Popcap Games Plants Vs Zombies

[Michele Firmasyah]

Threeyears! No wonder there are so many modes to the game! I bet there were a number of winning prototypes, and the decision was made to include them all. And again, I ask, how did this not fall on its face as trying too hard to be all things to all players?

If anything demonstrates my claim that a game can be made more casual by making it more accessible, Plants vs Zombies is it. It does so many things right while providing so much of it to the player in a manageable way. The entire experience is fun and enjoyable.

We had a lot of time to polish it at the end. I think that is one of the key things it takes to turn a good game into a great one. All the plants and zombies were done about a year before we shipped. The game was fully playable and in beta for 6 months. Much to my surprise there were 10,000 little tweaks we made at the end.

PopCap Games, or simply known as PopCap, is an American video game development and publishing subsidiary company based in Seattle, Washington. It was founded on July 18, 2000 by John Vechey, Brian Fiete, and Jason Kapalka, and currently employs more than 400 people. As of July 12, 2011, PopCap was acquired by Electronic Arts[1] and is now a subsidiary of one of the leading game development companies. PopCap specializes in "casual" games, and often allows people to play their games for free during a brief trial period before the game must be purchased.

PopCap's 1st game, a gem-swapping game called Bejeweled, has sold more than 50 million units and was awarded the Computer Gaming Hall of Fame in 2002. PopCap games are available for Web, PC, Mac, Xbox and PlayStation consoles, Zeebo, Cellphones, PDAs, iPod Classic, iPod Touch, Nintendo DS, and other mobile devices. Plants vs. Zombies, a game created by George Fan, was first released was on the PC in May 5, 2009. Over time, the game was released to other platforms.

On an unknown date, PopCap opened a studio in Shanghai, China. PopCap Shanghai develops games separately from PopCap Seattle that are only available exclusively in China. In October 2011, Talkweb Information System Co. Ltd, a Chinese public company, signed a cooperation agreement with EA to operate Plants vs. Zombies 2 (Chinese version) and Bejeweled Blitz in the Chinese mainland[2]. However, it wasn't until PopCap Shanghai sold the game development completely to Talkweb that they are now the main developer of Plants vs. Zombies 2 (Chinese version) since the 2.0.1 update. PopCap now only acts as the publisher of the game, along with Electronic Arts. Talkweb then removed every other PopCap game (including Bejeweled) exclusive to China, as well as slowly shutting down every online one.

On May 5, 2009, PopCap released Plants vs. Zombies, a tower defense video game where the player defends their house with plants against an oncoming horde of zombies. The game received a positive response from critics, and was nominated for multiple Interactive Achievement Awards, alongside receiving praise for its musical score by Laura Shigihara.

Plants vs Zombies is boldly going where no popular gaming franchise has gone before: to a land of over-the-shoulder camera angles and gleefully bobbing crosshairs, whereupon things will be shot mercilessly. OK, maybe it's not the boldest move ever in the grand scheme of things, but Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare is quite a departure for PopCap's vegetable stew of a tower porch defender, and it's looking admirably silly. But so far, all we've seen is a quick bit of co-op. What about large-scale (24-ish player) competitive multiplayer and the ability to play as zombies? Also, stepping back a bit, why make a shooter out of Plants vs Zombies at all? I spoke with creative director Justin Wiebe to find out.

RPS: Why did you decide to do this with Plants vs Zombies, of all series?

Wiebe: We really wanted to grow the franchise. We knew it could be more than a 2D tower defense game, but we weren't sure. So we had a team say, "You know what? Let's try something different. Let's just go for it. And if it doesn't work out, that's fine." Because if it's not fun, we're not gonna release it. But we worked on the demo for a while and it turned out that this thing was just awesome.

But we knew we couldn't just tell everyone, "Hey, we're making this really cool PvZ action-multiplayer game," because it sounds crazy, right? It shouldn't work. So we knew we had to show them, not tell them. So we had to keep it secret for two years.

Wiebe: We explored different genres. We knew we wanted to build an action game that allowed players to play in the fight between the plants and zombies. That felt like the right way to go because it'd let the series evolve. We explored different design ideas. We put a bunch of possibilities together, like maybe an open-world game or a straight-up single-player action game. But at the end of the day, we kept coming back to multiplayer. Multiplayer brings that random fun element to it - the ability to play with friends or strangers. It just worked for us.

