PAX Prime 2012

[BarbieBobomb]

We're heading to PAX Prime in Seattle, Washington next weekend! We'll reveal the PopCap table and have it available to play! We are also participating in a PAX panel with PopCap (try and say that one 3 times fast!): Love at first bumper. The behind the scenes story of how pinball united Zen Studios and PopCap Games. Let us know if you plan on attending!

[snakeman07]

I'd so be there, if only I still lived in Vancouver, Washington (my home town) Anyways, can't wait for the reveal!

[BarbieBobomb]

For those of you who can't make it to PAX this year, I am going to attempt to post as much as I can here on the forums as the panel is happening (like a live-blog type thing). Hopefully we'll have a good enough internet/3G signal in the theater to do this. I will try to get online a bit before the panel on Friday night to test it out and see if we can make it happen. Panel starts at 8pm PST Friday, check out details on our blog

[snakeman07]

Sounds good

[s-carnegie]

Thanks for the heads up Barbie, will check for sure.

[ShoryukenToTheChin]

Wish I could go, alas im half way round the World.

[wims]

Thanks Barbie, you're our Madonna.

[BarbieBobomb]

Hey guys! We're here at PAX getting ready for our panel! Let's hope this wifi signal holds for the next hour I'll be posting as much as I can while they are talking about our epic love story with PopCap Get ready!

[BarbieBobomb]

Intro from Ty Roberts (@tyjroberts) Originally called this project "Pringles." He wanted to make a pinball game, but needed a partner who already had a great pinball engine. Looked around, found some cool pinball games with great gimmicks, but still only viewed the online tables as competitors. Was highly influenced by Metroid Pinball, but it was more "video game" than it was pinball.

First steps, mission statement: create a series of pinball tables that embody what popcap is all about.

Next, what game to base it on? Why PvZ? It was a huge IP, very successful. Had meetings outside of work to take simple goals and work toward a new "metagame". They had great faith in their ideas and were confident in what they wanted to accomplish with this pinball table.

Came up with a very simple table design, took it to PopCamp (where PopCap employees go to work on their dream games, stuff they never had time to do before). (I'll try to post some design drawing notes later, you'd be amazed to see how far it came from Project Pringles to the finished PvZ Pinball).

Presented the ideas to other PopCap employees, and decided they needed to license a pinball engine... because writing a pinball engine is a huge project

Finding a partner: they wanted someone who was just as passionate about games as they were. Enter ZEN! They met at a breakfast meeting at GDC 2010. Ty describes this design pitch as "Pitching Tom & Jerry to Pixar"

Ty says that "Zen made my dream game." Que the "awwwwws"

[BarbieBobomb]

Now.. Neil Sorens, our creative director takes the mic (you all know him as Solitude around here):

Introduction to Zen/what we do (you all know this story)

Diving in: Neil discusses licenses and Zen Studios and how PopCap asked to join forces to make a new table. We were more than thrilled to accept the challenge! Why PopCap? They are super talented, passionate people with a great, well loved IP that would translate well into pinball. (Plus who can resist those adorable zombies??)

More original concept art (I'll see if Neil will post these so you can see the progression from start to finish)

Zen did most of the pinball design aspects, but PopCap really made it more PvZ-like.

The hard parts:

-3D! It's really easy to get this wrong. They had to stay true to the original art while translating to 3D.

-Voice-overs: Not a lot of talking in PvZ, besides Crazy Dave and moaning zombies... And you know us, we needed more lines!

-Cutting out zombie dancers, and the bowling zombies

-Zombie/Ball collision issues

-balancing prices on Crazy Dave's shop

-FOG: Zombies marching out of the fog (seriously! This part is amazingly cool looking, they never even considered cutting it)

OH NO! ZOMBIES ARE HERE! (I'm totally serious! They are jumping around and being crazy and biting stuff, I'll post pics on our twitter, go look! @zen_studios)

[shogun00]

Thanks for the play-by-play Barbie.

[snakeman07]

Thanks for the play-by-play Barbie.

+1 Gonna go find those twitter pics.

[Bearded_Warrior]

Barbie, you are the Bobomb!

[BarbieBobomb]

Thanks guys! I'm glad you enjoyed it!