![]() ![]() The prototype’s performance was not too good, which was the reason to wait for Flash 11, with the support of GPU-accelerated Stage 3D graphics. "When I joined the company at the beginning of September 2011, there was a Flash 10 prototype of the original Angry Birds game available that had been done earlier in 2011. It wasn’t until later that year that Ville joined Rovio, and the port still wasn’t finished. The original release date for Angry Birds on Facebook, now known as Angry Birds Friends, was May 2011. The titles that have been successful for them on mobile are the ones they’ve built from the ground up for the platform." They can’t just take FarmVille and throw it on mobile and see what sticks. "You can’t take an experience that works in one environment and one ecosystem and force-feed it onto another. In March 2011, InsideMobileApps interviewed Peter Vesterback ( Chief Marketing Officer and “Mighty Eagle” at Rovio, and asked him why development was taking so long. With success came expansions, spin-offs and ports, and in 2010 Rovio started working on a Facebook version. Last but not least, working on something as hot as the Angry Birds brand ensures that everyone is giving their best in the different projects."Īngry Birds started life on the iPhone in December 2009 and has arguably become the biggest mobile franchise on the planet. We try to combine the good parts of traditional planning in advance with agile methods to achieve the best possible results. So, what’s it like working at Rovio? "The working environment is really nice, and the atmosphere is relaxed. ![]() I work closely with the graphic designers, server programmers and producers - basically most of the different people involved in the development of every Angry Birds game." I also still do some (mostly engine) ActionScript programming myself, but mainly try to concentrate on helping others do their programming job the best way possible. ![]() I go through job applications, do interviews, and try to make sure all the projects have right set of programmer resources available to launch on schedule - and that they meet our quality expectations. What exactly does his role entail? "As a lead game programmer, I am a supervisor for a team of ten other Flash and C++ programmers, varying from trainees to seniors. After hearing what the new job would be about, the decision to join Rovio was a really easy one." Then, during the summer of 2011, I was contacted through LinkedIn and asked if I was interested in coming in for an interview at Rovio. ![]() I had naturally read about the success of Angry Birds and checked Rovio’s website at some point, but back then there was no Web team yet, and even though I had done mobile programming myself, I wasn’t too interested in that anymore. At Sulake, I had been one of the two guys leading the conversion of Habbo Hotel from Shockwave to the Flash version. "I worked as a software architect at Sulake, the company behind the teenage online chat world Habbo Hotel. I chatted with Ville about bringing Angry Birds to Facebook, and started by asking how he got the job. Ville sported a playoff beard during the last few weeks of the project. And when he’s not working on one of the biggest games in the world for the biggest social network in the world, he loves running in and around his home town of Espoo, Finland (he ran a 100-km race in under 12 hours). Ville has been a developer for his entire adult life, with a background in C++ and ActionScript. At the forefront of this project was Ville Koskela, a lead game programmer at Rovio. ![]()
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