A Career Breakthrough With Angry Birds

Hi! Can you tell us who you are and what you do?

Hey there. I’m Johannes Ahvenniemi and I’m currently working as a freelance game developer. Before I started freelancing, I worked for big mobile game companies like Seriously Digital and Rovio Entertainment and gained a lot of experience there.

For the big games I’ve worked on, it’d probably be Best Fiends and Angry Birds, and I did some early Flash and other indie stuff on my own back in the day.

What game are you playing these days?

I've been playing Dave the Diver quite a bit. It's something I can just pick up on my Steam Deck and play. I rarely sit down at a computer and play, and I actually play games on consoles a bit more. I like playing games on a console that I can play with my wife, but she prefers story-driven ones.

We also recently finished Agent A: A Puzzle in Disguise. That was very nice. It's like a first-person point-and-click escape room game. I've actually been trying to find more games like that, but it seems like it's a pretty unique niche, but that was really fun.

That's pretty much it. On mobile, not that much. I have a hard time finding good games on mobile and finding the time to actually play them. And I feel like I'd rather be working than playing games on mobile because maybe it feels a bit like work for me.

How did you get interested in coding?

My brother got me into it. I don't know how he figured out coding, but I was just looking at what he did. I was around five years old and I just wanted to do what he was doing. I couldn't read or write, but I knew how to type on our Amstrad. The Amstrad wasn't our main computer, but it was like a toy that I could play with. I could type in lines, circles and some numbers and get stuff appearing on the screen through trial and error, and I was able to actually draw stuff eventually.

I also wanted to move stuff on the screen. I remember drawing this robot with circles and lines and I wanted to move it. So I went to my dad, as he knew something about computers, but maybe not much about coding, and I wanted him to help me move the robot. I had this very specific request, as I remember there was this robot and a box and I wanted the robot to move to the box, slide up and slide over the box. So nothing crazy, no animations or anything, but I remember him reading this Amstrad manual or something and trying to figure it out, but he couldn't really help me.

My brother then helped me a bit when I moved on to QBasic. I continued with lines and stuff there, but there he taught me how to clear the screen, do a loop with “goto” and variables, and that's all I needed to know to actually animate stuff I was drawing.

After that, I learned about inputs and I could interact with the stuff, and then I never stopped, just kept making games and coding and still learning every day.

How did you start becoming a game developer?

I made my first euro here in Finland making Flash games. It took me a while to get there, though. I was making games with C and Java and anything but Flash because Flash had this weird feel to it that it didn't seem like a real programming language or that it was for script kiddies, not for real programmers.

But then one day I just swallowed my pride. I realized that there are actually distribution channels for Flash games. You can put ads in them and I just made a few and actually made a bit of profit with them. And I guess that's when I became a professional. At the time I was studying and it wasn't a full-time thing and I couldn't quite live off of it.

But that's how I made my first euros. And then I guess that took me to a real game job when I joined Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds, they were making web versions of Angry Birds and they were making them in Flash. So now that I had experience in Flash, I applied for a job and luckily got in.

It was during the crazy growth period of Rovio when they went from 10 employees to 800 in a couple of years. So I was somewhere there in the mix. And that was a very nice place, actually. I really liked my time there.

Working in Rovio Entertainment

One of the best things I learned there was teamwork. Up until then, I had worked with one friend who was the artist for the games or some of the games I was making, but now there was a team, there were hierarchies, and I couldn't just do what I wanted.

It wasn't a problem though. It was actually surprising that it was easy. I could just do what was asked of me and that was enough, but it was a lot of fun to work with the people and learn more about other disciplines.

There were designers, producers, managers and more managers. And at some point, it got pretty crazy with the levels of management that were over there. I think that also made it even more fun because it brought our small team together. We were this small team inside this massive structure of hierarchies and we were oppressed by the hierarchy and it really brought us together.

I’m still bonding together with the people I worked with back then. And that's already how long ago? I'm tempted to say 10, but it's more like 15 or something. It was a lot of fun. 

What’s the game industry like in Finland?

