Finally, there are the social features. By collecting the game to your Facebook account you will see all of your playing friends on the King-style level map and on the level-specific leaderboards. There are also friend gifts, which player can collect from levels and send to their friends. Player can’t gift lives though, which is against the benchmarks.

When you look at the laundry list of all the new features and compare it to the classic Angry Birds games, you can only agree the game more than deserves its “2”. The game looks better, plays better and offers a wide variety of totally new features and game modes. But most importantly, Angry Birds 2 monetizes like a best-in-class puzzle game.

#1 Monetization Mechanic – Premium Currency

Angry Birds uses hard currency in form of Gems instead of relying on direct purchases. As most of you know, hard currency beats direct purchases due to four key reasons:

1. Hard currency increases retention. When players are incentivized to purchase more hard currency than they need it creates a money-in-the-bank situation. Players are incentivized to come back to the game because they have hard currency, which they paid for.

2. Hard currency increases the size of an average purchase. Just increase the smallest price point and implement volume discounts and voilà, you’ve increased the average revenue per paying user.

3. Hard currency enables effective use of incentivized video ads. As soon as a game establishes demand for hard currency, drip of hard currency can be employed to incentivize players to complete various actions. Tournaments, missions, daily bonuses, challenges, events, you name it. Giving players the opportunity to earn something worth real money increase retention and sometimes encourage conversion via trial.

4. Hard currency allows the player to take the most out of the game when off-line. Say you’re on a plane. You probably have time to play few more games than what the 5 lives give you. Well, then before you take off make sure to fill up on that hard currency and buy more lives while off-line.

Angry Birds 2 establishes several strong sinks for Gems to drive the demand. This demand is ultimately met in the Gem shop, which in Angry Birds 2 is above the competition. The Gem Shop features 9 different Gem packages player can purchase ranging from 0.99 cents to 99 dollars. Normally a shop puts all the offers in line from cheapest to the most expensive and prices them in a way that player is incentivized to choose either the biggest or the second biggest one. Angry Birds 2 does this and more.