Mafia Wars Missions tab
The Zynga community team announced on the Mafia Wars forums that a new feature is now live named Social Missions. However, the feature is only live for some lucky players to initiate the missions while everyone can be recruited to help once one of their friends finds a Social Mission. Regardless of whether you've been chosen as an Initiator, you'll be pleasantly surprised to find a new "Missions" tab between the Gifting and Marketplace tabs (pictured above). We're going to make an educated guess and say that this will be the hub for all Social Missions. Common sense rocks, we know.
Social Missions only trigger while doing normal jobs, but once that happens said player, or the Initiator, can recruit his or her mafia friends to become Helpers in the mission. These are timed tasks that have different assignments specialized for certain types of players, which gives the Initiator the chance to make best use of his mafia. We hope Social Missions will make use of the Top Mafia feature, because as of right now it's severely underused aside from its bonuses and being required to Declare War.
According to the forum post, it seems that Initiators will receive special item rewards in addition to a combination of experience, coins and later Loyalty Points, while Helpers will only be rewarded the latter with a chance at common loot. Initiators can also dismiss Helpers if they're too slow or could potentially jeopardize the mission, so be on your 'A' game.
With the ability to Initiate 10 and Help with 10 Social Missions at once, we're going to have quite a lot of work on our hands when this feature goes live for everyone.
Thứ Bảy, 4 tháng 2, 2012
Survey says, 'Two fifths of American gamers play Facebook games'
Of America's 160 million gamers, 41 percent of them are playing social games on Facebook or another social network, Newzoo's 2010 US National Gamers Survey says. As we all know, social games have just emerged in the later half of this decade compared to console games that been around--if we want to get technical here--for nearly 40 years, which maintain 56 percent of gamers' attention. This means that in just a few short years, social games like FarmVille have become more popular than MMOs, PC or Mac games and games on mobile devices, some of which have had decades to garner the same attention, Newzoo says.
But what's going on here isn't that gamers are switching platforms, rather they're taking on more platforms with the average gamer playing on three of the seven major gaming platforms simultaneously (define average), according to Newzoo.
Newzoo's US National Gamers Survey 2010
Of course, there's something to be said of social games' accessibility. In other words, they don't exactly require the amount of dedication or focus that console or traditional PC games do, which definitely contributes to the amount of social gamers. Though, if there is any metric that shows whether social games allow for true dedication, it's cold hard cash.
According to Newzoo, of the 115 million--71 percent of total--gamers who spend money on their favorite hobby, 25 percent spend their hard-earned dough on social games. With over 28.7 million players nationwide paying for in-game currency (at sometimes admittedly unreasonable rates), it's a no-brainer that social games are becoming a mutli-billion dollar industry.
These numbers beg the question: is it only a matter of time, with digital distribution becoming more robust every year (62 percent of console gamers pay for games and digital game content), before all games are free-to-play, taking the microtransaction model that social games seem to have mastered?
But what's going on here isn't that gamers are switching platforms, rather they're taking on more platforms with the average gamer playing on three of the seven major gaming platforms simultaneously (define average), according to Newzoo.
Newzoo's US National Gamers Survey 2010
Of course, there's something to be said of social games' accessibility. In other words, they don't exactly require the amount of dedication or focus that console or traditional PC games do, which definitely contributes to the amount of social gamers. Though, if there is any metric that shows whether social games allow for true dedication, it's cold hard cash.
According to Newzoo, of the 115 million--71 percent of total--gamers who spend money on their favorite hobby, 25 percent spend their hard-earned dough on social games. With over 28.7 million players nationwide paying for in-game currency (at sometimes admittedly unreasonable rates), it's a no-brainer that social games are becoming a mutli-billion dollar industry.
These numbers beg the question: is it only a matter of time, with digital distribution becoming more robust every year (62 percent of console gamers pay for games and digital game content), before all games are free-to-play, taking the microtransaction model that social games seem to have mastered?
FarmVille: Race a Horse in Disney's Secretariat free Farm Cash promo
FarmVille Secretariat promotion
For a good change of pace, instead of bombarding us with multiple choice questions, the latest FarmVille free Farm Cash offer allows you to run a quick horse race. Aside from that, you'll be watching the trailer of Disney's Secretariat, a film billed as "The Impossible True Story" of an American horse who aced all three races of the Triple Crown in 1973.
FarmVille Secretariat: Select a horse
It's cute that Zynga actually took the time to set this up. The sight of the familiar FarmVille horses and jockeys done in the the FarmVille style is pretty gratifying. It definitely makes me wonder if horse-racing will be the theme of Zynga's new fall game. (Facebook had a brief period of horse husbandry games, such as Ubisoft's Horse Gaga, but they didn't take off as people hoped.) The promo has you select a horse, choose something to feed it with, pick a jockey to ride it, and then let 'em race.
FarmVille Secretariat: Feed your horse
FarmVille Secretariat: Which Jersey will your jockey wear?
Though the artwork is nice prior to the race itself, the racing animation is pretty lame and incredibly crude. There's also no sound. But the concept itself is nifty, and your horse isn't guaranteed to win, so at least they didn't chicken out by taking the randomness factor out of it.
FarmVille Secretariat racing game
FarmVille Secretariat: Your horse won!
