United Gamer Online (UGO)

by Marc Saltzman
If you’ve ever swapped a gem in one of the popular Bejeweled puzzlers, then you’re well aware of its addictive "match 3"-style gameplay. From computers to consoles, handhelds to smartphones, social networking sites and even airplane seatbacks and scratch-off lottery tickets, the franchise has appeared pretty much everywhere. But there is a lot more to learn about Bejeweled -- which is currently celebrating its 10th anniversary -- than just matching gems.
1. It's a money machine.

Developer PopCap Games originally tried to sell the rights to Bejeweled for just $40,000 -- but found no takers. Instead, they decided to self-publish. When Bejeweled debuted in 2000, it was initially a browser-based game titled Diamond Mine, and the beta testers were the moms of the three co-founders. That turned out to be a smart move: according to PopCap, the game has generated well over $350 million dollars, establishing itself as one of the most lucrative game franchises ever. Despite it being a decade old, the game continues to sell somewhere in the world every 4.3 seconds.
2. It can be beaten.

Barely. In fact, only one person has ever officially completed Bejeweled 2: Mike Leyde, a 57-year old steel contractor from Riverside, California. In 2009, Leyde achieved the highest score possible -- 2,147,483,647 points -- after playing for more than 2,200 hours. Mike first discovered Bejeweled in 2005 when his son Brian bought him the game. Bejeweled 2 wasn’t designed to show a higher number than this, so his game simply showed a blank where the score would go.
3. It's voiced by its maker.

The deep-talking narrator in Bejeweled 2 – you know the one – is none other than Jason Kapalka, Bejeweled’s designer and chief creative officer of PopCap, who founded the company in 2000 along with Brian Fiete and John Vechey. Kapalka’s voice was modulated to make it sound deeper in the game. Prior to PopCap, Kapalka spent five years at casual game site pogo.com, and before that, the Canadian was a columnist for Computer Gaming World magazine.
4. It spawned hundreds of imitators.

Bejeweled is considered the original "match 3" game, though more than 200 knock-offs have surfaced over the years. While there are a few official sequels – namely, Bejeweled 2 (2004), Bejeweled Twist (2008) and Bejeweled Blitz (2009) – PopCap has rarely “reskinned” the game for promotional purposes. One was for the animated feature film The Ant Bully, and another time for -- believe it or not -- the Pork Advisory Board, featuring pork products on the board instead of colored gems.
5. It's sociable.

Bejeweled Blitz, the 1-minute Facebook adaptation of the game playable on both computers and iPhone/iPod Touch, attracts more than 3 million players per day. Collectively, that fan base spends half a billion hours per year playing at the rate of about 100 million games per day. That means plenty of tips, too: more than 2,000 videos of Bejeweled Blitz strategies, tricks and cheats have been uploaded to YouTube.