Interview with James Gwertzman of PopCap Games
Dec 15th, 2005 | Comments (0)
There's a great interview with James Gwertzman about the casual gaming market over at Gamasutra. James Gwertzman is the Director of Business Development at PopCap Games.
James talks about the process of how they develop their games:
What makes great games is obsessive attention to the details of core gameplay. PopCap agrees:
Traditional console games live and die largely by marketing. It's hard to test out an Xbox game before you buy it, so companies flood the market with television and print ads to try and convince gamers to buy their games. This isn't the case in the casual gaming world. Most casual games use the try-before-you-buy business model, so players can play games before they plunk down their money. If a game doesn't "have game" it will fail.
Read the entire article >>
The secret's out, and a lot of developers are turning away from the mainstream market - which, frankly, is brutal. So I think a number of talented people trying to make it in casual games are increasing, and the content is increasing too.
James talks about the process of how they develop their games:
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.
What makes great games is obsessive attention to the details of core gameplay. PopCap agrees:
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...[W]hen we're designing a new game, we'll spend months and months prototyping core mechanics.
Traditional console games live and die largely by marketing. It's hard to test out an Xbox game before you buy it, so companies flood the market with television and print ads to try and convince gamers to buy their games. This isn't the case in the casual gaming world. Most casual games use the try-before-you-buy business model, so players can play games before they plunk down their money. If a game doesn't "have game" it will fail.
[The try-before-you-buy market] changes everything. You can't be successful just by slapping characters or IP or fancy graphics on the box, because people have a chance to try it out. If the game's not fun, it's not going to make a sale. So everything comes down to whether or not the game is fun. And that's what makes casual games so exciting to work on, it's all about fun. It's very oldschool. It's not about fancy graphics or movie licenses, it's just about fun.
Read the entire article >>
