The Tragic Demise of Plants vs. Zombies

I aim to ask the question why how did we go from greatness to Absolute sorrow and misery how could we have experienced such legendary titles to being dealt cards that resulted in absolute flanderization soulless experiences and most depressingly a lack of any change to come Plants versus Zombies needs no introduction the 2009 Tower Defense classic introduced a whole cast of fun and soon to be iconic characters to the world designer George fan artist Rich Werner programmer Todd simple and composer Laura shigihara spent years crafting a meticulously fine-tuned experience the result was an incredibly polished lovable and fun shakeup to the Tower Defense genre the game would Garner critical claim across the board skyrocketing pop caps' success Plants versus Zombies in conjunction with previous hits such as Bookworm adventures pegle and Beed cement Ed pop cap as the king of casual Plants versus Zombies went on to Blossom a whole franchise consisting of sequels and spin-offs that grew the brand however Pop cap is rarely discussed today and those within the greater Plants vs Zombie Circle seem to Doom and Gloom about the future of this franchise how did such an iconic title fall so far Into Obscurity among the public I'm not the only person who feels this way the original PvZ is one of those games if you get what I mean it's Charming Unforgettable and brimming with a crap load of Personality there aren't many series that have managed to gain the cold following that PvZ has I mean there's a reason why the Play account on Steam is still this high after all these years pop cap was on the top of their game even after EA Boughton years after their breakout hit but recently they've been going down a questionable path so what happened Garden Warfare was special to a lot of people popcat made a bold move and paid off creating one of the most unique and fun Shooters out there perfectly translating the PvZ characters into a kind of goofy but well-made experience Garden Warfare 2 would build on the formula expanding the game in pretty much every way you classes variants game modes just about everything so what happened how did a company come crashing down despite all the massive success how did a game franchise so beloved so sentimentalized become a cesspool of corporate greed why did an enormous Community come crashing and burning outraged and Confused this is the tragic demise of plants versus [Music] zombies the zombies are coming another downfall of Plum zombies video EA's grubby mittens take over and run it into the the way to separate this one from the other two is that this one is bad you must have heard something that goes along the lines of EA ruin what it looks like like you don't even get to pick your plants what is that all [Music] about the original Plants vs Zombies is a masterpiece I don't care what any Arians think this game is beautiful the design of this game is masterful so much attention to detail went into the littlest of things I highly recommend you listen to George fans's 2012 GDC talk he goes over the design process and making plants vers zombies and how difficult it can be to make a casual game easy to understand for a non- gamer while not being too handh holdy for experienced Gamers Al POS a question did you think the tutorial to Plants versus Zombies was too slow or overbearing what you you might be thinking right now is what tutorial Plants versus Zombies doesn't have a traditional tutorial instead it's built into the game play seamlessly the lanes you're allowed to plant on is one before expanding through the first few levels you learn that keeping a consistent Sun economy is essential because how the game prompts you in the right ways to place down enough sunflowers since the player starts with 50 sun it's the only thing they can plant here in level two more Lanes unlock guys the shovel and even as the game progresses it still finds a way to introduce new things it adds the almanac the shop the Zen Garden one of the more famous examples of elegant design is in the plants' names most plants in this game have a design or name that easily communicates their function squash is the most straightforward example it both describes what it is and what it does Walnut is another excellent example acting as one of the game's stalling plants by acting as a wall and it's a n I think you get it but with all all that being said what is so compelling gameplay-wise about Plants versus Zombies this game constantly introduces new mechanics to you and I'm not just talking about basic things like the almanac or the shop after each level you unlock a new plant there's a sense of Discovery and excitement about the next Plant what does it look like what does it do every two levels a new zombie is introduced the level design is pretty tame the zombie combinations don't get very bold or wild but for the few times a level brings something back on expecting it keeps things exciting looking at you 4 to and bringing back football on the fog wait fog all of the different Lawns the campaign takes place over have their gimmicks that are great even fog guys I said it I like fog Please Don't Judge when you finish the adventure mode a whole barrage of postgame content is available to play mini games put a fun Twist on the traditional gameplay Loop whether it be invisible zombies portals or a slot machine they all provide a pretty different experience than what's offered in the adventure mode drifting farther away from the adventure mode the puzzle levels are a completely different experience both vase breaker and I zombie act similarly to an utterly separate game mode vase breaker requires you to break vases you probably could have guessed that one on your own the vases are randomly assorted with plants and zombies you can either take your time or open them all at once both are completely valid strategies and I zombie flips the script by having the player play as the zombies this is fun and finally survivals an opportunity to build up your defense through multiple gauntlets of zombies this mode acts as a final test culminating and building up whatever defense the player desires the other thing this game has is simply the charm oozing out of it the creativity in both the plant and zombie designs is outstanding I mean they're not all winners what the hell is this supposed to be but we have zombies riding pogo sticks seaweed that kill kills you a zombie holding a screen door where did he get the screen door and the music Laura shigihara went all out with the sound Trek Have you listened to graze the [Music] roof it's really easy to understand why plants versus zombies became such a massive hit it's goofy playful exhilarating and most importantly fun especially once popc cap through it on mobile everybody and their grandmother was downloading plants vers zombies after the first games of success pop cap would begin to work on sequels which wasn't uncommon for them a handful of popc cap games already had sequels but Plant vs Zombies was a top priority and in May 2013 PopCap would release the first official followup a plants vers zombies Facebook game wait what Plants versus Zombies adventures is technically the second game in the franchise well this is awkward word talking about PvZ Adventures is weird considering the game shut down nearly a decade ago so next time you scroll through YouTube and see a PvZ Adventures review how can it be a review you can't even play the game PvZ Adventures was a Facebook gaming tie-in game that was more of a social game akin to Farmville for the first followup it seems weird that they would strip away what made the original Stand Out from the other Tower Defense games going from Lanes to your standard linear path system in an exclusive interview with the Verge the executive producer had this to say figuring out a core combat that would allow players to defend their towns in interesting ways while also being an enjoyable Standalone experience took a lot of iteration we prototyped 11 different variants of combat some were very traditional pth based tower defenses where the zombies did not attack the plants but we felt this lost some of the appeal of the original game Kurt bariton executive producer on PvZ Adventures the verge I appreciate the effort to make this game more aligned with the original the zombies being able to eat the plants and then having plants revived does differentiate things alongside more minor gameplay changes I will give the game this the creativity is definitely not lost there are plenty of new plant and zombie designs the asparagus acts as a slower yet longer ranged peashooter the rocket zombie neglects nearby plans and has fast movement speed DJ zombie is a tanky threat with a a lot going on design-wise it feels very on brand with the wacky designs of the first game however plenty of Concepts don't carry over for example did you know this is the only plant versus zombies game not to have flag zombie all right I changed my mind Zer out of 10 game something I don't hear disgusted at all when talking about this game is both the art style and music art style-wise it goes for an isometric perspective paired with 2D art drawn to convey roundness or depth I think think this game looks great many iconic characters peashooter sunflower and walnut all retain similar charm as the first game the zombies look pretty good though their heads are a bit big which reminds me of the zombies from pvz1 on mobile oh G God music-wise guys it's good like really good if we're talking about a soundtrack that perfectly respects and pairs well with the first game this is a 10 out of 10 I'm not saying it's the best or even my favorite but I have the most respect for it compared to every other PVZ Game that followed the original in the soundtrack Department it sounds different yet completely on brand I think it has to do with the use of bow string instruments have a [Music] [Applause] listen if you haven't listened to the songs in this game they are a total Gem and should be brought up more regarding this franchise Stan leard why couldn't they bring you back I would like to give a personal recognition to Stan leapard as he sadly passed away in early 20121 you will be missed now the fate of this game is something I've already mentioned quite a few times the shutdown PvZ Adventures as servers were closed about a year after it came out this didn't come out of left field considering the update cycle for this game was consistent until a sudden drop off in September 2013 just about 4 months after launch digging deeper we can find evidence to suggest this was not the original plan in The Verge article I cited a little bit ago the creative director mentions that they have many plans to continue improving and adding to the game the easiest explanation to me would be hm PvZ 2 came out pretty soon after PvZ Adventures like 2 months after and I assume the Manpower working on PvZ Adventures was much more desirable for PBC 2 while it's hard to tell how well the game did it was a social Facebook game that wasn't getting a lot of Buzz unlike the official sequel so stopping all future updates and shutting it down was not surprising in retrospect the final thing to mention is that this game had microtransactions now since this is a Facebook game the way this game utilize monetization is through a means of time similar to games like this is a reoccurring theme the plants you use during the levels take time to grow and sure some of the waiting times weren't that bad but with all these games Clash of Clans is another easy example the time component is almost non-existent initially before the game slowly ramps It Up by making future and better plants take longer to grow encouraging people to you know the other way this game was monetized was through VIP plants these were just better versions of existing plants who could forget the iconic bhooter it's hard for me to classify this all As pay to win as well I can't play the game I don't know how hard some of these levels got without playing them though I'm going to take a wild guess and say at some point the levels got ungodly hard at a certain point the topic of microtransactions will come up when we talk about their most controversial use appearing in PVZ2 we're going to talk about PVZ2 right now aren't we YouTube user no named when recording his playthrough of the console editions of Plants vs Zombies had this to say about PvZ 2 also disappointed in planto Zombies 2 they really up planto Zombies 2 to make it more of a cash grab thank you no name for stating your opinion on PvZ 2 so I can use it as a transition into my point plans versus Zombies 2 is a divisive game I'd argue this game is even more controversial than battle for Neighborville which was generally accepted to be at the very least wors than Garden Warfare 2 though die hard battle for Neighborville supporters do exist we will never be able to see eye to eye though I must address the elephant in the room before diving into PVZ2 this game is a bit awkward for me to talk about because of my video on Project Eclipse I'll discuss my Eclipse video and the whole Community later but unlike the other games where I just talk about what they include and why they were unique or different talking about PvZ 2 will be an exception this is actually a video inside of a video titled Dana raade reviews Plants versus Zombies 2 so people stop assuming what he thinks about the game that's probably too long of a title and yes I did go through the effort of playing the entirety of PVZ2 this is not me recalling my experience this is what I genuinely think about the game today the things I do for you people this was a very painful experience you try playing PVZ2 in one week yes I'm going to give you the full juicy derate opinion but this is important because because a lot of this information I'll be talking about will be brought up or referenced this game is like one of two inflection points in the series we'll get to the second one here eventually but before diving into the game let's start at the beginning they had been struggling for an entire year just spinning their wheels we began with evolving the visual style which was contentious and controversial everybody owes the credit of that to Rich who created the art for that game and he was not involved in this new version of the game and George fan wanted to be left alone to create his new game which was all totally understandable so this gave the PVZ2 team though the impression that they didn't really have the full support from The Originators of the game I don't want to be unfair about that like they would pitch in and they would jump on call or they would help out or whatever but they really wanted some space from this thing that had probably just gotten kind of overwhelming for them Matt Johnson original producer of plans versus Zombies 2 with a completely new team in Direction how do you continue off the massively successful and masterful Plants versus Zombies future producer Alan Murray in an interview with gamesbeat had this to say I mean we went back and looked at the core design like just the core combat of plants fighting zombies we actually spent some time like you know actually thinking about the name it's Plants versus Zombies so how do we make the versus as fun as possible so already PVC 2 had a rocky road with a completely new team that had to really understand what made the original tick with people but in July 2013 plans versus Zombies 2 would launch exclusively on iOS devices for this playthrough I played on version 4.5.2 which was right after modern day part 2 was released completing the adventure mode why I did this will be discussed here shortly for now though here are my current and actual thoughts on Plants Vs Zombies 2 let's start with the most controversial aspect of this game the art style I like it I think it acts as a good Evolution from the first game I'll use the peashooter as an example example peashooter and really all of the plants in the original had quite stiff looking animations in PvZ 2 they really bring life to the characters more with a more exaggerated look of a pee being shot out of the peas shooters' mouth I highly suggest you watch The Art of reanimating Plants versus Zombies 2 where senior artist Mark Barrett talks about the struggles in making a game that came out just a few years ago feel completely brand new the PVZ2 team had to Tinker with the designs heavily and what they believed to be the perfect balance between new yet still feeling familiar on a technicality level You could argue pvc2 exceeds in communicating a plant's design the core three are the best example the peashooter has a much rounder peash shaped head the sunflower is brighter and has a closer resemblance to that of an actual Sun the Walnut it just looks more like a nut and sure not all of the plants returning from the first game have a perfect uplift the mushroom plants look really good so plants like jalap aino talut absolutely disgusting I find they generally had a worse transition over though the game likes to flex its style when tying it back to the theme time travel is The Game's main theme and I'm mixed on the one hand the artists really went all out on the backgrounds especially they're rich with detail and the artists did a great job adapting the different environments to fit the theme and just being able to give each zombie even down to the basic zombie a Fresh coat of paint visually makes playing each world feel much more distinct a great example is the flag zombie in Wild West wielding a Texas inspired flag cgp gray would be proud time travel and how it connects to the game play well why don't we just get into it the game play in PvZ 2 is similar to the first game but expanded upon which is what I would want in a sequel for one there are more levels like a lot more each world has roughly 25 to 30 levels give or take but boy are there just way too many levels the overabundance of levels feels like padding more than anything else I appreciate the inclusion of clear conditions the game calls them brain Busters which I never knew until replaying this game but every world just has the same Clear conditions I hope you like protecting endangered plants three times per world but then again the argument for variation can go the other way sometimes they introduce things too quickly pirate sees is the best example they add the barrel roller zombie on day seven the pirate Captain zombie on Day N and the M cannon on day 10 the M Cannon is the last zombie exclusive to this world and there are still 15 more levels speaking of levels the level design in this game is inconsistent or just garbage an example of lazy design is in Jurassic Marsh day 29 is a survive with the given plants level they use some of the Jurassic plants great how fitting since we're in Jurassic Marsh I hear you saying do you want to know what they did for day 31 it's literally the same idea except they attacked on two more plants um pop cap someone seems to have made an egregious error I wouldn't be making this such a big deal if it weren't for the fact the levels are so close also the level is just missing a flag in the level progression which definitely is not right the main issue people have with the levels is the difficulty and yep it's terrible the difficulty is all over the place the most famous example is Big Wave Beach day 16 but not enough attention gets thrown onto Wild West day 16 how are you you supposed to handle this the screen is filled to the brim with zombies this goes into the greater idea that PvZ 2's gameplay is much faster having both a 50 Sun meta and zombie hordes are much faster and more aggression in the number of zombies the speed is absurd sometimes there are plenty of levels where you place down like three plants and the game goes uh-oh I hope you planted enough for the first flag to compensate for this aggressiveness the game introduces powerups and uh for any new viewers this is a bit of an inside joke but I'll say