They wanted it to be exclusive to their site. Their vague excuse was that there was some game called 'Diamond Mines' - plural - from the '80s and they were too close, legally. "We got a deal with Microsoft and they wanted it on their site, but under a different name. "There were references to cave-ins and collapses, etc., but no one cared about the theoretical mining background." This is what Diamond Mine originally looked like:īut Diamond Mine was killed almost immediately - by Microsoft. Gems, however, worked: Bejeweled was originally called 'Diamond Mine,' Kapalka says. In the game, you need seven different colors and shapes, and fruits are the same colors and the same shapes. It was just the three of us working out of our apartments," Kapalka says. We didn't get venture capital or investments. "We didn't have much of a business plan, so we didn't think too much about it. This is Kapalka's first business card (at right). Kapalka is seen here with other early PopCap employees: This is another of the earliest pictures of PopCap's employees, with Jason Kapalka on the far right: Here's how they look today: "I think I got maybe $30,000" in the buyout, says Kapalka. TEN was eventually renamed Pogo, which was bought by EA.
Me: “… Bingo? Like, in bingo halls, with grandmas?” In fact, Kapalka had been producing a shoot-'em-up game called ARC: Those 19-year-olds were John Vechey, left, and Brian Fiete, far right, the other two co-founders of PopCap (seen here circa 2002, with Dave Haas, another early employee, in the middle):
Me: “But I’m still working on the Total Annihilation tournament.”īoss: “Yeah, well, now we want you to do a java-based web bingo.” Kapalka remembers the conversation going like this:īoss: “Jason, we’ve got a new project for you.” Around 1998 or 1999, TEN decided it needed to jump onto a big new trend in online gaming: Bingo. This is the greatest video game story ever told.įrom 1995 to 2000, Kapalka worked at Total Entertainment Network (eventually bought by EA). The archive includes images of the founders from when they were unknown teenage game nerds, forgotten black-and-white versions of Bejeweled for the Palm Pilot, and a picture of Snackers the cat, who makes Easter egg a appearances in most versions of the game. We asked PopCap to give us all the earliest photos they had from the birth of Bejeweled. Ten years later, their company was bought by Electronic Arts in a deal worth $1.3 billion. That's how influential and powerful the Bejeweled format is.īejeweled's creators - Jason Kapalka, Brian Fiete and John Vechey - once offered to sell the franchise to Microsoft for just $50,000.
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