Reply To: Angry Birds Anonymous

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Les Toreadors
@les-toreadors

Haha, I for one am not alarmed when people talk about video game addictions. I have been a gamer since I was like, age 4 or 5 when someone sat me in front of a crude joystick and keyboard, then realized I was in control of a fully armed F-16 fighter jet over enemy territory.

When one of my colleagues talked about Angry Birds I took some time to mull over the new fad and eventually tried it out after 2 months of procrastination. I had a then brand-new Samsung phone/tablet hybrid then (OMG $650 phone) and Angry Birds on a ‘large’ screen by 2010 standards gave hundreds of hours of entertainment.

I don’t usually get too concerned over 3 starring everything but I make a point to note carefully how each level is designed, where their weak spots are, and that all bacon should be exploded for 5,000 points. My ‘devotion’ to the bird side is only made 200x stronger with the release of Angry Birds: Space and I also used to have a large collection of Angry Birds plush toys, which I made a point to import direct from UK warehouse outlets. I refuse to support the local ‘licensed retailers’ here in South East Asia because of their tendency to mark up product prices to lunar orbit and beyond – no way am I paying $50 for a small Bird when Walmart in the States has them for $5 or something!

Eventually my entire office was indunated by Angry Birds plushies and I started selling them off to members of my motorcycle club who don’t have a chance to own them due to excessive local prices. I also made jokes that pigs are ‘not halal’ and thus must be exploded. I made a few new Malaysian friends from that lol!

I controlled my ‘addiction’ by using Angry Birds and follow on titles as a bedside game. I am too busy at work to fling to my heart’s content anyway.

Later, I switched to the Pork Side in September 2012 due to Rovio’s new “bacon appreciation project” aka Bad Piggies pre-release artwork. Bad Piggies appeals to my long-hidden love of sandbox games, which I played extensively early in the 1990s (you remember The Incredible Machine don’t you?).

I also got to meet various key persons of the franchise in an impromptu last-minute Facebook-advertised event in my nation of residence, and of course, I did talk about using Angry Birds as a tool for physics education, demonstrated using civil engineering knowledge to rapidly demolish tall pig buildings, finally talking about Bad Piggies and asking if I could start up a new facepork fan page for the launch of the new game.

The answer was an enthusiastic YES.

2 years later I have nearly 200 Bad Piggies insane creations to showcase on YouTube, can mess around with @birdleader learning to publish Bird articles (hopefully without going off-topic and writing about military aviation), and have a new appreciation for green bacon. Bad Piggies as a game may not survive, but it was a nice experience learning how to protect junior contributors and a new community from a whole shipload of hate speech and directed attacks from, shall we say, less mature persons and communities for nearly the whole duration of running a Pork Propulsion Laboratory.

Of course, wanting to do my own thing and make more simulations of real life things by ‘pigitizing’ them means I just ignore the trolls and let them see ‘doing my own thing’ means being able to do pigger and better things as time goes on! If I want drama I will do it in real life where there are real rewards roleplaying the cast of Desperate Housewives :)

True gamers use the Internet to help others and benefit all mankind through selfless acts of sharing strategies and fostering quality community engagement… Angry Birds Nest style.