The Minds Behind Some of the Most Addictive Games Around

If you've wasted half your life playing Peggle, Bejeweled, Zuma or Plants vs. Zombies, blame these guys!

The gaming industry tends to focus on the high end products, first person shooters that crank out a bazillion polygons a seconds and RPGs which spend more time developing the plot in cut scenes than in actual gameplay. But for every person playing Borderlands, there are scores playing casual games like Bejeweled and Zuma. PopCap Games has been at the forefront of casual game development, with a catalog that includes bestselling titles like Peggle and Plants vs Zombies, in addition to the two previously mentioned. I recently had a chance to talk to Jason Kapalka, one of the founders and the creative director of PopCap. We discussed the evolution of PopCap, how the casual gaming industry differs from mainstream gaming, and the challenges of creating games that can be engaging, without being frustrating.

James Turner: Could you start by talking a little bit about your background and how you came to PopCap and what you did before then?

Jason Kapalka: My career in computer games started back in the early '90s, when I was writing for the magazine, Computer Gaming World, doing various reviews and articles. In '95, one of the editors from the magazine left to join an internet dotcom start-up in San Francisco called TEN, the Total Entertainment Network. He invited me to come down there and work there, which I did. And TEN evolved over the dotcom boom and bust cycle, from a very hardcore gaming service into what eventually turned into Pogo.com around 1999. I worked there initially on hardcore games. One day, I was working on Total Annihilation tournaments, and then the next day, someone said, "Hey, design bingo." And I was sort of like, "Oh. Bingo? Okay."

That was the beginning of my casual game design career, I guess. And yes, I was there at Pogo. I helped design a lot of the structure for their casual games until around 2000 when I left, and Pogo eventually went on to get bought by Electronic Arts, of course. I left in 2000 and started PopCap with two other guys, Brian Fiete and John Vechey who are these guys from Indiana that I'd met earlier, around '97. They had made an internet action game called ARC that we'd produced on TEN, and we stayed in touch. In 2000, we all thought we wanted to try something different. So we all left our respective companies to start PopCap. As you might remember, 2000 was not the best year for internet companies. So we didn't really realize that the entire industry was collapsing. We had an interesting time initially. Luckily, our ignorance protected us, I guess.

PopCap started from there, just the three of us working out of our apartments. And over time, we'd say, "Well, I guess we need to hire an artist." And I'd say, "Well, I guess we need to hire maybe another guy here to program this stuff." And then eventually, maybe someone should look at the books or whatever, so we'll hire someone to take care of the bookkeeping. And it kept going like that until eventually we thought that maybe we needed an office. And from there, suddenly, we've got nearly 300 employees now in 2009. So it's been an interesting kind of experience. We never really intended PopCap to get anywhere near as big as it has today.

James Turner: How would you describe PopCap's place in the market today?

Jason Kapalka: I guess it's a bit odd. Casual game companies exist in these strange spaces where they're often the developer and the publisher at the same time. And then they also publish stuff with other guys, where they're sort of rivals, but also they're partners. There's a lot of this co-opetition thing going on. PopCap is obviously a developer, and we develop a lot of games. We used to publish other people's games. And we still do indirectly. in that we have SpinTop Games. which is a company we bought a couple of years back. They distribute a lot of other people's games through their site. But primarily, I think we develop and then publish titles. But we primarily focus on publishing our own titles. So we're kind of a self-publisher, I suppose.

James Turner: That's actually something I wanted to ask you about because one of your distribution channels now is Steam, which is another company's portal for their games and others. How do you see that relationship?

Jason Kapalka: Steam's been really good. We work with lots of different portals. Steam is one of many that our typical game would go out on. On Steam, on Real Arcade, Big Fish Games, Yahoo Games, MSN, WildTangent, a whole bunch of smaller channels. So Steam was just one of several. It's been interesting in that it was developed differently than a lot of those other ones. Steam is definitely much more of a hardcore game distribution channel than something like Real Arcade. So initially, when we started on Steam, it was uncertain whether our games were going to really fit in. Initially, a lot of the ones we tried on Steam didn't really work too well for their audience. Hidden object games don't do especially well with Steam users, for example.

The turning point for Steam was probably when we did Peggle Extreme with Valve. I don't know if you remember that. Peggle had just come out, and the guys at Valve really liked it. We were talking and we had some weird ideas. Someone had the odd suggestion to do sort of a miniature-themed version of Peggle that featured all of the Orange Box's characters, the Half-Life, MT Team Fortress guys. It was a really strange idea, because that was a fairly mature violent kind of franchise. And certainly, it didn't seem like the obvious fit for Peggle. But, on the other hand, we thought, "Well, what the heck? We can try it and it's only going to go on Steam anyway so it's not like it'll offend the soccer moms necessarily." So we tried that out, and it went up. And we were all kinds of nervous because we didn't know -- it had launched initially as a free download with the Orange Box. And even though it didn't cost people anything, we were still kind of wondering if there was going to be this big backlash from the hardcore community about, "What the hell is this cheap little pinball thing doing in the middle of my Orange Box product."