Finland is doing pretty good with the games we have. First of all, we have Rovio with the Angry Birds, and I think that's one of the things that really kicked off the industry here, and we had other stuff before that, as we have Remedy, we have Housemarque.

They're more AAA, very old and established companies that have done great games and still doing great stuff. And then we had Assembly. It was a convention where people came with their computers and played games together and they always had competitions for coders who made the best demos or the best games, like, we had Nokia and a lot of software engineers.

So suddenly we had these passionate people who had been doing this stuff since they were a child, we had Nokia people with the experience of running a big company and then we had this supermassive successful game, Angry Birds, and it all came together at Rovio.

Like suddenly it was a massive company. Everyone was working there. And then it started shrinking and people left Rovio for other new companies and they would continue this growth and diversification.

But then there's also Supercell, which actually did not come from Rovio. They were people who decided not to go to Rovio. A lot of people from Digital Chocolate, when they closed down, went to either Rovio or Supercell. And they're obviously still doing really well. Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Hay Day, Brawl Stars… all those are doing really well nowadays, and they keep improving their game all the time.

Then we have Metacore which started the new merge boom in the mobile space. They’re actually invested in by Supercell. We have Small Giant Games owned by Zynga and they make the Empires & Puzzles, that's a huge hit.

There’s also Seriously Digital, which I've worked at after Rovio.

How was your time at Seriously Digital?

I joined Seriously at quite an early stage of the company. Some people left Rovio to form this new puzzle company. They approached me. And I agreed to join.

It was a very exciting opportunity. I liked working at Rovio, but it was exciting to think that I could get to work with a smaller team on an important project and like really untap my potential. So I joined them and it felt quite right. We published Best Fiends very quickly and the game did really well.

It was early enough before there were so many of the match three types of puzzle games. Because it was early, it got a bit before the boom really took off and the game did well, the company did well. Eventually, it was acquired by Playtika from Israel. I left the company around that time, and the company had grown so much.

I really liked the people there, and I even met my wife there. She was there until the end, but I left a bit earlier to fulfill my own passions, as I really started to feel I'd been working for companies too much. I used to do my own stuff and I've been doing stuff for others, but I have so many ideas that I want to try out now.

I really had to do the stuff I had on my mind. So decided to leave and start doing my own stuff for a while. 

What did you do after leaving corporate game development?

I got this idea when I was at Seriously. It was the time when playable ads started being a thing. I was looking at the playable ads and the quality of the ads was just awful, in my opinion. We had a company making a playable ad for Best Fiends and it was a pre-recorded video where the user would tap on the screen and the video would change into a new video, faking it as if you've done some interaction. I felt that I could do better.

I've been making my own engines on the side, all low-level stuff and like really grassroots-level stuff of game development. I felt like there was a gap in the market for someone who could make playable ads because everyone was using Unity, and I felt like no one even knew how to make games anymore without Unity.

Playable ads could not be made with Unity because it was too big and heavy. It had to be light to start immediately. So I figured, I could make an engine where I could quickly create playable ads and sell them to companies, and I would become a company that creates playable apps.

My specialty was that I replicated all the core parts of Unity, like 2D and 3D rendering, particles, UI layout, animations and physics, mainly those parts in particular. I replicated them in my engine in the same format so I could import a whole project from Unity, and then close the gap between a game that has been made in Unity and a playable ad that can't be made with Unity.

So I would go to companies and say, “Hey, I can export your game onto this much smaller engine. No need to redo all UI layouts and level designs. It will all run in the ad.” And when you want to tweak the ad, when you want to iterate on it, you can still use Unity to do that. You don't need a new tool. You can create or tweak the ad with familiar tools.

I would say it went pretty well. The tool was functional. I even got a client, but I was really bad at marketing. Still, I couldn't just go to companies and say “Hey, I have this amazing tool!” I didn't know who to go to. But there was one company I did approach and they were interested, they were Lightneer.

They had this game called Hammer Jump, which was a small success in the hypercasual space. It was their most successful game and they wanted a playable ad for that, and they had tried many other playable ad companies.

