Rovio and mortality

Here we go again... 

I swear I'm not looking for there stories, they're coming to me! I can almost turn these 'Mortality' stories into a mini-series covering the inescapable inevitability of death and the soul cracking chaos that descends upon the unprepared in the face of that eventuality. Although in actuality, today's story is a bit of a different look on that same concept; this time we're looking at a publisher who is actively playing up the terror of mortality in order to profit and generally enrich themselves. Because there's nothing more frightening than the sensation of knowing something you once loved will one day no longer be there. Part of the deceit of the Internet is that it is 'forever', which runs true all the way until a Yugoloth-cultist cuts one of the underwater cables and the magic box in our rooms go "bye bye". (I assume that's what the premise of GTFO is about. A desperate suicide mission to restore the world's internet access.)

The developers of today's topic would be none other than Rovio Entertainment- and I'm seeing a lot of blank stares... They're the guys who made Angry Birds; you know them. Now you may not know this, but Angry Birds is a franchise of games that is still alive to this very day, believe it or not! That's right, the crappy app game you used to kill time with during break times at School is getting new entries even now. (I figured that god-awful movie would have finally made the world good and done with the mauve menace and his menagerie of malcontents.) In fact the latest game in the franchise is 2022's 'Angry Birds Journey' which features 3d Renders being slingshotted about in a more service-style game that is easier to monetise than the base Angry Birds package. It's as mindless as you'd expect and after all these years making the same sort of game you'd have figured that these developers would be out of fresh ideas by now. But the truth is, these probably aren't the same developers and they are out of ideas anyway.

Because rather than ride the same course that game developers do the industry over, and expect the merits of your new and recently released game to lure old fans back into their wallets; Rovio have decided to tug on that string that gamer's are most afraid of- the mortality of their software. Angry Birds 1, the original from all the way back in 2009, has been sentenced for the chopping block to be pulled from app stores entirely. Firstly the game will be renamed to 'Red's First Flight', to obscure it from search results, then when the dust is good and settled Rovio are going to lead it out behind the KFC and have that piece of history converted into heavily processed wings. Now to be fair, the game they're killing off is actually a faithful remake of the original game because the original and every Angry Birds franchise game from 2014 and before were delisted and removed back in 2019 for no publicly apparent reason. But the team released the remake they are now killing of because they were impressed on, by the internet, the historical significance of the game that literally made all of their careers!

I'm not sure why I take this so personally, but there's something deeply insidious about callously casting away your own heritage twice like that. Picture if the Rockstar develoeprs turned around and delisted every GTA game from the 3D era so that they could sell us a- wait, that's a bad example. What if my beloved hero game Marvel's Ultimate Alliance was killed from stores just as the new game released, conveniently funnelling traffic towa- wait, that's an even worse example. Okay, let me think about this a bit harder. What if Nintendo- actually there's no point even going down that train, is there... Wow, I guess this breed of cold and callous disregard for 'gaming history' has itself a bit of precedent, doesn't it? And all because George Lucas refused to offer up the unaltered original cuts of Star Wars to the American National Film Registry. (I can't prove that had anything to do with how the game's Industry treats it's past, but I'm going imply it does anyway.)

It would be utterly pretentious of me to sit here and make wild assumptions as to why the Rovio team chose this cause of action, particularly when they quite literally put out an exhaustive statement detailing their reasoning without any compunction of how it would reflect back on them. So what were the issues taken into account? Well, the team looked at their figures, realised that some people were still playing the original Angry Birds remake (which, by the way, released two months after Angry Birds Journey, so that isn't so crazy of a possibility) and then concluded that the old game had some form of sales impact on their currently supported title. The team was shook into action by the competition within their own library, so decided to shut down the choice of the consumer in order to funnel them towards the more profitable, easier to exploit, avenue of 'Angry Birds Journey'.

This is about as blatant and no-holds-barred as you can feasibly get when it comes to public relations; telling the populace that it is very much their own preferential habits that formed the companies problem, and by manipulating their access to the possibility of choice, Rovio can be venerated. The less exploitable app was just too popular to exist within this modern mobile gaming world. Now obviously I think we all just assume that this is the way these companies operate and that these are the sorts of issues that they take into account, but how often do you hear proof of those immoral dedications baying from the horses own chops? And the conversation here doesn't just touch on wider issues of game preservation, although that conversation is absolutely there to be had; but on intentional manipulation of software availability by a company that seem to very much not have the interests of it's consumer base to heart.

Not that I think anyone is going to be shedding any tears over the happenings of Angry Birds games, but what about that proposed New Vegas Remaster I covered recently? A revisit to the core systems that made the classic New Vegas, buffing them up for the modern age, probably making that remaster totally incompatible to the thousands of old school New Vegas mods in the process. What if Bethesda then move to pull the original New Vegas from all digital store fronts, thus forcing people to pick up the new game within which will most likely exist the companies newest paid-for mods iteration which they're thinking of reinstating later this year. Think I'm being alarmist? I literally just repackaged the exact real-world situation that happened with Skyrim Special Edition. You can't buy the original edition of Skyrim anymore, all you have is the version with the Creation Club attached on top of the package.

I've said it before but until there's action done it needs to be repeated, the relationship between consumers and gaming software needs to be addressed with legislation. If we continue to persist in a system where game disruptors are fully within their rights to withdraw access from paid-for products, this entire industry we're playing within will continue to teeter on the brink, beholden to the whims of whatever unrepentant faceless 'Corpo' is holding the cattle prod. Nothing lives for ever, to be sure, but you'd at least wish for something of a natural life span for the games that we play. Can we at least wait until hardware makes those old games incompatible before pulling them from sales? Is that asking for a bit too much? Or are we all happy moving towards a theoretical future were everygame that is no longer generating active profits can be forcibly plucked out of player's hands by the whim of the publisher? Because that's not a environment I want to flourish within.

