PopCap Games' sublabel, 4th & Battery, was not originally going to be called 4th & Battery.
It was not, in fact, going to be associated with PopCap at all. Technically. When director of editorial and social media Jeff Green joined PopCap last fall, one of his first projects was working with producer Matthew Lee Johnston on making what would eventually become 4th & Battery.
"We were going to do it almost like a stealth indie house launch," explained Green. "That was the original idea we had. We were pretty much making up a new game company."
Green and Johnston had planned on distancing PopCap from the venture entirely, to the point that PopCap's lawyers looked into registering the new studio through the Cayman Islands, preventing anyone from being able to trace it back to PopCap.
The 4th & Battery rabbit hole goes deeper, much deeper, though.
The two of them actually concocted a whole background and persona for this new, semi-imaginary studio. The founders, as Green and Johnston envisioned it, were two female game designers also located in the Seattle area, where PopCap's at.
"One of them had a boyfriend who was in a band," said Green. "We actually made up that band."
The band was called sadparade. Green and Johnston went as far as to register a MySpace account (seriously!) for the self-described "emo/experimental/indie" group known as sadparade, an account that still exists online, albeit unfinished. sadparade's mood on MySpace is currently--and probably forever will be--described as "annoyed."
This underground studio and the mythology behind its faux creators was enough of a real thing for PopCap to create bumper stickers for sad parade, and for Green to sit down and write a fictional song.
Today, I'm happy to present the lyrics to this so-far unproduced sad parade track, "(Welcome to the) Sad Parade," penned by Green:
Heavy raindrops on my windowsill
I’m lookin’ out but I can’t see
My heart is heavy for you baby still
That’s why I’m lost in misery
And when I look out at this big ol’ world
I see a lot of things that bother me
Why do people have to be so mean?
And what’s up with all this poverty?
CHORUS
Welcome to the sad parade
Fall in line with the sad parade
Don’t stub your toe in the sad parade
Come play the flute in the sad parade
Yeah soldiers shoot each other all the time
When they all should just be holding hands
What will it take to make the people free
Why can’t we make them understand?
But oh yeah baby you should be here now
Instead of somewhere I don’t know
You told me that you needed room to breathe
You know I’d have opened a window!
CHORUS
Welcome to the sad parade
Yeah line right up for the sad parade
There’s free balloons at the sad parade
We need more tubas in the sad parade
So now I walk along this dusty road
Looking out at all I see
So many people with nowhere to go
I’d like to buy them all iced tea
And yeah you baby you’re so far away
You’re on your own now without me
But you’ll be back girl I do surely know
Because I have taken your housekeys
CHORUS
Welcome to the sad parade
Yeah keep on marching in the sad parade
Play Louie Louie in the sad parade
Watch out for horses in the sad parade
Please tune the trumpets in the sad parade
Don’t call me princess of the sad parade
Play Theme from Rocky in thesad parade
Who let those midgets in the sad parade
(repeat and fade out)
None of this is a joke, by the way. I asked multiple times between fits of laughter on the phone.
"This was all true, this was how we originally envisioned it as just a separate thing!" said Green.
While PopCap would have nothing to do with this kind of sort of fictional company on the surface, it was still a PopCap initiative that PopCap would have to somehow point towards.
"We were gonna have to try and use ways of drawing attention to it, but we were just going to be another indie developer," he continued. "That's when a lot of internal debate started happening, and the company was like 'why are we putting all this effort to hide this thing when there's a lot that we actually kind of want to show off?'"
The name PopCap Labs became the new point of discussion within the company, but that one was tossed over concerns having "PopCap" in the label's name would create unnecessary pressure. Games coming out of this sublabel were going to be experimental in nature, and gamers should not be expecting something on the level of Peggle or Plants vs. Zombies from it.
"We spent an insane amount of hours debating this whole thing," said Green.
sadparade may come back, though. Green hasn't ruled it out.
"We still may incorporate that band into 4th and Battery," he said. "I think we should. There's at least [that] one song that they wrote...they...wrote."
And with that, everyone on the call burst out laughing all over again.