![]() ![]() ![]() Its popularity is why it’s been copied countless times Kapalka describes many examples as “mostly just depressing,” though he has no problem when the imitation is done well. Not bad for a game created by three guys in the span of a couple of months.īeyond merely just selling well, Bejeweled also birthed the match-three puzzle game genre. “I think it’s done something like $500 million in revenue,” says Kapalka. That’s equivalent to having 70 people playing the game without stopping since the end of the last ice age. The games have been played by more than 500 million people worldwide, and a company release boasts that 798,000 years of leisure time have been spent playing Bejeweled. It’s been inducted into the Computer Gaming World Hall of Fame, after Tetris the only puzzle game to receive the distinction, and in January 2010, Guinness World Records named Bejeweled “The Most Popular Puzzle Game Series of the Century.” Instead of getting a one-time $50,000 payout, PopCap kept the rights to the puzzle title that would eventually be renamed Bejeweled and go on to become one of the top 10 bestselling videogames of all time. Rather than selling Diamond Mine, the young PopCap had to settle for licensing it. We like to think that our ignorance was blissful.”īlissful and fortuitous. “We weren’t very savvy about the business stuff. Then came the dot-com crash.Ĭhief creative officer Kapalka says that he and his partners weren’t really aware of what was going on. The business model of developing and selling games like Diamond Mine had great potential. Matched gems disappeared, and the stones above dropped down to fill the holes, new ones flowing in constantly. It was a simple puzzle game in which players moved colored gemstones left, right, up and down to form lines of three or more identical gems. PopCap’s first game was called Diamond Mine. They were the first of what would come to be known as casual games. The games were small and simple, built for dial-up modems, intended to drive traffic. AOL and Microsoft had sites offering free-to-play games. Fiete, Kapalka and Vechey had been working for Total Entertainment Network, which would become. ![]() It was the early internet era, and advertising-funded websites were the rage. ![]()
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