Angry Birds (Repost)

Due to a highly busy and bizarre week, there’s no NEW post today. I don’t like not posting new material every Wednesday, but you’ll have to excuse that every now and then. It won’t become a habit. I can promise that much. However, I did help Mandie Marie write a guest post for Rob Shep yesterday that you should read.

Here is a post from June of last year, which is likely well before you ever started reading this or any site. Enjoy, and don’t forget to check back Friday for a chance to win a ticket to the Killer Tribes Conference!

Angry Birds is a video game that exists solely to remind us of the futility of life. Since it was released for the iPhone in 2009, over 12 million copies have been sold. That’s through the Apple App Store alone. 12 million people willingly paid a few dollars to hurl little wingless birds towards some pigs that look like they went rooting in the wrong sort of ‘shrooms.

Why are they wingless? Why are all the characters just little balls with faces and beaks? If they’re birds, why do they need to be launched from a slingshot? None of these questions are answered, my friends. Much like our own mortality, we are simply given the hand we are dealt and are forced to make something out of it.

In this case, this is what we are dealt: a bunch of aptly named angry birds to throw at pigs who have somehow found the time to build multiple forts for protection. These pigs have also overcome years of apparent inbreeding to study architectural engineering. While this accomplishment is impressive enough for a bunch of green (are they poisoned? Radiation, maybe?) body-less swine, the poor guys seemed to miss Carpentry 101.

You know, the class where you learn the importance of actually attaching things for stability.

While the villainous pigs are learning an Ozymandias-style lesson of how short lived their works are, the birds themselves are learning about two things that naturally go hand in hand: ballistic physics and self-sacrifice.

Not only are they angry and nonsensically flightless, they are also explosive. Birds are lining up by the 4’s and even 5’s to give themselves up for the stolen eggs, knowing full well that they are at the mercy of some unseen force that chooses to fling them at different angles and velocities. They do not know where they will land (once again, flightless for some reason), but they do know that they will not return from this mission.

The knowledge that war is just trial and error must SUCK.

So the characters of Angry Birds have taught us that the works of our hands will be forgotten and that sometimes we exist just to die. Surely there’s something uplifting to learn from Angry Birds. I mean, at least the huge success it has seen was a direct byproduct of ingenuity and originality, right?

…right?

Early in 2009, Rovio Mobile, the creators of the game, sat around slingshotting ideas off of each other in a meeting. Somebody, presumably bored, doodled a sketch of a bunch of angry looking balls with bird faces. Everyone looked at them, said “Adorable”, and decided to build a game. No amazing back story. No sentimental attachment. Just a sketch. And the game they built around it? Been done. Many times before.

So with a rough sketch of kinda-birds and an unoriginal idea, Rovio Mobile created a game that has won many awards given out in the Internet Box. So remember, children, even if you create a great idea, there will be somebody who will come around, do it better, and be more successful than you.

Let’s review:
1. All your works will be forgotten.
2. You exist just to die and give way to others.
3. Your greatest accomplishment will be done better by somebody else.

Next time work gets boring or you’re waiting for your oil to get changed, when you reach the point where the phone comes out and you start playing Angry Birds, take a moment to question it. Question everything you know.

Then fire up some Brick Breaker.