

PopCap Update - philk10
http://blog.popcap.com/2012/08/21/popcap-update-from-john-vechey/

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jpxxx
Can we preemptively shitcan the 'EA sucks' chatter until Pop-Cap's product
starts dropping in quality?

Solitaire Blitz on Facebook is strong evidence that this freakishly talented
game shop remains freakishly talented and capable of applying unprecedented
levels of polish to their titles, even the 'Freemium' ones.

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tatsuke95
If a company with the ability to make games as well as PopCap is being forced
to lay people off, what does that say to the entire space?

Between news like this, Zynga's share-price plummet, and the general "tech
bubble" sentiment out there, the social gaming world is in for some serious
turbulence. Consider this the bellwether.

~~~
gph1
Alternatively, you could look at the state of Zynga/social games as analogous
to the video game crash of 1983, which was largely caused by a deluge of poor
quality products from hastily financed startups.

From the standpoint of the core gaming demographic, the free to play browser
based gaming space looks wide open (see Riot Games/League of Legends, Kixeye,
wargaming.net, bigpoint).

~~~
cageface
That's the problem exactly. Too many me-too knockoffs are flooding the market
and consumers are likely to get option fatigue soon with so many duds to sort
through.

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kfury
I'm impressed by PopCap's openness and candor in this blog post. Tough
business decisions are tough, and it's nice that they're up front and
transparent about it. They really have no obligation to be.

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DrJokepu
> Free-to-play, social and mobile games have exploded in popularity. That
> happened fast. Surprisingly so. The change in consumer tastes requires us to
> reorganize our business and invest in new types of games on new platforms.

I wonder if this is really a “change in consumer tastes” or it’s just that
it’s much more lucrative than the previous, $2–3 per app model due to
universal human behaviour.

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dpcan
Here's the thing.... who asked?

I mean, I never would have had a clue that they were making cut-backs if they
didn't publicly announce it.

Are they in trouble? Are they going out of business? Should I be reading
between the lines?

The state of gaming has changed, and it's easier than heck to get your hands
on a fun casual game now-days, so I can see why having 50+ people with
multiple offices working as a casual game creating force may not be the
greatest plan moving forward, but couldn't this have all been a pretty silent
process?

I've always been fearful of openness with business methods and actions, yet
I've adopted a lot of practices in my own business because others HAVE been so
open. But things like this... a blog saying people are getting canned, well,
it just feels "icky" to me. Kind-of pointless almost.

Enlighten me.

What was the point of this blog post?

How does a company benefit from telling the world they are cleaning house?

Who asked? Who are they afraid of? ... Is this because they fear the press
would catch wind and report speculation?

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bendotc
Who asked? Most of the game industry. This and the lay-offs at Funcom today
have been the talk of the town(/Twitter) before they came out and posted this.

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stephengillie
They'll fire 50 people and still have about the same headcount as the start of
the year -- so they overhired and won't have the revenue to pay for their
excess employees?

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jeremymcanally
More likely, they over hired in certain skillsets (Flash, maybe?) and plan to
hire in others where there's money being made (I would imagine mobile) or
other markets (they mention China and Japan).

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bookwormAT
"we’re talking to our Dublin team about the future of that office and whether
we can find a path to improve our profitability in Europe without having to
close the operation."

Are there any PopCap employees here?

I can tell you how to improve your profitability in Europe: Try to sell your
games there!

Popcap first announched that they would release some of their titles for
Android in April 2009. When I asked them about what happended to this release
in July 2009, they responded quickly and told me that "Peggle and Bejeweled
Twist shouldn't be too far away".

In 2011, they actually released three of their games on Android: Bejeweled,
Peggle and Plants vs Zombies. But get this: They did not release those games
in Europe!

This is not an issue with content rights: All these games are available
worldwide for Windows. There was no reason to restrict the games to any
region. And they kept it this way until about a month or so.

In addition to this mess, the games were all really poor ports. Popcap also
whitelisted only a very few handsets that the games would run on.

This makes me angry: Not offering anything for sale, and then complaining that
your not selling anything.

[http://blog.bookworm.at/2009/07/popcap-is-still-working-
on-a...](http://blog.bookworm.at/2009/07/popcap-is-still-working-on-
android.html)

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spaghetti
My suspicion is that EA has relationships with all sorts of overseas shops
that do things like testing, artwork, prototyping etc. Part of PopCap's
integration into EA is leveraging these low-cost service providers.

Would be nice if the article actually defined head count. Is it just full-time
employees in Seattle? What about part-time employees and employees in Dublin?
If the artwork for a game is completed by a team on contract in Bangalore is
the "head count" temporarily increased to include those workers? What if
they're only part-time? What if they outsource the work to an even cheaper
local service provider?

My point is "head count" is vaguely defined if at all. I think this all boils
down to "we can do the work for less money with other people or less people."

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timkeller
I really liked the tone of blog post. Honest, sincere and free of California-
MBA-speak. Bravo.

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huhtenberg
Next, tune-in for the "PopCap massive dick move" TechCrunch coverage of the
event at 10.

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debacle
EA takes another victim.

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neeee
The post explicitly says that this has nothing to do with EA, and if they
weren't backed by EA the cuts would likely have been worse.

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moe
Shut up, release PVZ2 and take my money already.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N1_0SUGlDQ>

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joshu
I have a week off with no internet connection coming up. I sure hope they ship
this soon!

~~~
bdcravens
Second paragraph:

"Yesterday we announced the much-anticipated sequel to Plants vs. Zombies.
That’s very exciting. A lot of people have been asking about it. The game will
come to fruition in the spring of 2013."

