How PopCap became the jewel in the EA crown

Being acquired by your biggest competitor can spell doom, but David Roberts has thrived

‘EVERYBODY WAS terrified, there’s 8,000 of them and 500 of us,” jokes David Roberts, chief executive of PopCap, the little gaming company that could.

Referring to the $1.3 billion (€917 million) acquisition of his company by industry juggernaut Electronic Arts (EA) in July, the gobbling up of the minnow by the overlord reads like a case of gaming life imitating gaming art.

But PopCap has something that EA needs. While traditional gaming houses such as EA were busy doing battle for the thumbs of trigger-happy teenage boys, PopCap, which has had operations in Ireland since 2006, was courting their mothers.

Creating bright and breezy challenges and puzzles that attracted women aged 25 and over in their droves, gaming purists were quick to scoff and say what PopCap and its customers were doing – “casual gaming” – was not really gaming.

“We were definitely the step-children,” admits Roberts of how his company’s genre of casual gaming was once perceived. “You definitely had a bit of the ‘those aren’t really games’. audience was ignored by gaming.”

He says while many companies over the years “did games for girls”, their makers tended to forget “that girls are people too”.

But with the company’s hit game Bejeweled – a sort of virtual Connect Four, where players compete to match three gems in a row in 60 seconds – attracting three million players a day, traditional gaming companies couldn’t but take heed. PopCap’s real triumph, however, has been its platform promiscuity. With a policy of bringing its games to wherever there are people, they captivated the growing hordes of those gaming on mobile phones and social networks while EA was still getting its boots on.

When in May this year, EA chief executive John Riccitiello said he planned to transform his company “from a packaged goods company to fully integrated digital entertainment company”, it was clear his tractor beams were firmly locked on PopCap.

Now five months post-acquisition, Roberts says things are going well.

“Most people have been surprised by how easy it’s been. They have left us alone, we make our own games, decide our own roadmaps, hire our own staff, they haven’t told us to change anything like that.”

Culturally, he says, “EA is trying to move itself into the new world . . . so we are less different than you might think.”

There’s good news for PopCap’s Dublin office too where employee numbers have doubled to 85 this year. In fact it was in Dublin that the iPhone version of Bejeweled 3, launched during Roberts’s visit, was developed.

“It’s been fun for me to be here this week because I sort of get to watch the baby being born,” he says. “Now it has the highest rating in the app store that you can get. Everyone here is so excited because customers love it.”

And there’s a hint that things are looking good for 2012 too as Roberts confides that the company’s Seattle-based franchise managers are increasing their plans for Dublin.

“As the studio here has gotten more grown-up, they’ve been able to take on more and more. Everyone is just sort of adding to Dublin because we have good teams here and a good pool of talent.”

A founding member of industry body Games Ireland, it’s in PopCap’s interest to see the sector – which already employs 2,000 people here – grow.

“We’re really trying to help that because when an industry has more people in an area, it’s just better for everybody,” says Roberts. “Even though there ends up being some poaching back and forth, all the boats float in the high tide.”

Roberts says free-to-play is where things are going. It’s a move that’s already begun.

“Even on the iPhone, if you look at the top- grossing, which are the revenue producers, most of those are now free apps that you can buy things in later.”

But he says the free-to-play model can be complicated.

“You can’t just take your premium game and say, ‘Oh now it’s free’, let’s toss in some things and bolt on some stuff to try and make it free to play. You really have to rethink the whole customer experience and gaming experience. How do you make sure they can have fun without paying but that they have more fun when they do pay?”

He also sees location-based gaming on mobile phones as an opportunity.

“That’s where I could be sitting in a pub and playing with strangers in a way that isn’t creepy but is actually fun,” he says. “We in the games industry have a lot of challenges – the fun stuff is to take advantage of a lot of this new device hardware stuff that we are just barely scratching the surface of.”

Dependent on Facebook to reach swathes of customers, Roberts believes social networking will always be with us – whether it’s Facebook or another medium, “We don’t care that much,” he says. “We like to be wherever gamers are and if gamers are on Facebook, we’ll be on Facebook. If they are playing on their refrigerators, we’ll be on their refrigerators. That’s always been PopCap, we don’t try to pull people on to a platform, we find out where people are and we go there.”