it one last time if you don't like them then don't use them with the topic of both difficulty and powerups brought up it begs the question is PVZ2 pay to win this is a complicated question because it depends on your definition of pay to win pay to win usually comes in two forms you can unlock something early that would typically require grinding or some kind of item SL Aid that makes the game easier critics of calling PVZ2 paid win will point out that you can beat the base game without spending a single penny you know what I agree because that's exactly what I did yeah that's right I'm an epic PvZ gamer but this argument Falls flat once you realize this argument can apply to most games in Clash Royale you can technically grind and work up the leaderboard without paying a penny will it take a considerably long amount of time of course but you also still need skill no amount of geming to upgrade your cards will save you the infamous Star Wars Battlefront 2 too with its loot box system can be analyzed here if you bought enough loot boxes you could get better and more sought after characters like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader but does that give anyone an advantage just because I got it earlier everyone technically has the opportunity to unlock the characters I just got even Candy Crush the king of mobile gaming the later levels are incredibly tough and usually have players losing by one or two turns you can beat the game and usually most mobile games without paying this is an oddly philosophical question the problem is that people judge a game as being pay to win based on how much they push it or at least that's what I've concluded now let's jump back into PvZ 2 unlike all the games I just described the one thing that separates PVZ2 apart is that you have to buy plants they are forever locked behind the pay wall there's no getting around it so inherently someone purchasing a premium plant is getting an experience a free-to-play player wouldn't be able to enjoy and certain premium plants like grapeshot and cold Snapdragon are outright better versions of comparable free Plants please tell me one reason why someone should pick Snapdragon over cold Snapdragon the other thing people don't consider is that while you may be able to beat the game without spending a dime you know who likely doesn't feel the same kids do you know how accomplished I felt when I beat the original Plants vs Zombies it is not a hard game really piss Easy by my standards today but little Dan didn't know any better and thought it was a colossal feat to beat level 34 there are times in this game when the levels get ridiculously hard the game provides a solution to curve that difficulty through in-game powerups and premium plants for all the games I described before the argument for them being pay to win was providing a vantage point for people to make the game easier players can bypass the time or effort to overcome such difficulties or disadvantages that are usually intentional game design decisions I personally think these three games are pay to win so where does that leave plants ver Su zamis 2o I have to say yes it's not an answer many of you will like but by using examples of other games being classified as pay to win pvc2 checks all of those same boxes in short the game sells you tools that being plants that can only be unlocked through microtransactions and many of these plans are some of the best in the game making the game easier so while the game may be full of pay to and systems what the game is lacking is some charm remember the mini games of the first game it added so much content and variety shaking up the regular gameplay PvZ 2 has some unique mini games special to each world and they're pretty good I like them my issue is that there aren't that many of them after Big Wave Beach they just stopped caring about coming up with unique mini games worlds like lost city and neon mixtape tour have nothing there was a certain quirkiness in the first game that yeah this mini game has portals because we felt like it I don't understand how a tiny team came up with 20 mini gamess and a full Studio can't come up with more than six it's not like all the charm is lost I mean zo scoo pirate sees day eight has a Jaws reference in its dialogue the final thing I want to discuss regarding the game play is the worlds ancient Egypt it's okay it acts more like a tutorial world and it's just there I love the theming but they don't use it very well Explorer zombie looks like he'd fit more in Lost City pirate sees pretty solid the levels were fun I think this world gets slept on nothing is inherently wrong with it Wild West Crepes 20 listen up I don't like this one I've always thought this was the weakest of the three original worlds and I don't know why it's an opinion I held when I was nine playing this game and I felt the same way here the mine carts are probably the best board mechanic though far future this one is also pretty fun it took a while to come out but I won't judge Dark Ages underrated as hell the 20 levels are a perfect length it feels like it doesn't overstay its welcome and Visually I think the artist did the best here necromancy isn't always Fair though and the metal spam isn't very fun H subtle foreshadowing for Big Wave Beach it can be described in one word dumb the levels are awful the waves come way too fast and low tide will wipe all your defenses this is also the first world with 32 levels and it just tracks on way too long frostbite caves boring just boring there are too many conveyor belt levels lost city I think the influence of the Mayan and Aztec societies is quite cool though the inspiration only appears in the background I have no idea how excavator zombie and parasol zombie have anything to do with this period I also don't think the gimmick of this world works from a zombie perspective the main idea is that the excavator zombie can only be attacked from up top and the parasol zombie can only be attacked horizontally no lobbing project projectiles the problem is that if you only have excavator zombie then you're just going to bring lobbing and pul plants if you only have parasol zombie well no need to really change your strategy the game decides to include them in every level which means you go into every level with the same situation neon mixtape tour the Zomboss battle sucks the levels felt really rushed the gimmick of having the music correspond to activating specific zombie abilities could have been used more effectively Jurassic Marsh easily the worst world the dinosaurs are the man attraction which means bye-bye to new zombies I hope you like seeing this new zombie base used in three other worlds the dinosaurs are too hard to handle modern day it's a great idea just poorly executed the concept of portals is excellent having zombies from other worlds spawn randomly do you know how many times they use it nine times the last time they used it is on day 21 why did they just forget that portals exist or or something the only real highlight is football Zombie as he comes in Fast and kills the first plant he tackles and arguably more insultingly of all the music the obvious would be that fans have made much better versions by including more of the other worlds's instruments in the base game it just relies on instruments from like half the world but the Graze the roof remix McConnell you've done us so dirty remember the best part of GRA the roof here I'll just play it for you I hope you weren't expecting to hear that remix cuz he just cut it out what a shame the there's a zombie on your lawn remix is pretty good though I just feel really sad whenever I think about modern day now while that covers most of my playthrough I mentioned that I played an older version of the game at the start of the section this is because PVZ2 had some rocky development when it came to losing key staff members according to this Venture beat article just 1 month after the game came out general manager Alan Murray Art Director director David Ryan Paul and lead designer Mohan crap I don't know how to read that name guys all left those are some key positions and the people that replace those roles can completely change the games's direction and so I ask you to join me on a dark path a path that leads straight to pvc2 and its modern State playing Plants versus Zombies 2 today is a remarkably worse experience they should give awards for this stuff first off the leveling system you know it's funny many say the leveling system sucks but I don't need to explain why because you can guess that already I'll tell you why the leveling system is awful in every way in Plants versus Zombies consistency is a core element not often considered most players know that 10 PS from a peashooter kill a basic generally people will start to get a feel for how tanky zombies are and how powerful plants are with the leveling system you can throw that out the window I hope you like just jacked up stats across the board I tried playing a big way Beach level with really basic powered plants I felt like I didn't even have to try this is when I feel like people started to throw hands about the microtransactions and I totally understand it feels manipulative and of course the only way to upgrade your plants is through seed packets which are usually only obtained randomly through patas Guys these are really colorful looking Loop boxes I hate how in their announcement video they specifically say one of the things that we really want to do with this update is encourage diversity in the builds that you are bringing in execution that statement isn't true to level up plants you have to spend your hard-earned coins since there are so many plants in the game you're realistically only going to focus on upgrading a handful of plants and sticking with those plants thereby totally eliminating the free choosing power that the franchise was built off of this is further worse by a new mode they added Arena Arena takes all the fun out of Plants versus Zombies doesn't that seem great how the game mode works is that you get points for killing zombies you get more points for killing zombies farther and toward the right of the map players are randomly assigned an opponent and the person with the highest score wins the idea of going against another person sounds good to me I love the original versus mode on the console ports despite losing tragically to shagy mask the cat here is that you're actually going against Ghost data of a random person so you might as well be going up against a random number generator that puts up a score for you to be the main issue with this mode is that to do well you have to resort to using that's right premium plants and not just premium plants but upgrading them to such a degree that you barely see the zombies in the game struggle to spawn them fast enough for you to kill is this like fun if you're so overpowered in this mode that the gaml consists of you spamming plant food with random stuff flying across the screen what's the point we talked about pay to win a little bit ago this mode is the definition of pay to win if you want to do well and win you'll be fine if you use electric P cold Snapdragon Mega Gatling P this mode is awful I hated playing it for this video and whether you're underpowered using level one plants or overpowered using maxed out premium plants it felt boring either way my soul was sucked out of all its fun when playing this godforsaken mode the other mode the Geniuses at pop cap have added is Penny's Pursuit every week there are five levels players can play you can play these levels to fill up the zps meter filling it up allows us to fight Dr zomos to earn rewards now the key here is that there are three varying levels of difficulty I'd like to point out the crudely traced pvz1 looking jalapeno even though they should have used the PVZ2 jalapeno design the difficulty options are problematic as the game has decided to introduce zombie leveling I hope you like your level one squash not being able to kill a cone head this goes back to why the leveling system is an awful idea as instead of introducing zombies that are bigger threats the developers can play around with the stats and make zombies nearly unkillable unless you upgrade your plants by the way zombies like the Roman and Z Corp zombies are exclusive to this mode and will not get their own traditional Adventure World this mode is also pay to win which seems almost useless because if you have good enough plants to complete the higher difficulty options you probably don't need the rewards also this mode introduces its own currency acting as an energy system yuck there's one last addition regarding modes there are seasonal events that correspond with a holiday or something I played during the summer nights event it's fine they create some new levels featuring zombie designs for the respective event they're pretty easy which is a nice change of pace from the insanity that is Penny's Pursuit though in one of the levels duct tube zombie appeared and mark up another Square on your Nostalgia bait Bingo board speaking of nostalgia bait I hate this PvZ 2's primary way of adding content is by including more premium plants hooray there are so many now it seems impossible to keep up as the game's life has gone on boy does it show that a completely different team is working on this game I mean just look at Buttercup her animations are so stiff looking the art style is all over the place with some of these plants the worst offender has been the recent addition of Scaredy shroom which doesn't even look close to belonging in this game there are fan designs that look leagues better than the official PVZ2 design they've also adopted a new system where you can't buy them outright you need enough seed packets to get enough seed packets you either have to grind or spend tens of hundreds of dollars on random drops to get enough seed packets and by the way when you get 250 seed packets that's just to unlock it it's still at level one the usefulness of some of these plants is all over the place scar shroom hot garbage go watch this video others like Mega Gatling Pete are brain dead broken plants pop cap just keeps pumping them out and I don't get why enough people are spending money on this game to keep the updates coming through guys there are nearly 200 plants in this game Jesus Christ there are also just some odd random changes to the game that I don't quite get I played a handful of levels in adventure mode and they felt way easier ancient Egypt seemed almost braind dead and like an even slower tutorial World other worlds felt way shorter and just easier they changed the almanac which I understand considering how many plants there are but it loses a lot of the charm I don't feel like I'm reading an almanac it feels like I'm reading pages of stats and descriptions they just recently changed the fonts which it looks like when you Google translate something and it gives you basic fonts that look out a place was this a priority it sticks out like a sore thumb this last change they did a while ago but the ultimate battle and demonstration themes of each world the unique mini games a handful of Worlds had yeah you can toss those all out modern pvc2 is just really sad it's incredibly grindy and pushes its microtransactions much harder the adventure mode has been completely neglected for what seems like the nearly impossible pennies Pursuit and pay to win Arena so to round out is PVZ2 a good game that is entirely a difficult question to answer plans versus Zombies 2 does exactly what I want out of a sequel in many regards it expands upon the first games's gameplay by introducing new mechanics whether it be a board mechanic like Minecarts or plant food while controversial its updated art style definitely brings the game new life with smoother and brighter visuals on the other hand the level design is so poor with either metal spam or waves coming in way too fast I feel like a lack of direction from the right people contributed to this game's demise and other influences which we'll discuss much later take senior artist Mark Barrett who is challenged to push the limits and strive to create something great his philosophy and how he explains things is fascinating I highly recommend reading up on him modern PVZ2 feels obligated to shove down microtransactions much more aggressively the areas in which PopCap continues to update the game seems trivial plans for suami 2 is a good game it's different in what it aims to offer though talking about pvc2 as a game is a bit vague considering how much it's changed over the years I find it inferior to the original but that doesn't mean other people can't come in and pick up the pace the popular mod ref flourished has been getting a lot of Buzz recently and am I going to play it no so I'll avoid that Firestorm but for what it is Plants versus Zombies 2 is a competent followup to a beloved game and from the very start the team had some huge shoes to fill interestingly right around the launch of PVZ2 pop cap had another Ace up their sleeve which was a massive shock to everyone at E3 2013 to the song Tear it Up by The Cramps Plants Vs zombies Garden Warfare was announced only four years we went from this to this popc cap Vancouver would be behind this project and you know what that means Justin Trudeau Plants versus Zombies Garden Warfare was a radical shift and the marketing leaned on it hard the promotional material gave all the characters such a grittier look the game tried to invoke a serious tone yet still had the goofy nature that Plants vs Zombies was known for make no mistake this is not a battlefield like game with the PVC skin this is its own separate entity Garden Warfare presents four plant and zombie classes to choose from the peashooter sunflower Chomper and Cactus for the plants and the foot soldier engineer scientist and Allstar for the zombies in addition to the classes each class offer different variants to put a Twist on the character they were based on most variants still kept some core features of the class they were based on for example the peashooter variant still involves Splash damage unless you are a Chad like me who plays agentp there are two main modes multiplayer and garden Ops multiplayer is your standard 12 V12 multiplayer action the standouts are team Vanquish or the first team to 50 kills wins and Gardens of graveyards a base capturing mode where the plants defend Gardens and the zombies try to capture them multiplayer play is a lot of fun and it blew my mind that I got in full lobbies on PC in this game in 2023 the controls are tight and all the different variants constantly make the fights fresh the second mode is garden ops and this is a guilty pleasure of mine many people complain that there isn't much variation it's the same every time there is a bit of Truth in those claims this mode resembles the original game more closely as you fend off wave of zombies while protecting a garden the game will send many smaller zombie zombie Heroes and even certain bosses the general format doesn't change which is a fair complaint however plenty of special ways introduce either wi conditions for extra cash or a unique set of zombies that get sent out playing this mode on a hard or crazy difficulty is a real Challenge and it's always chaotic play this mode with some friends and you'll get a run for your money this was my favorite mode as a kid but I can understand why people may not be super into it while I was and still am a big fan of garden ops what it represents and the rest of the game is a love letter to the series that 100% respects the source material an element I don't see get analyzed enough is the music guys it's absolutely amazing plenty of songs have a military marching band kind of feel which could be a reference or inspired by moong graz's hord theme in the first [Music] game [Music] the recreation of the rich Warner art style was great whether at the end of Team Vanquish or the different character icons for