It's also pretty hilarious that if you're first place, the 'game' says your horse won! But if your horse came in third, it just says "Your horse came in third!", instead of "Sorry, it lost!", or "I'm sorry your horse sucks!"
FarmVille Secretariat: Your horse came in third!
Well, it was nice to see the Disney and Zynga marketing folks try something new. I hope you enjoy your 2 free Farm Cash!
For a good change of pace, instead of bombarding us with multiple choice questions, the latest FarmVille free Farm Cash offer allows you to run a quick horse race. Aside from that, you'll be watching the trailer of Disney's Secretariat, a film billed as "The Impossible True Story" of an American horse who aced all three races of the Triple Crown in 1973.
FarmVille Secretariat: Select a horse
It's cute that Zynga actually took the time to set this up. The sight of the familiar FarmVille horses and jockeys done in the the FarmVille style is pretty gratifying. It definitely makes me wonder if horse-racing will be the theme of Zynga's new fall game. (Facebook had a brief period of horse husbandry games, such as Ubisoft's Horse Gaga, but they didn't take off as people hoped.) The promo has you select a horse, choose something to feed it with, pick a jockey to ride it, and then let 'em race.
FarmVille Secretariat: Feed your horse
FarmVille Secretariat: Which Jersey will your jockey wear?
Though the artwork is nice prior to the race itself, the racing animation is pretty lame and incredibly crude. There's also no sound. But the concept itself is nifty, and your horse isn't guaranteed to win, so at least they didn't chicken out by taking the randomness factor out of it.
FarmVille Secretariat racing game
FarmVille Secretariat: Your horse won!
It's also pretty hilarious that if you're first place, the 'game' says your horse won! But if your horse came in third, it just says "Your horse came in third!", instead of "Sorry, it lost!", or "I'm sorry your horse sucks!"
FarmVille Secretariat: Your horse came in third!
Well, it was nice to see the Disney and Zynga marketing folks try something new. I hope you enjoy your 2 free Farm Cash!
Zynga buys studio founded by Age of Empires creators, original games incoming
Zynga Dallas
Zynga announced today that it has gobbled up yet another US game developer, Dallas-based Bonfire Studios. Formed in 2008 by members of the defunct Ensemble Studios--creators of the Age of Empires series and Halo Wars--the developer is now officially Zynga Dallas.
Heading the FarmVille creator's Lone Star stronghold will be Bonfire's three founders, David Rippy, Bill Jackson and Scott Winsett, who will become general manager, creative director and senior art director (similar positions to what they held at Bonfire), respectively. While most of Zynga's big purchases have been of web game studios, this is the first major game studio to be welcomed into the social gaming empire.
This move is strangely brilliant considering members of the studio have created one of the most critically acclaimed real-time strategy series in recent years with Age of Empires, yet Bonfire Studios has zero experience with Facebook games. After saying to TechCrunch that they will allow Zynga Dallas to "continue to develop new IP across multiple platforms," Zynga must be on to something huge whether it be on a console or on Facebook. Though, we doubt the company would turn away from one of the most profitable platforms, currently.
With the recent trend of Facebook strategy games like Kingdoms of Camelot and Monster World and the Bonfire team's obvious experience in that genre, it's possible that Zynga is looking towards this genre to innovate with Zynga Dallas "developing original IP for the company," according to the Zynga blog. Then again, the developer could just as easily be working on a clone. Hey, it's not as if Zynga hasn't before. Regardless, we're hopeful that if Zynga were to buy serious talent, it would use it seriously.
Zynga announced today that it has gobbled up yet another US game developer, Dallas-based Bonfire Studios. Formed in 2008 by members of the defunct Ensemble Studios--creators of the Age of Empires series and Halo Wars--the developer is now officially Zynga Dallas.
Heading the FarmVille creator's Lone Star stronghold will be Bonfire's three founders, David Rippy, Bill Jackson and Scott Winsett, who will become general manager, creative director and senior art director (similar positions to what they held at Bonfire), respectively. While most of Zynga's big purchases have been of web game studios, this is the first major game studio to be welcomed into the social gaming empire.
This move is strangely brilliant considering members of the studio have created one of the most critically acclaimed real-time strategy series in recent years with Age of Empires, yet Bonfire Studios has zero experience with Facebook games. After saying to TechCrunch that they will allow Zynga Dallas to "continue to develop new IP across multiple platforms," Zynga must be on to something huge whether it be on a console or on Facebook. Though, we doubt the company would turn away from one of the most profitable platforms, currently.
With the recent trend of Facebook strategy games like Kingdoms of Camelot and Monster World and the Bonfire team's obvious experience in that genre, it's possible that Zynga is looking towards this genre to innovate with Zynga Dallas "developing original IP for the company," according to the Zynga blog. Then again, the developer could just as easily be working on a clone. Hey, it's not as if Zynga hasn't before. Regardless, we're hopeful that if Zynga were to buy serious talent, it would use it seriously.
Thứ Năm, 2 tháng 2, 2012
Bejeweled 3 arrives online, in stores on December 7 [Exclusive]
EXCLUSIVE -- Bejeweled, the addictive puzzle game that has turned gem swapping into an international pastime, is getting a new sequel, Games.com can exclusively reveal. PopCap Games is announcing later this morning that Bejeweled 3 will be unleashed on the world on December 7. God help us all.
