Fire Alarm Companies

PopCap CEO Dave Roberts told Nick Cowen Therefore, the company is thrilled with the purchase of Electronic Arts and what it means for game development

One of the biggest stories in the games industry this year around the acquisition of a casual game 's leading lights, PopCap, from Electronic Arts for the princely sum of $ 750m (? 457m) centered.

While the benefits of the sale of EA 's perspective is to develop simple - it expands the company' s reach on both social networking and gaming platforms and smartphones increases his talent-base significantly - for PopCap 's motives the sales have been elusive.

We spoke with PopCap CEO Dave Roberts to find out what motivated the deal and what impact it has on the company.

What were the last six months?
It was definitely crazy. I don 't know if it was the craziest 6 months of my life, but it was fucking crazy.

Can you talk me through the decision process that led to PopCap being acquired by Electronic Arts?
Well, we were with some bankers working on the deal. They took us through the whole thing - that was not 'ta traditional banking business process. At the same time we gave a lot of time and energy to the IPO route on this and make a lot of work on this. So, on the one hand, I was involved in this was, and on the other hand, I use a lot of companies that could potentially acquire to meet us, yes, yes, there was a lot on my plate during this time.

It was a bit like speed dating - although I 've never done speed dating. For us it was a lot of fast 'Hello, how are you' meetings. EA was a good fit for us, though. I think both companies are reminded each other of a few years ago when we first took a good look at each other 's inner life - it was easy to think that everything is static, when in fact, the truth of both companies had changed a amount over time.

There was much to discover new, for us, that EA really cared to play. That was an eye opener for me, I mean, I've known John Riccitiello 's been saying it for a long time, but I' ve heard that something like this before. Just because a CEO says, it doesn 't make it so. But then you have to go through the halls of EA and see how people who are really excited to play.

They also are a product of personal perspective. They have really fond of our games, their interest in us wasn 't because they saw it as filling a niche market. With Riccitiello 's vision for EA, Thurs games come first, and this multi-platform future for all games is kind of where we were heading anyway at PopCap. We share a common vision with them.

It 's now much more can we do with our games - and I think we' ve only the surface of what we 're in a position scratched.

What will the deal change at PopCap?
Well, PopCap 's has been changed every year for the last 10 years, but hopefully we' ll keep the essence of what we do here. One of the things I like about EA - I think and I don 't, this was for them a few years ago - is that they care very passionately about games. I think they lost for a while. The EA of four years ago was the EA, the arrogant and didn 't really give a damn about games. Eventually, though, and I personally didn 't even notice this until about EA as last year, but things had changed. EA was different, the people were really excited about their work again and I don 't think that had happened in a while.

Everything indicates that EA like us as we are. You 've not really proved to be very good, casual content, so there' s no reason why they 'd that the fair by what we have here.

We certainly see it as an opportunity, some of the things we have to take \ trying to do better on a larger scale - such as massive porting effort, for example - that we 've never quite as good as EA at doing. We were just the stuff on a scale of PopCap. Done in collaboration with EA this stuff is to make our lives so much easier, much of our game, guys are space and time to work on games and they won have \ t ', to spend large amounts of time on porting efforts to tell .

That was the main goal to allow the transaction PopCap to focus his creative talents?
Well, that's one objective, sure. We're a relatively small company after all. I mean, for example, we've got a team in Dublin right now that's working on a social media game, but that's also the team we have that does ports to Android. Also, if we get a Sony Ericsson deal, we have to go off and buy 60 handsets to work on.

Look, no individual task is difficult, but you 'd have a situation where we' d have designers, artists and engineers who could be working on a social game, and they 're doing other things, rather than . Now we can move, from the kind of work to look good to other parts of the EA organization to do that stuff much. The good news is that EA have it all set up so that we can choose what parts of our organization and work load that we want to integrate to get. It 's not a big EA mandate that we do things that dictated their way.

Their attitude is: "Look, here '.'s Doing the stuff our organization can let us know what you want and we' ll figure it all out '.

Well, that is 's how it' s so far. We closed haven 't the deal yet, ask me in six months! But we 're pretty excited about it. We have really seen this as an opportunity to a larger company, hopefully without losing what 's in particular, what we do here.

