CEO of PopCap games: How I Did It | Hacker News Reader

CEO of PopCap games: How I Did It

inc.com

100 pointsmjh813612 comments

The money quote:

"Facebook didn't even exist when we started the company. The iPhone didn't exist. We've adapted and changed and rolled with everything that's come our way. We've constantly integrated our approach to games."

Evolution is one of the most important words in business.

Being a game developer (though in the "old-style" console/PC part), I thought this was the money quote:

    We don't track the resources that go into each game.
    If it's a great game, it's worth a lot of money.
    If it's a B+ game, it's essentially worth zero.

Troll through the average list of new releases in a week and you can clearly see that most people/groups/publishers either don't agree, or don't get this.

Or they know when they have a B+ game and want to cut their losses and get whatever sales they can for it.

If it were that cut and dry, Wii shovelware-type games wouldn't be made. Clearly there's money to be made, just perhaps not AAA level returns to be had.

The story title is currently "CEO of PopCap games". Vechey isn't the CEO, but a founder. He actually left PopCap for a few years to pursue his interest in film (before returning to the company).

Dave Roberts is the CEO, who fits the "adult supervision" CEO stereotype reasonably well. He's an older, business-savvy guy the three young founders brought in: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_i...

I really appreciated the following quote:

When Dave started, we were focused on creating new games instead of supporting revenue streams from each game. Dave changed that.

Part of the reason why PopCap has been so successful is that they have properly branched their games into new devices and areas, from Facebook games, to iPhone, in-flight entertainment, etc.

I think that is a good lesson for hackers. If you aren't making enough money from your app, perhaps you just haven't expanded enough horizontally. Many of the best apps these days have iPhone/iPad/Blackberry versions so they can be easily accessible at all times.

    We're never perfect. We're always pretty good, but we're always trying to be better.

words i live by

Plants vs. Zombies is quite possibly the best game on the iPhone, hands down.

I disagree. Angry Birds is the best game for any platform, ever.

"We decided from the start to make our games incredibly fun and easy so that they appeal to everyone."

For me, that is one of the most important lessons to take away from this. Keep it simple, keep it fun and engaging, and the users will love it.

The rise of Minecraft has reinforced this point of view in my mind.

Fun and engaging are ridiculously hard to quantify. :P

PopCap: what do you think of my DropZap and upcoming DropZap 2 games?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNaM22Oulwg (DropZap 2)

http://dropzap.com

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