Bejeweled 3 will still have similar gameplay to the classic Bejeweled and Bejeweled 2 games -- match three or more of the same-colored gems over and over again, while racking up huge scores -- but there will be a few additional game modes and features that will offer something a little different.
In addition to high-def graphics, new sound effects and the ability to match more than one set of gems at one time (a key feature that debuted in Bejeweled Blitz last year), the game will have a special Quest mode made up of 11 mini-games, a new Lightening mode where you'll have to match as many gems as possible in a certain amount of time, and four new 'secret' game modes, which you will unlock as you play.
Related: Bejeweled 3 creator Jason Kapalka gives Games.com the inside scoop on the new game
One of the most interesting new additions is a special Zen mode (similar Bejeweled 2's Endless mode) where you can play the game without end, as calming music and positive affirmations play in the background. Oh yeah, they went there.
Gallery: Bejeweled 3: First look
"The challenge in creating a new version of Bejeweled is to innovate and keep it fresh and exciting without losing touch with the gameplay that millions of people love," says PopCap co-founder and Chief Creative Director Jason Kapalka.
The new Bejeweled also has a badge system, with some of the badges reserved for the most elite gem matchers.
bejeweled 3
Bejeweled 3 will be available for in retail and online for $19.99, starting December 7. Bejeweled games are popular on both Facebook and Apple's iOS platform, but for now, Bejeweled 3 will only be available as a downloadable PC game.
If you're wondering if it's worth the cash, just keep in mind that this 10-year-old game series is so popular that it has been played by a half-billion people for a total of 7.5 billion hours, and that older versions of the game sell at the rate of one copy every 4.3 seconds. Your 4.3 seconds might be coming sooner than you think, if Bejeweled 3 proves to be as popular as its predecessors.
Bejeweled 3 will still have similar gameplay to the classic Bejeweled and Bejeweled 2 games -- match three or more of the same-colored gems over and over again, while racking up huge scores -- but there will be a few additional game modes and features that will offer something a little different.
In addition to high-def graphics, new sound effects and the ability to match more than one set of gems at one time (a key feature that debuted in Bejeweled Blitz last year), the game will have a special Quest mode made up of 11 mini-games, a new Lightening mode where you'll have to match as many gems as possible in a certain amount of time, and four new 'secret' game modes, which you will unlock as you play.
Related: Bejeweled 3 creator Jason Kapalka gives Games.com the inside scoop on the new game
One of the most interesting new additions is a special Zen mode (similar Bejeweled 2's Endless mode) where you can play the game without end, as calming music and positive affirmations play in the background. Oh yeah, they went there.
Gallery: Bejeweled 3: First look
"The challenge in creating a new version of Bejeweled is to innovate and keep it fresh and exciting without losing touch with the gameplay that millions of people love," says PopCap co-founder and Chief Creative Director Jason Kapalka.
The new Bejeweled also has a badge system, with some of the badges reserved for the most elite gem matchers.
bejeweled 3
Bejeweled 3 will be available for in retail and online for $19.99, starting December 7. Bejeweled games are popular on both Facebook and Apple's iOS platform, but for now, Bejeweled 3 will only be available as a downloadable PC game.
If you're wondering if it's worth the cash, just keep in mind that this 10-year-old game series is so popular that it has been played by a half-billion people for a total of 7.5 billion hours, and that older versions of the game sell at the rate of one copy every 4.3 seconds. Your 4.3 seconds might be coming sooner than you think, if Bejeweled 3 proves to be as popular as its predecessors.
Bejeweled 3 creator tells us why this isn't just another sequel [Exclusive Interview]
PopCap co-founder and Chief Creative Director Jason Kapalka gives Games.com the inside scoop on Bejeweled 3's new features, and confesses that his mother's approval is the ultimate measure of success for this new version of the classic gem-swapping game. Aw, isn't that sweet.
bejeweled 3 from popcapOK, so let's talk about some of Bejeweled 3's new features. There's a Quest mode. Would you say that's one of the big new features for the game?
Yes, that's definitely one of the big ones. We're not trying to make a full-blown role-playing game or anything like that. It's kind of more of a structure for a series of challenges and variances for the game. There's a whole bunch of crazy Bejeweled variances we were playing around with, and we put in the quest mode as a framework to put them in there. So the structure is that we're trying to restore some various artifacts and to do so you have to play these different kinds of Bejeweled variants, that in some cases they are only minor variants on the Bejeweled rules, like you only have 10 moves or something like that to release a jewel.
What are some examples of the Bejeweled 'variants' in the new Quest mode?
There's a balance mode where you have a pendulum that goes back and forth depending on which color of gems you are clearing, if you tilt it too far one way or the other you lose, so you have to decide which gems to match to keep the thing balanced. There's Ice Storm, where you have these rising colors of ice that are going up and you have to knock them by making matches before they get to the top. There's Diamond Mine which is kind of the one where you're digging, and you're clearing dirt by clearing gems and the more you do you dig down further and further and find treasures and so forth. There's Butterflies -- which is a pretty interesting one -- where you have these jeweled butterflies that are moving up from the bottom towards the top where there's a big spider, and you're trying to clear them off the board to freedom or before they get to the top where the spider will eat them.
Are those your favorites in the new game?
