Angry Birds, Uncommitted Players

Abstract

Mobile phones have been game-enabled since 1997. However, it seems that mobile phone games are only taking off now, in the 2010s. With mobile phones and, specially, smartphones, reaching critical mass games, in their mobile form are accessible to more and more people, young and old, men and women. Angry Birds, first released for iOS in December 2009, was the best-selling mobile game in 2011 (Reisinger 2011). In order to understand who is playing Angry Birds, how, and why, the author conducted a series of interviews with a group of Angry Birds players. The results of those interviews are here analyzed according to perspectives arisen from those conversations. Two main axis of analysis resulted from the interviews: gender gap and gaming background. This study should be relevant to broaden the thinking about mobile games as meaningful experiences to players in different demographic groups.