Popcap Partners with China Mobile to Introduce "DotA Mode" for Plants vs. Zombies

Popcap’s Plants vs. Zombies has been a big hit in China, just like it has everywhere else. This weekend at GDC China, Popcap announced that together with China Mobile, it will be taking things a step further and releasing a new game mode for Plants vs. Zombies based on the popular Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients, which is hugely popular with PC gamers in China.

The Popcap-China Mobile cooperation isn’t just limited to this new DotA mode, though, as other Popcap games will be featured on China Mobile’s own gaming platform, and Popcap also plans to develop two new games for the platform.

As for the DotA mode in Plants vs. Zombies, that’s about as much detail as anyone has released at the moment, but we can make some educated guesses based on the fundamental gameplay elements of Defense of the Ancients. That game puts players into two teams on opposing sides of a large map and tasks them with destroying heavily-defended structures in their enemy’s base using player-controlled heroes as well as AI bots.

It’s difficult to know how far Popcap might take their Plants vs. Zombies homage, but given that the game is meant to run on mobile phones, we’re guessing it will be a fairly simplified version, perhaps one where players are tasked with dispatching plants and/or zombies to destroy a base or some other structure on the opposite site of the lawn that appears in most versions of the game. But who knows! We’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for this one.

China Mobile, itself a state-owned company, also took the opportunity at GDC to press the government for better IP protection regulations in response to discussion about the advantages of paid vs. free models for game distribution.

[Via Sina Tech]