PlayFirst Grapevine

Did you know?
Did you know that Flo, Quinn, Darla and Mr. Big all live in a not-so-little place called DinerTown? Did you know that the DinerTown neighborhood where Flo’s Diner sits is called "Avenue Flo?" Did you know that the menacing Mr. Big runs Big Corp, DinerTown’s biggest corporation, and that Big Corp is where Flo worked before she quit her job to open her diner? Did you know that Flo has a Golden Retriever named Skillet who likes to go jogging with Cassie’s dog, Phoenix? Did you know that Flo and Quinn are roommates, and that Grandma Florence calls her car the FloMobile? Did you know that Donutville is the next town over from DinerTown?

If you knew all these things then maybe you should have my job, because these are the kinds of little details that you carry around in your brain when you’re in charge of game design and creative content at PlayFirst.

Introducing Parking Dash™ and Karma! DinerTown’s newest heroine
For our latest entry into the world of DinerTown, you’ll meet a young upstart from Donutville, a heroine who’s a bit younger and a lot more disorganized than Flo and Quinn, who comes to couch surf in their DinerTown apartment just until she gets her feet on the ground and her parking lot business up and running.

Parking Dash is a time management game with a healthy dose of puzzle play.  We’re always excited to find creative new game ideas and were psyched to partner with Kef Sensei when they brought us this clever time management-puzzler idea. And the minute we saw the game—we knew it belonged in DinerTown!

We call it a story world
DinerTown is what we at PlayFirst call a “story world.”  We are hard at work on quite a few story worlds right now (including the mesmerizing Dream Chronicles Realm— just wait until you see Dream Chronicles 3!—and the delectable Chocolatier Collection -- watch out for Chocolatier III this winter!), but Flo’s DinerTown was our first story world and the one our internal studio lives and breathes every day.

Who doesn’t love stories?
I love stories. Who doesn’t? When I was a kid, I was a comic book nut and now, as an adult, I admit that my addiction is even worse.  In my house, much to my wife’s displeasure, I have an entire walk-in-closet filled floor to ceiling with comic books. My office is no better. My background is in art and design and music, but when I first started working in games I was lucky enough to work on  titles that had strong dedication to characters, narrative, and story. I worked as a game designer and later as a creative director on kids games with robust story worlds like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Reader Rabbit, and The ClueFinders. When I got to PlayFirst, I could tell right away that we were going to build a story world or two of our own…

DinerTown started with Flo
When I first joined PlayFirst as employee #3 (back in September, 2004!) we decided that our portfolio of games needed a guiding vision. We determined that our vision would be to assure that no one playing a PlayFirst game would ever ask the question, “Hey, um, why am I playing this again?” This led us very naturally to games with stories and characters in them. After all, what better motivation for finishing a level or a restaurant than finding out what happens next in the story?

We also wanted stories and characters that were rich in detail and surprising to the player—we weren’t really looking for dragons, spaceships, or ancient tombs, we wanted to stand out in the market with stories that were more in touch with the every-day. We wanted to offer the casual player characters that they would love and identify with.

Luckily for us, the first game we were working on, with Gamelab, was a little project then called “Lunch.”  “Lunch,” of course, matured into the first Diner Dash game, and the character designs for Flo were perfect.  Flo is someone you could know, someone with flaws, someone who isn’t a super model, or a bimbo, or an action hero. Flo and Diner Dash ended up being the Platonic ideal of what we were shooting for with our portfolio of games—and of course, Flo and Diner Dash hit a bull’s eye with casual players worldwide.

So, then what?
Flo was a superstar! But what do you do with a big hit game? Sequelizing Diner Dash turned out to be a bigger challenge than we thought. We designed and developed Diner Dash 2: Restaurant Rescue here in PlayFirst’s internal studios and it’s in DD2 that you first get a hint of the larger world around Flo’s Diner and the surrounding environs we now call DinerTown.  You also meet a broader cast of DinerTown’s entrepreneurial restauranteurs, and you even meet Mr. Big. We kept building the town we’d created, bringing Darla back for Diner Dash: Flo on the Go, and then we blew out the Dinertoon cast of characters much further with last year’s Diner Dash: Hometown Hero.

