An Interview with Popcap Games

We recently interviewed Popcap Games about its future Xbox Live hit Plants vs Zombies, and its plans to release for the future. It's an interesting read so make sure you check it out. Interview by Joe Anderson. How did you manage to come up with the concept of Plants vs. Zombies? It seems quite an unusual idea? George Fan, Senior Designer at PopCap, had just finished PopCap’s Insaniquarium, and was noodling around with some new game ideas, one of which was a more defense oriented sequel to Insaniquarium. At the time he was also playing some tower defense mods in Warcraft III and thought "What if I used plants as towers? Plants are great because you can give them lots of character, and no one expects them to move." So out went the fish, in came the plants. Around that time, however, a plethora of gardening games appeared in the casual games space so rather than blend in, he decided to come up with an usual mix in form of plants and…zombies. He was pretty sure nobody else would be working on such a combination! And it turns out it was a pretty compelling one! Given Plants vs. Zombies is based around defending you home, have you any plans to move away from this area, perhaps allowing players to defend other areas of the city, such as the local park or shopping centre? The idea of defending something is inherent in the tower defense genre and, in the case of Plants vs. Zombies, the flower defense genre! Once the team settled on the plant protagonists, having them protect your home came naturally. We haven’t any formal plans on what else the plants could protect but the defensive capabilities of the pea-shooter should not be underestimated! Having played both the iphone and ipad versions we are very excited to see Plant vs. Zombies hit Xbox Live but how will the experience differ from what we have already played on many an occasion? We at PopCap always strive to customize our games as they're adapted to each platform and Plants vs. Zombies for XBLA is no different. There’s lots of new content and features exclusive to the XBLA version – some of the showcase features include: · A total of seven game modes, including two new multiplayer modes: Co-Op and Vs. Mode · 12 achievements and 21 mini-games – more than any other adaptation, and including the exclusive Heavy Weapon™-inspired mini-game · A goofy new way to track and share progress online, where players create their own custom house and cruise down the street to see their friends’ cribs! · The highest resolution of any Plants vs. Zombies adaptation to date at 1920 x 1080 · All 50 levels of the original Adventure mode along with Puzzle, Survival, and Zen Garden Is there a reason you are not publishing Plants vs. Zombies on PSN? Will this again be left to SOE later down the line? We haven’t made any announcements about other platforms but I can say that PopCap loves to bring our titles to as many people as possible – and that means, as many platforms as possible! Do you enjoy developing your games for consoles and have you ever considered creating a bigger budget retail title? Our mission at PopCap is to make fun games. Beyond that we strive to make our games as accessible to an audience of ‘everyone’ - that means having our games on games on as many platforms as possible. Of course, it is hard to get to every channel at once…but we are working on it! Also, I should point out that our console games are available at retail in North America. Given how successful Plants vs. Zombies has been, we presume you are working on a sequel, is there anything you can tell up about this? We haven’t any news on this at present, I’m afraid. Popcap has released many an addictive game over the year, Peggle being one that particularly stands out, is this philosophy; to create games that people can’t put down, something the studio lives by? Absolutely. Our philosophy is to make fun games that people won’t want to put down and will keep coming back to. We are committed to discovering new genres of casual games and make these playable on all platforms. In terms of development, PopCap starts by asking “do WE like playing this game? We invest time in enhancing the industry and consumer’s casual game experience, prioritising a superior design process and spending about 2x/3x as long developing and polishing each game as anyone else in the industry. It is expensive but results in extremely high quality games that set PopCap’s offerings apart from other casual games and make them truly special and memorable – and hopefully nearly infinitely replayable! What do you think of Kinect and Move, would you consider supporting these devices in any of your upcoming games? We are very supportive of playing. Full stop. So generally we are supportive of any and all new platforms – even if we are not developing for them at that moment in time, if they are giving people a new reason to look at gaming, then that benefits everyone. And yes, we consider all platforms to reach our audience of everyone. We just launched our first WiiWare game – Bejeweled 2 – in North America. I don’t have official plans for others are this point but I’ve learned never to say never at PopCap! So what’s next for the studio? Can we expect any other big announcements soon? We have lots of fun coming up. Plants vs. Zombies for XBLA will launch at the beginning of September. As will Zuma Blitz for Facebook, which I am personally really looking forward to. And, of course, we always have one or two surprises up our sleeves that we can’t talk about…you just have to watch this space! [gallery]

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