Yeah, there's a couple that are actually – the Secret one or those Quest ones. There's some of them that are entertaining once or twice; I wouldn't want to play them repeatedly. There's other ones that are actually pretty compelling, and we've made those into separate game modes. So once you've played for a little bit, you unlock them as a full mode you can play.
Is that what the oh-so mysterious 'secret games' are in Bejeweled 3?
Yeah. The secret games are basically some of the variants of Bejeweled. The more unusual ones that we thought were the really cool ones that you wanted to play over and over again. And so once you've progressed a little way through the game, they're unlocked so you can just go back and play them in sort of a perpetual mode, as you would with the other versions, like Classic skill and so forth.
OK. I also noticed that there's going to be a new badge system in the game.
Yeah. It's not exactly ... it's kind of new. I wish I could say it's super radically awesome cool. We had something like that in the PC version of Bejeweled Blitz. It's sort of an achievement system. The only thing – you get these badges for doing various things, and there's different levels of badges, and there's elite badges for doing really tough things.
How tough are the 'tough' badges?
A really tough badge would be Super Nova Gem, which is a kind of gem that exists in the game but it's one of these we don't even tell people about it because it's nearly impossible to make. You have to get six gems in a row. And it's quite hard to do that. You either need to have an incredibly lucky hall of gems, or you need to engineer an extremely difficult combination of gems so those fall together and make a sixth gem combination. And a Super Nova Gem does a humongous explosion, so that's kind of cool. It's mostly just an achievement to see if you can actually get such a thing.
How many badges are there going to be in the game?
Oh gosh. There's a bunch. There's dozens. I would say there's dozens and dozens.
Bejeweled Blitz came out and we got obsessed with being able to do more than one match at one time. Is that also going to be in the game?
Oh yeah. We kind of used a lot of the Bejeweled Blitz basic physics and mechanics of it. Kind of carried into Bejeweled 3 here. Like Blitz, the visuals and all the special effects and stuff are pretty cranked up. It's full HD displays and accelerated explosions and more tunnels and so on.
Do you think that will go over well with the traditional Bejeweled fan?
I believe so. I think that when we put out Bejeweled 2 in 2004, at the time, for the casual game market, it was actually a bit over the top. I remember people telling us things like, 'Why is your game 1024 by 768? That resolution is way too big. Casual players are never going to need that hi-res." And that may be true -- that may be overkill for some people -- but in some ways it also kind of allows for future-proofing. Down the road another year or two, it will still probably look good, we hope. And of course it can be played at a lower resolution and smaller and you can resize the windows freely and just play on low-end computers, so that is a pretty important part. We are trying to support both casual players and people who have a fancier machine, so they can also enjoy more stuff. Bejeweled 2 is six years old.
What's your definition of success for a game like Bejeweled 3?
Honestly, Bejeweled 3 was, in some ways, a game we made for my Mom. And my Mom is a big Bejeweled fan, but, you know what, she doesn't use Facebook, she doesn't want to use Facebook, she doesn't want to play Bejeweled Blitz. So she's been looking at Bejeweled where, so, she's been playing stuff on, you know, 2004 kinds of things. So, you know, [Bejeweled 3] was a game that we kind of made for people like her, who kind of like Bejeweled, but have been kind of left a bit high and dry for awhile, as far as getting something new.
So if your mom likes Bejeweled 3, then you'll consider it successful?
Well, yeah, it's actually not a bad way of looking at it. [Laughs]
How many additions in the game are based on things that fans requested?
There is definitely a number of things in there that are a result of what people liked or didn't like in earlier versions. So for example, we've got one in there called Lightning Mode, which is influenced by Bejeweled Blitz. It's not exactly Bejeweled, because we didn't want to just duplicate that. It's sort of a very fast-paced, time-based kind of game. It is different from Blitz in a couple ways, in that you, it can last longer than a minute. You can kind of collect these time gems that will extend your game. And it's kind of got a sort of a stage thing, where you go up in rounds, and each round is worth more points, and so forth. So, that was definitely influenced by Blitz, because we figured that, you know, the players who are playing Bejeweled Blitz, of which, there are quite a few now.
Does Bejeweled 3 have any kind of social media integration that, you know, if you get a high score, can you put it on Twitter, or anything like that?
To be honest, right now, no. But it'll probably get stuff like that in the future. We're trying to figure out how to kind of do these things in a way that, kind of makes sense. And it didn't seem to make sense, Bejeweled 3 is kind of, more of a, single player game.
OK.
Now, that doesn't mean that, in fact, it's quite likely that, aspects of Bejeweled 3 will start to resurface, in other parts of. So, might, you start seeing some of those kinds of variant games, you know, as part of, you know, iPhone Bejeweled, or Bejeweled Blitz. And that seems quite possible.
You know, one thing I didn't really see in the trailer, were remnants of Bejeweled Twist. Is there any reason for that?
There are some places you'll see Bejeweled Twist resurfacing, but not in [Bejeweled 3]. There are some games coming out the next couple months, where, I will, I don't know if I, I'd probably better not announce anything.
I would say that Twist is not dead. There will be more twisting. There will be more twisting coming, but our feeling was that Twist was a little bit more of a hard-core mechanic. [Yeah] And so we're going to try to move that into a product where those kinds of players are more likely to enjoy it.
Downloadable casual games have been taking a hit and a lot of people have blamed that on social gaming. Do you think this will affect how Bejeweled 3 is received?
