(aka what others might, on occasion, refer to as ‘social games’)

Nice write-up on a talk Jason Kapalka from PopCap gave at GDC Europe, centred around their experience of Bejeweled Blitz.

Key points:

  • Those contests they run around the games don’t make any difference to player numbers.
  • Bejeweled 2 just on iPhone has sold over 4,000,000 copies.
  • Resetting the high-score table (of which there is only one) once a week is better than once every two weeks.
  • Most games on Facebook are “kind of evil”, since they’re trying “any way to trick you into posting something on your wall that’s not really even of interest to you, let alone your friends.”