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 really pertains to a story here are a couple of comic book-style screens at the beginning and end.  It's all very standard "follow your dreams" stuff, but trust me, it wasn't as cliché back then as it is today.

What's really to talk about here, though, is the gameplay.  It's deceptively simple, gets more challenging with each level, and - as any review of the game will tell you - it's highly addictive.  You seat customers, take customers' orders, bring customers food, customer leaves a nice fat tip, you clean the table.  Lather rinse repeat.  But!  Dining parties get larger and arrive faster as the game progresses, and they also come in more colors, which are matched to seats for bonus points.  But you also get perks that help you, such as complimentary drinks and a podium to entertain customers waiting to be seated.  All in all, it's a perfect time waster game.  And even if you make it to the end, you still feel compelled to get the expert score on every level.  At least...that's the way I feel.

After Diner Dash cemented itself as a classic, PlayFirst dedicated most of their lifetime to milking this cash cow for all it was worth.  The game itself received four official sequels: Restaurant Rescue, in which Flo helps her restaurateur friends revamp their kitchens and pay rent; Flo on the Go, with the added gimmick of getting to change Flo's clothes after she loses her suitcase on vacation; Hometown Hero, in which Flo visits her Grandma Florence and - what else - helps to revamp the local restaurants to their former glory; and BOOM!, in which Flo's Diner is flooded with so many customers that it literally explodes and the money you earn goes toward rebuilding it.  They also put out some more novelty titles like Seasonal Snack Pack and Flo Through Time, but these seem to be regarded as lesser installments.

(And did I mention the Spongebob version?)

But of course, one can't mention Diner Dash without mentioning...the spin-offs.

In addition to the proper Diner Dash series, PlayFirst released several other "Dash" games following the same general formula, but set in different businesses with different protagonists.

The most successful of these was Wedding Dash, starring Flo's friend Quinn who tries to make it as a wedding planner.  It was so successful that they actually made three sequels.

Then came Doggie Dash, Dairy Dash, Parking Dash...(that seems like an oxymoron).  All of which were fun in their own right, don't get me wrong, but by no means lived up to the original.  And you can tell that not all spin-offs really had the same budget, especially when it came to art and animation.

There was also Cooking Dash (which if you ask me was just Diner Dash trying to be Delicious, but that's an article for another day), DinerTown Detective Agency which served as the obligatory hidden object game, and DinerTown Tycoon.

Amazingly enough, though, the Dash empire was not PlayFirst's only claim to fame.  They also worked on Chocolatier, a tycoon series in which you travel back in time to run a chocolate company, and the Dream Chronicles series, equal parts hidden object and puzzle that actually had a really good story set in a world of fairies.

PlayFirst also had some great little standalone games.  In 2006, they released Plantasia, a crazy time management-slash-puzzle game where you use magic to bring gardens back to life.

They actually made this in collaboration once again with Gamelab who, despite having effectively sold the rights to their own personal gold mine, actually weren't doing too bad for themselves.  They ended up developing the first two Jojo's Fashion Show games and the highly underrated Miss Management.

Then in 2009, PlayFirst collaborated with Wadjet Eye Games (one of my very favorite game developers) to make Emerald City Confidential, a point & click adventure set forty years after the events of The Wizard of Oz.  And while Wadjet Eye's CEO Dave Gilbert expressed significant creative differences between the two companies, I still think the final product is amazing.

And in the same year, if you can believe it, PlayFirst took all that Wadjet Eye had taught them and released Avenue Flo, a fully-voiced point & click adventure based on Flo and the other characters of DinerTown, complete with a singalong theme song!  And wouldn't you know it, it even got a sequel.

Unfortunately, the Avenues Flo were pretty much the last good hurrah for PlayFirst.  They just kept stretching and stretching and stretching the spin-off thing as far as it could go and the magic just wasn't there anymore.  They weren't really adding anything of substance to their new games - only making them gimmickier.  The reason I loved Avenue Flo so much was because it gave me a slice-of-life view of the characters of DinerTown; actually let me talk to and learn about them, rather than just shuffling them through a diner or a fitness center or a freaking soap opera shoot.

(Don't get me wrong, Soap Opera Dash is still rad.)

The other thing that really sent PlayFirst on the path downhill was that they became very diligent about porting their games to mobile.  At first, these ports were pretty successful.  I mean, duh.  Why wouldn't they be?  You port Diner Dash to anything, it's going to be successful.

(Except for...most things Diner Dash was ported to.)

They were so successful, in fact, that in 2012, PlayFirst officially announced that they would cease production of all computer games to focus their efforts on the mobile market.  Which means any games in progress were cancelled, which means we never got Dream Chronicles 6, and I'm still bitter about it.

Then...tragedy.

In 2014, the PlayFirst company was purchased by Glu Mobile.  (You know, the company that makes the Kim Kardashian game?  Yeah, those guys.)  Most of their titles understandably went on backlog and are now only available through third-party sellers.  Which, thank God, there are a lot of.

But Diner Dash, cash cow that it is, kept being developed for the modern audience.  Which means the game got way more complicated than it needed to be, with weird power ups, too many new restaurants, and Flo and her friends getting really, really ugly makeovers.

Like, is that supposed to be Grandma Florence?

And that's about when Gordon Ramsay got involved and the dream well and truly died.

But no matter what the bloodsucking Glu cronies are trying to do to our beloved Flo, PlayFirst will always live on in memory as one of the giants of the casual gaming world.