I remember those old Web version of games that required ActiveX or some other plugin that I can't remember. Just wondering, what did you work on at PopCap?

It became a mobile milk the franchise dev studio before EA bought them - explicitly to get the buyout it wanted, which happened to go to EA.įrom what I know from friends afterwards, EA wanted continued success and definitely held the team at PopCap accountable after buying it -but the lack of success was far more from dev culture being all over the place and lack of vision as the talent drain accelerated as golden handcuffs and specific timed bonus payouts happened. But the culture was in turmoil - half the company yearned for the popcap dev cycles of old that took their time and invested fun in every nook and cranny of the game (even if it took 4 years: see PvZ), and half the company was being looking at Bejeweled Blitz and how to expand and replicate that. Large expansion of teams working on the fb games and tried to pivot (too late) to mobile games. The company was gearing up to be sold for about a year before I left, cancelled every non-sequel non-mobile title in prototyping or development.

The cultural lights were in the process of going out at that company when I left - it was the reason I left. As much as I don't like EA - in this case it wasn't EA at all. I worked at PopCap from 2006-2011, left a few months before the buyout.

Games like insaniquarium