MTV Multiplayer › popcap

Plenty of games are doing something interesting with holiday updates including new modes and skins. Here are a few worth checking out.
Read more...

Tags Blue Byte Studios, Castle Empire, halfbrick studios, iPhone / iPad, jetpack joyride, Overkill Software, Payday: The Heist, PC, plants vs. zombies, popcap, PSN, Sony Online Entertainment, Steam, ubisoft

Rumors have been circling lately that someone was attempting to acquire "Plants vs. Zombies" developer PopCap Games. Given their recent obsession with the iOS market – just the other day, the company announced that their Origin service was coming to iOS devices – Electronic Arts always seemed like the likeliest buyer. Well, the publisher has just announced via press release that they have acquired PopCap for $750 million.

Read more...

Tags ea, popcap

In case you somehow missed every last bit of gaming news in the past bunch of days, the 25th annual Game Developer's Conference happened in San Francisco, Cali last week. More than just a trade show, GDC celebrates those who make the games we play while also providing them with a forum where they can educate themselves and network among peers. This year's gathering was the biggest yet, drawing in a record-breaking crowd of 19,000, up from last year's number of 18,250.

Read more...

Tags batman: arkham city, double fine, game developer's conference, GDC, minecraft, mojang, nintendo, popcap, rochard, Satoru Iwata, scrolls, tim schafer, trenched, yu suzuki

Developer Pop Quiz is a weekly interview series in which we ask developers from around the industry the same 10 questions and post their responses.

Just because you don't play "Bejeweled" doesn't mean that there aren't millions of people out there that do. Discounting "casual" games as shovelware is a thing of the past, and for years now PopCap Games have been leading the charge making some of the most simple and addictive games to be released each year. This week's Developer Pop Quiz shines the lights on one of men behind PopCap's latest release, "Bejeweled 3." Michael Guillory, the game's Associate Producer, grew up with Gary Gygax as his hero, and worked for one of the most respected companies in the industry, Sierra, until it closed its' doors.

Read more...

Tags bejeweled 3, popcap

Based on the recently released "Toy Soldiers" Xbox Live Arcade game, "Match Defense: Toy Soldiers" has landed on the hallowed shores of Facebook, ready to invade millions of casual gamers' free time across the globe.

The Xbox Live release has been hailed as one of the best tower defense games available in recent years, but may have put many off due to its emphasis on strategy and forward-thinking. Players were tasked with placing and taking control of an army's most powerful weaponry, aiming to eliminate the incoming threat before it overran their base. It certainly was difficult, and rewarded those who put the time in, so this Facebook release will be a pleasure to those who prefer things a little more casual.

Read more...

Tags facebook, March Defense: Toy Soldiers, microsoft, popcap, Toy Soldiers, Xbox Live Arcade

PopCap's Garth Chouteau said a "Plants vs. Zombies" port to the iPhone might be doable, and a post to the company's official Facebook account confirmed that much with a newly revealed launch goal of January 2010.

Read more...

Tags plants vs. zombies, popcap

Originally released in 2003, "Zuma" quickly became one of PopCap's most popular titles. Like most of PopCap's titles, the game was easy-to-learn, hard-to-master, requiring you to fire clay balls from the mouth of a frog, matching colors and preventing a stream of balls from reaching an end-point. People have been expecting/anticipating a sequel for some time now, and they'd be surprised to learn that it's practically upon us! "Zuma's Revenge" is preparing to launch on September 15th for PCs, with a Mac version coming shortly thereafter.

Read more...

Tags popcap, zuma, zuma's revenge

And you thought after the success of the weekend sale of Peggle on the iPhone PopCap would just go about their business and enjoy their brief moment in the App Store sun? Ha!

Read more...

Tags bookworm, popcap

Word-based RPG isn't exactly a booming genre, but casual game publisher PopCap has the market cornered. "Bookworm Adventures" launched a couple years back and basically rocked, mixing an addictive word-based puzzle game with a narrative. "Bookworm Adventures 2" hopes to do the same thing when it drops at the end of July for PC, with a Mac release sometime after.

Me describing it sounds decidedly lame, but if you've been playing the original "Bookworm" on the PC or iPhone, it's a similar experience, albiet with a little more depth layered in. And by depth I mean literally companions like Mother Goose, who knows her way around a consonant. If you haven't played the original, take a few minutes and kill some time. The game encourages the prevention of book burning, too, so there's even a moral!

Tags bookworm, bookworm adventures, bookworm adventures 2, popcap

"Plants vs. Zombies" has become one of my MacBook gaming mainstays, but I can't help but think that it should expand beyond the PC computing world. Thankfully I'm not alone! In an interview with Kombo.com, Garth Chouteau, PR guru of Popcap, expounded on the odds of seeing "PvZ" on other platforms:

"'Peggle' for XBLA is a good example of a game that we took that was popular on the PC and we spent probably twice as long as anyone else would have figuring how to make that game really good for Xbox and Xbox Live Arcade, and I think you will see that with 'Plants Vs. Zombies'--I don't know the exact order in which that game will make its way onto other platforms, but it's certainly been successful enough, quickly enough, that we're looking at other platforms and deciding where we'll take that game next..."

Read more...

Tags peggle, plants vs. zombies, popcap