the boss slots the adaption of many series elements into fundamental mechanics was genius take peashooter as an example the chili bean bomb and P Gatling reference both the chili bean and Gatling pee I have to say it again but this feels like a Plants versus Zombies game which is saying a hell of a lot considering they made the funny looking Chomper into a killer walking Jaws looking creature though this game isn't without its fault the amount of content is lacking for the most part this is unfortunate because all you're left with is multiplayer and on the topic of garden ops you can only play as plants the zombies simply could not be played as much even in gardens and graveyards you were never defending as the zombies only zombies could invade and play offense it felt like there was a slight bias toward the plants in this game but overall plants vers zombies Garden Warfare was an extremely fun fresh take on the shooter genre and it would only get better with Plant vs Zombies Garden Warfare 2 is a game that deserves the number two next to its name we've established that the first game was great but had room for improvement there was a lack of content no single player offering the leveling system sucked among other things pop cap looked at all of this and address these issues and more I won't discuss this game in an overanalyzed way as come on it's Garden Warfare 2o everybody including your Grandma knows this game is great Garden Warfare 2 expanded the series's scope adding more variants more ways to play Etc they Chang the right amount and focus their time on the right areas for example all the game modes from Garden Warfare 1 return but this is fine the game modes in that game were already varied and the multiplayer was fun plus the new maps and variants already make the experience feel vastly different despite the lack of substantial changes to the multiplayer I'd argue the biggest shakeup to the multiplayer is the inclusion of three new classes for each side on the planta side we have the Citron a tankier character who utilizes a beam as his primary and generally has a lot of tools at his disposal the colel Korn is the plant's foot soldier which is totally fine he's a fun character in his own right except every Garden Warfare 2 player can tell you that simply spouting the words husk hop will trigger Vietnam flashbacks and finally the rose which PopCap tried to make as a support character except they gave her primary Aimbot so is it really a support character on the zombies we have my personal favorite Captain deadbeard the zombie sniper class he has a long range sniper glass and a close range shotgun I think this character is a ton of fun to use super brains is a fan favorite and it's easy to see why his zany design pairs well with his crazy play style being a melee class and finally the imp a small but fast character he's got the lowest amount of Health but pop cap also gave him a double jump good luck trying to kill this guy overall the new additions are great even though you could argue new additions like Captain deadbeard and Colonel Korn aren't the most original feeling characters being similar to Cactus and foot soldier in certain regards I appreciate both factions having similar playing characters it makes flipping between them more enjoyable in discussing the different sides having similar class types they've evened out the playing field and allowed players to equally play as plants and zombies this was a major criticism I had toward the first game only being able to play garden ops as plants was an unfortunate restraint this was actually the first thing they told the world they would address announcing the game by showing off graveyard Ops the zombies' version of garden ops in addition Gardens and graveyards has been replaced with Turf takeover now having Maps where zombies defend finally a perfect world where I can play marine biologist in any situation if you want to talk more about meaningful changes well there are plenty of them gone is the simplistic menu of Garden Warfare 1 instead pop cap has crafted an entire Hub world for you to explore and has anything a regular menu would hold welcome to the backyard Battleground a treat to Simply play around in there's a ton to explore or you can just mess around with your friends yeah that's right ex ex0 you suck dooo at this game inside the backyard contains a single player campaign which is okay it's there it's nothing remarkable but it's better than nothing explored down to the sewers to participate in some fun target shooting miname and even wao so Garden Warfare 2 decided to take a bold move and add lore guys it's woodro Wilson time in base Garden Warfare 2 after completing the single player campaign a mode known as Infinity time unlocked which was an endless Gauntlet against gnomes it's cool how the gnomes are treated as these mysterious and all powerful beings but down in the sewers things take a big leap when entering this gnome Dimension this was part of a DLC update called Trials of gomis and this was the greatest thing man this update was a perfect mix of single player and multiplayer single playerwise you could explore this new dimension and Tackle unique challenges leading up to an amazing reward at the end multiplayer wise we got the mystery portal which introduced new Weekly game modes I loved this update I remember the trailer they made alongside the release and people were jumping out of their seats yes pop cap give me more they said now while I love this game it's not perfect people in the pz community put this game on a pedestal and act like it's the greatest thing God has ever created and that's totally fine but I think it's like a 9 out of 10 the maps are definitely a downgrade not bad but gar Warfare 1's Maps were simply just so perfect I'm also not a fan of gar Warfare 2's art direction as much I still think the game looks great but look how cool plasma P looked in the first game and he just nah also well I know this will sound like the nitpick of things but I have never liked the in gar Warfare 1 there were just some awesome looking stuff right now it might seem like I'm splitting hairs but I don't want to DET trct that GAR Warfare 2 is a fantastic sequel that improved the first game in nearly every way expanding the player base and proving that plants vs zombies could work in many different forms PopCap Vancouver was swimming in praise and money as copies of Garden Warfare 2 flew off the shells so what was pop Seattle up to Plants versus Zombies Heroes was pvz's first mobile spin-off not counting PvZ Adventures if you've never heard of this game I don't blame you PvZ Heroes came and went with little to no Fanfare that's not to say the game has no fans but this is an interesting case study pop cap likely assumed they could slap PvZ on anything and it would sell while in execution that's not close to what happened seriously though what is PvZ Heroes all about PvZ Heroes is a strategic card game that puts the plants and zombies against each other in some typical PvZ hij Jinks each playable character are superheroes a sort of unique version of certain plants and zombies that's why you can have a peashooter on the field with this weird looking fell on the bottom the hero you choose dictates two things one is the types of cards you can have which are all divided into classes each class usually has some kind of General theme but it's a Loosely defined theme the second thing each Hero has are unique superpowers the superpowers are usually much more powerful cards in proportion to their cost but I'm getting ahead of myself what does an actual round look like like any card game you'll have a starting hand and the goal is to get your opponent's Health down to zero now each card has unique attributes many of them are visually shown by specific modifiers and I must admit all the graphics they made for a handful of reoccurring abilities are incredibly nicel looking overall the game is constructed in a clean an easily digestible way the plants and zombies take turns placing down their cards each adding an extra sun or brain for each player to spend it's an easy and intuitive system and the number of cards in this game adds variety there's a lot and I mean a lot of decks people could form you could base a whole deck around one card or try to maximize the synergies of multiple cards options is definitely something this game isn't missing and with options come skill this game is a great example example of easy to learn hard to master a core principle of the first game a common criticism of this game is the over Reliance on luck which I'm indifferent to a game like this should have certain RNG elements and while certain cards are more reliant on RNG I find that the battles are much more interesting with the amount of crazy stuff happening I do have one massive complaint with PvZ Heroes and that was its update cycle to keep a game fresh like this it's crucial to introduce new cards and change the stats of cards so the meta doesn't feel stale the game launched in October 2016 and it wouldn't be until June 2017 that we get the first major expansion Galactic Gardens this was a space themed set of 100 new cards this was a significant update it added a brand new card type called environments two new Heroes and new gimmicks in October 2017 and January 2018 we'd received sets three and four colossal fossils and Triassic Triumph This is where our troubles begin for one I'm I'm not really a fan of the dinosaur theme I already think Jurassic Marsh was the worst world in PvZ 2 and they were doubling down here second the fact that they split them into two was really frustrating it made the releases feel less substantial and broken up now having to invest in more sets my second complaint was the over Reliance on existing cards or reusing animations an easy example is Puff shroom derived from shroom for 2 or how about the half banana which just comes from the Death Cards of banana split in fact for both colossal fossils and Triassic Triumph 12 out of the 15 Commons are repurposed cards in some way or another if they don't reuse cards they'd use existing cards as a base and the same animations they actually did this in Galactic Gardens but I can excuse that one a bit more as they were few and far between and a set with plenty of cards it was okay when they reuse card bases they tried to hide it pretty well for example the mustache waxer is a reskinned pool shark or the blow gun gun imp which is a reuse of loudmouth it just made sets 3 and four feel even more uninspired and of course they put all their resources into making the super rares and legendaries very unique and sometimes overpowered speaking of Rarities it was also during this time popcat played around with a handful of card Rarities they took some of the best and most popular cards and increased their Rarity but after the release of set 4 nothing except for a single balance update in 2019 the game has been quietly abandoned there really was no closure and that was it for PvZ Heroes this game was really a shame as I quite like PvZ Heroes it's not a perfect game but I got into playing multiplayer and increasing my rank to open more packs and unlock more cards it's probably one of my favorite mobile games and that's the key as a spin-off PvZ mobile game this had incredible work put into it the background and characters are detailed the game functions and works great it's just a let down that it was left to rot and die so now in our story PopCap Seattle has its first Rocky Road but surely the same wouldn't happen for pop cap Vancouver plans versus Zombies battle for Neighborville is the third and final game of the PVG Shooters and it didn't go so well I'll only briefly talk about this game since I did a review a while back but I've replayed the game and have had some time to cogitate some more on the game I can't remember where I heard this but I swear the developers explicitly called out that this was not Garen Warfare 3 but instead its own thing with that mindset you're almost doomed to fail because no matter how much you want to distance yourself from Gard Warfare everybody will compare this game to the garden warfare games and in that respect battle for Neighborville falls short in nearly every regard let's start with an easy one removing variants remember Garden Warfare with its diverse cast of characters what was nice is that if you like to part particular class you could play around with different variants it made the game never feel stale I feel like I'm in a gunfight with the same characters probably because I am even with that many characters are just less fun to play Citron and Rose are a direct downgrade and other characters feel fine but aren't as fun also this game could never be adequately balanced despite having fewer characters scientist wasn't just a good character he was the best offensive character he's a Healer nightcap is basically the plants version of imp and good luck killing her despite the game being more straightforward at its core problems always seem to come up the next most controversial thing about this game is you're looking at it the art style changes weird I'm conflicted as some characters like engineers and others like peashooter and sunflower look good most however have a subtle downgrade especially Rose makes me never want to play as her even Captain deadbeard his beard looks like it's made of plastic I find the art style change unfortunate as one of the original Garden warfare's main draws was seeing these lovable and simple characters reimagined into a grittier and more gruesome setting and BFN they've done a complete 180 and I do not like it from that standpoint alone everything else follows similar Footsteps in the disappointment category a big selling point of this game was the improved single player which is a double-edged sword for one the maps the story missions take place in are filled with way more to do and secrets to find it's an improvement over Garden Warfare 2 single player but the issue is that all four of the Maps use the exact same structure they have the same Collectibles and the same sort of objectives you'll be asked to do it's hugely draining for my BFN review I remember 100% in two out of the four and then gave up on the others multiplayer is also negatively affected on the surface level all the issues about the lack of variants and how un fun the characters feel apply here the maps greatly disappointed me as they all feel incredibly generic the map design is too open meaning certain characters are more equipped or you could just Camp your way to getting vanquishes when talking about Ops ouch I've mentioned already I'm a pretty big fan of Ops and it's just it's just bad in this game the biggest problem is the lack of a difficulty selector which means this mode is piss easy second it just generally feels unfinished people complain that Ops didn't change much gameplay wise well let me introduce you to BFN Ops and that's the worst problem with this game it felt unfinished it seems like pop cap spent all this time completely redesigning everything from scratch and when it came to actually making the game everyone panicked and BFN was the final product direction list is the best way to describe this game from my perspective it seems like EA wanted this game to be their highly marketable live service game evident by the fact they push the outfits way more in this game through the use of rucks selling costumes for real world money the game has the most detailed and coolest looking skins in the whole whole franchise though as the game's life went on it seemed like the focus was being put more on the purchasable outfits BFN came out at a horrible time when every company tried to push their life service game it didn't help that BFN wasn't good and just one year after launch BFN would cease development on all future content updates and that would be the last of BFN surely popc Cap Seattle is totally fun Plants versus Zombies 3 is Infamous to say the least this game put me on the radar for YouTube and is why I'm here today so I feel I have a responsibility to take another look at the game that started my career if you look back at my original pvz3 review it's pretty close to the definition of garbage I was 14 at the time editing everything on kind Master everything was going against me unfortunately just like PvZ Adventures we can no longer play this game so talking about it will mostly be me revisiting footage however I did play a lot of it in 2020 so at least I've had experience with it don't consider this a definitive review or analysis instead I'd like to discuss why pvz3 does not feel like a Plants versus Zombies game spoiler alert if you thought my tune would change regarding this game you're surely mistaken the most pressing issue is again you're looking at it BFN had problems with its visuals but it's not an awful looking game environments and models have detail just a General art Direction and the character design aren't my favorites while in PvZ 3 everything is ugly from top to bottom I don't really understand what happened plenty of concept art looks good but when the models were actually made for the game everything went wrong I simply think it has to do with the limits of 3D on mobile you must sacrifice a certain level of detail for the game to run on various devices the result is blocky and unnatural looking models I also find the texturing to be Bland and soulless if you go to EA's website there's a Q&A section when they announced the release of the soft launch they stated we love the 2D art from the original games but wanted to provide our brand with more flexibility and artistic opportunities for the future we've got plans folks I honestly don't know what that means even 3 and 1/2 years later another area of contention the orientation they went from landscape to portrait mode and I do not see the point if it's not evident already PvZ 3 feels a lot more like a mobile game than every other plants for suami game that's come before it someone might mention that a portrait orientation is more attractive for people and it's easier to use and this is actually the reason PopCap stated on EA site developing the game with the portrait landscape in mind would be more phone friendly I would still like to push back plenty of popular games Clash of Clans and brawl Stars use landscape orientations and people are perfectly willing to play them even if you neglect the flawed rationale behind the decision playing the game feels clunky the board only takes up about 40% of the screen the bottom where you place your plant is almost as big as where the action takes place and the top has a lot of empty space just holding some small icons I hate how the UI takes up more space than where the game occurs we've gone this far without talking about the game play and I can assure you it does not get any better everybody's favorite leveling up system from PVZ2 makes a return except unlike it being tacked on later in the game's life like it was for PVZ2 they designed the whole game around it and egad it's awful at least with plant leveling in PVZ2 it really only felt required in Arena and Penny's Pursuit which are garbage game modes anyways so who cares in PvZ 3 plant leveling is a core part of the game as zombies also have their own leveling system instead of introducing new and challenging threats the developers can inject artificial difficulty by halting your progression at a certain point and so what inevitably happens is you save all your coins to level up a couple of plants hoping to God it's what you need to continue through the game as the player unlocks new plants they'll increasingly neglect new plants and experiment less and less because a level one plant will no way in hell combat against the higher level zombies progression in this game is dictated by the devour Tower this is how the game drip feeds content whether introducing new plants buildings or zombies it's how the game unveils its contents the caveat is that with the