Just why?

Why are we still here, is it just to suffer?

Have you ever had one of those moments when you just stop dead in the middle of the street and shout "No". I did, just now. There I was, walking home with the shopping not a care in life. I was bopping to some music, as I often do, completely ignorant to the travesties happening in the world all around me every second of every day. But I wouldn't stay that way for long, happenstance would have my head turn to face the side of a bus across the road from me. I saw the advert and looked away, thinking nothing of it. But then I stopped, 'That couldn't have said what I thought it said' I thought, incredulity overpowering reason. I literally did a double take in order to absorb the magnitude of what I had just read. The Angry Birds Movie 2.

All of a sudden I was struck with waves of existential dread. How could this happen? How could we let this happen? We're smarter than this! Apparently not, because The Angry Birds Movie 2 had been on Hollywood's slate ever since August 2016. The last movie's body wasn't even cold before they got to work on it's sequel. I shouldn't have been so shocked, we all knew this was would happen. We knew this day would come. But does that make it any better? Doesn't the fact that The Angry Birds Movie 2 is less then a month away speak volumes about where we are as a species? Is this what Boudica defied the Romans for?

And before you start getting onto me about how 'This isn't supposed to be a movie blog', let me remind you of a more innocent time when Angry Birds was just a low-effort high-yield mobile game. Oh, how blessed those times were. Not that I ever played Angry Birds, teenage me was too much of an insufferable hipster to stoop so low, but I always begrudgingly respected it. How could you not respect a game so popular that they managed to get away with a Star Wars Crossover, and that was after the Disney acquisition! Even before the dragon EA managed to curl it's scaly lips open enough to form the words "10 year exclusivity", Rovio Entertainment had their foot in the door to make the first Disney licensed Star Wars Game. So much for quality control.

Yet even with all the money in the world, no one took them seriously when The Angry Birds Movie was first announced. How many times did projects like this get announced, presumably during a coke-fueled office rave, only to be canned after everyone sobered up the next morning."Oh yeah, I'm sure actual human beings sat around a boardroom and decided to greenlight The Angry Birds Movie." We sarcastically thought. "When there are still genuine heartfelt stories left to be told in the world, Hollywood would obviously rather tell the story of the Angry Birds." In hindsight, there was no way this movie wouldn't get made.

For those who haven't subjected themselves to it and may believe that I'm being harsh, let me reassure you. The Angry Birds Movie is cinematic garbage. Oh sure, it might try to get away with itself, marketing that it is 'just a comedy' and also 'a film for kids'. To that, I would like to propose that neither of those labels count as satisfactory excuses and in actuality are even more damning. Firstly, when did it become generally acceptable for comedy movies to be trash? I know that recent comedic ventures may paint the picture that this was always the case, but one merely needs to go back to the classics to see it was not always so. 'Life of Brian' is genius, 'Airplane' is absurd gold, 'This is Spinal Tap' goes to 11. These movies show you that 'comedy' isn't slang for 'low effort'. Comedy is hard to pull off, it requires empathy, wit and timing. Comedy can be crude, highbrow, dark and cheerful. It can open up your audience and make them vulnerable to other emotions. A great comedy can even make you cry.(For the right reasons) Comedy is an artform when handled correctly. The Angry Birds Movie does not handle it correctly.

As for the 'just for kids' excuse. Since when do we not care about the things we show to our kids? Would you let your kids watch a snuff film? How about Game of Thrones? Or >shudder< season eight? Of course not, we curate what we allow children to see so that we can remain watchful over their developing minds. That shouldn't just apply to extreme content but to trash too. Who remembers the Disney renaissance? Disney have always made their movies for kids but rarely do they half ass projects on account of that fact. Just look at Aladdin, Hercules, The Lion King, Pocahontas. (Okay, maybe not that last one.) We also have the movies of Don Bluth to prove to us that children love movies that are allowed to be dark and scary. Just look at 'The Secret of N.I.M.H', 'The Land before Time' and 'All Dogs go to Heaven'. All these movies are remembered, not because they spoke down to kids but because they respected them and treated them like adults. These are the properties that go onto define a generation, not this cynical corporate crap.

But we are no longer in those golden ages. Don Bluth doesn't make movies anymore, half of Monty Python are dead now and Disney is more interested in remaking (ruining) their old movies. What right do I have to call myself an amateur writer when we live in a world so devoid of authenticity that writer and producer John Cohen can win the Jussi Award for best film with Angry Birds. Okay, I'm getting a little bit personal now, I'll admit that. But maybe everyone involved should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Come on Peter Dinklage, you were in Game of Thrones! Have some dignity Josh Gad, you were in Frozen! (You were arguably the worst part, but still!) Stand up for yourself Jason Sudeikis, you were in... huh, literally nothing good. Okay, maybe he deserves it. (Or maybe he deserves to finally be in a good movie.)

The Angry Birds Movie 2 is not the death knell for creativity, that was sounded long ago. It's just a member of the mourning procession, here to carry integrity to it's final resting place. You may think I'm overreacting. And I am. But you would be acting the exact same way if you just saw a giant billboard of reasons why you, and everything you ever try to achieve, is, and will always be, insignificant. Before you've even had a chance to try, you've already lost. Despite thinking so desperately that you're right, you fail nonetheless. It's frightening. Turns the legs to jelly. I ask you to what end? Dread it, run from it, destiny arrives all the- wait, I'm quoting Thanos, what was I talking about again? Angry Birds? Yeah, screw that movie.