Angry Birds Costing $1.5 Billion in Lost Wages?
Angry Birds is played for 200 million minutes each day. Just 5 percent of that could mean billions in wasted employee wages if played at work.
Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic estimates that Rovio's Angry Birds is costing businesses around $1.5 billion in lost wages. The estimate is based on a recent report by AYTM claiming that the bird-flinging game is played for 200 million minutes per day. That essentially equals to 16 years of continuous game play every hour of every day.
According to the estimate, if 5-percent of those 200 million minutes are Americans playing Angry Birds at work, that's around 43,333,333 on-the-clock hours of Angry Birds per year. Multiply that number by the hourly pay of America's smartphone owners (a rather steep $35 average), then $1,516,666,667 worth of lost wages are lost due to the game. That's more than the rumored valuation of Angry Birds developer Rovio which is estimated to be $1,200,000,000.
In addition to the total number of minutes played, AYTM's report claims that, out of 1000 surveyed gamers, 32-percent feel somewhat relaxed when playing Angry Birds. 23-percent said that they felt "very" relaxed while 23-percent felt neither relaxed or anxious. 17-percent said they felt somewhat anxious while 6-percent felt very anxious.
The report also claims that 58-percent of the gamers surveyed felt that their moods improved after a round of flinging birds. 37-percent were found unchanged whereas 5-percent of the gamer moods actually worsened. Even more, the report concluded that unemployed gamers were 2X more likely to feel anxiety and 2.25X more likely to experience anger. However, gamers aged 18 to 24 were 5X more likely to be in a worse mood after playing Angry Birds than those 25 years and older.
Is Angry Birds addicting? 18-percent of the surveyed gamers said that they have never felt addicted when playing the game, whereas 54-percent chose the term "occasionally." Only 15-percent said that they actually felt addicted, and 13-percent admitted to being totally addicted. Unfortunately, there's no known medical cure to Angry Birds addiction other than deleting it off the device. Of course, there's always the free version on Chrome, on Google+....
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This of course assumes that if people weren't playing Angry Birds that they would be doing something productive. Reality would likely find that to be true for 0-1% of those people at most. The average smart phone owner may make $35/hr (highly dubious, or at least misleading), but they are also lazy and more interested in checking their facebook page than doing any real work.
hmm I live in Mexico, and I do play sometimes angry birds at work maybe 20 min once or twice at week.
I'm 26 and I find it very fun and relaxing when I'm stressed. Also my parents like the game and sometimes they play it for about 2 hours always at night. Now I'm looking forward to buy all the seasons or whatever other modes of angry birds game, if someone could let me know where to find them for PC, I will appreciate it. 
I was hoping they would also consider in studying extra miles and extra hours spent by employees doing extra productive works, and compute for the manhour gain, translate it to $$$ gain, and compare the difference against the losses. These companies should also learn to consider the welfare of dedicated employees spending more time doing extra mile resulting to an excellent job well done. .
A relaxed worker is a happy worker which in turn is a better worker, right? Ok then, more angry birds it is!
who the f cares. People take smoke breaks, coffee breaks, bathroom breaks, text message, check messages, and space off and most certainly occupy their work time with myriads of other activities . People can not and will not work at 100%.
my estimate: internet costing $1 trillion in lost wages
If angry birds had never exixted, I am quite confident that the same employees who now kill pigs with birds during office hours would have invented lots of other interesting methods for wasting their company's productive hours.
Everybody who eats, pees, shits and breaths wastes wages! People must work for their master 24/7 until they die!!!
I waste my time on Toms when im at work, not angry birds!
Well I'm self employed & I'd rather use a desktop to game.
Without angry birds the gamer would instead be going postal and kill everyone he sees, how many lives doesn't that game save? But then again in the world of capitalism - money are more important than a bunch of saved lives. Ask the CEO's who produces their goods in where workers line in factory at abysmal conditions just to save a few cents per unit!
i wish i made 35 dollars an hour...most people make about 10 dollars an hour...after taxes is more like 7 dollars
The key words are..... "if 5-percent of those 200 million minutes are Americans playing Angry Birds at work, that's " This is a non story about the word if to fill up blank space about nothing.
I can only imagine how much windows solitaire must have cost people for the last 20 years. And before that, reading the paper. Bottom line is that people will slack off at work given any chance. I think not working 100% of the time is somewhat expected. It's when it is extreme that it becomes a problem.
I will also admit that there are more distractions out there than there have ever been (not just angry birds). Companies not putting up with lazy workers and a competetive job market should keep it from becomming too much of a problem.
I don't get what's the big deal with those birds. (never play the game or care about it)
Like someone said people have been playing solitaire (another stupid game) or reading the paper etc... there is no difference.
Plus how they know (or could know) that this people are not playing with birds (of any kind) during their lunch break?
Nice google+ add tho
I don't get what's the big deal with those birds. (never play the game or care about it) Like someone said people have been playing solitaire (another stupid game) or reading the paper etc... there is no difference.Plus how they know (or could know) that this people are not playing with birds (of any kind) during their lunch break?
Cool story bro. You're in the minority.
oh come on get it right, dont go calling these folks gamers, they are office decorations....
lol.... people who make 10 an hour get all of their taxes back.
THIS JUST IN: worldwide bowel movements account for trillions of wasted man hours. New SEC regulations regarding CEO hiring for the Fortune Top 100 Companies requires CEOs to have a broom shoved firmly up their rectum.
oh come on get it right, dont go calling these folks gamers, they are office decorations....
lol.. kewl name to it..
will take this advice and call my coworkers angrybirders office decorations.
Rafael.-
I've never played this game, but I still want to strangle that bird and pluck out all his feathers.
This is now what alot of people consider "gaming". It's Peggle for the new generation, lol.
Between this and Farmville I wonder how many souls have been lost?
Who are all the iZombies that play this stupid game. I love how the media hypes up this crap and people willingly swallow it. Pathetic !
As far as productivity goes these greedy CEOs make many mints while at the same time they have fired many people and reduced the number of employees doing the work, lets see now we have one employee doing the work of THREE!
I say F productivity and start being lazy, then they will have to hire more people and the unemployment rate will actually go down.
Increased productivity today just means the slaves work harder for less.
Oh you mean that game that ripped off Crush The Castle, which ripped off about 10 other games before that? Whatever...
I think I just wasted $1.50 reading this article and another 10 cents commenting on it.
@legacy7955
so.... your telling me now one guy has to play angry bird 3 times as much..... ;p
Worthless studies cost the economy billions of dollars each year. Those people who conduct worthless researches should do something productive like digging ditches or paving roads instead of criticizing how other people do their jobs.
it takes about 30 odd minutes to finish the game if you aren't paying attention
People actually find that game entertaining? I get the same amount of amusement from Angry Birds as I would doing nothing at all.
If I'm at work, I actually work. Am I a minority?
I always read Tom's at work.
An interesting but rather pointless study. I could come up with figures for things like FarmVille and such too, but a study is pointless unless it offers ways of improving the situation.