“[The deal]was a really crazy process to go through,” Vechey said. “I’m amazed that I’m alive, sometimes. For us, it wasn’t about the transaction — it’s about our legacy. I never once cared how much money we were making, what I cared about was how do we really make sure that this company is around, that it’s still an exciting place to work in 10, 15 years.
“A lot of it came down to: ‘How is the world changing?’ Everything we think we know about social is going to go away. A lot of social games still look like a lot of social games. A lot of mobile games look like a lot of genres.”
Vechey pointed out that most console games had so many more genres, and that social games had so much room to grow.
These days, several million people play PopCap games each day. Vechey said that pre-acquisition, the company had already started to think much, much bigger. “The destination is 100, 200 million people playing our games each day. That’s a scale that PopCap can barely comprehend. We’re going to have to do marketing in a whole new way. I pray that we’ll never have to do a Superbowl ad.”
The key then, he said, was partnering with a publisher who could provide the reach, who thought big enough with marketing to make those numbers happen. EA fit the bill. EA fit with PopCap’s strategy, which Vechey summed up humorously: “Instead of EA acquiring a small company,” he said, “we acquired a really big company.”
Hubble
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 9:30 AMCorrect me if I’m wrong… but didn’t EA acquire Popcap, not the other way around?
Hubble
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 9:33 AMNevermind I seemed to over looked the last sentence, lol clever.
Muzlbut
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 11:27 AMIt’s still a misleading title. Poor, poor kotaku. Why are YOU changing?
Batguy
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 11:37 AMI don’t think there’s anything wrong with the title. It sums up the whole point of the article nicely.
chugs
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 10:05 AMIt says a lot about EA.
I was in a corporate takeover a few years back where my company (a lot smaller) was acquired by a much bigger player. Although the smaller company CEO was put in charge within 3 years all of the bigger company exec’s had been chopped, thousands made redundant. Thoroughly taken over.
Is EA struggling with a lack of imagination and energy? Where is the next target? PoPCap has the steal on the EA team. They’ve got a target, they’ve got an aim and they are charging for it.
witness
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 2:16 PM“EA fit with PopCap’s strategy, which Vechey summed up humorously: “Instead of EA acquiring a small company,” he said, “we acquired a really big company.”
That’s what they said at Pandemic.