In a YouTube video titled ?Black Man Angry at Angry Birds,? a Black man berates the addictive nature of one of the world?s most popular mobile games, Angry Birds. ?Angry Birds is the most addicting game I?ve ever played in my life,? the man says. ?It?s worse than [cocaine]. At least with coke there?s rehab centers. With Angry Birds there?s no rehab.?
More than half a million people have viewed the video since it was uploaded last June.
?I think I?ve already contributed about 30 hours of my life to Angry Birds in the last six months or so,? says one African-American player who declined to be identified by name. ?This is even more popular than Words With Friends, which is very popular among Blacks.?????
On March 22, Finnish computer-game developer Rovio officially launched the latest installment of its Angry Birds series, Angry Birds Space. Already, more than 12 million copies have been purchased from Apple? s App Store, including purchases made by Blacks, with more than 10 million of those sales occurring in the first three days. The game has even received a major promotional endorsement from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the form of a video message from astronaut Don Pettie.
Orbiting at about 240 nautical miles above Earth aboard the International Space Station, Pettie demonstrates and explains the physics of space and microgravity and the role they will play in launching objects, not only for Angry Birds Space, but also for actual spacecraft being rocketed into orbit. ?We?ve got to see all of this in a weightless environment, which is what the Angry Birds Space game is going to be like with gravity fields from planetary bodies,? Pettie says in his promotion from space.
The price of this downloadable app will set you back 99 cents for iOS (with ads) and Android phones. There are also HD versions available on iPad and Android tablets for $2.99 and a $6 version for Windows PCs.
Rovio is clearly an industry-changing entertainment media company. In 2009 senior game designer, Jaakko Iisalo, proposed a game that featured wingless bird characters being hurled through the air at various objects. Capitalizing on the heightened global coverage of the ?swine flu? epidemic, the genius of the developing staff decided to make pigs the main enemy of the oval shaped birds.
Angry Birds Space is the fourth version of the mobile game, and seems to have the trajectory to further the franchise as the most popular app in the world. To date, the Angry Birds app series has been downloaded more than 700 million times on mobile devices.
