PopCap spending over $1m on next game

Sure, that number may not seem like much when you look at a game like GTAIV and its $100m+ price tag, but for the casual games world, breaking the $1m mark could be a watershed moment. Casual games are usually considered much cheaper to make, especially those which start out as PC downloads, such as those PopCap’s reputation is built on.

When asked when the casual games sector will start talking about million-dollar budgets in the way the core games industry does, Vechey told CasualGaming.biz: “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 released.”

The unnamed game, due later this year, has been in the works at PopCap for sometime, explained Vechey.

“It’s been in production for some time – we took a few wrong turns with the product and turned back to go in different directions. It’s really tough to get the simple gameplay out there, but we’re there.”

PopCap’s mystery game is perfect evidence that casual games know how to better spend money on pre-production and prototyping of game concepts than traditional games companies, Vechey added.

“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.

“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.”

He also told CasualGaming.biz that those moving from the core games publishing space to casual, such as EA and Midway, “are underestimating how hard it is going to be”.

He said: “I actually have a huge amount of respect for all those big companies and am really glad they are getting into casual as it is only going to be good for the casual games space. But I do think they are going to underestimate the challenge of making good games, though. It would be like if EA suddenly said ‘hey, let’s get into the novel writing business because stories are like games but are cheaper to do’. But really, writing a great novel is a very, very hard thing to do – and making a casual game is similar to that in its difficulty. So I think those big companies may be shocked to find that it’s not about spending money, it’s about nurturing talent and creating an environment for that. They will figure it out, though – there are smart people at those companies – it’s just that it will take them about four or five years to get it right.”

The full interview with Vechey will be published on CasualGaming.biz later this week.