It's definitely a factor. Yeah, I mean download space is, it's getting a lot tougher. I wouldn't say it's necessarily going downhill, but it's certainly flattening.
On the other hand, it's kind of a complex equation. Last year was our best year for retail. We're doing very well with boxes in retail stores. That's not exactly the sexy new social game story. There are a lot of people out there who are still buying their games in places like Wal-Mart, and so you know, we've been doing pretty good there.
Now it's not something that is a news story, but – and it's true that in general PC retail sales, especially for AAA games are not looking too good. But it has been doing pretty well for us. Downloadable are also, it's definitely a sign of it's changing. And I would say, in the future – as you can see from the kinds of products we're doing now, we're trying to – I wouldn't say move away from it, -- but I would say branch out from it.
When you look at some of our other games, what we find, the good thing about the PC is that it's a pretty good spot for testing things out and seeing how they work, and developing for that in a way that helps the other platforms. So, Plants vs. Zombies, if we started doing a count of where it's been played, probably by now you'd see that a lot more people have played it on iPhone or iPad or Xbox or something like that than have played it online. But would it have existed on those platforms if it hadn't been on PC first? Probably not. We provided a good spot for that game to come out. It was a pretty high risk game and it was a good spot to develop something where you weren't worried about a lot of the crazy technological issues, platform issues and so forth. And then going from there to these other platforms was actually relatively easy, comparatively. And when we went to iPhone, people were already quite aware of Plants vs. Zombies from PC, and so forth. And so that kind of helped get it out there.
Bejeweled 3 Interview: Part II: Take a closer look at the game's new experimental 'Zen' mode, complete with positive affirmations and breath modulator.
bejeweled 3 from popcapOK, so let's talk about some of Bejeweled 3's new features. There's a Quest mode. Would you say that's one of the big new features for the game?
Yes, that's definitely one of the big ones. We're not trying to make a full-blown role-playing game or anything like that. It's kind of more of a structure for a series of challenges and variances for the game. There's a whole bunch of crazy Bejeweled variances we were playing around with, and we put in the quest mode as a framework to put them in there. So the structure is that we're trying to restore some various artifacts and to do so you have to play these different kinds of Bejeweled variants, that in some cases they are only minor variants on the Bejeweled rules, like you only have 10 moves or something like that to release a jewel.
What are some examples of the Bejeweled 'variants' in the new Quest mode?
There's a balance mode where you have a pendulum that goes back and forth depending on which color of gems you are clearing, if you tilt it too far one way or the other you lose, so you have to decide which gems to match to keep the thing balanced. There's Ice Storm, where you have these rising colors of ice that are going up and you have to knock them by making matches before they get to the top. There's Diamond Mine which is kind of the one where you're digging, and you're clearing dirt by clearing gems and the more you do you dig down further and further and find treasures and so forth. There's Butterflies -- which is a pretty interesting one -- where you have these jeweled butterflies that are moving up from the bottom towards the top where there's a big spider, and you're trying to clear them off the board to freedom or before they get to the top where the spider will eat them.
Are those your favorites in the new game?
Yeah, there's a couple that are actually – the Secret one or those Quest ones. There's some of them that are entertaining once or twice; I wouldn't want to play them repeatedly. There's other ones that are actually pretty compelling, and we've made those into separate game modes. So once you've played for a little bit, you unlock them as a full mode you can play.
Is that what the oh-so mysterious 'secret games' are in Bejeweled 3?
Yeah. The secret games are basically some of the variants of Bejeweled. The more unusual ones that we thought were the really cool ones that you wanted to play over and over again. And so once you've progressed a little way through the game, they're unlocked so you can just go back and play them in sort of a perpetual mode, as you would with the other versions, like Classic skill and so forth.
OK. I also noticed that there's going to be a new badge system in the game.
Yeah. It's not exactly ... it's kind of new. I wish I could say it's super radically awesome cool. We had something like that in the PC version of Bejeweled Blitz. It's sort of an achievement system. The only thing – you get these badges for doing various things, and there's different levels of badges, and there's elite badges for doing really tough things.
How tough are the 'tough' badges?
A really tough badge would be Super Nova Gem, which is a kind of gem that exists in the game but it's one of these we don't even tell people about it because it's nearly impossible to make. You have to get six gems in a row. And it's quite hard to do that. You either need to have an incredibly lucky hall of gems, or you need to engineer an extremely difficult combination of gems so those fall together and make a sixth gem combination. And a Super Nova Gem does a humongous explosion, so that's kind of cool. It's mostly just an achievement to see if you can actually get such a thing.
How many badges are there going to be in the game?
Oh gosh. There's a bunch. There's dozens. I would say there's dozens and dozens.
Bejeweled Blitz came out and we got obsessed with being able to do more than one match at one time. Is that also going to be in the game?
Oh yeah. We kind of used a lot of the Bejeweled Blitz basic physics and mechanics of it. Kind of carried into Bejeweled 3 here. Like Blitz, the visuals and all the special effects and stuff are pretty cranked up. It's full HD displays and accelerated explosions and more tunnels and so on.
Do you think that will go over well with the traditional Bejeweled fan?
