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Real Life Angry Birds By Mohamed Raoof
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Angry Birds and its characters have been featured in advertisements for other products. In March 2011, the characters began appearing in a series of advertisements for Microsoft's Bing search engine. At the 2011 South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, Nokia used scrims on a downtown building to project an advertisement for its new N8 handset that included the game's characters. A June 2011 T-Mobile advertisement filmed in Barcelona, Spain included a real-life mock-up of the game in a city plaza.
The game's popularity has spawned knock-off and parody games that utilize the same basic mechanics as Angry Birds. For example, Angry Turds features monkeys hurling feces and other objects at hunters who have stolen their babies. Another game, entitled Chicks'n'Vixens and released in beta form on Windows Phone 7 devices, replaces the birds and pigs with chickens and foxes, respectively. The developer of Chicks'n'Vixens intended the game as a "challenge" to Rovio Mobile, which has stated that a Windows Phone port of Angry Birds won't be ready until later in 2011.
Angry Birds has inspired works of philosophical analogy. A five-part essay entitled "Angry Birds™ Yoga – How to Eliminate the Green Pigs in Your Life" was written by Giridhari Dasa of ISKCON Brazil, utilizing the characters and gameplay mechanics to explain various concepts of yoga philosophy as understood by Gaudiya Vaishnavism. The piece attracted much media attention, in Brazil and abroad, for its unique method of philosophical presentation. The piece was also recognized and appreciated by Rovio Mobile's Peter Vesterbacka, who was prompted to comment, "Very cool! I can see Angry Birds Yoga becoming a worldwide craze;-) ".
Rovio is investigating ways to expand the Angry Birds brand, including merchandise, television shows and movies. The game's official website offers plush versions of the birds and pigs for sale, along with T-shirts featuring the game's logo and characters. In May 2011, Mattel released an Angry Birds board game, entitled "Angry Birds: Knock on Wood". Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio Mobile, has envisioned a feature film in the stop-motion animation style of Aardman Animation. Hed acknowledges that such a film would be years away, and that Rovio must keep the characters relevant until then, by producing sequels or new ports of the original game. Rovio officials have hinted that one such "sequel" will be told from the pigs' point of view.
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