Interview with PopCap

Gamasutra just published an interview with PopCap, one of my favorite game developers. Judging by their track record, those guys know how to create top-quality casual games. Interestingly, their development process is VERY bottom-up and iterative.

"Our path of development is extremely prototype-heavy," said Gwertzman. "We'll make half a dozen prototypes, and pick just one of those to be a hit casual game. And once we develop that one, it's a very iterative process. It's a sandbox model. We try different things out, and find out what's fun. Only when we find out that the core mechanic is fun do we worry about the art, content, and all the other little details."

"We really obsess over the core game mechanics. In a game like Bejeweled, hardcore developers look at that and might think it's kind of...it's very easy to kind of dismiss it, but we literally spent weeks on just the right way for the gems to fall when you make a match. In a game like that, it's little details like that. How does it feel? Getting those little details right is what we prioritize. So when we're designing a new game, we'll spend months and months prototyping core mechanics."

Comments

[Darius Young]

Casual game downloads are slowly and quietly making in a big scene in the gaming market.

[Edward Vielmetti]

I don't recall where I saw it (the curse of reading too much net) but there was a review recently of a game where the reviewer praised the in-game Newtonian physics (balls bounce like they do in our world, not a cartoon world) as adding a lot to the game play.