By John Walker on December 9th, 2011.
From a job advert posted on Gamasutra, it is revealed that PopCap are working on “a stylistic reboot of our Peggle franchise”. Which is a way of saying: NEW PEGGLE! Which pretty much confirms that rumour from last month, after naughty Adam Orth tweeted about needing a new art director for a Peggle project, before promptly deleting it and probably having his knees spanked.
By John Walker on November 11th, 2011.
Bloodhound-nosed Lewie P gets in touch to say he had a bit of an interesting encounter with a PopCap fellow, via the medium of Twitter. One that rather strongly suggested that the company might be gearing up for Peggle 2. Lead designer at PopCap, Adam Orth, sent out a tweet asking for an Art Director “for the Peggle franchise”. Lewie retweeted this, and then said on his own account, “Imagine Peggle 2″. To which Orth replied, “I am.” Which he has since deleted. Rather tellingly. However, Lewie had already retweeted it. So yes, an awful lot of he said/she said. Except without the shes. We’re going to contact PopCap to see if we can get an answer out of them. But in the meantime, let’s all just assume it’s true so hard that it has to happen.
By John Walker on September 15th, 2011.
You know the phrase, “more money than sense”? PopCap have an awful lot of money…
Plants Vs. Zombies continues to be a sensation on every format it touches – I’ve heard that it’s soon coming out for digital calculators and answer-phones – which is presumably bringing in enough money to pay enough people to create something as spectacularly silly as the latest… trailer? Video? Proof that there’s something in the air conditioning at their headquarters?
By John Walker on July 12th, 2011.
Further proof that you should believe every rumour you read comes with the non-shock news that EA have bought PopCap. Perhaps the real shock here is for how much: $750 million.
Man, Simon PopCap and family are rich tonight!
By Brendan Caldwell on June 23rd, 2011.
The unblinking eye of Internet-news following that is Techcrunch has reported that Electronic Arts might just currently be in the middle of a deal to be acquire PopCap for the paltry sum of $1 billion. Given that EA aren’t as involved in the business of squeezing out casual or mobile games as they are in the home console and PC market, it seems like a logical move for them. But $1 billion is a sizeable chunk of EA’s total market value of $1 squillion kajillion (conventional mathematics puts this figure at $7.49 billion, so EA would be offering 13% of that. Yikes).
You might be terrified of EA’s influence on one of the most creative and fun studios in the casual market but this was good news for me, because it gave me the chance to question PopCap via the PR with the best name in the world, Ember Wardrop. “Per company policy, we do not comment on rumors and speculation of this nature,” she said. Oh, boo.
By John Walker on April 6th, 2011.
As of yesterday, PopCap are now the proud owners of an experimental game label, called 4th & Battery. Named after the intersection on which their Washington HQ can be found, it’s a place where they plan to put their more raw ideas. Which strikes me as a potentially splendid thing.
By John Walker on December 10th, 2010.
I would like to see the genre renamed please. “Match-3-or-more”. Matching just 3 is for loser wimps. I’m all about matching 5. The great-granddaddy of this ill-named puzzle favourite is Bejeweled, and PopCap have just released its third (well, nine hundred and seventeenth) incarnation, simply called Bejeweled 3. So has dragging gems into same-coloured lines changed dramatically enough to warrant yet another game? Here’s Wot I Think.
By Quintin Smith on December 8th, 2010.
Bejeweled 3 is out, and if you like putting gems in a line then you can play it on your computer. It’s quite good! Look, here Bejeweled 3 is on Steam, here it is on Direct2Drive, and if you head down to the official PopCap page then you can get yourself a free 60 minute trial. If you missed John’s rundown of the new features, that’s worth a look too. He is acerbic yet uplifting, like an Alka-Seltzer.
A video of Bejeweled 3′s new Zen mode follows, with its customisable mantras, ambient sounds, breath modulation and binaural beats. I am not joking. Take a look at this.
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By John Walker on November 1st, 2010.
I’ve just done some made up maths, and by my calculations every single human being on Earth has bought Bejeweled at least twice, even though Zoo Keeper is way better. It’s by far the most widely known match-3 game, and has made PopCap richer than God. Then came the rather improved Bejeweled 2. And next the wildly missing the point Bejewled Twist. Today they’ve announced Bejeweled 3, which they describe as “the first true sequel to [the] beloved flagship franchise in more than six years.” But what are those three matching gems up to now? And might they have made the improvement that could make me take it more seriously?
By Kieron Gillen on July 29th, 2010.
That was quick. Following on from yesterday’s news that the Dancing Zombie is being removed from Plants Vs Zombies due to the legal wroth of the Jackson family, the muddy-funsters at PC Gamer reveal the new dancing zombie, which basically looks like I did when I had hair and went to the perpetually-70s-stuck nightclubs in Stafford. And let’s celebrate this momentous event with an entirely gratuitous linking to Zombina & The Skeletones…
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By Alec Meer on July 16th, 2010.
More fruits from the fulsome Develop 2010 tree now, this time based on the talk by Popcap’s Dave Bishop. He basically turned up and proudly thumped the company chest (albeit in a likeably unassuming way), but based on some of this stuff he’s entirely justified in doing so…
