Saturday 17 April 2010

There's a Zombie on your lawn

Oh dear, my latest obsession is yet another Popcap game.

It’s a challenging, problem solving and intellectual game that pushes the boundaries of in-game humour

Oh yes, and it all centres around zombie eating plants.

Plants vs. Zombies is the latest sensation to take over my life. I would be ashamed and embarrassed, what with major upcoming titles being released but I’m not.
Because it is awesome.

As my loved one sits glued to his PS3 drooling over the latest Final Fantasy, I can be found sat at my pc, fending off a horde of brain-eating zombies with sunflowers and wall-nuts (I said it was intellectually witty). The simple, colourful 2D art and cheerful jaunty music can keep me entertained for hours.

Which has inspired me to do a bit of detective work. I am now curious how Popcap has such a huge following of casual gamers…what is their secret?

Let’s start with some background info, which I’m pointing out I didn’t pull straight from Google.

Popcap was founded in 2000 and currently has around under 180 employees under it’s control. Their major-title ‘’Bejelewed’ sold almost 50 millions world-wide over all major consoles such as the Xbox 360 and PS3 and their efforts have won them over 25 industry awards.

Their latest title ‘Plant vs. Zombies’ was apparently an App store record breaker selling 300,000 units in the first 9 days of its release onto the I-phone.

The audience of most pop cap games is on average a 43 year old woman playing on social networking sites such as Facebook. This audience alone generates more than $1 billion which is mostly made from virtual currencies and buying in-game gifts. This specific audience gave reasons to their gaming addictions as to play with relatives and friends.

So it would seem that casual gaming is mostly comprised of a female audience. Simple rules and addictive gameplay is vital to draw their players into purchasing in-game products to keep this multi-million pound industry afloat.

Bye-Bye Z-brush, hello pixel art?

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