Angry Birds was released in a year where social
online activity was at its peak and where mobile gaming was shaping the way
audiences gained on the go entertainment on their versatile smart devices. It
was at this first release where I had gained my first personal experience with
the franchise. The addictive gameplay made it difficult to simply stop playing
the game, especially with the heated competition between friends in order to
see who truly is the best at the game. It became apparent to me that audiences
globally had also experienced this, and that a few years later, Angry Birds was not merely a single app
based mobile game, but an empire that spanned across a worldwide
cross-platform.
When
it comes to my personal engagement with this text, it is clear that the vast
majority of my own interaction is across the online, digital world. This has
increased more recently with the release of Angry Birds 2 and the Angry Birds
Movie due to the hype on social media and other websites that promote these new
products. My first experience with the app could be formed through the
theoretical framework of Ludology and how I had first experienced the franchise
through simply playing the game. It became clear, however, that the more I
delved myself into the fictional world of Angry
Birds that I began to understand the narrative methods used by creators to
keep audiences engaged with the game. It is this distinction which made me
truly appreciate the transmedia storytelling technique developed into the
foundations of the game.
When
it comes to social media, pages like Twitter and Facebook have advertisements that
litter the page in a discreet manner, and therefore influence my engagement
with the text, having downloaded the second series of the game and also
planning to watch the new movie in cinemas. On Facebook, I have also noticed
many of the people I follow have ‘liked’ the Angry Birds game, leading to further interaction with the app as
new features, characters and products are advertised across the news feed. I am
also particularly drawn to the the new Snapchat feature of using filters that
collaborate to a users face. It came as a surprise to me when an ‘Angry Birds
Movie’ filter came up across the several unbranded filters, and further
expanded my interaction with the franchise through an entirely new platform
type.
Angry Birds has a vast online presence, via web 2.0
technologies, which in turn has had an impact on the way I personally consume
text and imagery related to the game. A particular reoccurring feature which
has had an impact on my personal experience with a text is through the Angry Birds Wiki. This is a non-profit
fan based website which is not affiliated with Rovio itself. The pages enable
audiences, like myself, to engage with and post creations online for others to
view and interact with. This has generated a new kind of user experience,
through the likes of canon and fan made material. Having been influenced by
other creators who generate concept designs for the Angry Birds game, that do
not exist, I had created my own ‘British Edition’ of the series. I had
constructed a mock up poster for the typical stereotypes for the British and
merged it with Angry Birds into a
concept through my personal engagement with the game and the experiences of
representation and conventions within the UK. Like this example, many others
have created their own designs that have been shared through fan art websites
like DeviantArt or on the Wiki dedicated to the game. These constructed designs
are also intriguing as they too take elements from different styles of the
Angry Birds design, from Toons TV and the further stylised movie.
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