I believe so. I think that when we put out Bejeweled 2 in 2004, at the time, for the casual game market, it was actually a bit over the top. I remember people telling us things like, 'Why is your game 1024 by 768? That resolution is way too big. Casual players are never going to need that hi-res." And that may be true -- that may be overkill for some people -- but in some ways it also kind of allows for future-proofing. Down the road another year or two, it will still probably look good, we hope. And of course it can be played at a lower resolution and smaller and you can resize the windows freely and just play on low-end computers, so that is a pretty important part. We are trying to support both casual players and people who have a fancier machine, so they can also enjoy more stuff. Bejeweled 2 is six years old.
What's your definition of success for a game like Bejeweled 3?
Honestly, Bejeweled 3 was, in some ways, a game we made for my Mom. And my Mom is a big Bejeweled fan, but, you know what, she doesn't use Facebook, she doesn't want to use Facebook, she doesn't want to play Bejeweled Blitz. So she's been looking at Bejeweled where, so, she's been playing stuff on, you know, 2004 kinds of things. So, you know, [Bejeweled 3] was a game that we kind of made for people like her, who kind of like Bejeweled, but have been kind of left a bit high and dry for awhile, as far as getting something new.
So if your mom likes Bejeweled 3, then you'll consider it successful?
Well, yeah, it's actually not a bad way of looking at it. [Laughs]
How many additions in the game are based on things that fans requested?
There is definitely a number of things in there that are a result of what people liked or didn't like in earlier versions. So for example, we've got one in there called Lightning Mode, which is influenced by Bejeweled Blitz. It's not exactly Bejeweled, because we didn't want to just duplicate that. It's sort of a very fast-paced, time-based kind of game. It is different from Blitz in a couple ways, in that you, it can last longer than a minute. You can kind of collect these time gems that will extend your game. And it's kind of got a sort of a stage thing, where you go up in rounds, and each round is worth more points, and so forth. So, that was definitely influenced by Blitz, because we figured that, you know, the players who are playing Bejeweled Blitz, of which, there are quite a few now.
Does Bejeweled 3 have any kind of social media integration that, you know, if you get a high score, can you put it on Twitter, or anything like that?
To be honest, right now, no. But it'll probably get stuff like that in the future. We're trying to figure out how to kind of do these things in a way that, kind of makes sense. And it didn't seem to make sense, Bejeweled 3 is kind of, more of a, single player game.
OK.
Now, that doesn't mean that, in fact, it's quite likely that, aspects of Bejeweled 3 will start to resurface, in other parts of. So, might, you start seeing some of those kinds of variant games, you know, as part of, you know, iPhone Bejeweled, or Bejeweled Blitz. And that seems quite possible.
You know, one thing I didn't really see in the trailer, were remnants of Bejeweled Twist. Is there any reason for that?
There are some places you'll see Bejeweled Twist resurfacing, but not in [Bejeweled 3]. There are some games coming out the next couple months, where, I will, I don't know if I, I'd probably better not announce anything.
I would say that Twist is not dead. There will be more twisting. There will be more twisting coming, but our feeling was that Twist was a little bit more of a hard-core mechanic. [Yeah] And so we're going to try to move that into a product where those kinds of players are more likely to enjoy it.
Downloadable casual games have been taking a hit and a lot of people have blamed that on social gaming. Do you think this will affect how Bejeweled 3 is received?
It's definitely a factor. Yeah, I mean download space is, it's getting a lot tougher. I wouldn't say it's necessarily going downhill, but it's certainly flattening.
On the other hand, it's kind of a complex equation. Last year was our best year for retail. We're doing very well with boxes in retail stores. That's not exactly the sexy new social game story. There are a lot of people out there who are still buying their games in places like Wal-Mart, and so you know, we've been doing pretty good there.
Now it's not something that is a news story, but – and it's true that in general PC retail sales, especially for AAA games are not looking too good. But it has been doing pretty well for us. Downloadable are also, it's definitely a sign of it's changing. And I would say, in the future – as you can see from the kinds of products we're doing now, we're trying to – I wouldn't say move away from it, -- but I would say branch out from it.
When you look at some of our other games, what we find, the good thing about the PC is that it's a pretty good spot for testing things out and seeing how they work, and developing for that in a way that helps the other platforms. So, Plants vs. Zombies, if we started doing a count of where it's been played, probably by now you'd see that a lot more people have played it on iPhone or iPad or Xbox or something like that than have played it online. But would it have existed on those platforms if it hadn't been on PC first? Probably not. We provided a good spot for that game to come out. It was a pretty high risk game and it was a good spot to develop something where you weren't worried about a lot of the crazy technological issues, platform issues and so forth. And then going from there to these other platforms was actually relatively easy, comparatively. And when we went to iPhone, people were already quite aware of Plants vs. Zombies from PC, and so forth. And so that kind of helped get it out there.
Bejeweled 3 Interview: Part II: Take a closer look at the game's new experimental 'Zen' mode, complete with positive affirmations and breath modulator.
Serenity now: Bejeweled 3's Zen mode treads on 'New Age-y' territory
One of my favorite things about PopCap's popular match-3 puzzle game is that you can choose to play under high pressure, whether timed or to beat a high score, or -- if you're just in the mood to kick back and relax -- you can play the game on Endless mode, where there's no time limits, you can just swap gems until you fall into some sort of blissed out trance.
PopCap co-founder and Chief Creative Director Jason Kapalka says this has always been a fan favorite, and in the new Bejeweled 3 game, the 'Endless' mode from the previous Bejeweled games has been completely blown out and renamed the 'Zen' mode.
