INTERVIEW: PopCap

After last week’s feature looked at how leading casual titles have seen console releases take most of the credit for record breaking sales, we spoke with one of the men behind what might genuinely be the most popular game ever made.

CasualGaming.biz: What is it about Bejeweled that has made the series so continually popular for so many years?

Jason Kapalka: I think part of it is the simplicity of the game. Like Solitaire or Tetris, it’s almost primal in its simplicity. Most computer games tend to be complex or based around technical features, like the latest 3D graphics, which means they date quite quickly, while a game like Bejeweled was ‘outdated’ by those standards when it first released; but that also means in a way that it’s timeless.
 
CG.biz: Why has PopCap followed both digital and physical distribution models, and what have been the benefits of combining both?

JK: We started with digital distribution not out of choice, but because at the time, in 2000, there was no way in the world for a tiny group of developers to get a little puzzle game onto the shelves at retail. The internet was the only option for that kind of thing. The casual game boom that followed Bejeweled has been called “the second coming of shareware,” and I think to some extent that’s true, although now of course digital distribution is becoming much more widespread and mainstream.
 
As for physical distribution, it made sense to do it once we had reached a size where we could manage the extra work in making boxes, dealing with retailers, and so on, and our games were well enough known that we wouldn’t get laughed out of meetings. Not everyone is willing to buy a game off the internet, and that’s not likely to change for a while, so getting the games into retail stores is the way to reach those people.
 
CG.biz: More than one person has called Bejeweled something along the lines of ‘the world’s greatest casual game’. What about the Bejeweled series makes it deserving of such praise?

JK: Well, it’s hard to step back from something you’ve worked on to see it in the broader historical context, but it’s certainly surprising that Bejeweled has taken on such a life of its own. At the time we were making it there was certainly no realisation it would have such success. In some ways, the feeling is more of having discovered this game mechanic that was there all along than of having consciously ‘invented’ something. As for its appeal, there are lots of theories, but it’s like any hit in music or film... there’s something mysterious about it that can’t be easily replicated (or else everyone would do so!).
 
CG.biz: A press statement reports that Twist took ‘considerably more time, more money, and more people’ than the original Bejeweled. Why was that?

JK: As casual games become more sophisticated, the audience does expect better production values, graphics, sounds, and so forth, so part of it is just that you need to spend more time and money on all that. But the other part, that took the most time, was spent in trying, abandoning, and refining game mechanics. A lot of complicated new things were added and then later edited out. We may have gotten lucky with Bejeweled, but with Bejeweled Twist we had to take the hard-work approach, of trying lots of things before we figured out what worked.
 
CG.biz: How did the ‘twist mechanic’ come about, and why was it deemed as the best direction in which to take the series?

JK: We’d been playing around with some prototypes that involved the twisting mechanic, and had just stuck in the Bejeweled gems as placeholder art. Everyone thought it was a really fun base mechanic, and then the realization came: hmm, what if we just left the gems in there instead of changing them for something else? The game felt like it had enough in common with the spirit of Bejeweled to share the name, but also that it was going off in its own direction as well. That’s why it ended up as Bejeweled Twist instead of Bejeweled 3...it’s a variant of Bejeweled, but not a direct sequel to the earlier games.
 
CG.biz: It does seem headline writers occasionally turn a blind eye to the casual movement. How does it feel when games like Wii Sports get credited as the world’s best selling games?

JK: Nintendo has been following a parallel path to us for quite a while with the DS and Wii. I certainly don’t feel they’re getting credited unfairly or that they ‘stole our thunder’ or anything. I think they’ve been doing the same thing we have, trying to move games back from the hardcore crowd to a more general audience... they’ve just been doing it in the console and handheld space where we’ve been largely focused on the web and PC world. The success of the Wii helps us and the whole ‘casual’ field, if anything.
 
CG.biz: Has ‘casual’ finally stopped being a dirty word, and if so, do you think PopCap has contributed to the acceptance of the casual movement?

JK: The term ‘casual games’ has probably begun to outlive its usefulness. We first started noticing it a couple years back... when we started, nobody called Bejeweled a ‘casual game,’ it was just a ‘web game’ or a ‘downloadable game’ or a ‘puzzle game.’ As a label, it’s been useful in giving people a handle to get a hold of the concept of what we’re doing, the idea of games meant for the world outside of hardcore gamers, but it has become awfully broad now. It encompasses our web and PC games, basically everything Nintendo does, and some would say music games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. By some standards practically half the video game market is ‘casual’ now, which is great, but it makes it hard to be specific in what you’re talking about.
 
CG.biz: The statistics about Bejeweled and PopCap in general are quite staggering. What do you plan to do next to maintain that momentum?

JK: We’re continuing with what we’ve done before, of course, in terms of new puzzle games and sequels to existing ones. We’re also branching into platforms that are new to us, like the DS, with Peggle Dual Shot coming up in March in the US, and other console releases in the future. A big area we haven’t done too much with yet is in ‘social network’ gaming on sites like Facebook and Myspace, so we’re starting to experiment there with things like Bejeweled Blitz, which just went up on Facebook.
 
CG.biz: What makes PopCap’s output so relevant to today’s world?

JK: Well, certainly one argument in these grim financial times is that people are looking for more affordable entertainment. Video games in general fill that category, and PopCap games hopefully are an even better proposition in the bang-for-your-buck measurement. So we hope that by providing ‘cheap thrills’ we can do our part to keep people happy in tough times.