A year later in 2012, PopCap announced the long awaited Plants vs Zombies 2 for a 2013 spring release.Ī day later, PopCap confirmed 50 people were laid off from their Seattle headquarters as part of a reorganization. EA was already a major player in the console market and wanted to tap into the casual market on mobile. PopCap’s CEO said, “By working with EA, we'll scale our games and services to deliver more social, mobile, casual fun to an even bigger, global audience." PopCap Games was successful with its casual games, Plants vs. In 2011, Electronic Arts (EA) purchased PopCap Games in a $750 million deal. The game was ported to nearly every device available, had two spin-off games, and a sequel that changed everything.Įlectronic Arts’ Acquisition of PopCap Games
PvZ was released on PC in 2009 and on mobile in 2010. Fan primarily developed the game with a small team of four people at PopCap. Plants were chosen because they are stationary and zombies are slow.
The characters of plants and zombies were conceptualized in this sketch, moving away from fish and aliens. Zombies (PvZ) is a tower-defense game inspired by Fan’s love for custom games in Warcraft III and the trap scenes from the Swiss Family Robinson movie.įan sketched ideas that would become core gameplay mechanics such as the peashooter, sunlight resource, and the five-lane layout.
Fan initially wanted to work on a sequel to his previous game, Insaniquarium, but developed the idea into a new game. George Fan worked as a senior game designer at PopCap Games where he made one of his most popular games, Plants vs.