- Angry Birds was the 52nd game that Rovio made
- They made 51 games *before* their "overnight" success with Angry Birds
- The odds of succeeding in the app store - makine money through a paid app or advertiser-supported ad are extremely low
    - 50% of developers earn less than $682 per year 
    - $35,000 is average cost to develop an app 
    - 51 years to break-even
- So, how did Rovio change those odds? 
    - patience and persistence
    - good customer-focused product development process
    - long-term thinking   
    - luck
- All product developers - including game designers for the App Store - need to understand probability and good customer-focused product development practice

Probability theory teaches that rare events are common

-Take a timely and tragic example - the risk of an earthquake
- 3.2% is the probability of a major earthquake in any given year in California
- Given enough time, the odds are high that this rare event will occur 
- Here's how to calculate this probability
       1. take the inverse - i.e. chance an earthquake does NOT happen
       2. take a 50 year period and ask what's the chance of an earthquake 
           NOT happening

          (1-3.2%) - that's part 1 of the formula - that's the inverse (NOT happening)
          ^50 - that's applying the 50 year time range
          total formula: (1-3.2%)^50 = 20%

        3. there's a 20% chance of an earthquake NOT happening over the 
            next 50 years in California
        4. What's the probability of one happening? Final step - revert back to the
            chance of an earthquake happening: 80%

            1-20% or 80%

- That's a scary number
- Lesson learned: rare events are common if you have enough "x" - whether "x" is time as in this case with earthquakes or number of games designed as with Rovio's Angry Birds
- With a total app universe (just in the Apple Store) of 250,000+ apps, how do you increase the odds that any one app (the one you make) will succeed?

How do you increase the odds that your app will succeed?

Step 1: Patience and persistence
- Rovio designed 51 games before Angry Birds. 
- Each game they designed and learned from increased the odds of eventual success
- Two factors work here:

   1. doing more apps, means the odds that one will succeed go up
       Even if the odds of each subsequent game did not improve (i.e. they didn't
       learn from earlier games), then  just creating more games meant that they
       were increasing the odds that *one* game would work (see earthquake math
       above and replace number of years with number of games) 

   2. Rovio did, however, learn from earlier games
       Rovio increased the odds of each subsequent game succeeding by
       improving how they made and marketed games (it's like the earthquake
       math above but imagine that instead of low probability applied equally
       to all 50 years, each year (or game) had a higher probability 

Step 2: Good customer-focused product development process
- Rovio studies the market and tries to understand the game player experience
- They are not led by their own ideas - but rather a combination of their ideas and what they learn from their potential customers (at the beginning and throughout product development)
"Eight months and thousands of changes later [many learned from watching customers], after nearly abandoning the project, Niklas watched his mother burn a Christmas turkey, distracted by playing the finished game. "She doesn't play any games. I realised: this is it."

Step 3: The power of long-term thinking
- This is related to steps 1 and 2 but deserves to be called out
- Long-term thinking and approach does change the odds of success
- Rovio almost failed because of a decision to focus on fads and hitting the next bubble
- They learned from that, retooled and returned with a commitment to the long-term in everything they do

Step 4: Luck
- Luck undeniably plays a role
- Rovio got lucky that Apple launched the iPhone and designed the App Store the way they did
- And 100 other things happened - they hired the guy who initially designed the first Angry Bird
- Once in a while, luck on its own works - think Lottery winners - but if you want to increase the odds then you have to do steps 1-3 and then get a share of luck 

Past success does not guarantee future success

- Rovio could still fail
- They just received $42 million in funding
- The press has quoted one of the executives as saying that their characters will be bigger than Mickey Mouse
- That is uncharacteristic statement by a company that is patient, persistent and focused on customers and the long-term
- Even with all they did to increase their chances of success, Rovio also got lucky - a whole constellation of factors coincided to make them succeed
- Most executives mistake luck for smarts - even when - and especially when - they have been particularly smart
- It's not just a smart thing to understand the role of luck (and how probability works) but it also means you are less vulnerable to the charms of ego, which over time can conspire to increase the odds of failure 

Phil's take: 52 times is the charm. The story of Rovio and their success with Angry Birds is more about the 51 games they designed *before* Angry Birds (and how that shaped their customer-centric business philosophy). That's what I'll be emphasizing when the product, user experience, customer experience, strategy and CEO councils meet this week in New York. 

Angry birds are happy: good game and good marketing
Daily Artifacts
March 11, 2011
http://dailyartifacts.com/angry-birds-are-happy

In depth: How Rovio made Angry Birds a winner (and what's next)
Wired UK
March 7, 2011
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/04/features/how-rovio-made-angry...

Full Analysis of iPhone Economics - it is bad news. And then it gets worse
June 22, 2010
Communities Dominate Brands
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/full-analysis-of-iphone-...