

Angry Bird’s “overnight success” only took 8 years. - g0atbutt
http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/03/11/angry-birds-overnight-success-only-took-8-years/#disqus_thread

======
Tiktaalik
It's a lot of fun to look into the little unknown games that large,
successful, games companies made before they hit the big time.

Blizzard for example had mild success with Rock n' Roll Racing and Lost
Vikings prior to Warcraft 2.

Nintendo made lots of arcade games since 1973, many being blatant clones of
successful titles, before striking gold with Donkey Kong in 1981. Some of
these may have sold fairly well, but the titles are ignored today so they
couldn't have been all that good.

Pokemon developer Game Freak seems to have had it pretty rough prior to
hitting the big time with Pokemon. The company has existed since 1989 and they
put out a number of relatively unknown games before Pokemon in '96. Pokemon
wasn't a strong seller at the beginning either.

According to wikipedia (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Tajiri>):
"Pokémon Red and Green took six years to produce, and nearly bankrupted Game
Freak in the process; often, there was barely enough money to pay the
employees. Five employees quit, and Tajiri did not take a salary, instead
living off of his father's income. Investment from Creatures Inc. allowed Game
Freak to complete the games, and in return, Creatures received one-third of
the franchise rights."

~~~
iamdave
You may want to go back a little further with Nintendo, which started as a
playing card company.

~~~
yannickmahe
In 1889. Took 92 years, 2 world wars, and the invention of the computer before
worldwide success.

~~~
Tiktaalik
That's maybe a bit too unfair. Nintendo as we know it has only really existed
since Hiroshi Yamauchi became CEO and took the company public in 1962. Prior
to that point they were merely a card company, and from what I've read feels
like they were a very successful card company. They were the largest, and
first to create durable plastic coated cards. They also had a successful
licensing deal with Disney.

Yamauchi certainly deserves credit for realizing that playing cards was not
going to be a growth area in the future and for experimenting in new areas
that eventually led to toys and then to arcade games.

~~~
yannickmahe
Totally agree, but how often can I slip the fact that I know Nintendo is over
100 years old in a conversation?

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jakegottlieb
Overnight success generally takes around ten years. First the person must
become an expert. When you first start practicing a new skill set like playing
the piano, you may be able to play, but you have definitely not reached your
potential. Within a couple of years you are more competent but there are
clearly people better then you. At about the 8-10 year mark, you are then an
expert. There may be people better than you, but there shouldn't be a huge
difference (of course this depends on the person).

Taking ten years to make it as a performer or a even a craftsman is pretty
common. Rovio clearly earned their success.

~~~
jarek
I feel it's worth pointing out that this paraphrases poorly researched and
anecdotally supported arguments from Malcolm Gladwell.

~~~
gyom
And adding to that, it seems to me like the main idea here is that "eventually
you'll get lucky, but it'll take time" and not really the expertise required.

If the moral of the story was about expertise, you'd expect that any game
developer with 20 years of experience could write huge successes like "Angry
Birds" in 3 month, on demand.

Now, true, they're getting better at it over the years, but I don't think that
this story belongs the "10 000 hours" category.

------
Batsu
Harmonix (creators of Guitar Hero, which they sold, and Rock Band) has a
similar story. They created a handful of games over a decade or so, all music
based, that never really caught on. When they released Guitar Hero and a few
karaoke games, they did a little better than breaking even, and with the
release of Guitar Hero 2 sales exploded.

<http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2007/02/dice_harmonix_b/>

~~~
dfan
Yep, I've worked here since 1996 (the company was founded in 1995) and we
didn't release Guitar Hero until 2005 (actually, we didn't release a game at
all until 2001, although we had done other music apps before). It was a total
hockey stick curve.

~~~
ZoFreX
Great to see a Harmonix employee on HN! I still break out Amplitude from time
to time, which I'm guessing you worked on?

~~~
dfan
Yep.

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seanalltogether
I'm more interested in finding out how they went from "pretty slow for the
first 3 months" to massive sales and attention.

