PopCap release Plants vs. Zombies Christmas single called “Wabby Wabbo.” No, really
PopCap are going head to head with the X-Factor this Christmas. Crazy Dave aka. Cray-Z is the talent behind Wabby Wabbo. It’s available to buy through iTunes now. Purchases registered between December 18 and December 24 will count towards Wabby Wabbo’s Christmas chart rankings. PopCap mention that “approximately 55p of each 79p purchase” will go to the Concern Worldwide charity.
PopCap point out that Wabby Wabbo “is believed to be the first hip-hop single ever released to feature a yodelling solo by a Yeti zombie.” It may also be the first hip-hop single ever released to contain just five real words (“heeey, gonna eat your braains”), and is probably the first to be performed by an animated character wearing a saucepan on his head. The official music video is above, which means you’ve probably heard it by now. What do you think?
Smart Casual – How PopCap conquered casual gaming
Following the news that PopCap has been purchased by EA. We’ve decided to bring you a feature on the mammoth casual games developer that originally ran in PC Gamer UK issue 220.
Sitting on the floor of Benaroya Hall in Seattle, I’m depressed as hell. I’ve come to the Casual Connect Conference 2010 to hear the makers of casual and social games share their ideas, but in three days of lectures I haven’t heard a single idea about games.
Instead they’re talking about how designers don’t matter. They’re talking about how psychological tricks can turn their audience into zombies. They’re talking about how to use metrics to better monetise your mum. This isn’t just the industry’s business men and women talking, either; these are the people who actually make the games. At a point in history when a new and huge mainstream audience is trying computer games for the first time, our ambassadors aren’t interested in talking about how to make something fun.
PopCap for sale? EA rumoured to be making a $1 billion offer
There are strong rumours flying around suggesting that EA are in the late stages of negotiating a deal to buy up PopCap for a massive ONE BILLION dollars. Edge picked up a report from TechCrunch, who have been approached by two unnamed sources who say that Electronic Arts are about to spend 13% of its stock market value to buy up the casual games developer.
Plants vs. Zombiesville? China gets exclusive adaptation from Popcap
Popcap have revealed a “Social Edition” of the superb Plants vs. Zombies. The adaptation was handled by Popcap’s Shanghai studio, and is launching on Chinese networking site Renren.com. There’s no news of an English translation yet, sadly.
Read on for screens and the details.
Massive PopCap sale, all games half price
PopCap are holding a Thanksgiving winter sale, with all of their games selling for half price. That means a chance to scoop Plants vs Zombies, Peggle and Bejeweled 2 for almost $10 each.
The sale is set to run until November 29th over on the PopCap site. For an insight into inception and development of these games check out our interviews with George Fan on the making of Plants vs. Zombies, and Jason Kapalka on the inception on development of PopCap’s most addictive opus, Peggle.
Yeah, we did just call Peggle an opus. Eat it, unicorn haters.
The best gardens from our Plants vs Zombies swag giveaway
Over the weekend we ran a competition to take a screenshot of the coolest Plants vs Zombies garden you’d made, Zen or otherwise, with a massive haul of PvZ swag for the winner. Here are the best gardens we got, starting with the overall winner.
Show us your garden, win a gargantuan pack of Plants vs Zombies swag
A huge wave of zombie loot is approaching! To round out PopCap week, we’d like to give away a few more awesome prizes. If you like Plants vs Zombies as much as we do, take a screenshot of the coolest or most interesting garden you’ve made and post it on our forums. Our favourite will win this mega-pack of awesome loot, including one of the best gaming T-shirts ever, a zombie figurine, and a goddamn apron. Here’s what else you get.
The Making of Peggle
PopCap Games are the creators of Bejeweled, Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies, each of them one of the biggest and most lovable games on PC. When casual and social games are reaching ever larger audiences and their developers are getting a bad reputation for poor design practices, how have PopCap managed to find fans amongst gamers and grannies alike? To find out, I visited the studio and interviewed everyone I could find. We’re running those interviews each day this week and calling it PopCap Week.
Today I’m speaking to PopCap co-founder Jason Kapalka and the designer of Peggle, Sukhbir Sidhub. It’s only now when looking back at the transcript that I realise there are long periods when I don’t ask any questions. Jason and Sukhbir have worked together for years, and it shows. They talk away without my intervention, revealing details of PopCap’s forgotten first release, a strip poker game called Foxy Poker, and follow it up by going into detail about the many variants of Peggle, including a Thor-themed version called Thunderball, and what would have happened if co-founder John Vechey’s mum had been PopCap’s accountant.
George Fan and his cat on the making of Plants vs. Zombies
PopCap Games are the creators of Bejeweled, Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies, each of them one of the biggest and most lovable games on PC. When casual and social games are reaching ever larger audiences and their developers are getting a bad reputation for poor design practices, how have PopCap managed to find fans amongst gamers and grannies alike? To find out, I visited the studio and interviewed everyone I could find. We’re running those interviews each day this week and calling it PopCap Week.
Today I’m speaking to George Fan, the designer of Plants vs. Zombies. Alongside a ton of incredibly early sketches from the game’s development, George talks about his time working for Blizzard and PopCap simultaneously, PvZ’s origins as a double-decker fish tank, and why he dressed as a zombie for the director of Dawn of the Dead. Also, a few words from his cat.
Win Half-Life 2: Episode 29!
Attention PC gamers! We’ve got a giveaway so momentous that it stands to eclipse epochal moments in history going all the way back to the discovery of fire by an unfortunate troglodyte in a lightning storm about one and a half million years ago. In fact, it’s so spectacularly massive that it may create a singularity unimagined by even Stephen Hawking at his most fanciful after a fifth of bourbon. What could be so huge? How about this: a magical Steam code that will grant you free, permanent access to Valve’s entire catalog—which includes some of the finest PC games ever made—and every game Valve ever will make. That’s right: you can win Portal 2, Dota 2 and even Half-Life 2: Episode 3.* It’s the prize that keeps on giving, year after year!
But wait, that’s not all! Click through to see what else, and how to win it!
Update: Winners have been drawn, and notifications are going out. We’ll post the list of winners soon!
Update 2: Winners posted!
You can play Plants vs. Zombies in WoW: Cataclysm
Blizzard have unveiled the latest move in their incessant quest to make sure PC Gamer does as little work as possible. They’re putting a Plants vs. Zombies mingame into World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Video below.
Plants vs Zombies update added a secret surprise
If you have Plants vs Zombies on Steam, you might have noticed it was recently ‘upgraded’ to the Game of the Year edition. It stores your savegames online, lets you create custom zombies to put into the game, and adds a new achievements screen that has a little secret. Here’s a video.
Guard plays Plants vs Zombies, inmates escape
Five prisoners escaped a police precinct in Cagayan de Oro in the Phillipines by stealing the duty officer’s keys. That’s not PC gaming news! But they only managed to steal the keys because the guard was engrossed in PopCap’s casual garden-defense game Plants vs Zombies, likely installed on an office computer. We feel your pain, sir or madam.
Meet the new disco zombie in Plants Vs Zombies
Yesterday, PopCap announced that they’d decided to retire the dancing Michael Jackson-shaped zombie from future versions of Plants versus Zombies. I asked them what they’d be replacing him with. The answer has a hairy chest, white flared trousers, and fabulous hair.
One copy of Bejewelled sold every four seconds
I knew sitting in on the Pop Cap talk at the Develop conference was a good idea. Pop Cap’s Dave Bishop just dropped some amazing Pop Cap fact bombs.
