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Interview
Top of the Pops In this extract of an exclusive interview from CasualGaming.biz, we speak with PopCap co-founder John Vechey about the casual games developer and publisher and his thoughts on the marketplace overall… You said at the Casual Connect event in Amsterdam that the casual games industry needs to evolve. How does PopCap plan to help that happen? One of the things we are doing is thinking about casual not as a separate business, such as mobile or PC, but how it’s all tied together. We’re looking at is how we partner with other companies – who is out there, and how can we work with – and how we can reach new customers and find ways to get them to our games. PopCap has been hugely successful – what’s your secret? I think it’s all about the games and attention to detail and fighting for the creative process. It’s tough working on games – Peggle has emotionally scarred developers that worked on it. They were so passionate about it and creative… I’m not saying it was like art, but that level of creativity is intense to make something new. And PopCap’s willing to do that – we set the whole company up to do that, a company just can’t switch to make games like that because all of our choices so far have been to guarantee that creative environment and then leveraging it as a business. So our business team and studio are completely separate – their schedules are completely separate and the games are done when they are done. You acquired a few studios own last year and, so there’s probably also a statement to be made there about remaining independent… Yeah, and that’s really what we already do. We meet with developers and find out how to work with them. PopCap doesn’t have a traditional publishing arm – but what we’re always doing is looking for developers we could acquire or work with. And they’re studios that are good at making games and focused on delivering a great experience. From a production point of view how would you say the making of a tripleA console game differs from a casual game? We’re seeing all these core games enter the space as if casual games are quick and cheap to make… There is this image that is finally now 10 | JUNE 2008
different directions. It’s really tough to get the simple gameplay out there. Would you say that the development of casual games differs from core games in that they tend to start with a concept, and the potential stories and characters are added on afterwards is needed, whereas a hardcore game starts with a character or story and then matched with a genre? Yes, and that’s where the hardcore industry has gone wrong – a lot of developers in that space having started with the core fun part of the game. Something like Team Fortress is a flawless example of executing on a good idea and then adding characters.
“It takes years for us to make a great casual game…”
going away which says that it takes three to six months only to make a great casual game. And maybe for some people it does take three months. But for us it takes years. Peggle was in prototype mode for nine months. We’ve had games in the works for three years which were cancelled. I actually think in comparison to the hardcore games space there is a lot more prototyping and a lot more iteration in that beginning part when it comes to core gameplay. That’s kind of sad – because I often wish that in the core games space those developers had time to do a little bit
more iteration on their games at the start. There are some developers that do that – Valve is one which I really respect; they take a long time on their games and I’m glad they do, otherwise I wouldn’t get to enjoy Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life. We spend more time than anyone else in the casual games space on those things, sometimes over two years, and that tends to mean they cost over $500,000. In the core games space very few people are able to take that risk, except for rare cases like Valve or Blizzard. On the point of budget – when will the casual games industry get to the point when it starts talking about million dollar and over budgets? I think PopCap’s actually about to do that. We have a title in development which has had over a million dollars spent on it so far, and it’s still not announced. How long has that been in the works? It’s been in full production for some time – we took a few wrong turns with the product and toned back to go in
You oversee the PopCap strategy for the Mac, and were one of the first companies to make iPod games. There’s speculation that a lot of their games activity, if it grows, will focus on casual games. So what are your plans for that platform? Apple is an amazing company and doing some awesome things – the iPhone is probably the best consumer handset designed so far. I can’t speak for their casual strategy, but with the iPhone I think it’s going to change the mobile industry and have a significant impact overall – in fact we’re already seeing its influence. How much of the success of the platform will come down to its ubiquity? Or will it be driven by the fact it, like the DS, has a touch screen – which changes the way people interact with casual games? I don’t know how much it will be driven by touch screen – but from a games standpoint the touch screens are useful; if all mobile devices in future included that kind of interface I’d be very excited as that changes the way the mobile business works. We’d no longer be making a game for 200 handsets and just six or so. But I think the simple fact that the iPhone has a really simple web browser is what will really help the mobile world, and help aid the world of mobile games. READ THE FULL INTERVIEW AT WWW.CASUALGAMING.BIZ