PopCap's John Vechey •
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Eurogamer:
PopCap recently trademarked the names Robodojo and Yetitrain. What was that all about?

John Vechey:
I can not tell you what the Robodojo and Yetitrain trademarks were all about! But we definitely had a different name for Plants vs. Zombies before it launched and we weren't going to use it for copyright reasons. There's certainly no guarantee that the game names Robodojo and Yetitrain are really some game. But there's certainly, on some level, us thinking about those games potentially.

Eurogamer:
Is there a completely new game by PopCap coming out this year?

John Vechey:
I don't know.

Eurogamer:
Is there a completely new game by PopCap being announced this year?

John Vechey:
Er, I don't know, actually. It's one of those things where we wait until we're really sure a game is going to be released before we announce anything. There are definitely new games coming this year.

Eurogamer:
You managed to get Peggle and Bejeweled into none other than World of Warcraft. Are you doing anything else there?

Peggle in World of Warcraft, complete with own talents and progression - "crack cocaine into heroin", according to Vechey.

John Vechey:
Er... Not... We're talking to them. We're official friends of Blizzard, and of Valve. I don't know if we'll do something official with [Blizzard], even Peggle was sort of unofficial. We've had some conversations.

Eurogamer:
How did they come about?

John Vechey:
This guy had created a Bejeweled game in WOW and it was great but he got these five things wrong and the graphics kind of sucked. And so we contacted him and gave him a little bit of money and had him make some changes to the game to make it better, put our art in it, call it Bejeweled and that was pretty cool.

For Peggle it was like, we could do it, so we did it. I wish I could say we had some great plan to take over the world with that or some strategy, but I think it actually really annoyed a lot of our sales and marketing team, because they were like, "Why are we spending time on this stupid thing that we're not going to get value from?" They got a little irritable.

But for us it was cool. "It was like putting a bunch of crack cocaine into heroin," I think was one of the quotes. That's my favourite quote about PopCap ever.

Yes we can!

Eurogamer:
Your most famous partnership is with Eurogamer. You promised Johnny Minkley you would make a game about him if he ate an enormous piece of cow in a restaurant. He did, plus a starter, two side dishes, Cat and Ellie's leftovers and a dessert. A real, genuine hero. How's work on Johnny Minkley's Meat Ceiling going?

John Vechey:
Well, PopCap has an official policy to not talk about games in development. I can assure you that the proper amount of care and attention that Johnny Minkley's Meat Ceiling needs to have put into it, will be put into it. We're really good at taking multiple platforms and putting the right game on them. And I assure you that the exact proper amount of care and attention will go into Johnny Minkley's Meat Ceiling that needs to be in Johnny Minkley's Meat Ceiling.

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