But actually, the response was really good. I mean, the Orange Box guys all really liked Peggle a lot. And ultimately, that led them to go and seek out and buy the regular versions of Peggle which made Peggle suddenly this fairly big success on Steam. Which a month or two ago, before that, didn't seem very likely that this game with unicorns and rainbows would be selling well on Steam. So after that, that sort of seemed to kind of be -- it sort of opened the floodgates a little bit. And now a variety of our games do very well on Steam. Obviously, Plants Vs Zombies was the last one that had quite a hit there. Not everything. There's still some of our games that are clearly more casual and that don't particularly work well on Steam. But the ones that do work there seem to really work well.

James Turner: There seems to be a fairly different expectation level for casual games in terms of graphics and such. Do you think that's a natural result of how they're produced and what they're intended for? Or could you see something like Plants Vs Zombies but with the graphics levels of a Half-Life?

Jason Kapalka: It's certainly possible. I mean in some cases, we're not intentionally trying to make the games low fidelity. We try to do the best art direction we can. Although the usual contradiction, or decision to be made, there is we also want to make games as accessible as possible. So we want Plants Vs Zombies to play on every crummy netbook and seven-year-old computer your mom has and all of these types of things. And so that tends to mean that we try to work and have good art, but usually make the technical requirements very modest. We've been working at making things that can scale well so that on a good computer, you'll get a really nice experience and it'll still scale down to play on a lower-end computer. But that can be challenging in itself. So usually, we err on the side of not worrying about the graphics being too high-end because our experience is showing that a good game with not very fancy graphics can sell very well, like Plants Vs Zombies. And I think that game has good graphics, but it's definitely limited. It's only got 800X600 resolution and so forth. But on the other hand, we've seen plenty of games in the casual space that have really good graphics and they sell very poorly if they're not a fun game. So accessibility and fun definitely, for us, end up being a first priority over graphics. And especially 3-D or technically impressive graphics versus just good art direction.

James Turner: You would think Nethack and Rogue would be the ultimate proof that you can have good game play without good graphics.

Jason Kapalka: Sure, I love Roguelike games. We have lots of Nethack fans over at PopCap, which seems a bit weird in that they're obviously not very casual in many regards. But yeah, they're good exemplars of that principle that graphics are not as important as game play.

(continue reading)

Four short links: 2 November 2009

Inside Botnets, Creating Choropleths, Privacy Simplified, Massively Machiavellian Online Social Gaming

1. Your Botnet is My Botnet (PDF) -- 2008 USENIX Security paper analysing >70G of data gathered when security researchers hijacked the Torpig botnet. A major limitation of analyzing a botnet from the inside is the limited view. Most current botnets use stripped-down IRC or HTTP servers as their command and control channels, and it is not possible to make reliable statements about other bots. In particular, it is difficult to determine the size of the botnet or the amount and nature of the sensitive data that is stolen. One way to overcome this limitation is to “hijack” the entire botnet, typically by seizing control of the C&C channel. [...] As a result, whenever a bot resolves a domain (or URL) to connect to its C&C server, the connection is redirected or sinkholed. This provides the defender with a complete view of all IPs that attempt to connect to the C&C server as well as interesting information that the bots might send..
2. cartographer.js -- build thematic maps using Google Maps. To be precise, you can build a choropleth, which is my word of the day. (via Simon Willison)
3. Making Privacy Policies Not Suck (Aza Raskin) -- interested in developing a standard set of privacy policy components the way that Creative Commons has created a standard set of copyright license components.
4. Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem of Hell (TechCrunch) -- many of those games on Facebook that your friends play are evil. To get in-game money or objects, they'll let you take a survey but at the end you're signed up for crap you never wanted. Related: this article on monetizing social networks which talks about social gaming's business model.