completion of each floor the zombies would gain power this means you'll stop at some point because the zombies become too powerful to handle outside of the devour Tower are breakup battles breakout battles are more traditional PvZ levels that net you rewards this is a cruel way of the game encouraging you to grind as if you get stuck on a floor in the devour tower all you can do is grind breakout battles these fights aren't fun they feel like randomly generated levels where the game just throws whatever zombies it feels like probably because that's exactly what it is the gameplay Loop of this game is monotonous as hell and for the devour Tower I don't know know if this is an unpopular opinion but I think it's kind of dumb they gave a skyscraper crab legs plants vers Su Zombies 3 doesn't feel like a Plant vs Zombies game but the reason for that is because myself and many others are going into it comparing it to the first game and even PVC 2 despite being a mobile game PVZ2 emerged when mobile gaming was vastly different Once Upon a Time mobile games were developed by smaller companies that utilize mobile Hardware to create experiences that could only be done on the the phone today mobile games are led by people like Voodoo who create the most barebones and generic games ever made but with the current mobile game Market that being everyone these games have to keep people's attention for short bursts so for PvZ 3's case many of the sacrifices made were likely decided to fit in better with these mobile games I mentioned this in my original video but the game structure takes a lot of inspiration from Clash Royale I mainly commented on the menu layout the shop seed selection overview map Clans and Arena I've meant to clarify this point for 3 years now but I initially called out how arena is derived from a very similar mode from Angry Birds 2 it's a little more understandable in that game since achieving a high score is part of angry birds' design many people stated that I was incorrect because Angry Birds 2 came out in 2015 and PvZ 2 came out in 2013 they added arena in 2017 Get Wrecked random kid from the comment section The Clash Royale comparisons go much deeper people have pointed out that the sunflowers autor producing sun is reminiscent of The Elixir system the new plants they do add are so offputting what was from an older PBZ game and what was made fresh for this game seems evident maybe they shouldn't have made nearly 200 plant for PvZ 2 it's a shame that pvc3 ended up the way it did as looking at early concept art there was a lot of love poured into it it's clear that there was some desire to do either a 3D or 2.5d aesthetic however the world seemed significantly expanded building on the characters and setting of PvZ interestingly enough the art station account containing all this art has been completely deleted huh and so you know the story by now pop cap would shut down the servers in November while at the same time we saw this as maybe PopCap wanting to rebuild a couple of core elements of the game in actuality they would entirely scrap what they had and relaunch the project with new pvz3 a little ironic considering I said this in my original video I they're going to dramatically change the game to the point of a rework yeah no I still find this an odd change and stand by the fact that this is not regular business games getting completely reworked from the ground up is something we rarely see most companies are comfortable pushing out a sinking ship stranger is that when you actually step back and look at pvz3 a lot of work was put into it I'm not going to sit here and say it was all good but looking at the behind the scenes for this game it's clear that this was a massive project with tens if not hundreds of employees behind it we never even got to see everything as data miners have uncovered tons and I mean tons of content that never saw the light of day it likely would have been in the game if they continued down the road they were on but PopCap decided to start from scratch so let's see what we're working with nowadays popc cap has completely rebooted pvz3 with I'm just going to call this new pvz3 they've released a handful of betas with this new Direction and I've played all of them while it's been a little under a year since the last beta this new PvZ 3 has been one I've been thinking a lot about during my multiple playthroughs I took the liberty of taking notes yes this video has been in the making for a while so let's start with the most contentious aspect of the original soft launch the art style I am super happy to see the Focus Shift to 2D art the backgrounds are back to 2D they even have animated parts to make them feel more alive the Overworld is back to 2D which we'll get into even UI obviously they were 2D before but still had 3D influence like take the cherry bomb as an example though with this big shift in 2D the use of 3D still confuses me everything outside the plants and zombies within the levels is 2D so why even use 3D the weirdest thing is that things are animated to almost look 2D the zombies are the best example they're trying to copy more expressive 2D movements but it makes them look janky I can't 100% tell if The Grapes of Wrath is even 3D or not same with the Gargantuar its assets look animated in a way where they're layered to give it the illusion of more depth and in all of the games' screenshots the characters front and center take on a 2d look which looks quite nice so I have to ask why cling to the 3D models for dear life when talking about old pvz3 I mentioned that weaker Hardware may run this game at lower settings making the EXP experience much less enjoyable and the same would apply here as well so that was the art style which my thoughts aren't crazy unpopular or anything but I've got a juicy take for you the music in this game hot garbage I have no idea why everybody is like guys the music in pvz3 is one of the only good things I'm no music expert so making my case proves a little challenging but from my perspective the tracks all sound generic as hell PBZ music to me can be identified by it Goofy and uplifting feel while still having an element of mystery and Intrigue have you actually ever sat down and listened to how grasswalk in the original PvZ transitions to a much more dramatic [Music] [Applause] tone and I'm not saying pvz3 has to sound like pvz1 Peter McConnell and his work on PVZ2 captures a similar feeling utilizing ing specific instruments and creating catchy Tunes or Jingles music taste is entirely subjective but I can't help but think the pvz3 soundtrack just isn't very good now we're really diving deep how does new PvZ 3's gameplay differ a lot actually the difference in new pvz3 is primarily due to how incredibly Bare Bones it is this game introduces almost nothing new to the franchise as a whole it is a highly watered down experience nothing encapsulates my point more more than the tutorials this game feels the need to explain every little mechanic to you even though a huge part of the first game's design was the player sense of Discovery core features in Old PvZ 3 have been reworked or scrapped entirely the form of progression that being the devour Tower does not make any appearance in this game though it lives in this weird limbo as in PVC 2's 2022 lawn of Doom event Banner the devour Tower makes an appearance in the background and boy is it not only weird to see it drawn in the PvZ art style but just its existence in this picture is almost cursed so with all this cutting what is there to talk about the sun meta takes on a brand new form now in increments of one many people nitpick this point and don't like it which I can understand what do I think Die Hard viewers may remember that way way back in my paper Mario origami King video I discussed how I dislike the inflationary feel of the coin distribution the coins in that game hold little to no value because I have the game literally showers you with coins I much prefer the use of smaller numbers and I feel the same sentiment so going by ones is fine with me though with a slower Sun meta you would think the level design would accommodate for this the levels are the fastest they've ever been PVZ2 had a similar problem but not only was it slower than pvz3 but you had more tools to handle the faster hordes with such limited plant selection you're left with basic peashooters to fend off the hordes of zombies the artificial difficulty in this game sometimes times is unreal what further worsens all of this is the decision to have the game pick your plants for you on every level on a scale of 1 to 10 this is a -2 and how smart of a decision that was I hope you hate choice because you won't get it here this is the most common criticism of this game and I don't think I need to go too deep into explain why this is so bad other changes I noticed had to do more with the mobile game Vibe all these pvc3 versions have been going for popc caps added a live system any way a game artificially tries to get you to stop playing is an immediate red flag because what's going to happen is when this game officially launches the later levels will become so brutally hard that most players will get stuck and that's how they'll push the monetization through the powerups but don't worry guys they've added face breaker it's been resorted to a once a day miname the levels themselves are so fundamentally easy that I almost have to question what's the point seriously this game is so basic at its core that I struggle to understand and what the point of this game is the final thing worth mentioning is the story PvZ has never been known for having award-winning stories but the developers are bringing attention to it for new pvz3 after completing a level you earn a taco ticket the taco tickets are used to progress in the story equating to Bland dialogue between Dave and this girl from the Darkhorse Comics the story revolves around cleaning up Neighborville of the zombie debris decorating the place to fit your style now this system is awfully similar to H Apes is and I guess we're back on the coping other mobile games bandwagon at first I was really confused by the taco ticket system if you really wanted cut scenes why don't you just play them right after certain levels but no I and many others realize that new PvZ 3's design is inspired heavily by homescapes this is why I have little to no faith in pvz3 fans have voiced their criticisms here on YouTube Reddit and Twitter and yet the developers throughout three betas have not addressed any of our concerns this is because in both it generations of PvZ 3 the developers are clearly trying to create what would make the best mobile game not PVZ Game this design decision will forever plag PvZ 3 most of us Die Hard PvZ players well we're not the target audience the target audience is mobile Gamers those who are impressionable to spend money and want something extremely simple it's sad to see this franchise get resorted to this but in new PvZ 3's current state the game offers me nothing to return to even if it introduces new zombies and mechanics because of how shallow the gameplay is And the fact I can't even pick my plans it's hard to see the point in me really playing this game in the future so now I pose the question again why how did we get to the point we're at now why are we in a position where plants vers zombies went from this cultural phenomenon to forgotten by the general public I wanted to know what caused pop caps' demise so I went digging and dug a little deeper and a little deeper and let me tell you my friends I'm I am confident that I have the answers we've all wanted to hear so what is the reason for popcap's demise you may ask it's because Darkness Rose Darkness from the depths of [Music] compaction the PBZ Community finds itself divided for many reasons whether it be opinions on the games or where to take the direction of this franchise but in my opinion nothing further divides this community than the EA versus pop cap debate in my most evil game companies video I intentionally decided not to mention anything pop cap related and despite that people still brought it up the debate aims to point the blame on the demise of this franchise so let's go over the arguments for both sides proponents who blame EA cite the somewhat direct decline of games after EA bought pop cap that EA has an oversight over Pop cap and could therefore make decisions that negatively affect the games those who cite everything as Pop caps' fault argue that PopCap is the company that actually makes the games EA is only a publisher and has no share in the games' production so any decision whether it be adding microtransactions or creating spin-offs should be directed at Pop cap what do I think well ladies and gentlemen that question changes everything you've known about this franchise and I have the answer the answer answer to the pop cap versus EA debate is both it's both of their faults anticlimactic I know but this seems to be a foreign idea that nobody has thought of the true test for me is proving EA's influence after all they're just a publisher how could they have such a hand in the downflow of Pop cap that is what I aim to make a case for that pop cap and EA caus their own demise and the results we are seeing now are because of a long string of Bad Business decisions over over a decade but we need to start at the beginning pop cap was founded by John vety Brian fit and Jason capela if you look at the videos published during pop caps' early years they display a wacky work environment it really gives me that quirky startup feel starting with humble origins in a basement PopCap slowly grew into an Empire I think director of produ Joe said it best I think the leadership with pop cap is is really impressive leaders build companies to reflect themselves and they set the tone in the spirit pop cap would be blessed with a little game called bejweled which started the match three frenzy that were still seeing the effects of today the success of Beed gave pop cap a consistent Revenue Source allowing them to highly experiment while not all of popcap's games were instant winners any fans of chuzzle or Bonnie's bookstore watching ing for every typers shark there was an incent aquarium pegle Zuma and the list goes on this can be attributed to pop caps' unorthodox methods of running their business it's pretty evident by watching Company videos that PopCap internally ran things a little differently it was comprised of hyper creative people but in conjunction with a highly passive casual and open environment companies take creativity for granted the best creative minds flourish in the right conditions though if we look beyond the external look inside pop cap things were even crazier the pop cap parties are a tale that can only be fully understood through imagination they were described as absolutely wild an open bar an ice sculpted zombie with green tequila pouring from it the absolute wild nature of these parties was a direct parallel to the crazy feel that pop kep embraced and embraced they did as for all of the 2000s they were pumping out hit after hit before we move on I like i' like to point out that the comment about the parties comes from this video the oral history of Pop cap games it is get this a 4our long video detailing the ins and outs of Pop cap and I listened to it all twice for the rest of this video the information contained here will be an invaluable source so if I say something that seems like it comes out of nowhere or you've never heard of it before it likely comes from this video now then with pop cap growing rapidly there was only one logical step popc caps' quick rise to fame and Glory attracted some eyes to them the employees were well aware of some sort of Bio or public offering there are just certain things companies do to make themselves as appealing as possible whether it be hiring more pumping out more games to increase Revenue it's all very common two major contenders were being considered to sell pop cap to Zena and EA Zena was a very logical Contender to buy poop cap they were a prominent mobile developer most famously known for Farmville but you've also probably played a couple of their other games most notably Words With Friends see there was only one problem with this okay that's actually not true with these mergers and Acquisitions a lot of complex Logistics go into these decisions that consist of boring facts you probably don't want to hear if you've been keeping up with the recent Activision Blizzard acquisition by Microsoft you would know that not only are there issues with it being approved but documents showed that Microsoft considered buying up other companies so there are behind the scenes technicals we'll never truly know for the purpose of this story the main issue with zanga buying pop cap is that nobody at Pop cap wanted to work for zena pop cap internally despised Zena think about it PopCap was out here producing these casual games intricately crafted to be as fun as possible for everyone Zenga with its release of Farmville was raking in millions of dollars with a bland farm game that had you guessed it ingame purchases ah the classic microtransaction blossoms and so PopCap steered clear of zanga and in the summer of 2011 it was announced that EA would be buying pop cap for a base 750 million with an earnout process that could be as much as 1.3 billion now why would PopCap do this it makes a lot of sense actually EA has been around for a while if you remember I described pop cap as Quirky wild and casual it was run by game developers people with a passion people who aren't as business savvy so selling your company to an industry veteran like EA provided pop cap with security among other Essentials though any acquisition should be brought with hesitation there is an immediate fear of change and I don't know if you know this but most humans are innately against change the employees were well aware of this and even worried there was already a transition happening in casual games Zena's Farmville Illustrated this new free-to-play model which structured a game not on how to create the best game but rather on Crafting something as profitable as possible notably EA didn't want pop cap the company they wanted pop caps as franchises franchises are long lasting brands that can produce millions of dollars through multiple games and other media tie-in but right here at the beginning of the story what can we look at for evidence of EA Touching The Grubby hands on popc cap well a straightforward thing to start is corporate restructuring in the oral history of Pop cap this was a comment that stuck out to me and then shortly they after thereafter they laid off me and my my whole my whole team my whole culture team the idea was that they didn't need the culture team because there should be other parts of the organization that are doing that work um how do you feel like that worked out uh well from what I understand not well the they being referred to would be EA and while again this stuff is ubiquitous for an acquisition like this making a comment like that is missing the point pop cap was built and defined by its company culture EA stripping this crucial asset has Rippling consequences it can cause this once prosperous and Whimsical game company to fit with the mold more acting more like any other game company okay I hear you saying so what if EA fires some people and shuffles things around the core team of people that were left was still making the games let's go back to the original acquisition deal a specific stipulation stated pop cap could earn up to 1.3 billion this would be determined through an earnout period where if PopCap made certain earnings by an unspecified time it would receive more money you can pause the video and read the whole thing if you want this earnout structure was definitely not leading the company in the right direction because From popc caps' perspective they have more of an incentive than ever to drive up their revenue