Angry Birds: Following on your Passion

This is meant to be a text about following your passion. Some people set out to save the world, while others go for seemingly simpler things, like popping green pigs. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not about the purpose per se, but about the way you get there. It always comes down to work, and a lot of it.

Looking at the screenshot below, you could easily conclude that at some point I became very, very efficient in the pig-popping business. After all, some of these golden eggs only unlock after winning 3 stars in around 60 different levels.

Note: The original Angry Birds game currently has about 500 different levels.

How many hours did I spend on this game? Many? A lot? Days? Nights? Did I do anything else? (Is that even a valid passion?)

I know what everybody is thinking: that I either have no life, or that I cheated by tampering with the data on my phone’s storage. Both are false, by the way. I’m also not sure you could reach the state shown below by cheating. Of course, you can’t complete the Master League without power-ups, but Rovio has a business to run, so that’s quite understandable.

What if I told you I never spent a single penny on any of the in-game purchases? If you don’t use power-ups in the regular levels, they pile up, because the game hands some out from time to time. Everything up to the Silver League can be won comfortably without power-ups. The Gold League is hard to win without them, and the Master League is hard to win even with plenty. As for tickets, you can collect more than you’ll ever need through good old patience: open the game every day and don’t play any level for about 2 months.

But let’s take a step back. What we’re really talking about here is:

• Passion
• A strong desire to win
• Starting early
• Many hours of work
• Patience
• Resource management

I hope you now see that this text isn’t really about Angry Birds. It’s about following your passion all the way to the end. Thanks for reading!