We posted a snippet of this story last week, but now the full interview has been made available. A CasualGaming interview with PopCap’s creative director, Jason Kapalka...

CG.biz: It does seem headline writers occasionally turn a blind eye to the casual movement. How does it feel when games like Wii Sports get credited as the world’s best selling games?

JK: Nintendo has been following a parallel path to us for quite a while with the DS and Wii. I certainly don’t feel they’re getting credited unfairly or that they ‘stole our thunder’ or anything. I think they’ve been doing the same thing we have, trying to move games back from the hardcore crowd to a more general audience... they’ve just been doing it in the console and handheld space where we’ve been largely focused on the web and PC world. The success of the Wii helps us and the whole ‘casual’ field, if anything.

CG.biz: Has ‘casual’ finally stopped being a dirty word, and if so, do you think PopCap has contributed to the acceptance of the casual movement?

JK: The term ‘casual games’ has probably begun to outlive its usefulness. We first started noticing it a couple years back... when we started, nobody called Bejeweled a ‘casual game,’ it was just a ‘web game’ or a ‘downloadable game’ or a ‘puzzle game.’ As a label, it’s been useful in giving people a handle to get a hold of the concept of what we’re doing, the idea of games meant for the world outside of hardcore gamers, but it has become awfully broad now. It encompasses our web and PC games, basically everything Nintendo does, and some would say music games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. By some standards practically half the video game market is ‘casual’ now, which is great, but it makes it hard to be specific in what you’re talking about.

Full interview here