Plants vs. Zombies started as Insaniquarium sequel, PopCap is human

If you, like us, were laboring under the impression that the entity known as "PopCap Games" was some sort of supernatural anti-free time daemon that simply willed release after release of perfectly polished and addictive gameplay into an increasingly submissive world, then you'll probably find this little writeup over at Ars Technica intriguing. Apparently PopCap is just a video game developer, made up of real people who draw ideas out on notepads and tweak them as they see fit. Who knew?

For example, its latest runaway hit, Plants vs. Zombies, started out as a sequel to Insaniquarium, but as the gameplay was tuned more towards a tower defense-like setup and the idea arose of regenerating sunlight as a resource for the fight against the undead, the title morphed into the time-killer we know it as today. Of course, there's no doubt that a game that featured locust aliens and "jolly-moustache-potato-men" would have been just as fun, but it's good to know that the minds behind PopCap are, in fact, human. We'd like to use that knowledge to find a weakness and attempt to reclaim our long-missing boredom, but we're too busy playing its games.