How to Pitch Angry Birds, If It Were an Unknown Indie Game
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It's hard to imagine, but at some point Angry Birds had 0 downloads. It was released by the Rovio game studio in December of 2009 as the company's 52nd game. Since then, it has been downloaded over 1 billion times. At the Red Fox Clan, we thought it would be fun to pretend that Angry Birds was still an unknown indie game as a template for how you can promote your game (aka the next Angry Birds). We're specifically going to write a pitch that would be emailed to reporters online. If done well, this can be a high impact, low cost solution for getting your game out there.
*This first blog post covers how to write your subject line. If you're interested in the full white paper, visit the www.redfoxclan.com/resources
Type of Game
We're going to stay as simple as possible and call it a puzzle game. For your game, I would also simplify it as much as possible. Is it a board game, racing game, sports game? (HINT: If you get stumped, visit the app store to find similar apps and use the categories they are listed under.)
< 3 Word Descriptor
We often describe other games as Angry Birds type games, but starting from scratch we have to determine what makes Angry Birds different than a "word game" puzzle or a "brain teaser" puzzle. Using our hint from before, we see that Rovio considered Angry Birds an arcade puzzle in the app store, but to get a little bit more descriptive and fun, we'll call it a Slingshot Puzzle.
The unique benefit in < 10 Words
The unique benefit is all about storytelling. We have to get across why your game is different than the other puzzle games on their phones, and give them enough interesting details to have them open the email. This took us a while to come up with, but because we have already identified it as a slingshot puzzle, we can decide to give more details about the characters involved and the fun we're trying to get across. We landed upon "Topples towers filled w/ greedy pigs to wreak havoc".
The finished subject line of our email is now, "Slingshot Puzzle 'Angry Birds', Topples towers filled w/ greedy pigs to wreak havoc." By providing this, we're letting the reporter known what type of game they're about to learn about, its name, and what makes it different from the thousands of other games they have come into their email.
Comments
February 24, 2015 08:39 AM
How to pitch Angry Birds:
it is Castle Clout with birds instead of stones and piggies instead of villagers.
I was just about to say the exact same thing. There was nothing new or original about Angry Birds other than its art style.
February 26, 2015 12:49 PM
March 01, 2015 06:47 AM
If you have a great game, pitching it should not pose a problem. If your game sucks on the other hand, now that's a pitching challenge.
March 15, 2015 03:50 PM
How to make and pitch Angry Birds:
1.) Find a successful game on another platform (like the Flash game Crush the Castle)
2.) Bring it to mobile but change graphics to be more casual (cannonballs are birds, soldiers are pigs).
3.) Make up a heartbreaking story how you made 52 original games on your own and only the last one was successful and don't mention you stole ideas.
March 23, 2015 12:40 PM
How to pitch angry birds, my way:
I love the honest salt here about game being just a clone of old idea with some whimsical graphics applied, althrought that may not be to helpful for some indies that really want to know how to pitch.
I warn you that you might discover that pitching Angry Birds might have involved some bribing, some over-hyped reviews, some dirty tactics, only those equipped with good intuition and persistence in investigation will find out, but here is HOW:
1. Go to web archive(!)
2. Search for Angry Birds in time frame few months before its release until its benign of peak popularity (you can use google trends or similar to find that out)
3. Sort your results by date
4. Find out who told what, who posted what review
5. Find the culprit(s)
6. Now you know
Enjoy! 
March 23, 2015 03:08 PM
I can't stand topics like this..
A lot of times on forums I read about people who want to make the next Angry Birds or Flappy Birds or whatever, threads like these keep giving these endless dreamers endless false hope.
What has written in this thread happens a million time on a daily base, yet the top 20 mobile games only allows a new entry every blue moon..
How to make and pitch Angry Birds:
1.) Find a successful game on another platform (like the Flash game Crush the Castle)
2.) Bring it to mobile but change graphics to be more casual (cannonballs are birds, soldiers are pigs).
3.) Make up a heartbreaking story how you made 52 original games on your own and only the last one was successful and don't mention you stole ideas.
This basically is the true, the best way to win is to look for a type of game play (GAME) that isn't that popular yet, create catchy graphics and even THEN you'll have to find ways to get noticed. These ways are heavy marketing and know how and where to market.
And even THEN, sometimes the law of "It isn't what you know but who you know" is in order.
I myself have an idea for a game, one could say it's a combination of Puzzle & Dragons (BECAUSE AFTER READING ABOUT THIS GAME THAT MADE ME WANT TO DABBLE IN THE MOBILE GAMES TO BE TRUE), Wordmole, Pokemon with graphics of Naruto. You see what I did right there! That is 4 games!
However, this game isn't going to be "I build it in a weekend" type of game, I actually been spending WEEKS studying every aspect of mobile games from developing to marketing to everything.
How do I see my game being the next Angry Birds, I'm going to do everything that already has been done BUT THEN OVER THE TOP AND BETTER so the QUALITY of the game will speak for itself.
Even THEN maybe I only get like 2878 downloads..
May 13, 2015 04:11 PM
At the Red Fox Clan, we thought it would be fun to pretend that Angry Birds was still an unknown indie game as a template for how you can promote your game. We
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How to pitch Angry Birds:
it is Castle Clout with birds instead of stones and piggies instead of villagers.