keskiviikko 14. joulukuuta 2011

Angry Birds

Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Melinda Seckington / Flickr
Angry Birds is a super popular phenomenon that keeps on expanding, so I figured I'd collect some interesting Angry Birds links to this post. For example, the latest news on the subject is that the playground equipment manufacturer Lappset starts making Angry Birds playground equipment.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra has played and recorded the Angry Birds main theme which can be listened to on Spotify. Shane Parker has drawn the birds in a real retro ornithology book fashion. People are crocheting Angry Birds like crazy. There has been an attempt to negotiate peace between the birds and the pigs.

A couple of professional footballers, Lassi Hurskainen and Dan Jackson, created a real life Angry Birds video. That's some accurate kicking! Conan O'Brien has also played a live action version of Angry Birds a couple of times. :)

MauroNewMedia has written a quite extensive analysis on the reasons that Angry Birds has become so successful. This includes, of course, "simple yet engaging interaction concept" but also more complex concepts such as the way the game deals with the user's short-term memory management. The Wall Street Journal's Matt Ridley also analyzed the game a bit and figured that people just like predicting parabolic trajectories. The early Homo Sapiens, for example, basically relied on this exact skill when killing mammoths and other animals by throwing spears and rocks.

Finally, you can play the basic Angry Birds or the Fazer Tyrkisk Peber Volcano special levels in your browser. :) You might also want to follow the Angry Birds on Twitter.

The Humble Indie Bundle #4

I have written about the Humble Indie Bundle before, but now that a new one is out again I figured I should blog about the concept again. The Humble Indie Bundle is a collection of indie games (games from independent developers) sold for whatever price the buyer wants to pay. The games are cross-platform and work on Windows, Mac and Linux. Part (or none, or all -- you decide) of the price you pay goes to charity. Each bundle is are available for only a couple of weeks only and new ones are published irregularly, perhaps four or five times a year. Right now it's the Humble Indie Bundle #4 and there are 13 days left to buy it. This time the default bundle contains five games, but if you pay more than the average buyer you'll also get two more games. The bundle includes such games as Super Meat Boy and Gratuitous Space Battles. Go get your games! :)