Four short links: 13 October 2009

Open Source, Gov 2.0, Gaming, Education

1. Our Open Source School -- blog of Albany Senior High School in New Zealand, which only runs open source software.
2. Behind The Scenes at What Do They Know -- interesting post showing details behind the What Do They Know web site. In the last year there have been only seven significant cases where requests have been hidden from public view on the site due to concerns relating to potential libel and defamation. Three of those cases have involved groups of twenty or so requests made by the same one or two users. While actual number of requests we have had to hide is around 70 (0.4% of the total) even this small fraction overstates the situation due to the repetition of the same potentially libelous accusations comments in different requests. In all cases we have kept as much information up on the site as possible. Our policy with respect to all requests to remove information from the site is that we only take down information in exceptional circumstances; generally only when the law requires us to do so.
3. The Complete History of Lemmings -- a must-read for videogamers from the early 90s. Theres been much debate over the choice of colours as well, but the colours were selected, not because they were the easiest to choose, but because of the PC EGA palette. With the limited choice, it was decided the green hair was nicer than blue, and with that, the final Lemming was born. I was actually the next person to code up a demo on the Commodore 64, but I only got so far as having a single Lemming walking over the landscape before Dave put me onto another project.
4. Google Replaces TeleAtlas -- Tele Atlas confirms that Google has decided to stop using Tele Atlas map data for the U.S. Google will now use its own map data. Our relationship with Google for map coverage continues outside of the U.S. in dozens of geographies.

The iPhone as a Gaming Platform: Share of Top Apps By Category

As a follow-up to my recent post on the Top Grossing Apps list on iTunes, I examined three lists highlighted in the app store: the Top Paid, Top Free, and Top Grossing Apps. Believing that many users scan these lists, developers covet a spot on any of these Top 100 charts.

In my previous posts, I've highlighted that Games is the largest^† category, accounting for about 20% of unique apps. The graphs below show that the gaming category has a much larger share^†† in each of the three Top 100 lists:

68% of the Top Paid, 67% of the Top Free, and 50% of the Top Grossing apps were Games. Other categories that had disproportionate share of apps in the Top 100 rankings include Social Networking, Photography, (and to a lesser extent) Sports, and Utilities.

In contrast, three of the five largest categories (Books, Travel, Education) were severely underrepresented in each of the U.S. iTunes Top 100 Charts.

(†) Size of a category is measured in terms of unique apps.
(††) Data for this post was from the two weeks ending 10/4/2009. I consider an app as being in the Top 100, if it was listed among the most popular (free, paid or grossing) apps, sometime during those two weeks.

Four short links: 31 August 2009

Digital Textbooks Rock, Diagrammed Sentences, Urban Games, Quirky Food

1. CK-12 Textbooks Accepted by State of California -- kudos to open textbook non-profit CK-12 for having many of their textbooks okayed for use in classrooms. Their books did better than those from commercial publishers! (via Slashdot)
2. Diagrammr -- web app to diagram simple sentences. (via brian on delicious)
3. Noticings -- Noticings is a game of noticing things in cities. Snap a photo of something interesting you happen upon, upload it to Flickr, tag it with 'noticings' and geotag it with where it was taken. (via migurski on delicious)
4. White Castle Microwavable Frozen Hamburgers -- Cal Henderson and Joshua Schachter can be bribed with these after midnight. (via direct observation)

Four short links: 7 July 2009

Motivation, R, Games, and Open Source Medicine

1. Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them -- Tests done since 1933 show that people who talk about their intentions are less likely to make them happen. Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed. I have noticed this myself. It must be balanced against the other finding that public commitment increases probability of followthrough, which might work in sales but seems to fail miserably in getting me to do anything productive. (via migurski on Delicious)
2. Rseek -- search engine for info on R. Necessary because of the non-unique project name. (via Benjamin Mako Hill)
3. Treasure World (Offworld) -- Nintendo DS game that turns wifi spots into collectible treasure. You have to explore the real world as you play the game, another of these games that mix the online and offline worlds. (via waxy)
4. 50 Successful Open Source Projects That Are Changing Medicine -- notice the large number of electronic health record (EHR) suites. What are the chances of any of them getting a slice of Obama's EHR money that the ex-RedHatters behind The Axial Project are going for? (via timoreilly on Twitter)

Four short links: 2 June 2009

Fonts, Medicine, Healthcare, Project Natal

1. TypeKit -- Jeff Veen's new startup, making typography on the web fail to suck. Every major browser is about to support the ability to link to a font. That means you can write a bit of CSS, include a URL to a font file, and have your page display with the typography you expect. While it’s technically quite easy to link to fonts, it’s legally more nuanced. We’ve been working with foundries to develop a consistent web-only font linking license. We’ve built a technology platform that lets us to host both free and commercial fonts in a way that is incredibly fast, smoothes out differences in how browsers handle type, and offers the level of protection that type designers need without resorting to annoying and ineffective DRM.
2. Talking With Jamie Heywood About PatientsLikeMe (Jon Udell) -- the creator of patientslikeme, a site that provides people with serious conditions a chance to report on the efficacy of their treatment, their unique symptoms, and (if they wish) to connect with the researchers in the drug companies who made the treatments. It's a new closure for the feedback loop of medical research.
3. The Cost Conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health care. (New Yorker) -- the lesson is that you tolerate bad ethics, bad business, bad behaviour at your own risk because the rogue you tolerate may become the anchor tenant for a mall of villainy you'll find very hard to dismiss.
4. Microsoft Announces Project Natal -- full-body motion capture for XBox 360, as game controller. I'm keen to see whether having nothing in your hand is as satisfying as having something to hold. Kudos to MSFT for bringing research to market as mainstream entertainment.

