不知不觉中，PopCap公司的热门游戏《宝石迷阵》（Bejeweled）已在去年走过了十年发展历程，PopCap也已成为世界上最著名的休闲游戏公司。但很少有人知道，该公司最初成立时曾有过一段趣闻——三名联合创始人刚踏入这一领域时以“Sexy Action Cool”这个有些不雅的名字起家，而且还开发过一款并非真正涉黄的脱衣扑克牌游戏。

bejewled

PopCap联合创始人之一Kapalka在2011年的游戏开发者大会上告诉观众，“有些游戏就是有一些独特的标志，在2001年，我告诉别人我正在制作一款叫作《宝石迷阵》的游戏，别人的回答是：那又怎么样。但在2011年时，我再跟别人说同样的话，得到的回答就是：谁信啊？”

据游戏邦了解，《宝石迷阵》目前的销量已达5000万份，一共有5亿多用户，玩家游戏的总时长累积达70亿小时。但这款游戏的开发商刚起步时却并不是太风光：在2000年，Kapalka、John Vechey和Brian Fiete希望开创一项富有成就感的独立事业，所以就决定创立了一家游戏开发公司。

他们最初为公司命名为“Sexy Action Cool”，该名字起源于他们之间关于安东尼奥·班德拉斯主演的电影《亡命之徒》的一个笑话。这家公司的第一款游戏并非《宝石迷阵》，而是《Foxy Poker》这款脱衣视频扑克牌游戏。

Kapalka开玩笑地回忆道，“我们并不是真的想从事情色艺术行业，这款游戏也让很多玩家感到失望。如果你真的想庸俗的话，那你就会一条路走到底。如果你真希望开发一款真正的脱衣扑克牌游戏的话，那你就会在其中添加祼体元素。”

当三名创始人意识到“我们并不想成为做这种生意的人”时，他们最后还是将Sexy Action Cool更名为PopCap，毕竟谁也会羞于告诉父母自己在“Sexy Action Cool”这家公司上班。

Kapalka认为《宝石迷阵》核心设计的起源十分有趣。尽管总有人指责该游戏抄袭了其他游戏的创意或设置，但Kapalka却总是以自己独特的幽默方式沉着以对。游戏邦获悉，最近还有一家餐厅女服务生认为，《宝石迷阵》模仿了世嘉的《Columns》，但Kapalka却笑答，“我从来不这么想，虽然它看起来有点像。”

不过三名创始人认为，另一款名为《Diamond Mine》的设置倒是“有点意思”，该游戏是在基于网页的Javascript游戏《Colors Game》的基础上进行开发的，也同样含有匹配条件的游戏设置。这款游戏没有动画效果、声音或者积分功能，其中的方块设置更是提高了游戏难度。这就是构成今天人们所知的《宝石迷阵》的相关功能，这种设置至今仍持续推动这款游戏的不断进步和发展。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

GDC 2011: PopCap, Bejeweled’s ‘Sexy Action Cool’ Origins

PopCap’s Bejeweled crept up on its tenth anniversary last year, and PopCap is now among the world’s most prolific and best-known casual gaming firms. Which makes the company’s weird origins all the more surprising — the company’s three co-founders entered the industry as “Sexy Action Cool”, makers of a halfhearted strip poker game.

“Certain games have kind of taken on a bit of an iconic status,” Kapalka told audiences at the 2011 Game Developers’ Conference. “In 2001, when I told people I made a game called Bejeweled, the response was ‘so what’. In 2011, when I tell people I designed Bejeweled, the response is ‘bull shit you did.”

The games sold 50 million units to 500 million players who’ve accumulated 7 billion hours of play. But it all began in a much more humble way: In 2000, friends Kapalka, John Vechey and Brian Fiete wanted a rewarding, independent career, so they decided to found a game development company.

And they decided to call it “Sexy Action Cool,” after an inside joke based on a poster for Antonio Banderas’ ‘Desperado’ film). Their first title was not in fact Bejeweled but Foxy Poker — a “sexy” strip video poker game.

“We couldn’t actually bring ourselves to do any pornography,” he reflects jokingly. “It disappointed a lot of the players. If you’re going to be sleazy, you really want to do it all the way. If you’re going to do a strip poker gamer game you should probably have nudity in it.”

Ultimately, Sexy Action Cool got a name change to PopCap — and a de-sleaze — was born when the three realized “we didn’t feel like the kind of people we wanted to spend our lives doing business with.” And as a company name, “Sexy Action Cool” isn’t the kind of thing one wants to tell one’s mom they do.

So the three switched from halfhearted video poker to the development of a simple match-three puzzler. Kapalka finds all the extensive speculation about the genesis of Bejeweled’s core design process amusing. Regularly accused of having ripped off this or that, Kapalka, with his deadpan humor, appears part of a crew that simply didn’t think it through to that extent.

Just recently a restaurant waitress suggested that Bejeweled is an imitator of Sega’s Columns — “I hadn’t thought of that,” he jokes. “It kind of is.”

But Diamond Mine, the game that would become Bejeweled (as licensor, Microsoft didn’t like the name Diamond Mine), was based on a crude web-based Javascript block game known simply as “Colors Game”, with a matching condition the three thought was “kind of cool.”

It had no animation, sound or scoring, and the fact that every block was a square shape made the game more difficult to play. Hence those features of Bejeweled so immediately recognizable today, and that continue to drive the deceptively-simple puzzler through continual evolution. （source:gamasutra）