So I got to see what the problem was with them and learn why did they not want to use them. Why did they want something else? And I could offer that and I could then focus my marketing on that. So I felt it was a pretty good business, but then a better opportunity came up. So I put that on hold.

What can you tell us about Papukaya?

I was approached by Drusilla Hollanda, who was a former Supercell game lead and we co-founded Papukaya. She was the game lead on Hay Day, and someone had recommended me to her.

She had a deal with Supercell that she would get the funding to start a new company if she set up the founding team. And I was flattered that someone from Supercell wanted me on their team, but yeah, getting to work closer to Supercell was a big thing. Everyone thinks very highly of Supercell in Finland, especially. It's like the dream place for everyone to work at.

At the same time, it would be a startup, so I wouldn't be part of a bigger structure. I could have more impact on what we're doing, and Drusilla approached me, I was flattered. And also the mission of Papukaya, the pitch she gave me really spoke to me.

By then I was a bit burnt out by the free-to-play market. I wasn't a big fan. I didn't think I would go back to making free-to-play games, but then she pointed out that there's this massive imbalance in who makes the games and who plays the games.

Diversity in game development

The majority of developers are men, but the majority of mobile game players are female. So she proposed a company where we would, first of all, target this underserved audience with female players and actually build a team that can cater to this more diverse audience.

And I felt like that was a very, very exciting challenge. I like mentoring. I like teaching people. And that would mean that we would probably have to bring fresh blood from outside the industry, bringing people who maybe never considered that they would like to make games, but get them excited about making games and teach them how to make games, shift the whole perspective into how games are made and who makes them.

That was a more interesting challenge than coming up with the next big hit for the mobile game market because I felt that was a dead end. It was so explored and a very tough road and not something I wanted to pursue 100%. But building the team and teaching people? That was very interesting to me.

So yeah, it sounded like an awesome opportunity and I put everything else on hold and went with that.

What are the best traits you’ve gotten from all your experience in Papukaya and others?

Something I learned during Papukaya is to speak my mind, not only listen but also tell what I'm thinking. That works not only while teaching, but also when being taught. That gives confirmation to people, that we're on the same wavelength. I would say I used to err on the side of listening more, so I would just maybe nod my head and listen.

But now, I am more proactively giving my own input and no longer afraid to point out mistakes or go against someone's opinion, because that can actually help also them to find their own way. So yeah, I'm communicating more of my thoughts, which helps in teaching and other stuff.

What happened after Papukaya?

One of the many next steps I took after Papukaya was… well… I went crazy. I went all over. I started doing so many things. My main pursuit after that was actually making a game for Apple Arcade. I figured that seemed like something that would fit a small indie studio, possibly even one person's studio.

My goal was to pitch a good enough game for Apple Arcade that they would fund it, and then I’d hire a team. The intention wasn't to work alone but to keep a small team. I've looked at the market and figured that a game that is a bit like Stardew Valley, like these, live sim crafting games could do well on mobile on a subscription platform.

For some reason, those games haven't really worked out as free-to-play. There haven't been many free-to-play life crafting sims. There must be a reason. I didn't know what it was, but there must be a reason. So I figured maybe it would work as a subscription game.

So that's what I pitched to Apple and they liked it. We did a few rounds of discussions and eventually after a long process, they said no. And I can now see why; their platform is full of these Stardew Valley-type games. So I would say I was reading the market correctly, but I was too late and my quality wasn't quite there with the competition.

The competition was coming on really hard. Now they have the Hello Kitty Island Adventure. They have the Tamagotchi, a Japanese title, a really cute pixel art game. So yeah, I could not stand out there anymore. 

What’s Games by Sam?

The by Sam games started soon after this bigger, life-crafting sim game I was trying to pitch to Apple. I needed something small because I felt like I hadn't published a game since I was 20 or something. I had just been working on games and other people's games. Most of the games I was working on were never published. I wanted to show that I can publish a game. And at the same time, I was looking at my wife and my mother-in-law playing some games on mobile.

I was wondering about the quality of them and the amount of ads in them. I felt bad for them suffering through the ads. And I also felt that the quality could be way better for the size of the projects they were. Comparing the marketing budget to the actual gameplay quality, it didn't feel fair because I felt like I could beat those games in quality by myself.

