Rovio Mobile has developed more than 50 video games with relatively little success. They finally hit the jackpot when they released Angry Birds game in December 2009. According to Rovio CEO Mikael Hed, it went to number one in Finland pretty much overnight. And as the saying goes, “The rest is history!”

The development of the Angry Birds game started in March 2009. The idea of birds playing the main character came from Jaakko Lisalo, Games Developer and Lead Designer in Rovio Mobile. His first concept of the game did not include a slingshot. This brought confusion to testers who first tried to play this game. It seems like we could’ve been enjoying flying birds right now if only those game testers had figured out how to play the trial version of Angry Birds. Lisalo thought that slingshots would best explain how to play this game since everyone is already familiar with it.

Rovio Mobile wanted a game that is easy to pick-up and play, but hard to master. This is exactly how anyone will describe Angry Birds game. Niklas Hed, Rovio Mobile COO and Co-founder, shared a story that made him believe that Angry Birds will be a big hit. He showed the game to his mother on a dinner party who never played any video game before. The dinner party was actually delayed as Niklas’ mother couldn’t stop playing the game. Rovio should award Mrs. Hed as the very first fan of Angry Birds.

Angry Birds has now been downloaded more than 300 million times. This seems like a natural occurrence for the company who habitually breaks mobile gaming records. With Rovio’s partnership with Madhouse, a major advertising network in China, their next goal is to hit 100 million downloads by the end of the year in that country alone.