Like the 'Endless mode,' you will be able to play for infinity -- but the Zen mode has some new added a few new experimental features designed to transport you to your happy place. While you play the game, you'll be treated to a spa-like experience with relaxing visuals and music. And a breath modulator. And, if you choose, positive affirmations like 'Don't Worry' and 'Be Happy.' Oh yeah -- they went there.
Kapalka offers us more details on what to expect in Bejeweled's most experimental version of the game yet.
So, tell us more about Bejeweled 3's Zen mode.
The zen mode is gonna be quite interesting. A lot of this stuff that's in there is actually kind of scientific-lite. It actually has things in there that you can actually use to kind of, you know, get into a meditative state. It's got breath modulation stuff...
Breath modulation? How does that work?
Well, you turn it on. And this sort of tracking line moves up and down the screen at the same time you hear kind of, basically, breathing in and out sounds. It actually works pretty well. What it does is then, over time, if you play that, the pace sort of slows down gradually. So you get to ideas that kind of. It definitely works. I mean, as you're listening to the, you know, breathing and watching this line in the background, you kind of think up your own breathing with it. And as that slows down, you know? You tend to, you know, make you also slow down your own breathing.
Wow. That's wild.
Yeah. I mean, it's not exactly, you know? It's not full-on biofeedback-type stuff, where we kind of attach, you know, electrodes to your head or anything like that.
But it is, you know? It actually does, you know, the kind of function that will, you know? If you sit there and do that, it's very likely it will actually kind of slow your breathing down, which will probably cause you to calm down and lose your stress.
Have you guys done any medical testing on that?
Jason: Yeah, kind of. Yeah. We – there's some medical researchers who have been doing a bunch of tests using Bejeweled and custom variants of Bejeweled. They have a version that will actually do a biofeedback. So they have people hooked up to monitors and so on. We can't exactly replicate what they're doing in this version. But, yeah, we have had them come in and talk to us a few times and consult with us.
Is there anything else rather than breath modulation, like colors and sound?
There's some subtle stuff we did in the game where when you're playing in the Zen Mode, a bunch of things like gravity and the rate of how things swap and explosions are all kind of tend to be a little more mellow, basically. But there's also more full-on things. There's fine aural tones, which – you might have heard of these -- you have to wear headphones to listen to them. It's an auditory illusion where they play a frequency in one ear and a different frequency in the other ear. And that kind of tricks your brain into hearing a different frequency, by hearing the two sounds in different ears. And it can be done so that you hear a frequency outside of the regular hearing range.
Now the point of that is that, in theory, you can have it be tones that are outside of the range of hearing but are in the range of different kinds of brain wave pulsations. The theory being it can be useful for meditation by playing frequencies that are in the beta wave or delta wave range that would be associated with deep sleep or dreaming. That's kind of an interesting thing. It's in there in the experimental category. But that is an area that's sort of fringe science. And, you can turn the monitor off as you prefer.
What has the response been like from players?
Different people have different responses to it. Some people listen to it and think it's cool. Other people hear a bunch of irritating tones and noises. So it's something that we thought was fun to try. And some people like it. It does work well for some people in terms of meditative mode. And we also have one more feature in there that is definitely for my mom. We call them mantras. Which are kind of, to some degree, kind of like affirmations. Where it will display positive thoughts on the screen either visibly ___ or if you want, subliminally.
Like what? What kind of affirmations?
Generally positive thinking kind of things. 'Be happy' and 'Don't worry.' At one point we had a quit smoking set in there where it would try and tell you things to quit smoking, but we had to take that out because, bizarrely, even having the mentioning of smoking in there gave us an ESRB rating, where we had tobacco use. So it was just too weird to have a thing where we would come out with a warning about smoking on it.
Yes, that would be odd for a Bejeweled game.
Yeah, so it has these things in it. That's a weird one, obviously, because clearly that's getting into some sort of New Agey territory. Some people don't like it and some people would consider it silly, but, again, my mum likes it, and I know she enjoys that stuff or seeing it, and it does no harm, and it's certainly it's an option you can choose, whether you want on or not. It's part of the whole experience of a zen-type thing, which we always thought was a good idea to embrace the idea that if people are playing it to relax let's kind of throw in everything we can to might possibly help you do that, rather than sort of...
All you need to do is insert yoga instructor you're good to go.
We did change some of the things where you can get music well you can actually play music or various sort of soothing sound effects in the background like running water or waterfalls, stuff like that, too. So, yeah, I mean, we'll see how that goes.
It is odd because it represents how Bejeweled has these two extremes, so you've got, you know, on the one hand, that version, where you could be you know listening to hypnotic tones on your headphones and positive affirmations while you're watching this breathing thing go up and down, and on the other extreme you've got kind of hyper-kinetic, one-minute action games with explosions all over the place with wormholes and lightning bolts, and so forth.
Now, some people may like both of them, and that's been the weird thing with Bejeweled is whenever people try and specify it as a game for one type of person, you know it's a bit not fair to say that. It got stereotyped as being just a game for mums initially, and with things like iPhone and visuals, [Bejeweled ]Blitz and so forth, it takes on a different form for different people.