this can be achieved through monetizing their games through microtransaction actions such as PvZ Adventures or investing resources into sequels such as pegle 2 and PVZ2 I want you to keep this all in mind as we continue EA influencing pop cap is subtle it's not as literal as the anti-ea crowd would like you to make it out to be but we've hit a bump in the road something that remains controversial even today a big talking point the antia fans like to use is the firing of George fan now let's clarify that firing someone and laying off someone is two different things firing someone is related to the employee maybe they're not fitting in with the company culture or just not working hard enough laying off someone usually has nothing to do with the employee it's because of a company downsizing or restructuring for example so for this case specifically George fan was laid off got all that good because the rest of this is a little stickier when asked to to work on a sequel George fan declined having spent the last half decade working on Plants versus Zombies he saw no way to expand upon it enough to make a sequel plus he had other Ambitions and wanted to work on other projects so he stepped away from PVZ2 and the lack of his involvement in future PvZ games is seen as part of this demise while I won't go into how true that is the actual story of his layoff has two completely different perspectives here are the two different stories Geor made a game called in San aquarium he made it ages ago and it won a lot of awards he got head- hunted by pop cap and pop cap hired him sent him off with two more people in a small office and said hey make a game and he said okay I'm going to make plants versus zombies and he made plans vers the zombies it was hugely successful they got acquired by EA EA made those games even more successful and then they were like okay we're going to focus on this and we're going to make a sequel spin-offs this this and this was like great I've got an idea for a sequel he developed this game independently as well an independent mindset with a small team of people it was personal knowing the guy I can see the characters are personal every bit and piece is something from him so it was his baby and they're like hey let's make the sequel we're going to put it on mobile and we're going to do this pay to win and he's like uh I don't know that's not a good idea I don't really want to do that with my game and they said you're fired and he left this is such a newsworthy thing thing and it's frustrated me for years that there's not new stories about this Edmond McMillan after the initial controversy about the story began circulating a second story floated online I was the producer of PVC 2 and that story was not even close to the truth I was the lead producer from January 2012 to launch in July 2013 about 18 months George was never involved during the time I worked on the project he was working on a different game which was super fun but it never launched George was unfortunately part of the layoffs in August 2012 but I know none of the details surrounding his departure in October 2012 there was a change in franchise leadership that mandated a shift to freeo playay mobile despite concerns about the design change I'm proud of the work me and my team did George created a great game but we built upon and I was sad to see him go I'm excited for his new Endeavor and I wish everyone the best of luck Alan Murray original producer of Plants vs Zombies 2 Edmond MC argues that pop capea forced George fan into producing PVZ2 with a greater focus on in-game monetization and the lack of cooperation from fan eventually led to his firing conversely producer Alan Murray argues that fan was simply part of some pop cap layoffs and that fan had little to no involvement in PvZ 2's development now judging and weighing how true each story is would be disrespectful to both camps in my humble opinion McMillan comes off as a crusader against large gaming corporations he's an indie developer at heart responsible for Super Meat Boy And The Binding of Isaac his story here reflects this Persona Alan Murray meanwhile was the producer for PVZ2 unlike McMillan he actually worked at Pop cap while you probably don't remember since it was already an hour ago during the PVZ2 section there was a quote by someone named Matt Johnston the original producer of PVZ2 Matt Johnston was laid off in Alan Murray was brought on as the games's next producer why is this important well Matt Johnston was laid off mainly because of creative differences from the top he specifically stood his ground by not obliging to the free-to-play model PopCap SLA wanted to take the game so after his forced departure they brought on Alan Murray someone who in popc caps' eyes would be more willing to accommodate and take on the requests from the top from this angle Murray almost seems like the opposite of McMillan he was brought in after someone didn't want to give into the free-to-play model PVZ2 was heading in interestingly though Murray would eventually delete his Twitter post about fan getting laid off huh fan would come out of the Shadows to make his comment he stated that he was laid off and didn't want to make PVZ2 a premium game but nothing more than that it didn't leave us much to go off of fan in this tweet seemed almost apprehensive and like he's gatekeeping a lot more despite the damage control fans rhetoric Chang changed in the years since the story broke in a 2018 Reddit AMA he said he had no animosity toward EA while in the recent 2023 RIT AMA his words were much more colorful quote I think it's such a complicated issue with so many facets that it doesn't really boil down to a single statement for me I think it's possible to understand why the rift between me and the rest of Pop cap grew which led to them laying me off yet still feel disrespected at the same time even thinking about it now I still feel the the rage bubbling up a bit to be honest but this was the same pop cap that took a chance on me and gave me and the team 3 and 1/2 years to make this weird zombie game so George fan admits to having annoyance and anger toward him being laid off pop cap of all companies laying him off he had just come off the heels of Pop caps' most successful game and yet they let him go in the same statement he acknowledges that Not only was a popat that even allowed him to make Plants versus Zombies but there was a growing disconnect between him and pop cap so in a sense both stories are true the rift George fan describes would be pushing freeto playay which McMillan cites as why PopCap SLA fired him fans independent mindset which Murray describes as working on a separate game at the time was not what the company needed though Murray does admit to not knowing anything at all about his departure so really should he even be commenting on something like this as fans's friend McMillan would know much more about fans his departure from pop cap do you see how the story can get a lot more complicated the more you unpack it the last thing I'd like to clear up is the August 2012 layoffs pop cap indeed had big layoffs in 2012 John vety one of the three pop cap co-founders specifically said that the decision came from pop cap not EA so really the correct statement would be that pop cap laid off George fan not EA though this doesn't account for two points one could be that Vetti is taking the blame for the layoffs and there were some behind the scenes decisions EA made that influenced the layoffs and two if they really had to layoff all those people and wanted to respect George fan wouldn't they reconsider laying off the man responsible for their biggest game ever but that's the key here pop cap did not treat their developers properly during this time something veety would later admit I don't think we'll ever know the whole story depending on your perspective McMillan may come off as rash and defensive he'd have a clear bias for George fan as he's his friend while Murray may come off as a little too squeaky clean almost like damage control but whatever the story is it's a real shame that PopCap not EA disrespected fan and his talent they should have put more thought into fostering and treating their teams respectfully George fan while being the most talked about regarding pop cap laying off employees won't be the last time pop cap wouldn't support their developers properly pop Cap's mistreatment of their employees continues into the development of PVZ2 and let me be clear when I say mistreat I don't mean malicious or aggressive behavior from managers as far as I'm aware of this was a transition period for pop cap one in which as bety admitted PopCap didn't fully support their creative teams PBZ 2's development would prove to be a troubled experience we've already discussed the issues and evolving the the gameplay and art style but a new pressing issue would emerge Alan Murray alluded to what I'm about to talk about in his statement in October 2012 there was a change in franchise leadership that mandated a shift to free-to-play mobile yes pop cap not EA had decided to put the microtransactions in PVZ2 now October 2012 might seem a little odd to you considering PVZ2 launch in July 2013 that's not a lot of time to change the entire monetization system system of a game and this was PVZ2 a sequel to one of the biggest games in the world but there was a big problem with this now I don't know how all the dates line up maybe PVZ2 was meant to be freeo play earlier than October 2012 and then the rest of Pop caps games would follow whatever the case the PVZ2 team had spent an extraordinarily long time analyzing and figuring out what made the first game work so well an example of this is the lock and key system in PvZ 1 zombie IES had specific counters the zomboni would die to spike weed the screen door would die to fum shroom the umbrella Leaf counters catapult and Bungie while it can be argued that this makes the game too easy after all specific zombies that might typically pose a threat like football can easily be countered by hypnos shroom this was a design philosophy that the PVZ2 team was aware of and wanted to maintain to keep the game's Balan this would culminate in a standoff with the original producer Matt Johnston and well I'll just let him tell the story he said you know my kids love PV and they always bring me these ideas my son suggested what if you you rented plants and you could rent a plant and it was like consumable and expired over a course of time you could use it for a while and but it was like you made the plants rentable and isn't that a great it's that seemed like a great idea and it just went against everything that we had just learned like if you if you have that interwoven fabric all these elements and you pull one of them out like the whole thing unravel can't so you know here I am being sort of asked by the CEO of the company that's about to acquire it was still in process like the whole acquisition was those things take a while yeah um and it was just like a high press moment for me and I just was like let me talk to the team and we'll get back to you right um and it just everybody was horrified so the PVZ2 team has spent all this time experimenting and testing and figuring out yes this is the best way to make a PvZ Sequel and let me reiterate it was both EA and pop cap that pressured Matt Johnston he stood his ground and was promptly laid off so what does this all mean why would popat mistreat their team so much well the answer is something I've already talked about and something John vety also admits to you know there was the incentives to the earnout there was also like the what's popc Cap's place with an EA like you you get the acquisition everyone's really excited but then you don't have that success that everyone wants and suddenly you're not cool anymore in the company I mentioned a bit ago how the acquisition structure negatively affected the internal leadership at PopCap and this is the aftermath these incentives were inherently harmful and instead of putting their support Behind these people Matt Johnson went through the grueling task of not only having to lead the PVZ2 team but also play defense in trying to negotiate and display the work and methodology behind the project so what I hear you saying the CEO of EA stopped by the pop cap offices and suggested renting plants popc cap then pushed this and other monetization efforts that led to the restructuring and direction of the PVZ2 team so then in this case it's all pop Cap's fault the most well-known clip from this entire video is this quote like they're like well look at what EA did I'm like I think the most misconception is that EA forced any of that on us case closed right he said it himself that EA had no influence in how PVZ2 would become I think I've Illustrated that EA has changed the company culture they also gave popk kep incentives that unintentionally LED them down the wrong path how influential those variables are is debatable digging a little deeper we can find that contrary to popular belief other companies during this time experienced great leadership and mentorship under EA the best analogy I use in a positive way is EA gives you just enough rope to hang yourself it was really interesting because we really made all the choices we wanted to make ourselves these are all things we wanted to try that was the biggest Revelation the rope that EA gives you they don't second guess you they don't say you shouldn't do that we had complete creative control over a lot of it some fans didn't like some of it and some of it was experimental quite frankly Greg zesk BioWare co-founder see there's one glaring issue with this idea well yes BioWare may have had a good experience under EA you know what people have yet to realize about all these developer interviews the pop cap employees in this interview have been gone from the company for years if not a decade every single one left or was laid off from 2012 to 2013 they only got to see the initial effects of the acquisition remember PvZ 2 got way worse with its inclusion of microtransactions why do you think I talked about modern pbz2 for so long it's because the early production and design of pbz2 vastly differs from what it is today that BioWare quote I used is from 2013 and 2013 is right when EA experienced a radical change but to explain that we need a little background in 20 7 EA CEO Larry Probst stepped down and handpicked John ricelli as his successor now ricelli is an interesting segment of EA's history the men before and after him ran things quite differently under probs EA developed a highly lucrative format of sports games pumping out yearly releases with little to no changes it was a moneymaking machine they also got the NFL license meaning EA had the definitive American football experience I used the adjective American for all my non-americans I care about you except the quicker when relli came onto the scene he ran things a little differently he pushed for new IPS such as mass effect and some genuinely good EA games released around this time but ricelli made one significant change that would differentiate him from his predecessor under probs EA would gobble up Studios and they'd all be shut down soon after now EA is an obvious ly buying up Studios just to immediately shut them down it's a case of bad relationships differing perspectives and general discontent Rick at telli didn't like this idea and at the 2008 dice Summit he gave a surprisingly honest speech discussing modern gamings as issues how games initially could be made by small teams now take hundreds of people and so much more money the barrier to entry is so high he also mentioned EA's prior failures and properly treating their acquired Studio relli uses the phrase citystate to describe his new strategy under his leadership the companies owned by EA will retain creative control and act more independently we can see this come into effect with him citing Dead Space hm that did pretty well and them recently acquiring BioWare if you remember I used a quote from their co-founder which described this very system Ricket telli was CEO from 2007 to 2013 meaning he was in charge right in the middle of the pop cap acquisition so it does not surprise me that people like Jeff Green State this EA was actually um uh pretty accommodating in a lot of ways and they left uh PopCap Seattle to its own devices but just like everyone else from this interview he was gone by 2013 and see 2013 would be a radical change because EA went and got a new CEO the problem with the ricelli years is that EA was not making any money and sure there were other factors like the Great Recession Rising production costs OB relli's successor would be Andrew Wilson and he would run things very differently the EA leadership and strategy that bought pop cap is not the same as today and Andrew Wilson is a very good businessman hate him all you want but EA's profits soared when he became CEO Wilson's reign as CEO can be explained well through a story a story that many games face brutal de development cycle inexperienced employees tight deadlines have you heard of Battlefield 2042 I promise this is really important to understand the point I'm trying to make I'll try my best to give you the most concise version of the story if you want more specifics you can watch this video that goes into more detail the battlefield franchise is produced by dice which in 2006 EA had bought after the release of Battlefield 5 many senior dice developers left because of what a lack of creative freedom hm when EA and dice discussed the next Battlefield game EA not dice wanted it to be a battle royale of course that was the hot new trend so dice did all this planning and pre-production a battle royale Battlefield game would be a significant departure after some time EA returned to dice and said remember when we wanted you to base the whole game around Battle Royale well we want a more traditional Battlefield experience dice had to scrap most of their work and tacked on a battle royale game mode instead you might bring up the fact that this sounds a little at a left field but two theories as to why this could have been was EA seeing the success of Call of Duty war zone or the fact EA was coming out with their own Battle Royale Apex Legends speaking of Apex legends that game nearly suffered from a creative control battle when EA wanted the game to be a paid experience in addition to the mic transactions however respawn entertainment pushed back and convinced EA otherwise in addition to changing the direction of the game remember when I said dice developers had left well there was a clear lack of leadership and experience left on the battlefield team the main issue was that part of the games' development would be upgrading the games' engine into a newer version of Frostbite 3 now ironically dice created the Frostbite 3 engine which is great because they know how to use it to the best of its capabilities except they all left so good luck guys and so an inexperienced team was left to upgrade the games's engine and spoiler alert it took a lot longer than it should have along with everything happening the virus trademark kicked in forcing the staff to work from home I don't think I need to explain the struggles of working from home with all of this going on Andrew Wilson had the audacity to tell the public that work on the new Battlefield was going great and was ahead of schedule wow what a rare sight to see with all these games being delayed in such challenging times launch day came and the result an absolute disaster the game was a buggy mess it was unpolished and was missing key features you have the basics like a lack of weapons and Maps but my personal favorite was no voice chat at launch that was the development of Battlefield 2042 so now I ask should the average Battlefield fan get mad at dice for making a bad game in this case I believe it would be unfair to put all the blame on dice they were dealt with an extremely difficult