So the other major objective was to PopCap to grow as a company?
Well, we 've always about creating this lasting legacy for our brands. We want our games to rank there with games like Monopoly and Scrabble, regardless of the fact that they 're playing video games. People have favorite games, but many of them aren 't video games and we really want to change that. Now, to reach the consumer, that EA 's got, we' re better that position. We knew that we probably have done it on our own, but it would have taken much longer. With EA, we can accelerate this process by quite a large number of years, because a relationship provides us access to them a lot more resources.

Some of his stuff, like Playfish 's publishing platform that will be our social media game development, or coming to get this huge client database to help us, more players may accelerate.

So we 've got more available. We don 't have all the answers yet on what we' re going to do with everyone, but we 're thrilled to have the opportunity to use it have.

They, like you 'sound it out yet, how do you go ...
Yes, well, that 's just the greatest challenge for a company our size is that there are so many things we could do. The danger is that we don 't sure that we know what is beyond the first things we are after. We 're going to have a little cautious, it' s easy to try a thousand things at once and doing none of them. We 've got to be a bit sensible about things and take advice on it.

Look, there's a lot of questions that we have - we haven 't closed the deal yet - and there' s the potential for a variety of fears people have, if \ Change's so much so that we know we have a lot to work through.

You 've said that it' sa lot, that will change at PopCap - won but surely there are basics that 't be changed - as happened in the last 10 years?
Well they shouldn't be. Unless, of course, we decided we wanted to change them. Look, five years ago we were a download gaming company. Now we're a social media games company and a smartphone games company. That's what we're know for now, and that's a pretty big change, right? It's the biggest change that I think we've had at PopCap – certainly in the time I've been here.

We 've had to play to really think differently too. With games, I really have to credit Jason [Kapalka, founder and chief creative officer] and some of the other guys in the studio for drawing some of the old timers, we 've had here, sometimes kicking and screaming to this genre. Once she got it, if they really realized that not all social games were bad, and they were actually a really cool way, the user in a way that you never even thought of before commit. Once this is done, the whole landscape is changing here.

I think we 're on this morning of the new social games. Not only from PopCap, but no one - we haven 't the best thing that has yet to offer this platform to see. We want the way people look at certain social gaming, and I 'm that other people are working to change the same thing. Take the new Sims social stuff - I haven 't seen it myself, but I' ve heard it 's supposed to be amazing. I don 't think you' re will be seeing a lot more, Cloney, spam-your-friends games that we ve 'on Facebook as seen in the past. I think you 're a lot of innovations will be seen there, and that' s just a good thing.

To think that we 're less social games on platforms which would see a premium put on monetization?
Well, that depends on what you consider important. You can go overboard with monetization on any platform. You can use one of free-to-play models too far and I'm thinking that too much can put a blemish on the industry. I think it actually hurt very early social games, even some of them, like Farmville, what I thought was very spammy at first. But they 've got huge, Farmville players now ask if they like Farmville, and they do. 'Say s easy for us in the core gaming crowd that it' It \ s not even a game, but the truth is, has FarmVille millions of people who play and love it and you can 't argue with that!

Do you think that the core market of developers resist social media games because they, how much money they see, and they begin to worry that begin this the kind of game publishers and developers will focus more on, because that 's where is the money?
I think that 'sa part of it, sure. But then there 's another part of her that she' s because it 's the unknown. Game designers are fickle and they breed a little like the things remain as they are. It 's hard to change things sometimes - we look' ve struggled with him. It 's hard to make a game with the right balance, which is funny, and you can monetize directly, while engaged with it still. A game that one-time fee is a much simpler task than any game freemium model to work.

I 've a lot of bad Freemium models is to see where they expect you two levels and then you pay for it - and the two levels aren' t very good. It can be an interesting game in there, but you 'll never know because the makers tried, you paid too fast!

So, I think the developers have always been game balance issues, and now we 've got a new dimension to game balancing, and I think that' s huge. It 'sa whole new skills and proven by some of the things that I' ve seen out there, a lot of people aren 't very good.

I think we 'll Come Around, though. People learn how to make a better social games. We take an approach here, where we try to lead the fun part and then select the monetization part. We 've probably left money on the table somewhere, but eventually we' ve always been our customers happy and we 've built our reputation and will, frankly, that' s the most important thing for us. We 're in the long run. It 's Facebook today, but it could in a year + Google and it could be something completely different in three years.

Are you a developer to make games for Google +?
I don 't know if I' d may say so, if we are!