Dev Game Club

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we begin a short mini-series on casual games, beginning with PopCap's Plants vs Zombies. We spend a lot of time setting these lower-challenge games both in their time and against other genres before talking a bit about the game itself. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary. Sections played: Through 2-1 Issues covered: setting the game in 2009, PopCap's fortunes, repackaging a genre, puzzly games in Java, appealing to core games and casual, being good at rewards, walled gardens, starting on desktops and moving to phones, phone fragmentation, A/B design testing, hidden objects, translating well to mobile, the history of EA's acquisitions, the early tower defense games, coining the term, automated elements, the stress of the RTS, MOBAs, removing the dev hurdles from a genre, modders doing something they could do, autochess, recognizing it, a simple concept that reads quickly, the impenetrable defense