Jason Kapalka

Bejeweled is a dead simple computer game in which players line up gems of similar shapes and colors. It is also a blockbuster financial success.

Downloaded more than 350 million times, Bejeweled has generated over $300 million in the past eight years for its Seattle-based developer PopCap Games.  No wonder that Wired magazine recently compared Bejeweled to crack cocaine.

Tonight, PopCap is taking the covers off the latest version of the game -- dubbed Bejeweled Twist -- at a big bash at the Experience Music Project in Seattle. In development for nearly four years at a cost of more than $1 million, PopCap is hoping that the new game will win over new and old fans alike.

Sequels are extremely tough to pull off. But PopCap is hopeful that they have another smash hit on their hands.

PopCap co-founder Jason Kapalka, one of the brains behind the Bejeweled franchise, chatted with us today about what made Bejeweled a success, the history of the game and why a casual game developer likes to spend his leisure time playing hard core games. 

On anticipating Bejeweled's success: "Bejeweled certainly was not this thing where we knew what was going on and we planned to make this big hit. It was really a surprise for us. Was that luck? I don't know. But we are conscious that we, in some ways, got struck by lightening in a sense. We need to be cognizant of that and preserve what made that special."

On changing the name from Diamond Mine to Bejeweled: "When Microsoft wanted to launch the game on their site, they had some legal concerns about the game because I think there was some game called Diamond Mines that was around....It was actually a guy over at Microsoft who came up with the name Bejeweled. We actually didn't like it because at the time that Brendan Fraser movie had just come out, Bedazzled. And so Bejeweled sounded like a really lame effort to tie into this current movie which we thought would sound dated in about a week. So, obviously as it turned out, we were wrong and Bejeweled turned out to be a much better name."

On when they knew Bejeweled was something special: "When we put out the first downloadable version of Bejeweled Deluxe, Brian ,our programmer guy, wrote a little application that sat on the desktop. And every time someone bought it, it would make a ka-ching sound so we could tell people were buying it. We would be sitting on the couch and suddenly you would hear a ka-ching from the other room. After a while the ka-chings started coming pretty fast and furious to the point where we turned it off. That was the point where we realized that it was going to be a pretty big thing."

On the simplicity of the game: "A lot of the appeal of it is that obviously it is simple. But part of it I think is that it breaks a lot of the rules of traditional video games. We were told initially when we showed it to people in the video game industry that they weren't interested in it. And they complained that it wasn't even really a game because it was purely luck based.... It is pretty much random, and there's not much you can do. You keep playing and eventually there are no more configurations on the board where you can move and it ends. (Compared to) the traditional world of skilled-based video games, it really is out of your control. It just happens when it happens. So, it seemed like a bad idea in terms of technical game design. But as we found, when I showed it to my mom, my mom didn't care whether it was a good game or not, she just enjoyed playing it. In retrospect what we are realizing is that it is more akin to more traditional games like solitaire where luck is a major part of the game."

On the party tonight: "They are doing some kind of wacky stuff in terms of the presentation of it. It will be a little more theatrical than what you expect for a casual game launch."

On what makes Bejeweled Twist different: "It offers a lot of possibility for people to play it in both in a very casual relaxed way, but also in a much more competitive or deep kind of manner."

On the $1 million development price tag for Twist: "It could be a lot for casual games for sure. The idea behind casual games has always been that you could make them really cheap in your basement. And that's what we did with the first version of Bejeweled. But on the other hand, it is certainly very cheap compared to a typical CD-ROM or console game, which costs at least ten times that."

On the shelf life of Bejeweled: "Given the amount of money that Bejeweled has generated, we could have spent 10 times that amount and still have felt it was worth the risk because Bejeweled has had this long franchise so far... The good thing about these types games is that -- so far -- they have shown to have a very long shelf life. These types of games don't really date the same way a lot of the way the hard core games do where they have to make their money in the first two months."

On nerves heading into the Twist release: "I am a little nervous. I personally do feel like there is a little bit of pressure."

On why Twist will resonate: "At this point, I think the game is fun to play. After I've been working on it for three or four years, a lot of games by that point I am pretty tired of it and I don't want to see it again. But if I want to look at Bejeweled Twist, and the original Bejeweled, I still find them both a lot of fun to play. If I am still enjoying after three years ... I think that is a pretty good sign that other people will enjoy playing it too."

On the iPhone: "It is pretty clear that it is a pretty good platform for games... Trying to design for the touch screen is a little different, but I think it is a really promising device and we are pretty excited about working on that more in the future."

On his interest in hard core games: "It is this idea if you do one thing for your day job, when you get off work do you immediately start doing the same thing?"

JASON KAPALKA FAST FACTS

Age: 38

Favorite game of all time: Civilization

Games you are playing now: Dominions 3, WarHammer and Stalker. "Pretty hard core stuff."

Favorite computer hardware: Alienware laptop

Education: Master’s degree in English literature from the University of Alberta

Residence: Vancouver, B.C.