The Sordid History Of Bejeweled And PopCap Games

The humorous headline isn’t as sensational as it seems. PopCap co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Jason Kapalka discussed the origins of Bejeweled in a fascinating postmortem today, revealing the somewhat surprising origins of PopCap in the process. 

Kapalka revealed that PopCap wasn’t the original name of the popular casual company. Rather, the team started under the moniker of “Sexy Action Cool” when founded in 2000. An inside joke, the name was inspired by the tagline for Antonio Banderas’ Desperado. The fact that the URL was free was a major plus.

Sexy Action Cool’s first game wasn’t Bejeweled, but rather a game called Foxy Poker. The title was designed with the idea that a strip poker game would sell well enough to fund Sexy Action Cool’s real game aspirations. Sadly, the game didn’t take off as expected. Instead of featuring fully nude illustrations as a reward for play, the game included Austin Powers-esque implied nudity. Sexy Action Cool quickly learned that when it came to the porn industry, you can’t be “half-sleazy,” and that you have to “go full sleaze or go home.” They decided to go home.

Officially changing the company name to PopCap, the office moved to Seattle and began work on its first true game. Created in Java, Diamond Mine evolved into what is now known as Bejeweled. Kapalka revealed that people often ask where Bejeweled was ripped off from, musing that the core mechanics were taken from a Russian game named Shariki, Tetris Attack, or Sega Columns.

While Kapalka admits that “he hadn’t thought of it, but it kinda is!” in reference to Sega Columns, Kapalka laughed that they really “ripped it off” from a phantom game called “Colors Game.” The game was horrible in his words, and that perhaps has something to do with the fact that no one can find it or prove it ever existed.

When brainstorming the visualization of Diamond Mine, Kapalka shared that his goal was to create unique shape and color pieces, a missing pillar in Colors Game. His original idea was to feature fruit as play pieces, but realized there weren’t enough natural colors to draw from. Gems were the second concept explored, but it was again ruled out for lack of diversity. Generic shapes with unique colors seemed the best option, and a hybrid was created between simple shapes and gem-like facets to add flair.

With the game mechanics nailed down, PopCap began to shop Diamond Mine around and eventually licensed it to Microsoft. Unhappy with the name (which Kapalka admits came from his bizarre desire to name all his games with Canadian classic rock conventions) Microsoft renamed the game Bejeweled. Kapalka believes the iconic title was inspired by the timely Brendan Fraser film Bedazzled, and as such hated it. He seems to have come to terms with the title over the past decade, though.

The session yielded other fascinating information, including the fact that Peggle originated as a game based on Norse mythology called Thunderball involving Thor leading his dog to Asgard. Who would’ve thought?