The DinerToon Characters
With each new Diner Dash game we do, we are constantly expanding the cast of DinerToon characters.

As we were developing Wedding Dash, we decided to bridge the world of Flo and the world of Quinn, so we made them opposite characters. As one of our game designers put it, “If you have Cookie Monster, why do you need Muffin Monster?” Quinn is delicate and traditional and makes dreams come true, Flo is down to earth and iconoclastic – and she makes…lunch.  Of course, to add some story tension, we made them roommates. 

The DinerTown story world provides a way for us to build from a single character (Flo) to an ensemble cast of characters, like Grandma, Quinn, Bobbi, Cookie, Scarlett, Walter, Cassie, Darla, Coco, Karma, and Jo the jogger. Karma comes from Donutville, but we’re working on a game now starring Jo the jogger where you’ll uncover more about all the cities around DinerTown, from Puddington to Muffinberg, and even the daunting Meatropolis.

Breaking out of the diner
Building a story world out of DinerTown has enabled us to expand the world of Flo in interesting places—places it wouldn’t have gone if we’d just stayed in the diner. For the folks who are making games here at PlayFirst, DinerTown is way more than just a fictional neighborhood; it’s an overarching story world to dive into and a neighborhood of game design and game play opportunities to explore.

Quinn’s Wedding Planning Service, Flo’s Diner, and the DinerTown Pet Shop all line the streets of Avenue Flo, but out of that world we were also able to work with our talented partners to dream up hit games and stories like Cooking Dash, Wedding Dash and Pet Shop Hop and tie them into a comprehensive narrative while taking the stories in new directions. When it’s working right, DinerTown and Flo’s gang of Dinertoon buddies act as creative catalysts for new game play ideas and new game/narrative opportunities. We’ve put our imaginations to creating a story universe where the starring characters of each game can “team up” (sorry, no super-powered fist fights high above the city skyscrapers) and offer interesting situations and scenarios around which to build great, fun games.

And here’s some insider information: over the next few months, we’ll be revealing some exciting new ways for players to enter and play in the DinerTown story world.

How do I get to live in DinerTown?
Building story worlds is no easy task—it takes a lot more than cartoon bricks. It takes imagination, great characters, and super-talented people. I feel very lucky to come into work every day and concentrate on things I love—like game design, story, audio and art direction—and work with such a talented and dedicated group of lunatics. Check out our current Career Openings if DinerTown sounds like the kind of place you might like to spend your days. Who knows, there might be a store front on Avenue Flo with your name on it! Though we owe Flo a lot around here, it still takes real people to breathe life into fictional ones. Everyday heroes. People you could know, people with flaws, people who aren’t super models, or bimbos, or action heroes. People who believe in hard work, DIY, and perseverance. 

Kinda like Flo.

When the iPhone was released last summer, I was excited and caught up in the hype. It was going to be hard for me to give up my Blackberry, and I was also aware that for years my wife had endured gadget envy as I’d gone out to get myself the latest cool thing, from my original Palm Pilot 5000 (released in 1996) to my latest iPod. The iPhone offered the perfect solution—I’d buy my wife one for her birthday!  She’d finally be the Queen of Gadgets, and I’d get to play with it.  This wasn’t quite as bad as Fred Flintstone buying Wilma a bowling ball (cut to Fred’s huge fingers) – after all, I did port *her* phone number to the iPhone.

More than a year later, the iPhone is still the hottest gadget going.  The iPhone 3G and the iPhone App Store have kicked sales into overdrive.  It’s mind boggling to walk by the Apple Stores in San Francisco, Walnut Creek and Palo Alto and see people waiting in line outside just to get into the store!  You’d think they were giving iPhones away for free (they’re not). It sure is fun to see this kind of success for Apple, since at PlayFirst we’re fans of both the Macintosh and the iPhone.  And finally, with the launch of the iPhone SDK and the App Store, we’re able to start bringing our games to the reigning champ of gadgets. 