production cycle as the publisher EA should have provided the necessary resources and proper care for their developers so that not only the best game could be made but to watch for the well-being of their employees now with this in mind is it farfetch to say that EA had expressively shown ways it gets involved in the production of games the answer is yes I am sick and tired of people acting like EA has no say in these games' production people make the silly claim that popcat makes the games and EA just sits there and presses the release Game button because apparently that's what Publishers do in fact many Publishers play a more prominent role than one might think what people are likely imagining is a company such as devolver digital they publish individual smaller games to reach a larger audience they may help fund the game and push the marketing but they do a great job maintaining the original artist's Creative Vision now how does this differ from EA EA does publish Plants versus Zombies games but unlike devolver digital they own pop cap it creates an entirely different Dynamic EA owning pop cap means they have a much closer relationship where EA is more inclined to request things give advice and provide funding because EA has more direct involvement they'll be eager to ask for changes and and how do I know this I just named an example of this happening to if you count EA trying to make Apex Legends a paid experience here's another way to look at it EA is pop caps' boss because EA provides PopCap with financial stability and more resources they must agree and abide by what EA wants here's another example Nintendo published Luigi's Mansion 3 but the game was developed by Next Level games can you imagine Nintendo going up to Next Level games and saying all right make a new Luigi's mansion Game and come back to us when it's finished that would never happen and that's because it doesn't happen Publishers have a direct incentive to coordinate and influence a project whether for quality control or to steer the project the way the publisher sees it I used Battlefield 2042 development as an example to illustrate that yes EA can and will get involved head first and development projects it's impossible and stupid to say that after EA buys a company they just do nothing the ricelli era has been over for a decade and Wilson has ditched the original relationship methodology in place when Pop cap was initially bought even during the acquisition you already had negative attributes such as the earnout period that promoted PopCap to aim much higher with the revenue counts or the fact that during a transition period there is going to be a clear shift in company culture and dynamics that that layer of middle management that they brought in um like those people had wonderful intentions but uh the calculous that was done to sort of consider how that might affect the core culture of the studio of the game Studio I don't think was complete I know the past 20 minutes have been a lot to take in so I'll give a quick recap it was pop cap who fired George fan and who pushed for microtransactions in PVZ2 pop cap was in treating that senior developers properly the same developers that got them in their successful position the EA acquisition whether intentional or not did affect the company culture and Dynamics through a slow but painful process intentions under ricelli were good but a dramatic shift in leadership through Andrew Wilson would change how EA operated internally EA now the owner of PopCap and a publisher will inevitably steer the course of how the games are made this could be as simple as requesting renting plans which would break the core gameplay structure or further pushing microtransactions in later versions of pvc2 to meet Revenue goals Publishers have a large hand in game development and can install specific metrics that worsen the outcome so it is both pop cap and EA that have caused their own demise by 2016 PopCap had been under EA control for 5 years after the release of PvZ 2 they wanted to expand the scope of the franchise and that year the PvZ franchise would see two new games Plants Vs zombies Garden Warfare 2 the sequel to The already successful garden warfare and plans versus Zombies Heroes a spin-off card game if you look at popc caps' output the number of new IPS they produced had dried up it was only bjed pegle and plants versus zombies this was likely part of the EA strategy yeah in the EA years would kind of start off with like Okay so this idea is this a billion dollar idea can it become a billion dollar franchise Heroes would launch with little Fanfare it just came out and didn't make a big splash I assume pop cap thought it would do Gang Busters considering it had the PvZ brand sadly on May 2nd 2017 this image was posted on popc caps' official Twitter account announcing a massive layoff I remember when this was announced little 11-year-old me found it really saddening layoffs AR never fun people lose their jobs and especially in an expensive area like Seattle it can put people in a stressful situation though really what happened to PvZ Heroes is a fascinating case study one that dives even deeper into the popc capea relations Rabbit Hole after the launch of PvZ Heroes it was clear that the game wouldn't do well the 2017 layoffs were only 7 months after the game launched and what followed was key staff members such as such as directors senior artists and animators all abandoning the project 1 month later in June 2017 set 2 Galactic Gardens was released after that the game would receive two more sets but after January 2018 the game received no additional content if you're following this timeline it would seem odd that the game received all these expansions after the layoffs this is because popcat did not finish PvZ heroes' updates instead they hired contract workers how do we know this well there is an artist named crystalite pelen that has PBZ concept sketches on her art station on all of her images they have the label pop cap and hibernum ah I now get to introduce a new player into our story hibernum Creations you already know we're off to a bad start when a company is based out of Quebec they probably support the cringe BL bequa they focus on mobile games and will typically swoop in and assist in developing mobile titles so in this case PopCap farmed out work to finish up the content for PvZ Heroes there's a lot of additional evidence to back up this claim despite the hium logo giving it away the last picture Crystal a provided shows us the sketching stage notice the more traditional and formulaic approach if you look at concept art it can be very free flowing artists will draw multiple heads bodies and all sorts of iterations to get the creative juices flowing here though it seems very deliberate like they had to come up with three designs and some manager at PopCap would pick the best one additionally have you ever wondered why sets three and four were split up into two or why they relied so heavily on retooling existing cards and reusing animations well it's likely because PopCap had very little internal staff on the project they only wanted to allocate so many resources to Contracting out new cards now the one thing I haven't brought up is why PopCap would do this now this gets into some technical boring business jargon so hang with me a contract worker is independent of the company that is hiring them they act like a freelancer they operate independently and file their own taxes they're not on the company's payroll now let me clarify that contract workers aren't inherently bad companies often hire contract workers for specific Niche jobs that may require just a few months of work both sides mutually benefit however in this case ppap had an apparent reason to do this it's way cheaper contract workers are not officially part of the company they're working for pop cap or any company doesn't have to provide them with certain benefits no sick days paid vacation dental plans or insurance coverage with contract workers there's simply less red tape to deal with with the 2017 layoffs and EA's influence and full effect we unfortunately saw the aftermath of this internal corporate restructuring do you know what started to pop up a lot around this time glass store reviews if you don't know glass store is a website where former employees leave Anonymous reviews of companies these reviews started to appear around the EA acquisition and during the 2017 layoffs the truth is that a lot of the information in these reviews is quite depressing sure there are some positive reviews it's not all doom and gloom but a shocking majority have some harsh things to say when looking at reviews posted around the acquisition we see some effects that I specifically called out in this video there are mentions of the culture changing reflecting a Stern contrast to how pop cap has fundamentally changed with the new ownership the earnout period I described and how that negatively influenced popcat to shift gears into focusing on the monetary side of things that explicitly gets mentioned as well so all those things about how EA had subtly changed the inside of popcat that's being confirmed all here beyond the EA acquisition specifically there's plenty else to analyze lousy management was by far the most brought up complaint whether it be hating confrontation nepotism lack of communication drama politics this is a pretty big issue considering well I'll let Joe say it again leaders build companies to reflect themselves and they set the tone in the spirit there were constant layoffs and rehires in addition to what contract workers just add another check to the things Dana raade has reason to believe happened the list goes on Creative stagnation canceled projects lack of original games poor planning and Direction Etc now looking into reviews from former employees should be taken with a certain level of hesitation after all especially with the evidence we've laid out many of these workers may have a negative tilt to their perception of Pop cap however because everything these people are saying perfectly aligns with what I've been going on about for this entire video it was exciting on my end to validate all of this research I've been doing still it also made me kind of sad remember popcat took pride in providing an open wild work environment according to these reviews current PopCap is plagued with high turnover rates unhelpful upper management and generally just a more uniform and generic Corporation it's sad to see a fall from grace now is some of this pop caps' fall well probably I'm not going to put all the blame on EA I've already mentioned that Mobile gaming was experiencing a harsh shift into freeo play which PopCap specifically wanted to capitalize on by adding microtransactions to PVZ2 but after all of this I think it's pretty clear that the EA acquisition negatively affected popc cap a trailer for Plants versus Zombies bad battle for Neighborville dropped on September 4th 2019 announcing that everybody could play the game right then and there titled the founders Edition the game would officially launch on October 18th but those who wanted to play it early could the game would trickle out its content to test the different features it was getting ready for I think this was a terrible idea for one just Shadow dropping a game like this with no buildup or hype led many people not knowing that this game even existed and the intent of the founders Edition it's not like popc cap could make fundamental changes to their game just in the 6 weeks they were doing their little soft launch BFN just had a terrible start as an owner of the founders Edition I can attest to the constant appearance of bugs a lack of content and a game many people struggle to distinguish positively from its predecessor I genuinely believe this lawn structure killed the game on arrival because when the game officially came out many people had already made up their minds now while I can't prove this if I had to guess I'd say EA was trying to rush this one out the door to position this as EA's kid-friendly shooter and embrace a monetization format similar to fortnite with the expensive skins and whatnot if it was someone's idea at Pop cap to Shadow drop the game day and day with the trailer they honestly should be fired fans did not review this game well with people being generally confused the garden warfare games were both love and commonly known amongst gaming communities it brought a new taste to the shooter genre and BFN was taking a backwards approach not setting itself apart from the crowd just one year later in a press release PopCap announced that they would cease the development of all future content Updates this came as a surprise to fans and possibly to PopCap as well there was tons of unused content and more than just simple things like placeholders and scrapped ideas there was progress made on new characters most notably the iceberg lettuce new legendary upgrades Ops phase 3 just to name a few I honestly think EA pulled the plug on BFN seeing the writing on the wall whether you believe this is a greedy or scummy thing to do is something I won't debate but because of the immediate Halt and surprise this news came as I wouldn't be surprised if internally the developers were thinking the same thing though I don't have much to go off of on that specific claim so take it with a grain of salt I've got one big question for you what's up with the Nintendo switch Port this port was randomly announced in the February 2021 direct and people just accepted its existence it felt like a last Stitch effort to squeeze some extra cash out of the game and I can't blame them BFN feels like a good fit on the switch and they made substantial changes the price cuts to the reward orron and making outfits that initially required rainbow stars now only need in-game coins was great other small quality of life additions include offline play and motion control integration the announcement of this port received quite a bit of news coverage but not for the reasons you're likely thinking surprisingly news sites picked up the fact that this was the first Frostbite 3 engine game ported to the switch hooray this leads to the question nobody has bothered to ask who made this port I bring up this point as PopCap Vancouver was no more after the updates stopped for BFN for a brief moment their site updated to this motive Vancouver indicating a complete shift away from the pop cap brand interestingly they've changed it back H but as with everything else in this video I have an answer to my own question however this is an awkward situation where I say that the following information came from a personal Source from a conversation I had years ago so I do not have anything to site directly I kindly ask you the audience to take my word for it this time please with the help of of a couple of original staff members EA hired contract workers oh you've got to be kidding me ah the classic contract worker strikes again it's a real shame that PopCap Vancouver has utterly been abandoned so all those people wishing and praying for Garden Warfare 3 yeah don't get your hopes up with the PBZ Shooters effectively Dead all that's left is popk Seattle and whatever they're working on the only thing PopCap today seems to be working on is pvz3 they've released three betas of this new iteration yet have shown no interest in changing core game design decisions plaguing the game it's been nearly a year since the last beta so it begs the question what's been going on over the past year pop cap has been extremely quiet on any development updates when they come out with a new beta they post about it on EA's website out of the blue I wouldn't be surprised if if a new beta dropped while making this video because karma's a the only news we've received is that pvz3 has Sunset it sunsetting a game is EA's cuty way of stating they'll take a game down from online stores now this can mean one of two things either pvz3 is officially cancelled or a new version of pvz3 will replace the current one this happened with the older 2020 build and our latest betas however with the constant presence of jobl listings I think the project is still ongoing while PvZ 3's been in development hell EA's chocolate Panda and Chingo conjured up zombie match a PvZ inspired Match 3 game yuck yes PopCap was not responsible for this how reassuring the zombies straight up look like the infamous Gangham Style zombies then 2 years later chocolate Panda and the Gang returned with Plants versus Zombies match glad to see the name Plants versus Zombies back in the title it's generic boring and reuses assets from old pvz3 wait not even the new one reusing pvz3 assets leads to a theory I like to call the great BFN pvz3 art style gamble trademark the art style first shown off in the original version of PvZ 3 appeared in many more places than just PvZ match a while back PopCap and EA partnered with the marketing and distribution agency to refresh and modernized the PvZ brand they worked on the look and feel of possible new PvZ packaging and merchandise this is a style guide to make sure everything stays on brand notice how all the artwork shown uses a weird combination between the BFN and old pvz3 art style this contributes to the idea of EA's demand to essentially reboot the franchise with a focus on children more than anything in other news PopCap released a survey years ago asking people their opinion on this upcoming Plants vs Zombies mobile game a very exciting title guys by the looks of things it came off as some sort of PBZ RPG but more interestingly was the use of again 3D models while it has its own style and looks pretty good it's clear that this was a prototype and a proof of concept oh and I lied this was actually meant to be a Rog likee and the project has been dead for years the screenshots I'm showing are the only remnants of the game and it just SC dreams old PvZ 3 if you want to talk about more cancelled PvZ games look no further than project hot tub on IGN's YouTube channel they detailed and documented the cancellation of a PvZ action adventure game developed by PopCap Vancouver the game followed Eddie as he used plants across the series as companions they'd Aid the player throughout the world by solving puzzles and assisting in combat I think most can agree that what popcat developed looked fun to play the plot involved time travel which I wish they just move on from Eddie and the Gang would travel to all the PVZ2 worlds basically reusing all the world Concepts they had already come up with Wow Dana raade way to nitpick at a game that doesn't exist the team at Pop cap Vancouver presented project hot tub to Andrew Wilson and the Gang the presentation was received well surprisingly a few short days later the leadership of EA decided they'd stop project hot tub's development and move the team to another project project ragtag or visceral Star Wars a game that also got shut down if there is one thing you should take away from all this realize that this is a PvZ related example of EA exercising their Authority as a publisher and making significant decisions on the PBZ brand project hot tub while looking excellent clearly was not what the company wanted this is a widespread practice as allocating resources to other project is a perfectly normal thing to do but again I have to repeat it because I will take any opportunity to EA has a big say and both what projects get approved and the direction they should take though I've always had a certain level of skepticism with this video the amount of art Concepts gameplay and general behind thes scenes information IGN revealed is extensive considering how little we know about other cancelled PvZ games I reached out to Rebecca who produced and appeared in this video and you bet she neglected to respond project hot tub stands out as one of the few significant pieces of information the community has chewed on other than that there isn't much else to work with with PvZ 3 being in limbo the