Real Gem Hidden In ‘Bejeweled’ Game
Posted April 16, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The proposal wasn’t the surprise for Tammy Li. She and Bernie Peng had discussed marriage, and even looked at rings together. But the shock came in the novel way Peng found to propose.
You’ve heard of rings hidden in a bouquet, dropped in a champagne glass, or at the end of a treasure hunt. Peng took the idea of a hunt one step further, and made it virtual.
Li loves the computer game ‘Bejeweled, and Peng is a computer programmer. It didn’t take him long to figure out that hiding the ring inside the puzzle would be the perfect proposal.
What did take a long time was modifying the game so that his question would show up when Li reached a certain score.
He first announced his plan in December, and after months of planning and hacking, Li finally said yes in April.
They’ll be married in September.
PopCap, the Seattle company that makes Bejeweled, got word of the proposal, and couldn’t be happier for the couple. They plan to fly the two to Seattle for their honeymoon, and are also handing out the game as wedding favours.
They’re not even mad about the hack: Garth Chouteau, a spokesman for PopCap, says “it won him a woman. As a bunch of geeks we have to say, ‘Bernie, hats off to you.'”
