Word of Mouth Is More Important than Reviews for Rovio

Rovio, the creator of the very successful Angry Birds franchise, believes that when it comes to casual games reviews are less important for the normal gamer than the information that he/she gets from other players via word of mouth.

Teemu Huuhtanen, who is a vice president at Rovio, has said during a presentation at Gamelab that, “We try to monitor social media, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and even reviews.”

He added, “I think they are all important, especially in the beginning. But I don’t think many casual gamers actually read any blogs or reviews – they hear about games from their friends, mostly. But to gain momentum in the beginning, it definitely helps to get good reviews.”

The type of player that Rovio targets tends to have less time than the mainstream home console player, and that means he lacks the ability to follow all the news and reviews from specialist sites.

Rovio has expressed a desire to grow and become a company on the level of Disney.