Wiebe: This is truthfully our very first reveal to the world. This is our four-player co-op map. It's also the first game mode we're unveiling. But when we started off, this was actually billed as a very competitive multiplayer game. So we've got a lot more details that we're gonna be unveiling over time. So essentially, this is just the tip of the iceberg for us. But you can imagine if we head toward a 24-player competitive Plants vs Zombies experience... just let your imagination run with it.

What we've done is we've worked very hard with our team. We're very passionate PvZ players, and we went through all the characters trying to nail down what are the four core plant classes that we wanted to have. Which characters fit those classes. And it's the same way for the zombies. It's very difficult to whittle it down to what are going to be the essential core of your multiplayer experience.

Wiebe: We actually assembled a team of Frostbite veterans. People who'd been working in the engine for years. People with experience in shooters and other action genres. And that experience basically allowed us to have a playable version of our game up and running honestly within two weeks of starting development. We just went right for it because honestly we needed to create a demo and prove whether this was gonna be fun or not very, very quickly.

RPS: It all looks very tongue-in-cheek and self-aware, though. But, at the same time, I think a lot of people feel like you're morphing PvZ into some seriousface rah-rah-rah shooter. Do you think that's shooter fatigue talking? Are you worried about shooter fatigue?

Wiebe: Well, I think shooting is actually a core part of PvZ, right? I mean, you look at your Pea Shooter. You've got your cactus. There's a lot of projectile-based characters within the core game. Basically, all we did is find the characters that made the most sense as projectile characters. But if you look at the Chomper, he's not projectile-based. He's more of a platformer kind of character. He just wants to run around and eat as many zombies as possible.

RPS: Well, sure. Things do technically shoot other things in PvZ, but that's not the main verb of the game. In PvZ classic, you're strategically arraying cheerful green things that do the shooting for you. Garden Warfare is actually about aiming and pulling the trigger. That action, that central goal. That's what I mean.

Wiebe: Well, I think what we're gearing it toward is fans of Plants vs Zombies first and foremost - and fans of the action genre. So if you take that, add some depth, and mix in some humor, this game is not gonna be positioned in a place where we would necessarily compete with the likes of Call of Duty or Battlefield. We want to be the game that players play when they want to relax from managing their KD ratio. Something where they can just sit down, enjoy the game, and laugh out loud.

RPS: Yeah, and humor's obviously a pretty big thing here. The Call of Duty call-out at the start, especially, got some good laughs. But frankly, a lot of EA games seem to get a little too wrapped up in themselves. They lose sight of how silly most of what we do in games really is. What are you doing to avoid that?

Wiebe: I think the important thing in this game is to not take itself too seriously and look strategically at where we can poke fun at other games - including our own titles. We've already made fun of a lot of EA-owned products, and I think there's a lot of good humor in that. We're gonna carry that on because it's part of the core humor of the game.

PopCap Games are the creators of Bejeweled, Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies, each of them one of the biggest and most lovable games on PC. When casual and social games are reaching ever larger audiences and their developers are getting a bad reputation for poor design practices, how have PopCap managed to find fans amongst gamers and grannies alike? To find out, I visited the studio and interviewed everyone I could find. We're running those interviews each day this week and calling it PopCap Week .

Today I'm speaking to George Fan, the designer of Plants vs. Zombies. Alongside a ton of incredibly early sketches from the game's development, George talks about his time working for Blizzard and PopCap simultaneously , PvZ's origins as a double-decker fish tank, and why he dressed as a zombie for the director of Dawn of the Dead. Also, a few words from his cat.

George Fan: They didn't hire me at that point. At the time, I was looking for a job and I also got an offer from Blizzard. I was ecstatic, as I had been a Blizzard fan my whole life, and I got offers from both Blizzard and PopCap. I'm from the Bay Area in California, so that was one factor that ultimately let me make the choice to go to Blizzard.

George Fan: That was a really tough transition. Normally when you work in a job they're not really keen on having you work on other projects for other companies, so I was really concerned that if I worked at Blizzard I'd have to stop working on Insaniquarium. But they made an exception, based on precedent, they said, 'Because you were working on this before we'll give you the leeway to finish it up.' But knowing that I wasn't going to work on anything else afterwards. And that was actually a pretty horrible thing to try to attempt. I don't suggest that anyone works a job programming during the day and going home and programming some more during the night. It's just too much using the same part of the brain, and the same part of the wrists. My wrists got really, really messed up that year, so I'm glad I've made it through and released Insaniquarium, but I don't think anyone should do it that way.

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