How Popcap Games Adapted Plants Vs Zombies with Resounding Success in China

Renowned for its famous hits like Bejeweled and Plants vs Zombies, American video game developer Popcap Games has been making headways into China since expanding its operations there in 2008. The executive game designer for Popcap Games China Duncan X spoke at the China Games Developer Conference over Chinajoy recently – discussing the tweaks and changes the company made that resulted in Plants vs Zombies becoming one of its strongest performing titles in the domestic Chinese market. (Update: Actually it’s going badly with Chinese gamers pissed at perceived price gouging).

Deep Localization

The most crucial piece of the puzzle in tapping the local market successfully was reworking the game’s content to tailor it to Chinese gamers. Duncan explained it as a deeper level of localization compared with how most would normally perceive the term. This is displayed in the company’s China-exclusive title Plants vs Zombies: Great Wall Edition that changes the game’s setting to the Great Wall of China. Every single zombie, including the bosses, was thoroughly re-skinned to reflect influences from Chinese culture and lore. Since its release in 2012, Popcap has built on this formula by adding on a Journey To The West update which draws inspirations from the famous fairy tale.

Curbing Piracy

When it first launched the game in China, the company faced a surge of piracy with many profiteers creating counterfeit merchandise of Plants Vs Zombies. It was an uphill task pursuing them using various legal avenues and although Popcap did ultimately succeed, its brand image was affected by a lack of merchandise on the market. Popcap games eventually launched its own official merchandise to fill this void and it has been performing well in stores.

Game Downsizing

Another issue the company faced was the limited data plans of Chinese users which meant the game build it normally used in other parts of the world would place too much of a strain on Chinese users’ data consumption. To resolve this problem, the developers had to downsize many aspects of the game by merging images, reducing music tracks and using smaller file formats for both audio and game animations. Despite the final build being one of the lowest quality builds of the game Popcap had produced, the large reduction in size eventually saw the number of downloads increase significantly.

Maximizing Profitability

To maximize the profitability of in-game transactions, Duncan explained how the team poured over their user data to implement pay walls at the appropriate junctures. It observed that a large majority of players invested money into the usage of premium items within the “Adventure Mode” and subsequently created a pay wall at a certain level of the game only unlockable via payment. Additionally, Popcap compiled a list of the top consumable items favored by players and tweaked the in-game prices for them to increase their take-up rate.

Simplifying Payment Gateways

Last but not least, Popcap worked with the local mobile companies to create a simplified two-click process for users to make in-game payments. There were no accounts or passwords needed and the transaction could occur within the game via direct carrier billing. By removing any unnecessary hassle to purchase the in-game items, the company provided another push factor for the increase in revenue.

Duncan underscored the value from Popcap’s experience deploying and adapting Plants vs Zombies for China and how Popcap games will continue to refine the game while bringing the lessons learnt back to America as well.

Plants vs Zombies: Great Wall Edition can be grabbed as an APK file from the QQ Games download page

(Editing By Steven Millward, Anh-Minh Do and Charlie Custer)