PopCap co-founder and Chief Creative Director Jason Kapalka says this has always been a fan favorite, and in the new Bejeweled 3 game, the 'Endless' mode from the previous Bejeweled games has been completely blown out and renamed the 'Zen' mode.
Like the 'Endless mode,' you will be able to play for infinity -- but the Zen mode has some new added a few new experimental features designed to transport you to your happy place. While you play the game, you'll be treated to a spa-like experience with relaxing visuals and music. And a breath modulator. And, if you choose, positive affirmations like 'Don't Worry' and 'Be Happy.' Oh yeah -- they went there.
Kapalka offers us more details on what to expect in Bejeweled's most experimental version of the game yet.
So, tell us more about Bejeweled 3's Zen mode.
The zen mode is gonna be quite interesting. A lot of this stuff that's in there is actually kind of scientific-lite. It actually has things in there that you can actually use to kind of, you know, get into a meditative state. It's got breath modulation stuff...
Breath modulation? How does that work?
Well, you turn it on. And this sort of tracking line moves up and down the screen at the same time you hear kind of, basically, breathing in and out sounds. It actually works pretty well. What it does is then, over time, if you play that, the pace sort of slows down gradually. So you get to ideas that kind of. It definitely works. I mean, as you're listening to the, you know, breathing and watching this line in the background, you kind of think up your own breathing with it. And as that slows down, you know? You tend to, you know, make you also slow down your own breathing.
Wow. That's wild.
Yeah. I mean, it's not exactly, you know? It's not full-on biofeedback-type stuff, where we kind of attach, you know, electrodes to your head or anything like that.
But it is, you know? It actually does, you know, the kind of function that will, you know? If you sit there and do that, it's very likely it will actually kind of slow your breathing down, which will probably cause you to calm down and lose your stress.
Have you guys done any medical testing on that?
Jason: Yeah, kind of. Yeah. We – there's some medical researchers who have been doing a bunch of tests using Bejeweled and custom variants of Bejeweled. They have a version that will actually do a biofeedback. So they have people hooked up to monitors and so on. We can't exactly replicate what they're doing in this version. But, yeah, we have had them come in and talk to us a few times and consult with us.
Is there anything else rather than breath modulation, like colors and sound?
There's some subtle stuff we did in the game where when you're playing in the Zen Mode, a bunch of things like gravity and the rate of how things swap and explosions are all kind of tend to be a little more mellow, basically. But there's also more full-on things. There's fine aural tones, which – you might have heard of these -- you have to wear headphones to listen to them. It's an auditory illusion where they play a frequency in one ear and a different frequency in the other ear. And that kind of tricks your brain into hearing a different frequency, by hearing the two sounds in different ears. And it can be done so that you hear a frequency outside of the regular hearing range.
Now the point of that is that, in theory, you can have it be tones that are outside of the range of hearing but are in the range of different kinds of brain wave pulsations. The theory being it can be useful for meditation by playing frequencies that are in the beta wave or delta wave range that would be associated with deep sleep or dreaming. That's kind of an interesting thing. It's in there in the experimental category. But that is an area that's sort of fringe science. And, you can turn the monitor off as you prefer.
What has the response been like from players?
Different people have different responses to it. Some people listen to it and think it's cool. Other people hear a bunch of irritating tones and noises. So it's something that we thought was fun to try. And some people like it. It does work well for some people in terms of meditative mode. And we also have one more feature in there that is definitely for my mom. We call them mantras. Which are kind of, to some degree, kind of like affirmations. Where it will display positive thoughts on the screen either visibly ___ or if you want, subliminally.
Like what? What kind of affirmations?
Generally positive thinking kind of things. 'Be happy' and 'Don't worry.' At one point we had a quit smoking set in there where it would try and tell you things to quit smoking, but we had to take that out because, bizarrely, even having the mentioning of smoking in there gave us an ESRB rating, where we had tobacco use. So it was just too weird to have a thing where we would come out with a warning about smoking on it.
Yes, that would be odd for a Bejeweled game.
Yeah, so it has these things in it. That's a weird one, obviously, because clearly that's getting into some sort of New Agey territory. Some people don't like it and some people would consider it silly, but, again, my mum likes it, and I know she enjoys that stuff or seeing it, and it does no harm, and it's certainly it's an option you can choose, whether you want on or not. It's part of the whole experience of a zen-type thing, which we always thought was a good idea to embrace the idea that if people are playing it to relax let's kind of throw in everything we can to might possibly help you do that, rather than sort of...
All you need to do is insert yoga instructor you're good to go.
We did change some of the things where you can get music well you can actually play music or various sort of soothing sound effects in the background like running water or waterfalls, stuff like that, too. So, yeah, I mean, we'll see how that goes.
It is odd because it represents how Bejeweled has these two extremes, so you've got, you know, on the one hand, that version, where you could be you know listening to hypnotic tones on your headphones and positive affirmations while you're watching this breathing thing go up and down, and on the other extreme you've got kind of hyper-kinetic, one-minute action games with explosions all over the place with wormholes and lightning bolts, and so forth.
Now, some people may like both of them, and that's been the weird thing with Bejeweled is whenever people try and specify it as a game for one type of person, you know it's a bit not fair to say that. It got stereotyped as being just a game for mums initially, and with things like iPhone and visuals, [Bejeweled ]Blitz and so forth, it takes on a different form for different people.
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