Four short links: 19 May 2009

Recession Map, Gaming Psychology, Charging For Unwanted Content, and Two Great Projects

1. Economic Stress Map Outlines Recession's Stories (AP) -- The Stress Index synthesizes three complex sets of ever-evolving data. By factoring in monthly numbers for foreclosure, bankruptcy and most painfully unemployment, the AP has assembled a numeral that reflects the comparative pain each American county is feeling during these dark economic days. Fascinating view of the country, and I wish I had one for New Zealand.
2. Handed Keys to Kingdom, Gamers Race to Bottom (Wired) -- Free to play the game as they like, players frequently make choices that ruin the fun. It’s an irony that can prove death to game publishers: Far from loving their liberty, players seem to quickly bore of the “ideal” games they’ve created for themselves and quit early. Not only a lesson for creators of user-generated content sites, but also for students of human nature: if you provide a number, some people will act to maximize that number come what may. See also friend counts on social networks. (via jasonwryan on Twitter)
3. San Jose Mercury News to Charge For Online Content -- congratulations to the SJMN for trying something, my regrets that it's this. This business model didn't fail in 1998 because there weren't enough people on the Internet, it failed for the same reason it will fail now: you have a generic product and a cheaper substitute will win.
4. Two Groundbreaking Open Source Projects -- two open source projects that are developing software in very different ways (one with centralised authority, one more distributed), large (60k and 200k+ LOC), in some cases teaching people to code from scratch, with a wonderful vibe and solid outputs. I was stunned and delighted at the OTW’s process for choosing a programming language for the Archive. In the Livejournal post, Python vs Ruby deathmatch!, they asked non-programmers to read up on either language and then write a short “Choose your own adventure” program. {The trick is that we would like you to try writing this program with no help from any programmers or coders. DO feel free to help each other out in the comments, ask your flist for help (as long as you say “no coders answer!”), or to Google for other help or ideas-in fact, if you find a different tutorial or book out there which you think is better than the ones below, we really want to hear about it.} There were 74 comments in reply, and the results — 150 volunteers on the project, many of whom had never programmed before — speak for themselves. It makes me realize how much of the macho meritocracy "it's just about how GOOD YOU ARE" individual-excellence cocks-out culture in programming in general and open source in particular isn't about what's necessary to make good programs and good programmers, it's what's necessary to make great egos feel good about themselves.

Web 2.0 Expo Preview: Will Wright, Sims and Simulations

Will Wright has been the foundational genius behind a thirty year string of blockbuster games, from the early Raid on Bungeling Bay in 1984 to the first truly fun urban simulation Sim City, a game "universe" that let players create and manage their own cities, dealing with everything from balancing budgets and battling crime to dealing with the aftermath of alien attacks. This game was later expanded to SimCity Societies to better explore the larger social factors that shape society.

From there he delved deeper into the lives of the individual inhabitants of those cities with the Sims, a virtual "dollhouse" that gives players the ability to shape the eponymous sim-people, their houses, careers and relationships (and in subsequent installments, let them start businesses, party, go to college, have pets, and take vacations, among many other activities).

In 2008, Wright produced Spore, where the players can "play gods" - raising new life from Sim-ooze to intergalactic civilizations in a freeform multiplayer environment that's evolving nearly as fast as the spores themselves. Scheduled for June 2009, Wright will release the much awaited Sims 3, in which for the first time, the Sims world comes together in a full immersive environment, perhaps the full merger of Sims and Sim City.

Wright will be speaking on the Sims and games in general at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. O'Reilly editor Kurt Cagle caught up with Will Wright to ask a few questions.

Kurt Cagle: You've been doing this a long time. I can remember distinctly playing Raid on Bungeling Bay back on the old Commodores days back in the late '80s. The thing I find fascinating is every game that you've done in the last 25 years or so would more actually be considered a simulation rather than a game. What have you found most fascinating about simulations as games?

Will Wright: Well, as a kid, I spent a lot of time getting models and an inordinate amount of time dealing with the plastic and with models. That kind of got me into robotics which was kind of a different form of modeling. I bought my first computer, which was an Apple 2, to connect to my robots to control the programs on that. It wasn't too long before I started doing little simulations of the robots I was working on on the computer, and I started realizing this was kind of a new way to make the models that I'd kind of grown up making, except these models had dynamics underneath them rather than just static structure.

(continue reading)