success story.

    "Angry Birds The Game" was a genuine success. "Angry Birds the merchandising" is a potential long tail that will continue bringing in money: http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/28/angry-birds-rovio-revenues/ [techcrunch.com]

    "Angry Birds The Game Sequel #whatever", not so much. Why pay hundreds of programmers $$$ to make games that will never sell enough to pay for their salaries? So they have to cut overheads.

    Like it or not, the MBAs didn't kill "Angry Birds The Game". It had a finite lifespan and died a natural death. Just like the "draw my thing" game (which had zero merchandising potential, so the guy really got lucky he managed to get the $$$$$$ and jump off before the crash ;) ). I hardly see anyone play Angry Birds or the sequels. I see people playing Clash of Clans, some driving game, and zillions of other games.

    I'm not so sure that Angry Birds The Movie is a good idea though, unless they have Pixar grade talent (in which case that could make them lots of money).

  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Sunday December 07 2014, @09:51AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Sunday December 07 2014, @09:51AM (#123441) Journal
    Angry Birds wasn't the first throw-stuff-at-towers-to-make-them-collapse game out, even for mobile, and most of them had good physics. Many of them had a good interface. Angry Birds was always about the marketing: they managed to add sprites and sounds to an established concept that made it more approachable to people outside of the normal gamer market and they hyped it to a huge amount. When you have a commercial success in a fad-driven market that's there because of marketing, don't be surprised when another marketing-driven product displaces you.
    --
    sudo mod me up