~~~
shrikant
I remember reading somewhere (fairly recently) that they got some major
traction only after publishing via Chillingo.

Apparently Chillingo had a good relationship with Apple, and were able to get
the game onto the "Featured Apps" list.

Edit: found a link: [http://eye-tea-em.blogspot.com/2011/03/talking-about-
softwar...](http://eye-tea-em.blogspot.com/2011/03/talking-about-
software-5-angry-birds.html)

------
alain94040
That was definitely worth saying. Most people don't know the back story. I
didn't know the details either.

~~~
curiouslurker
Yep. We need a dose of reality. I also just found out yesterday that OKCupid
started in 2003 whereas many thought they were an "overnight success" after
writing a few blog posts last year!

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solipsist
Spoiler: not everyone can make it big, even after 8 years of trying...

~~~
seiji
Are you sure? Don't stay with the same approach all the time and wonder why
"the world" doesn't discover your brilliance. Learn, change, adapt, and
adjust. You should be able to be independently wealthy within ten years of
devotion and sacrifice.

~~~
alex_c
That seems a bit like begging the question. If you work hard/smart enough, you
should be able to be independently wealthy within ten years. Therefore, if
you're not independently wealthy within ten years, you didn't work hard/smart
enough. In the end, you haven't proved anything.

It's a motivational message, sure, but completely void of any substance or
practical advice.

~~~
g0atbutt
I'm sorry you didn't find any practical advice in this article. Please allow
me to share some of the backstory to this.

When I write my articles for The Startup Foundry, I try to focus on what will
help startups succeed. I've gotten some pretty sad emails from startups that
think they're failures for not being huge in 6 months or less. I wrote this to
make a point that it takes time for most startups.

All the best, Paul

~~~
alex_c
My comment was aimed at seiji, not at the article - I completely agree with
your point.

------
dools
OT: I've noticed recently Americans more frequently interchange "then" and
"than". Is this some sort of emerging dialectical shift?

~~~
yan
No, you've just been noticing spelling mistakes and making generalizations.

~~~
gruseom
Actually, dools is quite correct. Generalizing from spelling mistakes is a
classic technique for tracing phonetic shifts in language. That's because
misspelling is almost always in favor of something that sounds the same (e.g.
their/there/they're).

One couldn't ask for a better example than "then/than". When I read the
previous sentence out loud, the first "than" sounds closer to "then" than to
the second "than".

------
tnorthcutt
The OP's link is to the comment thread - here's the article link:
[http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/03/11/angry-birds-
overnigh...](http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/03/11/angry-birds-overnight-
success-only-took-8-years/)

~~~
brown9-2
Even that article is basically just a recap of
[http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/04/features/how...](http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/04/features/how-
rovio-made-angry-birds-a-winner?page=all)

------
listic
I still wonder why it is so popular. I, for one, like Tiny Wings much more.

@ iTunes: <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tiny-wings/id417817520>

Official Gameplay Trailer: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6pT_2E5xI0>

~~~
mdaniel
IMHO, not even in the same universe of playability, and if they insist on
using the same music as they used in the trailer, I would actually grin while
deleting it.

~~~
listic
I played both. "not even in the same universe of playability" doesn't explain
anything. Angry Birds looks to me like another projectile-shooting game, but
with birds. Shooting birds onto even more elaborate structures I find tedious.
I did a level or two, and didn't bother to continue. On the other hand, Tiny
Wings has unique gameplay (at least as far as I know): you can fly a little
bit, but generally you use slopes to accelerate (a la vert ramp); touch to
accelerate downwards. Also, I find it hard to be so angry on the pigs as to
bash them for many levels. Tiny Wings doesn't want you to be angry at anyone;
you just fly because it's fun, then you will want to fly longer and higher.

Yes, the music is the same. I find this light-hearted tune very fitting to the
graphics and gameplay.

To each their own, I guess?

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JacobIrwin
Where's the article for "Apple's "overnight success" only took 25 years?"

Much more profound "success" of course.

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TheSOB88
Come on, guys, 163 points? This whole article could be summed up in the HN
title. There's no additional info there. Dammit.

