 Plants vs Zombies is a game series with a phenomenally passionate fan base. Acute yet challenging game about warding off an undead invasion, the games have captured the hearts of many players. But the road to the creation of Plants vs Zombies wasn't easy. It took game developer George Fan a long time to find his right place in the world. This is the story of how George left his job at Blizzard Entertainment and strode out into the unknown, of how he befriended the founders of a casual game studio through sending them fan mail, and of how an aquarium filled with aliens paved the way for Plants vs Zombies. George Fan had a simple goal. He wanted to make his own game and enter it into the 2002 Independent Games Festival. George was already working in game development at the time, but he wanted to make something all his own. He had an idea for a Java game in which fish inside an aquarium fought against an alien invasion. As part of his day job at an online games company, George found himself doing competitor research, which led him to looking up a company called PopCap Games. The company's biggest hit at the time was a game called Bejeweled, and George was a fan. Side note, so am I, absolutely love that game. So he sent them an email to congratulate them on their success, and ended up corresponding with Jon Vici, the co-founder of the studio. When the prototype for George's game, Insane Aquarium, was selected for the Independent Games Festival, George got the chance to meet up with the heads of PopCap, and they offered to work with him in order to turn his game into a commercial release. There was just one problem. George was in demand. He ended up being offered a job at Blizzard, which seemed like a dream come true. Under ordinary circumstances, Blizzard wouldn't let an employee work for a rival studio on the side. But George argued his case. It was decided that, as Insane Aquarium was a pre-existing project, George could finish it up at evenings and on weekends, so long as it didn't get in the way of his work for Blizzard. This was horrible. George worked hard all day programming games for Blizzard, then he went home and programmed for PopCap. He worked so hard that his risks began to ache from typing all day. After two and a half years of working two jobs, George had reached his limit. Insane Aquarium was finished, and he was able to focus fully on work at Blizzard. Except, he didn't really want to. His programming job was fine and all, but he'd come to realise that it didn't play to his strengths. There were a lot of other far more talented developers at Blizzard, and George felt like he couldn't keep up with them. George also struggled with articulating his ideas. He felt that his greatest talents lay in game design, but when trying to communicate this to others at Blizzard, he always felt inadequate. Perhaps working for a big, busy game studio just wasn't something he was suited to. So George left his job at Blizzard, and suddenly found himself in the opposite situation to where he'd been before. He'd previously been working two full-time jobs at the same time, but now he had nothing. It was at this point that he started working on his own independent game. He wanted to make something all for himself, without needing to rely on a large team. At first, George wasn't really sure what he wanted to do. Then inspiration came, from, of all sources, a Blizzard game, albeit not a fully official one. Warcraft 3 was a big deal at the time, and George was having fun with mods and custom games from the fan community that were being made for the Blizzard title. One particularly interesting mod was a tower defence game, and it started the wheels turning in George's head, although he at no point set out specifically to make a tower defence title himself. He'd also been playing a lot of DS games at the time, and had considered making something that utilized the handheld split screen and touch controls. George's first idea was to make Insane Aquarium 2 with two separate fish tanks. Players would organise their aquatic troops to fend off waves of alien invaders. At some point, though, George decided to drop the fish element from the game. Instead, he turned his attention to gardening, and the idea of plants defending a garden. The game still involved fighting aliens, so this was along the same lines as his first fishy game, but George liked trying something different. George worked on coding the game and drawing the artwork in tandem. If he found a good visual idea that he liked, he could draw it up and implement it into the build of the game. If he found a fun mechanic while prototyping, he would go away and think about how he could represent it visually to make it more interesting. But then, disaster struck. George, ever aware of the gaming landscape around him, began noticing a lot of gardening games appearing. This was particularly true in the casual games market, where social online games all seemed to be focusing on growing crops and planting seeds. If George didn't want his game to slip under the radar, he'd need some bizarre twist to make it stand out. And so, he threw in zombies. Doing so was a bit taboo at the time. Zombies were already a cliché by this point in more serious games, but for the casual crowd, they always felt too grotesque and unappealing. But George's idea straddled the line between cutesy and edgy. His zombies were soft and cuddly, while his plants had a bit more bite to them than those in other gardening games. After a while of working independently, he got talking with Popcap again. The company had loved his work on Insane Aquarium, and had recently opened up a brand new office in San Francisco. While George was enjoying working independently, he was eventually persuaded to come work for the studio. There, he would have access to more resources and manpower to help make the game a more enjoyable experience. This did mean that some ideas that George wanted to include needed to be pruned back. George was playing a lot of magic for gathering at the time, and liked the idea of letting the player build a custom deck of plants that could be used in battle. But this all became very complicated, and for the most part, Popcap Games thrived on simplicity. There was some concern that even the relatively simple gameplay design of George's game was a little too complex for a Popcap title. But the higher ups at the company were pleased with George's work, so they were willing to try something new, even if it meant trusting their audience to grasp a more complicated game. Finding a name for the game was proving difficult. At first, it was given the working title of Plants vs Zombies, but this was never meant to be its finished name. George considered calling it Weedlings, before the team started to like the idea of calling it Lawn of the Dead. To go with this, though, they'd need permission from George Romero, the director of the original Dawn of the Dead movie. So they sent Romero a message, asking for permission to use the name. George fan dressed up like a zombie and made a cute, funny little video in which he showed off what the game would look like. This, apparently, did not work. We'll never know if George Romero himself actually ever saw the video, but regardless, his response was that the name Lawn of the Dead could not be used. Eventually, things ended up going full circle. The team simply went with the game's original working title of Plants vs Zombies, and considering the popularity that followed, this was a good move. Thanks to the hard work of everyone involved, including the musical talents of Laura Shigihara, who'd later go on to compose a song for Toby Fox's Delta Rune, Plants vs Zombies became a pop culture sensation. The game won over countless fans, as everyone fell in love with shooing zombies off their lawns. The moral of the story is that sometimes it can take a while to find where you belong. George fan may have been thrilled with his job at Blizzard to start with, but before long, he realized that the environment wasn't right for him. The studio didn't cater to his talents. He was better off working with a smaller team, where he could develop his own ideas with more creative freedom. You'll likely find the same thing in your own life. Sometimes the most prestigious, glamorous path might not be right for you. Often, the path of least resistance might take you to places where your talents are being wasted. Find what works for you and pursue that. No matter what you're trying to achieve, if you keep striving to develop your own skills, you'll be able to find somewhere that you fit in. This might mean trying things that you find difficult at first, or leaving your comfort zone to experiment with new ideas. PopCap took a chance on George's game idea, even though it didn't fit with their typical releases, and it led to the studio finding a whole new way of making games. Be patient. Be brave. Keep exploring and developing your talents. One day, you'll be able to find an environment where you truly belong.