This afternoon’s slice of MAKE CRAIG ANGRY comes courtesy of Wired, whose article In depth: How Rovio made Angry Birds a winner (and what’s next) should probably have been called Fap Fap Fap Rovioooooohhhh.

There’s something of a cult that’s built up around the Finnish developer’s massive iOS hit (since ported to practically every other platform in existence—I hear there’s a VIC-20 version on the way), and more than a little bullshit.

Before a million Angry Birds fans descend, I’m not suggesting the game is rubbish, nor am I saying Rovio doesn’t deserve some of its success. Angry Birds is a fairly good iOS game, and it’s immediate, usable, polished and cute. The perfect game? Not in a million years—it’s too random (requiring quickfire grind play rather than strategising) and has an irksome linear level structure (which was ‘fixed’ via a 59p in-app purchase rather than enabling users to skip levels they couldn’t solve). But it’s not bad.

What is bad is the reporting that continually goes on about Rovio’s magic formula. Ultimately, Rovio got lucky. They put out a game that users could feel they were good at very quickly (even if they weren’t) and with little effort, and built it around a level and reward structure that worked nicely with the quickfire nature of mobile gaming. Rovio then did some cunning marketing, driving word-of-mouth in smaller territories, before partnering with publisher Chillingo in larger countries. But there’s little innovation in the game (it’s a variant on Crush the Castle, a genre that can be traced all the way back to Artillery on the Apple II) and Rovio ‘Mighty Eagle’ Peter Vesterbacka’s saying the company’s “building an integrated entertainment franchise where merchandising, games, movies, TV, cartoons and comics all come together, like Disney 2.0.” is a pretty bold and odd comparison, for one key reason: Rovio is currently a one-hit wonder, with Angry Birds as its sole hit.

There’s no doubting Angry Birds is phenomenally popular. There’s no doubting many people like the game. But right now Rovio is doing little more than milking the brand until it screams: a tie-in with Rio, a self-published ‘seasons’ version to double-up iOS sales and avoid cutting in Chillingo as much as possible, soft toys, possible board games and animations… The list is growing by the month. What’s not on the list though is Rovio’s Next Big Game and The One After That, the products that would prove it has a magic formula for success. At least Wired recognises this in its article:

Rovio needs to evolve from a studio with strong intellectual property (IP), to being a publisher that isn’t over-reliant on a single hit game. There’s the rub: it took Rovio 52 games to get its first hit. To create a fully fledged entertainment empire, it will need more.

Show me another half-dozen megahits and I’ll file Rovio alongside early-1980s Atari and admit that, yes, these guys do have some kind of formula. For now, though, there are dozens of iOS devs out there offering superior and more varied gaming experiences, and that have to balls to do something different every six months or so. Here’s hoping iOS consumers start seeking them out, rather than assuming gaming ends once they’ve three-starred the latest set of levels in Rovio’s game.