Voor mijn artikel over het towerdefensefenomeen, Daar komen de discozombies, interviewde ik George Fan, de bedenker van Plants vs. Zombies. Inmiddels de snelst verkopende PopCap-game. Fan legt onder andere uit hoe het idee ontstond voor planten als geschutstorens en hij suggereert dat zijn game misschien wel meer mensen aanspreekt dan Bejeweled. Hier de hele e-mailconversatie. (In het Engels, want dat kun je.)

Niels: Do you remember the first tower defense game you played?

George Fan: “Yup, it was one of the many tower defense maps that came out for Warcraft III. It got me thinking: ‘Wow, why am I so addicted to this?’”

When did it occur to you, PopCap should do a game like this?

“The game started out independently but, from the get go, I knew that I wanted to work with PopCap on the game. We have similar high standards when it come to quality but we also have that same sense of fun and desire to find new twists on existing game genres. I prototyped Plants vs. Zombies independently, and, at the point which I thought the game was officially ‘fun’, I brought it to PopCap and they helped me put a team together to see it to completion.”

What was the flash of inspiration that led to Plants vs. Zombies?

“I’d just finished Insaniquarium, and was noodling around with some new game ideas, one of which was a more defense oriented sequel to Insaniquarium. At the time I was also playing the aforementioned tower defense mods in Warcraft III and thought ‘What if I used plants as towers? Plants are great because you can give them lots of character, and no one expects them to move.’ So out went the fish, in came the plants.

“The two opposing sides were kind of born out of the need to fit the game’s mechanics. Plants filled the role of ‘towers’ quite well in that people expect plants to stay in place, and zombies were the perfect way to introduce a slow moving enemy, which is necessary in order to give the player time to react on a smaller playfield.”

Did you ever think, while developing, “there are so many tower defense games coming out, let’s do something else”?

“When we first started working on the game three years ago, tower defense games were still a small blip on the radar. It was only recently that the genre kind of exploded thanks to the easily accessible flash variants you can play in your web browser. That’s what you get for taking so long to make a game I guess, haha. Luckily, Plants vs. Zombies has plenty of unique elements to set it apart from other tower defense games.”

What have you done to set your game apart from others in the genre?

“My goal was to take the tower defense standards and simplify them down to the point that almost anyone could pick up and play. With that in mind, I kept the playfield small and removed some of the things found in traditional tower defense that might not be as intuitive. There’s also the resource harvesting element that’s not found in other tower defense games.

“Also, I don’t think there’s a tower defense game out there that’s quite as ridiculous as Plants vs. Zombies is. My goal was to pile the hilarity so high that no other tower defense game could compare.”

Is there a special PopCap-touch in this game? Something only PopCap can do?

“One of the best things about PopCap is that they take the time to get a game right, to give it that final polish. PvZ was three years in the making. That’s a significant chunk of time for a casual game. As a developer, they gave me the space and freedom to make it the best it could be.

And there is a sense of humour that PopCap has, that I share, that is contagious. We tried to load as much of this into Plants vs. Zombies as we possibly could and I think you can see that in the finished product.”

What do you make of the recent trend of hardcore journalists taking an extreme liking to PopCap’s casual games, like Peggle and now Plants vs. Zombies?

“I think it’s great. Peggle really paved the way for PopCap’s games to become accepted by the hardcore audience, and I’m happy to see that Plants vs. Zombies is going to solidify that even further.”

Can you tell me something about the changes to the game that occurred during development?

“The biggest change was the game’s name, which took a lot of time to decide on. We originally wanted to call the game Lawn of the Dead, but couldn’t for legal reasons. It was hard to get away mentally from that name but then, we decided to say it like you see it. And so, Plants vs. Zombies was born!”

Do you have a theory about why tower defense games are so addictive?

“We all built forts and defended our sand castles from the incoming tide as kids. Defense comes very natural for us. Combine that with light strategy and the hypnotic nature of watching your towers fling projectiles at enemies and you have a recipe for addictiveness.”

Where did the idea come from for the musical style teaser trailer?

“The music video was born when I mentioned to my girlfriend Laura that I wanted to do something neat for the game’s end credits. That gave her the inspiration to write that awesome song, which in turn gave me inspiration to mock up a goofy flash cartoon to go along with it. The team then worked for two weeks straight putting the whole video sequence together. PopCap’s marketing team dug it so much that they thought it’d be a good idea to release it as a marketing tool. I agreed and the rest, as they say, is history.”

[Meer over het liedje in dit interview met Laura Shigihara.]

Are tower defense games for everyone? Do you expect this to have as broad an audience as, say, Bejeweled?

“Tower defense games as a whole aren’t necessarily for everyone, but Plants vs. Zombies is. It’s easy enough for my mom to pick up, yet has enough strategic depth to keep a hardcore gamer thoroughly entertained. It might end up having an even broader audience than Bejeweled, due to its crossing over to the hardcore audience.”