What Killed the Plants vs Zombies Franchise?

I made a documentary on PopCap itself if anyone's interested. I tried to take as much of the criticism as I could so there's no overextending or straying too far from the topic displayed in the title, as a lot of people have been having grievances with the fact that this retrospective video goes over the full story. Check it out if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPZfvkuZ0AY&t=387s


CORRECTIONS:
PopCap were technically the ones who had complete control over whether or not to add microtransactions in PvZ 2. EA just published the second game while giving PopCap a massive incentive to make a lot of profit, causing them to descend to greedy methods. Something I had also forgotten to include was the input of George Fan. He was the one who implemented a lot of character into the first game, and his lack of involvement for the second game could be a possible reason for why the game has a different (not necessarily worse) feel.

After knowing and playing this game for 12 years I know that torchwood also can get rid of fog

Everytime I would play PVZ as a kid It would freak me out hearing the zombies. I was too scared to play it sometimes. What scared me the most was when the zombie’s would enter your house. Hearing the “NO” scream haunted me as a kid.

They should make a PvZ game where you attack the Zombie HQ and rescue Crazy Dave. That way the roles are reversed while sticking to the original idea

Man Garden Warfare 1 and 2 were one of the biggest games of my childhood. The story and interactive world in GW2 was addicting me. I just wanted to adventuee and collect all the secrets. Truly two gems, but i dont wanna talk about battle for neighborville. Some nice ideas but the execution rough

Garden Warfare was insanely fun. Actually ahead of it's time. Such good co-op too. Damn I miss that

I think the reason Garden Warfare was well recieved was that, despite the feel changing massively, it was still a "tower defense" game in spirit. It's jsut that now, you control the towers instead of a omnipotent builder. This especially applies once you start strategizing in the game. That could be a reason why Garden Warfare was well recieved, but Heroes is forgotten.

In the almanac, it says that zomboss is trying to conquer his local place of smh. Moreover, we can see chinese zombies in the bottom of the achievement section. So it shows that there are more and different zombie groups and bosses all around the world. I think it would be fun to have a game that we can travel the world with our seeds and save people from zombies. We could find new seeds too. We would learn more and more about how Zombies first appeared and who's responsible for that and the last boss would be the one who created zombies. Yes, most of the fan theories says that Dave and Zomboss have a big role in that but what if they wouldn't? What if the one who created bloom and doom co. is someone different than we thought?

3:20 Young fly on the track🛎🛎🛎

It’s not dead. They just took the franchise in a (unwanted) different direction which made the fans stop caring about the new entries. That doesn’t mean that the other games don’t have players, in fact there are new players in almost every lobby (even gw1) (on xbox, sorry for the confusion)

Edit: grammar (thanks to @Flanigmo) and the bit at the end

“Winter Melon tries to calm his nerves. He hears the zombies approach. Will he make it? Will anyone make it?” Is the best quote

We'll be back

Loved the video! Really high quality and has a homey sort of feel to it

The original Plants vs Zombies game got me through so many hours of waiting on my car getting serviced, DMV, hospital waits, and everything in between. I'd have to say it's one of my favorite games of all time.

People often forget PvZ:Heroes exists, but imo it did a great job with its artstyle.
It mixes nicely the respective artstyles of both PvZ (cartoonish but weird and a bit gritty) and PvZ2 (softer cartoon), and then adds a dash of super hero comics art to make it its own unique style. And it fits pretty well!
The new plants/zombies fit well enough, while the returning ones take cues from either PvZ1, PvZ2, or other sources like PvZ Adventures (the weird facebook game?)

I played the DS version a lot as a kid! It was always one of my favorite go to games. :)

Dude the first PvZ game got me through all sorts of tough times. During my childhood I was in and out of the hospital and all I can remember is playing PvZ on my dad's phone.

Garden warfare 1 and 2 were really fun imo, one thing i really liked was that skins werent just skins but they also changed mechanics in character

Upon release I remember PVZ2 being really bad. It’s gameplay was great, however the levels were atrocious. The map was like a maze, and you had to buy keys to unlock the rest of the levels. I was so happy that it was completely reworked to be linear

Great video T3rr0r and it's so interesting to know what killed plants vs zombies franchise :]