It helps that your enemy is so detestable. Angry Birds' ostensibly simple physics puzzles play on that mentality for all they're worth, setting up what outwardly look like fairly delicate, flimsy structures for you and your furious feathered friends to destroy.
It's easier and more fun to destroy than to create. I'd be massively distrustful of anyone who watches footage of buildings being demolished and doesn't think something along the lines of, "That's pretty awesome." As much as I hate the game - and I really, truly despise it - it's easy to see why it might appeal.įor starters, we're hardwired to enjoy the sight of things falling down. That's not to say I don't understand why Angry Birds has bewitched so many. Levels might get slightly tougher, but once you've seen all the different bird types that's it. That's 200 million minutes a day playing a random, frustrating puzzle game with a fundamentally broken control scheme, a baffling score structure and no reward system to speak of. Recently, Eurogamer contributor Simon Parkin Tweeted the profoundly depressing fact that "every 30 days, humanity spends the same amount of time playing Angry Birds as it took to build Wikipedia to date". To put it into context, that's as many records as The Who or Metallica or Deep Purple have ever sold. This is a game that has apparently been downloaded over 100 million times. If we could pinpoint a single moment when the entire world descended into this sinkhole of stupidity, it would be the release of Angry Birds. To quote professional sourface Charlton Brooker: the idiots are winning. These programmes are watched by millions more people than compelling, mature dramas like Mad Men and Rubicon.
We live in a world where people make gameshows about squeezing through funny-shaped holes or repeatedly falling in water. We live in a world where irredeemable pap like The Black Eyed Peas' The Time (Dirty Bit) tops the charts, where Peaches Geldof not only has a career but is paid to appear on telly and, like, talk about stuff, and stuff. The dumbing down of society continues unabated.
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