I can't make a successful game because the mobile market is what it is. You need to have performance marketing and so on. But I did ask myself, like, how bad is the organic discovery actually on mobile? I knew organic discovery is not really a thing, but like, how bad is it? 

So I decided to try. I took one of the most popular mobile games on the market at the moment. That was Block Puzzle, which I think is like a derivative of Woodoku. Woodoku’s a very nice game, they really earned their place at the top of the most downloaded. It's gone through many iterations. A great game, but very easy to copy.

So I copied it just to see what happens if I don't put any ads and I put it in the title like, “This is Block Puzzle, but with no ads!” Will people find it? Turns out they don't, but also turns out there are actually thousands of block puzzles that are carbon copies of the most popular ones.

I didn't do enough market research on that. I figured whatever, it's like a couple of weeks project. I'll just do it and see what happens. But I didn't give up. I thought, what if I try something else? What if I try something that isn't copied? I wanted to try the Hexa Sort game next.

That was a new game mechanic. Very interesting. it's really fascinating how that mechanic was created. I don't really know the whole trail of iterations, but looking at older games by the same publisher, you can see it's not like it didn't come out of the blue. Someone worked on it and it's a really brilliant mechanic.

And the quality of the leading one was quite bad, in my opinion. It had a great background with supersaturated colors and looked like a hypercasual game. Which is fine, because that's what it is, but what if there is someone who likes this type of game, but wants a bit more quality and doesn't like apps?

Will they find my game? Since there, was no competition yet. I could make one and that's showing some promise. It's not yet great, but it's going upwards, and that's what makes it so exciting. It started with a couple of downloads per week, and now it's at 10 to 20 downloads per day. 

How do you currently make money?

The Games by Sam apps don’t have any monetization, they’re all free, so I do consulting work. That's how I finance my crazy ambitious projects. I just focused on my own projects, but then I ran out of cash. So I started consulting and it's been really nice.

I have a good client at the moment, so I can balance my consulting work with my own work really well, free working hours and pays well enough so I can do it all while being flexible.

Johannes’ Workflow

I am not super good at organizing a workflow. I. Sit down in front of my laptop in the morning and I'm like, “Okay, what do I do today? Do I need money? I'll do some consulting. What do I feel like doing?”

Then maybe I focus more on one thing for a week. Like I guess I’ll try to finish stuff. That's it. I start something and then I try to finish it. And then everything else that just has to somehow fit in between there. So I can finish the thing I'm doing.

It could just be a feature. It could be an optimization or just pretty much anything, but just starting and finishing. That’s it. I'm not planning too much. 

What are your future plans?

I'm hoping that one of the Games by Sam would take off. That’s one potential path right now, and I'm okay with three games. I use that now as a portfolio. I will iterate them a bit, and bring them to new platforms. I'll try some web platforms like Facebook, maybe some chat things I guess?

At the same time, one of my projects that seems most promising is a Sudoku solver/generator/creator. I actually got the idea from a Hey, Good Game podcast episode. I was listening to the talk with the Good Sudoku guy, Zach, and he mentioned that there are not many Sudoku solvers available, like good ones, available online. Because if someone has one, they can make money off it.

And I had been toying around with this Sudoku solver idea implementation for quite a while, and that kind of gave me the kick to actually finish it and launch the beta version of that recently. So that's now done and I can focus on other stuff again, but I'm hoping that might take off. Like maybe some clients need a Sudoku library or an API or just levels. Let's see which one seems more lucrative for people. 

And then, me and my wife were doing escape puzzle magazines. They seem they're not very profitable, but maybe one day we'll just manage to tweak the margins enough so we can start scaling it. And then at the same time, fantasizing about a digital escape game. That could be big based on what I'm seeing. I'm hoping one of them finds the light.

Where can we find you to learn more about you and your projects?

They can find me on LinkedIn and then adartis.fi is the domain for my company through which I do consulting and all this. And then of course I have the sudokugen.com, which I just launched, and Games by Sam.