The Rovio way of making games

In the world of mobile games, Petri Järvilehto has one of the coolest jobs.

A veteran of the Finnish industry, he's worked on console titles such as Alan Wake and Max Payne at Remedy, and now runs all of Rovio's development.

And despite what you may think, that's not just about Angry Birds.

For one thing, we're in Finland to talk to him about Amazing Alex. And on the floor above us sit dozens of developers, some of who aren't working on Angry Birds games, or Amazing Alex. You need an all-access elevator key to open those doors and journalists are not welcome.

Järvilehto isn't going to give away any secrets either, but he is happy to talk about how Rovio approaches games.

"When we think about games, we think about making a series, the longterm strategy, and how we will update the game to add mechanics and content," he says.

You might be surprised to learn that although Rovio 'only' has released four games to-date (the original Angry Birds plus the Seasons, Rio and Space expansions), each of the each titles has been released on over 10 hardware platforms, such as iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, PC, Chrome etc. Some have been released on 16 platforms.

That's a big engineering challenge, and something that sucks up the time of around 50 percent of its development staff.

But that's one of the consequences of the company's massive success; something Rovio expects its new titles will also experience.

"It's our duty to create new content, keep people playing our existing games, and more generally give players an overwhelming value proposition," Järvilehto explains.

It's certainly a fair description of the near 350 levels Rovio's designers have created for Angry Birds, which on iOS, are available for a mere 99c.

When it comes to Amazing Alex, Rovio is taking the same approach.

Of course, given that it's based on an existing game called Casey's Contraption, the development team had a strong starting point.

"We liked Casey's Contraptions and we though, 'Let's do this right'," Järvilehto says, of the decision to buy the IP from the original developers.

"We didn't want to make a clone," he adds. "We've rewritten the entire game using our technology, and added backstory and a universe, so we know Alex will be around for a long time."

This means that unlike Casey's Contraptions, which was just released on iPad, Amazing Alex will launch on iOS and Android, with more devices to follow.

The development process has taken about six months, with the fundamental issue being the balance between the pressure to release content quickly - there's a poster on the office wall that says 'Always be shipping' - and what Järvilehto calls meeting the 'Rovio quality bar'.

"We have a huge amount of ambition for our games, but the hard work starts when we release a game," he warns.

Referring to the "Always be shipping" poster, Järvilehto points out that Rovio aims to update its games on a monthly basis, as well as planning for more important seasonal events.

"We have to know what's going to be happening at Christmas," he says, despite it only being May.

And that's why the release of Amazing Alex is the beginning for Rovio.

"We have lots of plans. This is just the first step," Järvilehto ends. "Expect the unexpected."