{"id":309,"date":"2009-05-09T21:30:44","date_gmt":"2009-05-10T05:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/?p=309"},"modified":"2009-05-09T21:30:44","modified_gmt":"2009-05-10T05:30:44","slug":"day-87-theres-a-zombie-on-my-lawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/?p=309","title":{"rendered":"Day 87: there&rsquo;s a zombie on my lawn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How does <a href=\"http:\/\/www.popcap.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">PopCap<\/a> do it?&#160; Like the Pixar of casual gaming, they manage to churn out hit after hit, even when expectations are unbelievably high.&#160; I managed to score a free copy of Plants vs. Zombies (thanks, <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/jayisgames\" target=\"_blank\">Jay is Games twitter account<\/a>!) and have played through about the first three chapters or so.<\/p>\n<p>The gameplay in PvZ isn\u2019t revolutionary or ground-breaking.&#160; If you\u2019ve played flash tower defense games, the main idea is similar.&#160; But damn if PopCap didn\u2019t polish it until it shined.&#160; The art is the usual whimsical PopCap style and the entire thing is highly addictive.&#160; The game has an unlock\/reward structure that drives the player to want to play just one more level, with new items being revealed at the end of the previous level.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s more, the marketing campaign, from a consumer point of view, was executed perfectly.&#160; A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0N1_0SUGlDQ\" target=\"_blank\">terrific and funny music video<\/a> was my first contact with the game and I saw it after I had finished playing a Bejeweled Facebook game.&#160; And\u2026it worked.&#160; It made me interested in the game before it came out.&#160; I even considered preordering it on Steam \u2013 something I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve ever considered for a casual game before.<\/p>\n<p>Even with the higher expectations that all this marketing gave me, I was not disappointed.&#160; The Internet seems to agree: Metacritic currently has it at 89.<\/p>\n<p>So, how does PopCap do it?&#160; Simple: they create fun, polished games and come up with creative and interesting marketing.&#160; Plus, they\u2019ve created enough good casual games that they\u2019ve become <em>the<\/em> brand to beat when it comes to satisfying downloadable casual game experiences.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe not that simple then.&#160; Or quite simple, but just very difficult to pull off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How does PopCap do it?&#160; Like the Pixar of casual gaming, they manage to churn out hit after hit, even when expectations are unbelievably high.&#160; I managed to score a free copy of Plants vs. Zombies (thanks, Jay is Games twitter account!) and have played through about the first three chapters or so. The gameplay [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[37,25,119],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-year26","tag-casual-games","tag-video-games","tag-zombies","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}