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Soiling Your Plants: An Interview with PopCap about Plants vs. Zombies (Part One)
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"They're coming to get you, Sunflower...!"
While playing Plants Vs. Zombies recently, I thought I might give contacting PopCap a shot, and see if I could possibly get a few questions answered. What I got - to my surprise and glee – was a phone interview with PopCap’s North American PR Director, Garth Chouteau, who is a very professional, intelligent, and awesome guy who was kind enough to speak with me at length. Here’s Part One of my array of questions and his responses, as directly quoted as possible:
Plants vs. Zombies is sort of a new take on the tower defense mechanic. What do you feel is most unique about this title - as far as game mechanics go - that make it stand out from so many others?
Mr. Chouteau agreed that the game mechanic was something that had definitely been done before, but noted that Plants vs. Zombies’ selling point was the other features that PopCap brought to the game. Rather than something like Peggle – which he pointed out had no digital equivalents (other than real-life ones like Plinko/pachinko) – which creates “a complete and new casual game mechanic,” Plants vs. Zombies takes another route.
“I don’t think the game mechanic is unique,” Chouteau explained. “I think what makes it [Plants vs. Zombies] unique is the depth… the attention to detail, and the humor in the game. You’ve got 48 different towers at your disposal by the end of the game, where other TD titles have maybe 5 or 10. You combine that with the attention to detail: the ‘towers’ (plants) and the enemies – over 20 of them – each have their own unique behaviors, characteristics and abilities. That level of detail is not something you find in most tower defense games, let alone most casual games.”
Chouteau also pointed out that both through the game’s art style and writing, Plants vs. Zombies has a unique identity that carries the title, adding that the humor is “infused throughout the game – you can tell that the people who made the game had almost as much fun making it as you do playing it.” When pointing out the attention to detail, he gave an example of selecting a lily pad plant and dropping it on the water – that when the player sees the brief splash of water and the bewildered blink of the plant shortly thereafter, that “you’re won over on a subtle level.”
He went on to describe PopCap’s two different approaches to game creation: either by crafting an entirely new digital mechanic (like Peggle), or taking something that’s been done before and then to “make it our own… tweak it with the PopCap sensibility and lather it with layer after layer of tender loving care and polish.” Chouteau emphasized that PopCap’s philosophy has always been – and continues to be – focusing on the largest possible audience, but acknowledging the fact that “we’re [at PopCap] mostly a bunch of hardcore gamers,” and making sure that at the end of the day, it’s still something they’d want to play themselves. “Others can make better hardcore games than us,” he acknowledges, “or something that’d appeal more to the soccer mom set,” but he reiterates that PopCap’s focus has been – and remains – to target both audiences, and everyone in-between.
Is Plants vs. Zombies going to come out for other platforms such as XBox Live or PSN?
While he acknowledged that there have been no announcements so far as to where PvZ may go from here (noting that “we’re still basking in the glow of getting the thing out the door”), Chouteau did go on to emphasize that PopCap does have a long history of transferring games to other platforms – albeit with some caveats.
“[We] only bring the right games to the right platforms,” he explained. “When we do that, we make it the best experience it can be on that platform… When we do bring our games to other platforms, they are adaptations, not ports.”
Chouteau went on to point out that PopCap will never rush a half-finished version out the door, and unlike many other companies, they don’t have to worry about a window of possibility closing on their product. “Our games are evergreen hits,” he points out, adding that Bejeweled 2 is a bestseller today – just as it was four years ago. “If we bring Peggle out for XBLA two years after it came out for PC, people are still playing it, and thus still geared to buy it on another platform, especially when it’s got lots of features exclusive to the XBLA or DS or iPhone or etc..”
But XBLA and PSN fans, be consoled: Chouteau went on to add that “We haven’t announced anything, but if history is any example, you will probably see Plants vs. Zombies on other platforms eventually.”
Plants vs. Zombies seems to be a more in-depth release than PopCap's previous titles - how long was the development time?
When Mr. Chouteau responded simply “Plants vs. Zombies has been in the works for more than three years,” I actually blurted “Wow!” He went on to explain that for every game that PopCap ships, there are twenty that get shelved – at various stages of development. However, instead of these versions getting outright killed or permanently cancelled, they’re available for developers to reevaluate them at any time, and see if there’s a possibility for one to become a promising project again. Even Peggle, one of PopCap’s bestselling titles, was shelved multiple times before being released.
As to the company’s ability to keep projects in development for that long (even by today’s large-scale standards), Chouteau responded simply that PopCap has “always been profitable – we’re a privately held company, we don’t have to answer to any stockholders,” and that their focus has been on polish and fun – to an uncompromising degree. “When a game’s ready, it’s ready, and we don’t release it before then.”
Plants vs. Zombies is a fairly large game, and PopCap company literature mentions cre
ating more "experimental projects" like Bookworm Adventures. Are we going to start seeing more larger-scale projects from PopCap in the future? And is there any movement towards different genres such as action or platforming?
Chouteau obviously couldn’t go into serious detail on this question, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to tantalize the fanboy/girl in all of us.
“I think that it’s fair to assume that you’ll see experimentation from us going forward… nothing is off-limits. Are we going to do an MMO? Probably not – but you can never be sure. There are some very interesting adaptations and non-obvious extensions of existing franchises as well as experiments outside of what we offer today going on right now [in the company].”
Tune in for Part 2 tomorrow – with questions about WiiWare, indie gaming advice, and your mom!
- R. Dobbs
