In 1998, there were about 40 million computers in American as a whole.

Among them, the San Francisco Bay Area, including Silicon Valley, is definitely the place with the highest computer ownership rate in the world.

Basically every home will have a computer.

As a result, more than half of the first 1,000 Angry Birds purchases came from the Bay Area.

Similarly, Angry Birds quickly became a topic of discussion throughout the Bay Area.

The attention of the media was also quickly focused on the red bird.

On the third day of release, Angry Birds sales exceeded 200,000 units, and Stephen came to the garage at night and handed out Gamesmen to everyone, which read:

"More than once in the past three days, I've had to see this little red bird on my colleagues' computers.

He seems to have an indescribable magic that can entice people to sit in front of this game all day.

Until you beat the level, or get by a bunch of gloating piglets who want to smash the monitor off.

Yes, I believe that many players have already guessed this game by this point, and he is "Angry Birds".

Angry Birds is a hilarious game that tells the story of a group of wingless birds who are wronged by a pack of pigs.

In Angry Birds, the player controls a flock of birds as they attempt to retrieve their eggs from a group of vicious pigs that stole them.

The piglets hide on or inside buildings made of various materials such as wood, glass, and stone, and the goal of the game is to eliminate all the piglets in the level. The player uses a slingshot to shoot small birds at a building, with the aim of hitting the pig directly or destroying the building, which will cause it to collapse onto the pig.

The description comes directly from their developer, Riot Games.

I like to think of Riot as a Tolstoy of puzzle games.

The idea of pigs – how I hate them – referring to the idea that pigs in the game take refuge on structures or inside a variety of materials is fantastic.

Just reading Riot's summary of Angry Birds made me eager to play it again.

Sometimes the pigs line up unprotected, and sometimes they hide in forts made of stone, glass, or wood. They take refuge in these spaces, as in a "rogue shelter", and the shelter is very difficult to penetrate or overthrow.

In Angry Birds, as often happens in life, the material world conspires to favor these bastards, giving them what looks like breastplates, berms, and railings, as if they were the beneficiaries of some foreign aid program.

Those disgusting, smug green pigs stole my stuff, and they sat in stone fortifications that they didn't even build themselves.

What about the expression on their fat faces? It is full of smugness and high-minded mockery.

Think you're too good to me, huh? You're going to rob me, will I be polite about it?

You have your well-designed fortress. And I had nothing but the feeling of being hurt.

My anger!

So I staggered and aimed at them, pigs, there is no end in the world of Riot, there are one hundred and fifty levels to conquer, and it is said that the game will be constantly updated with new levels.

Angry Birds is a so-called physics game that implies education and at the same time a puzzle in reverse, as you have to destroy it by figuring out how its pieces are broken down.

Your tools are these birds – the victims of theft and your cannon fodder. Every bird that is fired dies. Although there is no bloodstain because it is the death of a cartoon character, each mission is a suicide mission.

So I must say that as much as I sympathize with and need Angry Birds (they are my excuses and expressions for anger), I also hate them.

I hate everything!

I play Angry Birds! Of course, at such a late stage in my emotional evolution, I finally had no reason to be consumed by anger. I would say it makes me happy. Images of pigs and broken ice structures filled my dreams.

I see buildings like the Capitol and fantasize about how easily – and should – collapse.

Is this what it feels like to be both an Angry Bird and a Bad Bird......"

After reading it silently, Zhou Xin looked at the other party: "Good article, is it just this?" ”

In Zhou Xin's view, the most valuable thing about Angry Birds should be the solution to buy games purely online.

There is no shortage of good video games in this day and age.

Angry Birds doesn't have a particularly significant advantage over other games.

The advantage may be that it's easy to get started with, and then the overall style is market-tested.

"Of course, when I went to work, I heard more than once in the cafeteria talking about the payment system we designed.

I've also talked to my colleagues, and they all agree that this is a revolutionary invention, and that while the game distribution channel won't be so easy to get rid of, a large part of the game distribution channel will be taken away by others. Ashley walked over and added.

Since Zhou Xin is an intern, he doesn't need to go to Microsoft every day, and he is about to enter the PhD, which is a perfect reason to take a leave of absence.

After the success of Angry Birds, Zhou Xin plans to resign when he returns in the next few days.

He's not the only one who needs to resign, Ashley and Stephen will also be leaving, and Riot Games will be their next stop.

In Silicon Valley, it's not uncommon to start a business while working part-time.

It's just that it's rare to start a business and turn it into a main business.

No matter how many opportunities there are, there are always a few who succeed.

200,000 sets of Angry Birds, or $4 million in cash flow, is enough to support a team of about 20 people.

And this amount is still growing, and the rate of growth is accelerating.

After the word-of-mouth of the game spreads, the number of people who pay to download it will be higher.

"The gaming community is going live.

A verification code can only be registered for one account, which can avoid the phenomenon of some unwillingness to pay. ”

It is inevitable that players will share the downloaded files with their friends for free after paying for downloads.

In addition, the game channel providers put their game installation packages on the Internet for free and provide them to players for nothing, which is even more helpless.

If there is Steam, Zhou Xin is confident that he will sell 10 million copies of Angry Birds.

Because the number of players willing to pay is not only at Americon, but also in the entire Europa region.

According to the transfer data compiled by the San Francisco branch of Huaguo Bank, the proportion of transfers from the Europa region has exceeded 5%.

"Luis, and you, because you joined late, and then you need to go back to Carnegie Mellon University to continue your studies.

We would like to offer you a purely remote job opportunity, which means that we assign tasks to you and you can then complete them at school.

The salary will be the same as that of the regular employees we recruit in the future.

What do you think? ”

The memories of twenty years later in Zhou Xin's mind gradually became clear, and he found out who the other party was in his memory.

Compared to unknown people like Stephen and Ashley, Louis von Anke was the founder of CAPTCHA, a genius programmer, and a first-class cryptographer.