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Angry Birds is a video game developed by Finnish computer game developer Rovio Mobile.
Inspired primarily by a sketch of stylized wingless birds, the game was first released for Apple’s mobile operating system in December 2009.
Since then, over 12 million copies of the game have been purchased from Apple’s App Store.
With its fast-growing popularity worldwide, the game and its characters—angry birds and their enemy pigs—have been referenced in television programs throughout the world.
The Israeli comedy A Wonderful Country, one of the nation’s most popular TV programs, satirized recent failed Israeli-Palestinian peace attempts by featuring the Angry Birds in peace negotiations with the pigs.
Clips of the segment went viral, getting viewers from all around the world.
American television hosts Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart, and Daniel Tosh have referenced the game in comedy sketches on their respective series, Conan, The Daily Show, and Tosh.0.
Some of the game’s more notable fans include Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom, who plays the iPad version of the game, and author Salman Rushdie, who is believed to be “something of a master at Angry Birds.”
Angry Birds and its characters have also been featured in advertisements in different forms.
In March 2011, the characters began appearing in a series of advertisements for Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
In the same year, Nokia projected an advertisement in Austin, Texas that included the game’s characters on a downtown building for its new handset.
Later, a T-Mobile advertisement filmed in Spain included a real-life mock-up of the game in a city plaza.
Nokia also used the game in Malaysia to promote an attempt to set a world record for the largest number of people playing a single mobile game.
Angry Birds has even 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 Dasar in Brazil, utilizing the characters and gameplay mechanics to interpret various concepts of yoga philosophy.
The piece attracted much media attention for its unique method of philosophical presentation.
Subtitles by the Amara.org community