Yes! You read correctly! I am pleased to announce that Flo and all the fun of Diner Dash is now available on the iPhone!  PlayFirst is committed to bringing our unique brand of fun to everywhere our users want to play, and the iPhone is simply a natural!  We’ve brought over a hundred percent of the game – the iPhone is powerful enough that there’s no need to “slim down” the game, as with most mobile devices.  The biggest difference (besides the smaller screen) is the touch interface.  Fingers (at least my big fingers) aren’t quite as accurate at pointing as the tip of a mouse cursor.  But fear not! Our designers and engineers worked hard and did such an amazing job tuning the game that now I can even play with my thumb.  It feels totally natural to play: dragging customers to seats, then just pointing at tables, the ticket wheel, and the dish bin. You’ll love it – it’s Diner Dash as it’s meant to be played!

It’s really exciting to see Flo on the iPhone.  At PlayFirst, we love the characters we’ve created and the worlds they live in, and we like nothing more than to see them appear on new platforms to extend their reach.  As we release more iPhone games, it’ll be fun to see more of the DinerTown characters and our other story worlds in new places.  

The other day, coming home from work on the train, I was playing the GM (Gold Master) approved build of Diner Dash on my development iPhone (I had to wait almost a year, but I don’t have to be jealous of my wife anymore).  It was such a cool feeling – I felt like the coolest kid in town, knowing I was the only one lucky enough to get to play Diner Dash on my iPhone that night.  However, soon I won’t be surprised to see other’s playing it. Lucky for me, though, I’ll always be one game ahead!

I must admit, it doesn't feel like “Back to School” time here in the Bay Area.  Sure, I've noticed the reemergence of the Spirit Store and my TiVo is suddenly bloated with fall lineup shows, but it's eighty degrees outside and the air near home is still rich with the scents of barbeque and coconut sunscreen.

Nonetheless, here we are in September. Our eight-year-old is once again procrastinating about homework and here at PlayFirst we're already deep in discussions about our December offerings.

To try to get even more in the spirit of autumn, Applesun and I decided to offer a Back to School Special. We suspect that some of you will have even more free time on your hands with your young ‘uns back in the lap of Academia, and as for the rest of you—well, any excuse to play, right? We fully concur, which is why we put together the following playful discount bundles:

• Need some brushing up on the basics? Sign up for our General Ed Curriculum and get  Brainiversity, Mind Medley, and Azada for just $40.
• Considering whether or not we're there yet? Study our Geography Curriculum and learn about Big City Adventure: Sydney Australia, Mysterious City: Golden Prague, and Around the World in 80 Days for merely $40.
• Feel like you may have missed something? Bone up with our History Curriculum and get Great Secrets: Da Vinci, Civil War: Hidden Mysteries, and The Nightshift Code for—you guessed it!--$40. 
• Ready to get your Geek on? Super boost your GPA with our botany, microbiology, and zoology-inclusive Science Curriculum. Your reading list? Plant Tycoon, Tasty Planet, and Zoo Vet: Endangered Animals. Full course list available for just $40.  
• Think Home Ec is an easy “A”? Get our Home Economics Curriculum, including Dress Shop Hop, Go-Go Gourmet, and Jewelleria (for only $40!) and think again!  
• Reading this blog just to see if I'll mess up on my spelling? You need our English Curriculum; just $40 for Spellagories, Bookworm Deluxe, and Word Whomp To Go!
• More artistically inclined? Take our Art Curriculum as an elective and get Enigma, Etch A Sketch®, and Color Up! Wedding Scrapbook. Just $40 for all three.
• Bringing a Mac Book to class? This semester we're offering Liberal Arts for Mac. For only $40 you get a well-rounded mix of Dress Shop Hop, Tasty Planet, and Escape the Museum—for Mac, of course!

Don't let all the summer fun fade away! School and work are important, but remember our philosophy here at your favorite gaming site and Play First!