Angry birds chicks nest their nests

    Last week, Angry Birds developer Rovio confirmed its plans for downsizing and business restructuring. The company decided to lay off 213 employees. Now, the priority areas for the development of the company will be games, media products and consumer goods. Rovio management also decided to abandon their educational projects.

    “Over the past few years, Rovio's growth and its desire to explore new business opportunities has been incredible. As a result, we started doing too many things at once, ” said Rovio CEO Pekka Rantala.

    But difficulties often mobilize, give determination and force to generate bold ideas, think outside the box, look for alternative ways of development. The train of thought of some employees went so far that their paths with Rovio diverged: they launched their projects and, perhaps, no longer work for the company. Two such projects will be discussed under the cut.

    After the closure of the educational area, the former employees of the company seriously took up work on a new project. Lightneer gaming startup is based by people from Rovio. Lightneer was invented by Lauri Jarvileto and Lauri Contori - one of the founders of the educational division of Rovio and the former creative director of the company. They hatched their plan for four years.

    The startup backers were Peter Westerbaska and Nicklas Head, co-founder of Rovio.

    Lightneer CEO Lauri Jarvileto said the company is negotiating a round of seed investments, which should be closed in the next few weeks. The first version of the game will be released in 2016.

    “There is no need to gamify the educational process, since games are the educational process. Lauri and I had an idea that we would never have realized at Rovio, ”says Jarvileto. “We met in the evenings and just thought about what our game might be like.”

    A clear picture began to take shape only in June 2015. After that, they showed a prototype to Westerbask and Head, who readily agreed to fund the project. They also served on the Lightneer board of directors.

    Jarvileto did not disclose the content of the game, but talked about another game that they plan to release in the future. This is a kind of card game that allows you to remember historical events.

    Despite the fact that the startup is educational, the games are not designed for any narrow target audience or educational institutions.

    In the same summer of 2015, other Rovio natives, together with ex- Nokia employees, created their project in the Finnish mobile studio Koukoi Games . On October 27, it was reported that the company had raised $ 1 million in investment.

    The investor was the Singapore branch of the Frontier Accelerator Fund.. The funds will be used to finalize the product and promote it in the world market. Koukoi Games management hopes that the investor will help the Finnish studio in the future enter the Asian market.

    The first game developed by Koukoi Games is called Crashing Season . This is a 3D runner, and in it the user will be prompted to control animals that try not to fall under the hunter's shot. The release of the game is due to take place this year. The studio’s website reports that the team is small and consists of industry veterans who previously worked at Rovio and Nokia. However, specific names are not called.

    How high the “new projects” will take off - time will tell.

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