Inside PopCap Games

All of which poses a potential danger - that PopCap, which has such success by making games simple again, might finally get tangled up in increasingly elaborate projects. "Yes. That is a hazard," laughs Kapalka. "As we've seen with games like Bejeweled, sometimes simple still works. I don't want to forget about that. I do recognise that it's a danger to say that we're making bigger games - like we'd announce we'd make an MMOFPSRPG and then do a horrible job of it."

But Kapalka suggests that, even while it presents a more complex picture of the casual audience than anyone might have expected, a game like Plants still makes the developer more willing to take additional risks: if it is at a quiet crossroads, it's not afraid to choose a direction and get moving. "Something like Plants certainly give us more confidence, both in our ability to execute it, and that there's an audience that's willing to accept it," he smiles.

In fact, in his keynote at Casual Connect, Roberts addressed this very issue, suggesting the next big battlefield is the crossover market itself, where hardcore platforms meet the right kind of casual games. Is that PopCap's new target? "That's an interesting one," sighs Kapalka. "We're seeing the crossover emerge, but it's not totally clear yet where it's going to end up. You see Steam, Xbox Live, PSN and WiiWare, and they're all figuring things out: taking the mechanics of the download market and bringing it to console owners who may not have been familiar with it yet.

"For a lot of console owners, the download market is a fairly new experience, and so the market is evolving rapidly as the audience figures out what games they like, and what's being sold. It's going to be an interesting market - and it's quite big. It may not be quite as big in raw numbers as the presumed casual space, but it's millions of people who are prepared to spend a lot of money. The barriers to buying something are really low, plus the psychology is already there: you are a person who buys games.

"Are we going full circle? Did we get out of hardcore games and are we getting back in? That's the kind of interesting thing that is not 100 per cent sure yet. You're not going to see people turning away from GTA to play Peggle 2, but as we've seen from Peggle on WOW, it doesn't have to be either or. We used to think that the Gears of War player, who we used to think of as a completely different entity who wasn't on our chart at all? Maybe they are. Maybe they're more important to casual than we initially thought. That doesn't mean you're abandoning an audience of presumed bored secretaries and soccer moms, but we may be able to come back to that market of classic gamers who have had their eyes opened to the idea of casual games being legitimate."

The interview over, Kapalka heads off into the warren of PopCap's offices: past cubicles filled with stuffed Chuzzles, past walls plastered with crayon drawings and carefully-lettered 'thank you' notes from local school kids who've been given a tour of the Kingdom of Casual, past computer screens filled with emails from gamers who bought Peggle on Steam and want to know how to score 16 million points with one ball, like that guy on YouTube managed. In the future, how many companies will have to become as broad a church as this one? How many will have the skill, and the desire to do it the right way? Casual and hardcore: it's strange to hear Kapalka himself using such terms, when you suspect his company's already calculating how long the distinction will have any meaning.

Or has it lost its meaning already? That depends on who you ask. But, taking a last look around at the colourful concept art and bustling cubicles, whatever happens next, it seems a safe bet that PopCap's best is yet to come. And, considering one of the company's last games was Plants vs. Zombies, that's something for other developers - whichever audience they believe in - to start getting worried about.