INTERVIEW: John Vechey, PopCap Games

In your keynote at the Casual Connect event in Amsterdam you said 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. Peggle, for example, we are taking to as many platforms as we can, and the success on one helps the success on another. Another thing we’re looking at is how we partner with companies – who is out there, and how can we work with. The last thing we are looking at is how we can reach new customers and find ways to get them to our games.

In the mobile industry they complain about fragmentation – it sounds like instead PopCap exploits that?

Well, mobile is tough because there are so many different handsets and it’s very much a porting job – while there is a different between the really crappy handsets and the high-end ones and interface differences between iPhone and mobile, there’s not that much different overall between mobile phones. But the difference between, say, an Xbox game and a mobile phone version where you can’t just port it. For mobile, we spend a lot of time asking what the core of a game is – it’s a creative challenge because it requires talent to refine and maintain an idea.

A constant source of difficulty and stress as we grow is ensuring that level of quality and attention of detail – and how we install people in the team to make sure they do that right. It’s why, although we are on more platforms and leading on them than any other casual game company, we are not anywhere near as close as we want to be.

Where do you see PopCap sitting in overall games industry? You’ve got huge audience appeal – but does being ‘casual’ ever hurt usual studio operations, things like recruitment?

We subscribe to the belief that you need to get great games – and getting someone to make great games is inherently tough to hire for. It’s an innate thing – some people have it, others don’t. In terms of how we find those people it is difficult but we don’t have trouble finding people as we tend to look to the games industry.

In terms of PopCap itself – we are well regarded in the hardcore games space and are very lucky because of that. So when we talk to people its rare that people we hire want to make ‘hardcore games’. For myself, I was working on online games all my career and was moving towards hardcore-type games before founding PopCap – but now I wouldn’t want to work on anything but casual games, it’s just more gratifying.

Do you think that’s because hardcore games have things like story and cinematics which can get in he way of the more pure playing experience which makes casual games so attractive?

Some companies do a great job of combining those two, but the problem we have when people talk about story and games is that they aren’t playing for the story. If the story isn’t reinforcing the fun then it shouldn’t be in there. We talk about putting stories in our games, and Zuma has a story element about an Aztec god and its relationship with a stone frog – but there are only four cut scenes about that in the whole game. And Bejewelled has no story whatsoever – but Peggle, meanwhile, has a story in the characters, in that instance the characters drive the game. Ultimately, I think if you have a story in a casual game it just has to reinforce the fun.

Everyone already established in the casual games talks about issues like targeting specific audiences and the stereotypical consumer – which tends to be women aged in their 30s. Would you say that this is the best approach other people looking to enter this sector should follow?

It’s true that our dominant player demographic right now is female, but you can’t really make a game for a specific audience unless you are that audience. Otherwise you are pandering to them. There are so many casual games company making these games that are a real trend right now that are called something like ‘Female Name Adjective Blue Collar Job’. It’s tiring. Every time someone tries to make ‘games for girls’ it just doesn’t work.

So at PopCap we make games for ourselves – and we think that if we find it fun we think the audience will find our game and make it accessible for them. But we never make games for a specific audience. I disagree with many in the industry – we need to make it so that everyone can play the games and that’s the key aspect. And it’s a that point when all the casual games will find their key audiences.

PopCap is unique in its approach in that sense – you’re in some senses the Nintendo of the casual space – what’s the secret to turning that into the success which you’ve clearly had?

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.

Do you think that’s the advantage you have over core games companies like EA and others who are entering the casual games space?

I think so – they are underestimating how hard it is going to be. 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 – yet making a casual game is similar. 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.

By that same regard, would you be interested in working with or an acquisition scenario with those bigger companies that want to get in the space?

We’re always talking to companies, and the questions are always. ‘Is it the right time?’, ‘What do they really want from us?’ and ‘How does that work?’. We haven’t ruled out a specific future for PopCap, but we haven’t committed to any either. Right now we’re just focused on making great games, building a cool business, and enjoying what we do. But we are constantly talking to people on the acquisitions side – it won’t happen anytime soon, but will probably happen someday. Or maybe not – perhaps we are the next EA, who knows.

PopCap acquired a few studios of its own last year and put them into the fold, so there’s probably also a statement to be made for remaining independent, growing PopCap, staking a claim on the sector and growing the core of the casual games industry…

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 triple-A console game differs from a casual game? We’re seeing all these core games enter the space and implying that casual games are quick and cheap to make.

There is this image that is finally now going away which says that it takes three to six months only to make a 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 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 is 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 a little bit – a lot of developers in that space having started with the core fun part of the game. Something like Team Fortress by Valve is a flawless example of executing on a good gameplay idea and then adding characters.

PopCap has expanded into Asia – how important is it for you to tap into those areas?

It’s really crucial for us because the casual games market isn’t just in the US or Europe. Of course in Asia we face some big challenges; our IP is very well-known but how can we get people to enjoy the games and pay for it in a territory where piracy is high? It’s a tough on to address, but the team we have out there is very seriously addressing it.

Are there any other territories you want to push out to?

We’re constantly looking at other regions, but a big question for us is still how do we grow further in Europe, and also the US? We’re very much focused on nurturing the business in Europe, and territories where we can build on our success – so for instance we just hired a new business development manager in Germany because we need to improve how we operate in each country, because there are different languages, etc. for each region, and kind of improve and nurture our business in places we are already present.

You oversee the PopCap strategy for the Mac, and were one of the first companies to make iPod games. There’s a lot of speculation that a lot of their games activity, if it grows, will focus on casual games. So what’s 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.