PvZ community clammers at the sight of any news the PvZ Heroes servers briefly shut down because the games's max season was 60 when the game reached season 61 it just didn't work gar Warfare 2 has had its own server issues dead lobbies were plaguing the game despite relatively consistent player counts after they fixed that hackers began Banning people on garware 2o like anyone the situation keeps developing as we've gone from we have an issue EA fixed the issue to nope never mind we still have a problem Houston PvZ has also experienced some weird Oddities that nobody can quite explain for example pop kept tweeting that mini games in pvz1 Mobile can now be accessed through coins okay why you would tweet this or even change this in the game I don't know this new pvz1 trailer was posted on the Apple and Google Play stores which might be one of the most cursed things I've seen in a while they use PVZ2 art and even combine the pvz1 and two Styles the voiceover sounds like it was produced through text to speech software and unlock new plants winner of over 30 Game of the Year Awards my favorite curs aspect of the trailer is the use of hacked gameplay seen in this Montage with a giant hypnos shrooms that's fun these weird changes add to the mystery and confusing State PopCap is in this confusion has resulted in a community ravenous for anything to focus on people are desperate they're disappointed at PopCap while pop Cap's been silent they've been there to defend themselves battl in these dramas and Wars they've made for themselves they go on and on back and forth finding a way to criticize any living Soul who doesn't like battle for Neighborville or has no interest in Heroes they State you can't negatively criticize pvz3 as much because of its redeeming qualities I honestly don't know what those great qualities are any content creators who make a PvZ video will have their comment sections blown up by contrarians why bringing up EA makes you a self- bigoted closed-minded and wrong individual who doesn't have your facts straight if someone thinks the first game is superior for all these reasons they're just Nostalgia blind if you review something that doesn't age great you might as well die with it to your grave I've had [Music] it the plants versus zombies Community looks like any other community it's small and Niche but has a loyal fan base with the hand full of PvZ videos on my channel I feel I have a unique perspective as a content creator there's been a recent trend of backlash and pure hatred toward specific creators I'm here to speak not only for myself but on behalf of others my friends it's time to get out of my comfort zone as I play offense today to tell you that the PvZ Community sucks holy Christ there's a particular type of PvZ video I'm sure you've heard of the downfall video now if you're part of the PBZ Community you likely see these videos and can only feel one emotion anger it's either a how dare you call PBZ dead guys it it's kind of true or B they put EA in the thumbnail not credible bye-bye three videos in particular seem to have received the most attention Milkman Steves is the downfall of Plants versus Zombies tears what killed the Plants vs Zombies franchise and the beakes why the plants vers Zombie series died I originally wanted to go over each video and talk about what was in it and the criticisms the videos received until I realized each video had the same complaints which I'll go over right now they are too much blame put on EA criticism of any of the PvZ games certain people like poorly researched and EA in the thumbnail the worst sin of all these videos certainly have their problems but I wanted to hear from the source I contacted all of these creators to hear directly from them how do they see their video today and what do they think about this community unsurprising to me plenty of their answers overlapped they all mentioned how getting information wrong in their videos disappointed them which is a sentiment I also share do you know how deflating it is to spend all this time on one video only for someone in the comments to point out that you got one tiny detail wrong we're only human and making mistakes is natural and should almost be encouraged I'd like to live in a world or I never make mistakes but that's impossible the second point was that people would not let these videos go whether they respond with the pin comment stating the video is outdated or that they don't even like the video it isn't enough people will instinctually remember you as the downfall of PBZ guy we'll dive deeper into this point later third is that people will get mad at everything there's absolutely no winning this all of these creators had negative things to say about PBZ Heroes to them them PvZ Heroes is an unappealing and uninteresting card game that aimed to capitalize on the PvZ brand it stands as a far cry to the Ingenuity of the original and instead PopCap made a hearstone ripoff even if we bypass the subjectivity of their opinions what these creators are saying isn't wrong it's not what people wanted it doesn't have a large player base it's somewhat pay to win what happens is your average PvZ fan sees fry him up streaming the game and says well clear clearly the game's not dead of course the game doesn't have zero people playing it if a small percentage of the PvZ fan base is still playing the game then you bet the general public has no interest in playing it right now any take made by these creators did not go over well with someone they all criticized the microtransactions of PVZ2 and how forced they all felt the hip new thing is to defend PVZ2 to the grave and attacking the game to any degree means you just don't get it those were some General thoughts but I wanted to highlight specific creators and comments that stuck out to me Milkman Steve stated that he had no intention of the video getting big if you look at videos surrounding his PvZ video they all have a few hundred views he simply wanted to talk about one of his favorite games growing up he made such a video and thought nothing of it and while he was excited about his breakout video it also Drew in a lot more negativity when he just wanted to make a goofy PvZ video Terror had the most positive perception out of the three he cited that he didn't receive an enormous amount of backlash and was mostly just the same few talking points every PvZ historian spews out still he negatively perceives a community because of their childish and annoying Persona then most interesting of all were the beak' comments the beak experienced the worst backlash out of the three and was unfortunate enough to experience a classic dislike bomb thank you Reddit the beak said he wanted to experiment with something new with the channel and I completely resonate with this desire many people criticize YouTubers and even myself for not branching out more why don't you try covering Niche games the problem is that the failure rate is exceptionally High my last video was a challenge run of Paper Mario the Thousand-Year Door I had never done anything like it and it initially did quite poorly while I'm thankful the video did quite well partly because of the recent remake that was just announced its initial failure steered me away from making a video in that style again while it picked up steam and received many positive comments it still left me weary and nervous while making it so the beak made this PvZ video it was created to Branch out to cover a nostalgic game that the beak enjoyed while growing up the beak tiptoeing his way into talking about the franchise led to uh that which is it warranted well yes kind of the video isn't well researched and and it's got a lot of technical issues the beak I know you're watching this video why does the PVZ2 footage look like it's half deep fried you also complained that they changed the music in PVZ2 isn't that what a sequel is supposed to do wouldn't it be weirder if they reused the tracks from the first game however the beak looked at the response to this video whether it be the script or his editing style and changed he's evolved if you'd bother to look at his newer videos I think they're much better than this tvz video Additionally the beak mentioned on a personal note that he has a negative opinion about the video because of how much backlash there was he's not traumatized let me make that clear YouTubers make tens of hundreds of videos and they move on and create the next big thing but those like the beak are stuck with the negative attention of his video it doesn't go away it will forever follow his YouTube career the final thing the beak mentioned was his characterization of the PvZ Community now let me preface that this only describes some a handful were perfectly reasonable with their responses and were respectful throughout however for the vocal majority he described them as passionate and militant they're good words to encapsulate the combative and mobike behavior this community exercises the one thing I have yet to mention is that all these creators have the same feeling toward the PBZ Community they all feel no animosity or hatred and do you know why they didn't take all of the comments they received personally Milkman Steve simply wanted to make a silly video about Plants versus Zombies and that's precisely what he did he's moved on to other projects and doesn't think much if anything of his PvZ video Terror was experimenting with a new video format the what killed blank series finally the beak has continued to experiment and refine his style he's continued to make videos and is perfectly happy Happ where he is the creators of these videos did not make these PvZ videos out of hatred or Vengeance for the franchise or even EA but because they like Plants versus Zombies they wanted to talk about one of their favorite games and their criticism was out of love and respect for the franchise they once held up in high regard sadly though the community won't let up and people like gold ninja Vlog spot make an EA bad pop cap good tier list video oh fantastic as a content creator I find myself in a weird position describing my frustration with these videos and their response as a part of their job any content creator puts themselves out there for the world to judge even in this video I've made some bold points and claims but this is how I feel at the end of the day these videos are primarily opinionated based each has their own unique editing style writing format and yet no matter who seems to cover PBZ there's an angry out to get you I'm not saying you can't criticize us these videos have issues but please the PvZ Community I ask that you sit down and reflect upon yourself maybe breaking down a video and critiquing each element with the most boring and monotone voice imaginable yeah this video is bad these creators are outside the PvZ community and therefore don't possess the same encyclopedic knowledge you may have but being an outsider brings with it a wakeup call PvZ Heroes looks like a weird one-off game to them they see PBZ as a nostalgic brand that hasn't been relevant for years and because of the videos they've made on the subject while they don't hate the community they also don't have a positive perception of it us content creators are willing to own up to our mistakes learn and evolve so maybe it's time for this community to do the same now this this is where I come into the picture I've just been speaking on behalf of these YouTubers but I have my grievances with this community it all starts with one word eclip shy guy mask and I back in 2020 made videos on the PVZ2 mod project eclip and we're paying the consequences if you don't know eclip was a popular PVZ2 mod when it was cool to hate PvZ 2 the modding scene for the game began to expand and develop the selling point for these early mods was we've removed the microtransactions ah how Noble of you mod Creator considering adding microtransactions would be illegal people have issues with these videos because we praise and chant The Good Deeds ecls accomplishes while some people criticize ECS and its game design most criticism is directed at its mods Creator good P2 the history of good P2 is so extensive that discussing it would steer us too far off the course I usually would direct you to a video discussing a topic in further detail but this video which I'm sure a handful of you have watched is not good it also comes from random which uh so long long story short good P2 remained controversial for profiting from his mod development aggressive behavior toward other mods and people and silencing criticism he officially quit development on aiss and left the community for good you'd think we'd have mods that could fill in the shoes for a CP such as alter Z and ref flourish nope they've got problems I won't get into the point in bringing this up is that because of good p2's questionable background his negative reputation gets thrown back onto me with the argument I can't believe you're praising good P2 no matter how much I or shyy mask denounce make fun of or publicly exclaim that we do not stand by our eclip videos they always come back afteron sty I'm just sick of the comments and Reddit post stating OMG they think eiss is so good they are so dumb regarding my video on ECP I agree that it's terrible I don't think enough people mentioned that I fairly criticized the mod and it wasn't a Mindless praise session everything else though it's hard to watch I I can't go back I was a 14-year-old using Adobe Premiere Pro for the first time I had no idea what I was doing some moments here have also aged so poorly did you add microtransactions to Plants versus Zombies too you'll bet your sweet bippy I did I generally find the PvZ Community tearing itself apart and I don't know why my favorite recent example is the feud between YouTuber rcch and the pbz1 modders association Discord server if you don't know some people exposed rcch by showing how he misrepresented mods profited off of mods and click baited because he uses the red arrow if you're going to try to expose someone for click baiting on YouTube please take an honest look around you in response rcch called The modders Association Discord server a I can't even say the word because YouTube will demonetize this video RC I am very concerned so as my final warning to the PBZ Community it's time to get out of this bubble of deflecting criticism made to your favorite PV easy game making assumptions about us content creators or just so vigorously fighting till the end to tell people why EA bad popcat good I'm speaking not just for myself but for my friends who have dealt with the Brigade of comments and backlash over primarily inconsequential actions grow up PvZ fans they bought us through the Pixar but then we stopped being the Pixar when inspecting the evidence it is clear that sometimes it is uncertain as to what the exact truth is this can be seen in the different accounts of George fans's firing or even in the various testimonials in the oral history of PopCap everyone's perspective is slightly different meaning their tone to specific topics will lean on a more positive or negative scale but even with all that being said it feels like something was missing even though I may be convinced about this deep explanation I know some of you are not you may still be under the impression that EA has a hands-off approach that everything is totally fine at popc cap sure they've made some mistakes but no company is perfect they're clearly back on track with retooling pvz3 and all those other cancelled projects that never saw the light of day well projects get cancelled all the time teams get reorganized and these things themselves aren't inherently wrong I named the battlefield 2042 example but just because dice had an unfortunate demise why must it be said for pop cap whatever counter argument you devis to put into the comment section it's a natural position to take changing your mind on such a controversial topic is a tall order even as I've admitted EA's influence is subtle while plenty of evidence points one way there's an argument to be made that it's all Loosely tied together remember the main argument that supporters of the it's all popcat fault Theory based their whole opinion on is that pop cap not EA does the actual game design and production of their titles even if EA tampers with the culture department and lays them all off what is the culture Department making the games if you believe that EA had no play in the demise of Pop cap then well congratulations you are officially the toughest egg to crack I've talked ad nauseum about this for 2 hours and you not being convinced is almost an a comp accomplishment if we genuinely want to know the truth and go even deeper into the pop cap rabbit hole we must go straight to the source I've had the extremely fortunate opportunity to talk with former pop cap employees now if you listen carefully to my opening statement you might have picked up that I said employees not employee I've come into contact with not one or two but four four different pop cap employees it was an honor to talk to the people behind one of the most creative game companies the world has ever seen I am incredibly excited to share exclusive and neverbe heard information on the inner workings of Pop cap before we start I'd like to explain how I will structure this all of these employees wrote a lot providing super specific details to respect their words the majority that's left of this video will be an exact transcription of their answers I'd like to note that I did have to cut some parts out but nothing was taken out of context and most of what I cut out were statements that don't necessarily pertain to the video also keep in mind that I didn't ask the same set of questions to everyone so some questions only have a couple of responses this is a rare opportunity to hear directly from the source so this section will be long but essential with that out of the way let me introduce the four lovely people I talked to Aaron mundorf was a 2d artist who worked on various pop cap games including PVZ2 Heroes Pele blast and more they worked at Pop cap from 2010 to 2017 Isaac Aubrey worked in QA and was a games producer fun fact they were behind making the online demo version of the game yeah you know the Crusty and roughl looking version of the game you could play on a web browser well Mr Aubrey was responsible for such project they were at Pop cap from 2004 to 2012 the following employee may ring some bells for a couple of Hardcore popat fans Steven notley he was a technical writer with his defining role consisting of writing all the almanac entries in the original plants vers zombies he worked at PopCap from 2005 to 2022 the final employee I had the pleasure of talking to was rich wner does he even need an introduction for all of you modders Association members who think I got this idea from the little Q&A you had the dates of these emails would suggest otherwise rich wner is responsible for all the original plants vers zombies art now with this Stellar lineup of people let's dive into what they had to say how was your experience working at Pop [Music] cap my experience at Pop cap was amazing it was a very special place to work pop cap was always encouraging everyone to explore new content and ideas it was such a fun environment it felt more like a family than a company I don't think that type of place exists these days best job I ever had I made some lifelong friends working there learned a lot about the technical ins and outs of creating and releasing games and put my liver through challenges I was likely to survive we were a big family who leaned on each other celebrated together went through hard times together and managed to crank out some pretty fun games along the way there's a lot to say here overall I loved it I feel lucky to have been part of PopCap during its best days when there were no limits on the kind of games we could make when people were free to experiment the feeling in the office was