1.
We could call [Bejeweled] as 'Tetris of 21th. Century', due to High
success & fame. But nobody might expect it in Production period.
When
we first built Bejeweled, we had no idea how successful it would
become. Back then, we thought our primary business would be licensing
games to websites ? not building downloadable games. In fact, we almost
sold the entire game to another company for only $50,000 which at the
time we thought would be a good deal! Luckily that deal didn’t work
out, because Bejeweled has gone on to become very popular. Bejeweled
started the same way all our games start ? as a very simple, very fun
game mechanic that we prototyped quickly. Then we added everything else
around it and came up with the idea of using jewels.
2.
'Casual Game in Download Market' became very big at now. People could
analysis about that, the reason why, in some different ways. What about
thoughts & view of Popcap?
We believe that everyone
likes playing games ? they just don’t necessarily know it yet! Casual
games are so popular because they appeal to everyone and they are so
simple to learn and play. Many other games are too complicated to
appeal to everyone. Because many of our customers don’t think of
themselves as gamers, or don’t know they like playing games, they would
never go to a store to buy a game. So really the casual game market had
to wait until the internet came along to get started. And it’s been
growing every year since!
3. As I see in Popcap
homepage here, http://popcap.com/aboutus.php, I could see your basic
moto is 'easy to learn, tough to master'. Does it infleunce of your
company name 'Popcap', to show people what game this company is making?
If not, could you please let me know how come to make that name?
I
wish we had some insightful story about our name, but we don’t. Maybe
we should make one up! Actually we just knew that we wanted the word
“Pop” in our name, to symbolize games that would be popular and made
for everyone. We went through all words we could find that started with
“Pop” and discovered “PopCap” and the name stuck! A Pop Cap is actually
the top to a bottle of soda, and early on our logo looked like a bottle
top.
4. Could you please let us know what you think about Korean gaming market?
We
think the Korean game market is extremely exciting. In many ways, Korea
is several years in the future compare to the US and other markets when
it comes to building online games, so we watch what is happening in
Korea with great interest. The online market in Korea is also known as
a very hard-core gaming market, however. With the exception of a few
games like Kart Rider, most popular games in korea are very competitive
and aimed at hardcore audiences. It will be interesting to watch how
the Korean market grows in the future. For example, here in the US many
of our customers are older women. When I talk with companies in Korea
about this they are always very surprised ? in korea, housewives are
apparently not yet a big gaming audience. Will they be a big audience
in the future? Perhaps.
5. Until now, Korean people
know about [Bejeweled] well, but not all Popcap games. Please pick 5
best Popcap games, and add brief reason why or basic information.
Bejeweled
is certainly our most famous game, but we have a number of other very
famous games. I’d encourage you to check out our game Zuma which is my
personal favorite ? it’s also a match-3 game, but it’s got a great
theme and is more challenging. Bookworm is a word game, but has a very
passionate number of fans. We just launched a sequel to that game
called Bookworm Adventures which we were working on for nearly 3 years
and I believe it may be the most expensive casual game ever made. Heavy
Weapon is an action game that was never very popular online, but we
have a version coming to the Xbox soon and we expect that to be
extremely popular. And finally the games Feeding Frenzy and Feeding
Frenzy 2 are extremely popular, and I personally worked on both those
games so I’m especially proud of them.
6. Please leave some message for Korean readers of Pig-Min.
You
are all very luck to live in a country with such fast internet
connections! It means that you are on the cutting edge of defining new
games and ways to play games, which is very exciting. We look forward
to bringing our PopCap games to your market in the future to provide
great game experiences!
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James Gwertzman Director of Business Development PopCap Games, Inc.