PopCap Player Profile

Cherie Priest

Horror Novelist Fantasizes About Peggle

Cherie Priest has a fetish for Peggle. The 32-year old writer of horror novels (http://www.cheriepriest.com/) lives in Seattle with her husband, a fat black cat and a small orange fish. But not long ago her family expanded to include Renfield, Bjorn, Jimmy Lightning and the other “masters” who populate Peggle. “I mostly play Peggle at home, since I work from a home office,” she explains. “But I’m not ashamed to be seen rockin’ the Peggle out at a coffeehouse or ‘Net café or – well, pretty much anywhere I happen to have my laptop with me.”

Cherie first discovered PopCap’s hit casual games while working in a more traditional office environment a few years ago. “It was one of those places where the workload was very ‘feast-or-famine’ so during slow times I’d surf the ‘Net and hunt for entertainment,” she recalls. Cherie first came upon Bejeweled, which she describes as “my first PopCap addiction. Then it was Bookworm, a bit of Mummy Maze, and finally, gloriously, Peggle!”

Cherie has now had four horror/fantasy novels published: Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Wings to the Kingdom, and Not Flesh Nor Feathers by Tor/St. Martin’s Press and Dreadful Skin by Subterranean Press. “I try not to indulge in quite so much Peggle now that my schedule is my own, but sometimes it’s just the thing when my brain is fried and I want distraction. The nice thing about PopCap’s games is that they’re engaging enough to entertain, but straightforward enough to give your brain a break,” she says. “About an hour of Peggle a day seems to keep the doctor, not to mention writer’s block, away.”

Asked why Peggle in particular seems to push all the right buttons for her, Cherie says “I love the way Peggle goes over the top to hit all your psychological reward centers every time you clear a level. Lights! Fireworks! Bombastic music! Congratulatory rainbow banner and loudly ticking points tracker! It’s just a fast, fun, ride from the first shot to the slow-mo close-up of each completed level.”

Cherie’s love of video games is far-flung and nearly life-long. “I first began with an Atari 2600 back in the day, and then I sampled the old Sierra role playing adventures,” she notes. “Eventually I graduated to survival horror games – which I first encountered via House of the Dead at the local arcade. From there, I moved on to home play with the Silent Hill and Resident Evil franchises – and although I don’t have the time to devote to these games that I once did, I still badger my husband into playing them with me,” she laughs.

“But PopCap games fill a very different role in my entertainment consumption because they don’t require a sixty hour time investment in order to extract the whole of the experience,” Cherie remarks. “Since downloadable games like these are gently predictable and yet infinitely varied, they have a very high replay value with very little personal effort. You don’t need to learn new laws or rules or console controls in order to keep going and keep enjoying yourself. And they’re absolutely unrivaled when it comes to blowing off a little steam after a long day at work.”

When asked to envision her “dream level” in Peggle, Cherie proffers a “Snakes and Ladders”-themed deck with “pegs arranged in ladder formations, spinning spirals of additional pegs and snakes and other artwork in an Incan or Aztec style – I love those spinning and spiral-shaped layouts,” she smiles.

Cherie, a self-described “eldergoth,” enjoys other pastimes including reviewing low-budget horror films on the Web (her blog is http://cmpriest.livejournal.com/), wildlife photography, urban trespassing and dabbling in science fiction conventions. Her master’s degree in rhetorical theory notwithstanding, Cherie says “you don’t need to ponder the goodness that is Peggle, you simply need to dive in and see where it takes you.”