really positive and optimistic it really did feel like family I loved going in every day and going to work with the friends I'd made a lot of us are still very close overall it was awesome and amazing lifechanging pop cap had been a huge part of my life it's 17 years I believe I hold the record for the longest continue employment at the company I originally made the move back in 2005 because I was excited by the chance to work with and contribute to this crazy circus of uniquely talented creators all United in the common goal of creating great games I'm eternally grateful I got to have that chance I feel like I don't need to explain this one very much pop cap was more than just a happy and fun workplace it was special a perfect storm of crazy people who all bonded together to create some of the greatest casual games I showed all these quotes to explain that from all parts of the company a sense of community rounded everyone together in your opinion was the EA buyout positive or negative both for you as an individual and the company as a whole after the buyout things changed but it was a slow change we were told EA would be hands off and I'm told that they were for a good while but their expectations for revenue and growth were so so high it felt like no matter what we did we were going to fail I think in a lot of cases it was hard for people to adapt to the fremium mobile game box that we eventually got stuck in there was a lot of resistance to that at first it was lifechanging for many of us I was able to pay off my student loans and my husband who was also working at Pop cap and I were able to make a down payment on a house others who had been at the company longer probably had the option to retire outright but I don't know if anyone did a few of them eventually left to make their own companies it was just crazy and I count myself very lucky was the buyout good for pop cap probably not but it did change many of our lives for the better for me it was a bit negative the company restructured and it just felt like it Lost That Special Sauce at one head I had lost my team and it just didn't feel right I do think this sort of thing happens all the time it's the nature of the Beast as for the year or so leading up to the buyout and what the actual buyout did to pop cap it ruined it there were astronomically unrealistic Revenue targets attached to our little 2D casual games and it crushed the creativity as we were getting Guzzi up for the big sale leadership started to buy into the idea that innovation wasn't as important as chasing the big social monetization designs of games like Farmville or Mob Wars despite a great knowledge of ourselves and an eagerness to innovate and create something on that greater level speaking for myself and the blitz teams I was on the leadership looked outside the company for new designers who could bring something fresh to PopCap it's also worth pointing out some of the original designers at PopCap were struggling with this new world where analytics were starting to influence game design it very rapidly started to shift the focus from fun games to how do we get people to click the buy button it started out innocently enough but once the biz Dev heads plugged into it that really started to drive a wedge between old and new some of us were riding the wave of the transition and having some fun with analytics While others were getting crushed beneath it and understandably so lastly to be fair it was all coming at us 1,000 M an hour anyone that could be blamed for missteps in management in the year or so leading up to the bio did so fully believing they were going to save the ship any Bad actors that arrived on the scene around that time didn't really have any influence at least not yet I'd summarize my sense of AD as a growing tendency to rely on proven hits while giving variously serious lip service to the importance of continuing to experiment and generate new games while in practice never fully going ahead with any for fear that they might not be gigantic instant hits and to be fair it was a pretty good deal the main shareholders acted pretty decently towards the employees and share option holders lots of folks not me unfortunately became instant millionaires after the sale the founders swore to stay on for as long as they were contractually obligated to do and EA promised to maintain a hands-off policy towards the hit game maker it thought it was buying and then well time happened people left new people arrived the games underperformed bonuses dried up PopCap got even more afraid of risking new IP again a lot of this was happening before the sale to EA and it continued to happen after as was said again and again in various ways in the documentary we did it to ourselves from my own personal perspective my biggest complaint with EA was that they were too solely focused on big numbers to satisfy their shareholders they would much rather spend 90 million to earn 100 million than spend 2 million to earn 15 million even if the latter case is hugely more profitable it's the overall magnitude of the revenue That Matters to them anything below say 50 Mill million or more realistically 100 million just doesn't interest them they were like a baseball team that only wanted home runs the EA buyout has a slightly different interpretation depending on those who experienced it but it's clear that from a corporate structural standpoint the inside of Pop cap was vastly changing this was because of the evolving landscape of mobile gaming and the higher pressure from EA to create titles that instantly did amazing Remember When I talked about the tens of Pop cap games that were made that you probably had never heard of well every game in a company's lineup cannot be an instant classic once released it takes time and experimentation to land on a great title but EA wanted to ensure that process would happen 100% of the time so while the company and its employees financially profited very well the effects this takeover would have would weed away any of the creative potential pop cap still had left in it why did you leave [Music] PopCap after the EA buyout there are lots of changes George fan and Todd simple were let go and I had almost exclusively worked with them on projects so I decided to make it a go on my own and left the company the last layoff I survived broke my heart it was a big one it was soon after PvZ Heroes had launched the rest of the artists that remained became part of a floating resource to work on different games as needed but I was mostly fixing art bugs for PvZ Heroes it's important work but by then I was so depressed and unhappy with how things had gone and so many of my colleagues were gone my heart just wasn't in it my intention was to take a sabatical to teach myself some 3D skills and I was allowed to do this but it wasn't long before I started the sabatical when I got an offer to work at another company with some of my popat friends who had already left I turned in my notice on my 7th work anniversary to take that job for my part I was an Oldtimer who was assumed to be disgruntled despite having been at the Forefront of our social efforts with the Blitz Games in corporate takeover land Old-Timers aren't good for Change and the mode is always to hire in new people who will agitate oldtimers out of the building despite the fact that I wasn't nearly as disgruntled as some I was starting to feel some pretty gnarly pressure from on high and it occurred to me that it was probably time to go there was about a month where I was talking to HR about maybe calling on some of the stuff that was happening but I was encouraged to just keep quiet say I had a great new opportunity elsewhere and then vaporize without making any waves I had friends running a 3D art housee down the street called Valkyrie entertainment and they needed a producer so I took a job with them and left pop cap to its new [Music] mechan basically last year as one of my colleagues Was preparing to depart I had occasion to to ask myself if I really wanted to be there anymore and was a bit surprised to discover that actually I didn't there had been some tension between the design team and the leadership the previous year I thought we'd done a lot in the early months of 2022 to rebuild a relationship of trust but then I had occasion to question that with my co-designer colleagues departure along with other departures I looked at the new Dynamics and I felt like i' would be happier elsewhere in corporate speak my priorities and those of leadership have diverged and I think it's time for me to move on the consistent theme for people leaving was the corporate change the same energy and passion that was once there was now long gone it seriously affects people's motivation and quality of work the following questions were ones that I only asked certain people and were a little more specific I asked Aaron how often the team she worked with Chang this is what she had to say pretty often people rolled on and off teams as other game projects were for ramping up or ramping down people would also leave the company and new people would be hired and each team I worked on for each game was unique it was never the same team that made this game is going to make the next game how do you feel about the trajectory of the Plants vs Zombies franchise where it's been and where it's at now I actually liked a lot of what was done with the popcat franchise Garden Warfare to me was brilliant I had so many doubts about it but when it came out I was pleasantly surprised the art style did change once PvZ 2 came out I know there were fans that were upset about it but things evolve and I wasn't there any longer anyway my only complaint wasn't as much how the art changed but how it got monetized I am surprised with the longevity of the franchise it's really cool seeing how every new generation of kids ends up discovering it when PvZ 2 first came out I grabbed it from my iPad and played the hell out of it I was already aware that it was leaning towards microtransactions the whole industry was so that didn't bother or surprise me I actually really enjoyed it as for PvZ 3 I've heard all kinds of tales and woe concerning the development of that game and I can only wonder how it's going to turn out so my awareness of all things PvZ sharply drops off after PvZ 2 and working there I became especially disconnected from it when I learned that my good friend who had been doing level design on it and had worked on pop cab nearly as long as I had got fired by some new who didn't understand and how he operated he was a brilliant and complex person and someone took his confident game design ideas as a threat so they waited until his boss was on vacation and had HR fire him for being edgy it was and I never played a new pop cap game after that based on your experience how much involvement did EA have in the making of the plants vers zombiie series most of them didn't have much to comment on but it was the response from Steven notley that was was the most revealing based on my own personal experience I must admit I don't have a lot of insight into the whole EA and PBZ Saga I spent a lot of the crucial years focused on pegle so lots happened with PBZ that I didn't see during my time on PBZ 2 I watched a gradual transformation that one could attribute to EA's influence which was to contract or offshore more and more work outside the Seattle Studio when I joined the PVZ2 team was almost completely Seattle based by by the time I left almost half or more was done elsewhere that's very on brand for EA which has Studios and setups around the world as well as a history of enormous games that require tons of work that has to be contracted out I often felt amazed or and bashful shame at their passion and willingness to enure crummy working hours just to be able to interact with all of us on the US West Coast as for pvz3 and its various incarnations I know a little bit but not too much the first version I worked on in a kind of secondary capacity that is I was was assigned to spend a day a week to help out with the story which was actually a lot of fun at that time pvz3 occupied the majority of the Seattle pop cap office with 50 plus people working on it and pbz2 being a weird little appendix in comparison again I never got deep into the politics of pvz3 version one other than to observe that it seemed troubled play tests came back less positively than hoped designs pivoted features were sheld and unshelved nobody seemed sure exactly what they wanted except for EA who were certain that the one thing they wanted and intended to insist upon was that it' make a 100 million or more a year immediately upon release I'd say that having a revenue Target be the one fixed point in your game design is a terrible way to make a game but what the hell do I know I just made games for a living instead of giving orders to people who already know how to do it eventually it became clear that all the pivots in the world couldn't guarantee that Revenue result so they reassigned or let go the vast bulk of the PopCap studio and that was it for pvz3 version one as for pvz3 version 2 I've played it it's a vastly smaller scale team than the one they had for PvZ 3.1 and I'm not sure at all where it is now or how their plans for it have evolved there are plenty of YouTube videos of fans sharing their opinions on what they've seen in various beta tests are there more pivots in store yes no maybe how that fits in with EA's overall plans for PvZ as a brand or franchise I honestly couldn't say in theory right about when I left a guy named Matt townend was in charge of the PvZ brand and remained a PopCap and he intended to get the b/ brand back together and push it forward with more clarity has that happened at this point I couldn't tell you what Steven notley and the rest have described proves that everything in this video was true and no this is not me knowing the contents of these emails and then stringing together pieces of evidence outside of these emails to lead up to this talking with these employees was one of the last steps in developing the script for this video I've been thinking thinking about these things for months trying to decipher the true nature of popc caps' demise these Insider accounts these people experience what we fans want to hear they specifically described the lack of new IPS and the fear of innovation the revenue expectations that EA put on the team not only put the team on high alert but also made the games suffer that pop cap continued to not treat their employees with the respect they should have in that last quote by Steven not he revealed pop caps is current and sad State something I never considered was the answer to why all the new plants and PVZ2 look so off and different sure while all of the original artists are long gone I would have never guessed it was EA Contracting out their work overseas and as I specifically described earlier Contracting out work has Financial benefits this is less surprising as if you go onto popcap's website you can see that they have a studio based out out of Hyderabad India in addition the restart of PvZ 3 also makes a lot more sense I never bought the idea that pop cap started from scratch because they were listening to the fans what really happened is that the team was at a complete loss on how to take the direction of the franchise with EA insisting on it being another Smash Hit but because of the turbulent development they restarted and scrapped most of what they had the reason for the new pvz3 having such a quiet and slow development is that a much smaller team is on the project PVZ2 updates have picked up again because that's the only thing generating revenue for popc cap there were some other great insights and exciting details but you just heard them yourself I hope the puzzle pieces are starting to fit together for you I'd like to end this section with a quote from Mr Aubrey that I think sums us all up best as for final thoughts we were a big happy family for a lot of those years it was challenged by the buyout and I know there are are some of us who still struggle with how it all went down but we had a small reunion a few months ago and it was amazing there's still so much love between us all and 5 hours in a room together was nowhere near enough time for us all to catch up and that was just a small sampling of how many people I'd count as the pop cap family so I hope at the end of all discussions about pop cap EA and all the politics of it people remember that pop cap was a place where true creativity flourished for many years and lifelong friendships also came from that I can name more than a dozen people off the top of my head who would all say it was the best job they ever had in an industry where there are so many different jobs and people Bounce from one to another so often that's really saying something it was a truly special place when planning on talking about these emails I considered whether I wanted to keep all these employees Anonymous or Not by the way I asked all of them and they were cool with me using their names in the end I specifically showcased who they are are and what they did to communicate a point the point being that these are all regular people at the end of the day these are passionate game developers who were simply thrown into the mix of the complicated downfall of Pop cap which is why I am incredibly excited to have showcased their story to tell the world how they viewed their experience to Aaron Isaac Steven and rich thank you for taking the time to answer my questions and I hope I've nailed this for you [Music] I have strong feelings about some aspects of this franchise whether it be the community specific games or how the fan base perceives certain things the main reason though is out of love if I didn't care about this franchise I wouldn't have spent the entirety of this year planning and making this video this has by far been the most intense and Taxi video on me personally but with what I've been able to present what I've hopefully Illustrated to you all is a different perspective a new way of looking at things I'm forever honored to have been in the position I am today someone with a sizable audience with amazing fans who have been patiently waiting far too long for this silly little PvZ video I've grown up with this series like everybody else seeing it Blossom and evolve today I spoke for many people former pop cap employees YouTubers but most importantly for myself to express my thoughts on something I am utterly grateful and passionate about I want to see things improve but I don't know if I ever will the climate of the gaming landscape has changed so much since 2009 PopCap and EA have changed with the industry and as things are looking I don't know if they're willing to change I am confident that both PopCap and EA are the reason for this franchise's decline and nobody can argue anything otherwise even with all my complaining and sadness I must acknowledge that if it weren't for pvz3 I would not be where I am today my attachment to Plants forus Zombies will never die but the world's love for pop cap and what it creates is dying so even though PopCap may never change those who were the backbone of such an incredible company and the work they made will not be forgotten George fan thank you for everything you've done and that ladies and gentlemen was the tragic demise of Plants versus Zombies there's a zie on your there's a zie on your line there's a zombie on your line we don't want zombies on a l yeah [Music]

Channel: Danerade

Views: 2,881,176

Keywords: pvz, pvz 2, pvz 3, plants vs zombies, plants vs zombies 2, plants vs zombies 3, pvz 3 update, pvz 2 update, pvz 2 plants, pvz garden warfare, pvz garden warfare 2, pvz garden warfare 3, battle for neighborville, pvz heroes, pvz downfall, the tragic demise of plants vs zombies, danerade, danerade pvz, danerade pvz 3

Id: V7j835caKiA

Length: 166min 55sec (10015 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 17 2023