Let's Talk At Length About The Rise and Fall of PlayFirst Inc.
In the early 2000s, quality options for casual games were limited. You basically had Cubis, Bejeweled, Jewel Quest, and a few thousand Mahjong games. But in 2004...or 2005, depending on which Wikipedia article you're looking at (I was quite young at the time, I can't remember), a little company known as PlayFirst Inc. published Diner Dash, effectively changing the world of casual gaming as we know it. The original Diner Dash was actually developed by Gamelab, who before then had only done a lot of online LEGO games from the look of it, but PlayFirst quickly acquired the rights to the game after they realized they had the golden goose sitting right in their lap. The story of Diner Dash begins with Flo, a young woman who is fed up with corporate bureaucracy and strikes out on her own to run a restaurant. Which ends up as a whole chain of restaurants, each with a different theme. Now, I use the term "story" loosely because all that real...