Jane Jensen

By Randy Sluganski

Jane Jensen, the acknowledged Grand Dame of the interactive mystery, is the author of the Gabriel Knight series of games as well as two Gabriel Knight novels and a new novel unrelated to computer games, Millennium Rising. In this interview, she talks about her future as a game designer, women in games and women gamers, and whether or not von Glower is bisexual.

Do you feel you still have a future in the industry, or are you truly the "last of the dinosaurs"?

Hmm. I'm feeling pretty dinosaury at the moment. I think I'll do things in the interactive medium in the future, but I don't know yet how soon or what that might be.

You have recently been involved in talks with Sierra. Is it anything you can talk about yet? Can we expect an announcement at this year's E3?

No. I have been talking with Sierra, but as of yet there isn't "a project."

Are there any companies out there who have the "taste and chutzpah" to create intelligent products?

So many of the smaller companies that had potential have folded, such as Sanctuary Woods—and that in itself is very scary. I think Sierra, LucasArts and EA are still releasing decent products, and would be happy to support adventure titles if they would sell. I'm aware that there are some pretty cool little companies in Europe, but to be honest, I don't know much about them.

In our "Ugly Americans" article, we addressed the problems that Funcom's The Longest Journey has had in finding a North American distributor. Do you find the reasons presented valid: adventure games don't sell, the language, and the sexuality of one of the characters?

I haven't seen the product to comment on the language or sexuality, but I've always been a proponent of maturity in games. There's no reason why a game shouldn't do anything an R-rated movie can do. As for adventure games not selling in the U.S., it seems to be a mournful but valid fact. What does that say about Americans? I would hazard a guess that, in general (note the qualification here), young Europeans probably (additional qualification) have a bit more interest in history, art, literature, etc., because it's all around them. What that has to do with adventure games, I don't know, except that adventure games are slower paced and take more patience. American pop culture is fast-paced, instant gratification.

Gabriel Knight 3 was a bestseller for the first month of its release and then the bottom dropped out. Once the core adventure game audience has shown their support, where do we go to drive more sales?

If I knew, I'd have a lot more money. :-) I tried to encourage Sierra to advertise in untraditional media such as mystery magazines, Fortean Times magazine, etc., but that just never happened. One reason was that after Havas' purchase, the marketing budgets got slashed. But to be honest, that's happened on every single one of the GK games. They've always had to rely on word of mouth.

I think that the audience for these kinds of games is a nontraditional computer game audience. How do we reach them? I have no idea. It may just be a matter of time, waiting for the technology to get pervasive enough that everyone has access to it as a matter of course.

If Sierra would elect to never do another Gabriel Knight game, are you able to use the characters in book form without Sierra's approval? Or would you be able to use one of the secondary characters such as Grace in a product that did not involve Sierra?

I technically have permission to do the GK books as long as I'm in decent standing with Sierra. The question is: is that the best way to go? I'm actually surprised, but the sales of the GK1 and GK2 books have done pretty darn well since the game came out. So, yes, I could do more GK books. But I have other books to write first, and I'd prefer to wait a while and see if the GK games are really gone for good.

As for taking Grace to another company—no, Sierra owns the copyright to GK and all characters therein.

After finishing such an ambitious and collaborative project such as GK3, how exhausted are you in comparison to when you finish a novel?

They're both hard in different ways, but there's no contest—the games are much harder, longer, and more of a pain! But they're very satisfying creatively.

Following the release of GK3, you wrote a controversial article for The Adrenaline Vault (later reprinted on Just Adventure). Do you feel the criticism you received was valid or unjustified?

Adventure gamers loved the article, but the shooter crowd got nasty about it. Beats me why. It taught me something important, though—don't do any more commentaries.

What exactly did the shooter crowd disagree with? Did they threaten to "frag" you, or did they think you had misrepresented their gaming community?

From what I've heard from various site editors and others in the gaming medium, it's been a trend that there's a vocal minority among action gamers who have been getting rude, crude, and obnoxious in general, about anything at all. It probably has to do with the age group and also the aggressive mentality of the shooters themselves. So I was just the target of the day. What did they object to in my piece? No doubt that I was speaking from the perspective of an adventure gamer, and worse, an adventure designer.

Why is that blood and gore are readily accepted by the gaming population at large, but the moment a site like Just Adventure or adventure gamers as a whole speak out against the carnage, we are branded malcontents or rabble-rousers?

Probably because few people in this business want to think seriously about what they're doing. I'm the last person to support censorship of any kind—I just don't believe in that. To me, whether you play a certain kind of game, or whether you choose to work on a certain kind of game, is a matter of personal choice. Anyone who's made the choice to view shooters as fun entertainment doesn't want to have their nose rubbed in any high morality about it, any more than someone's who's smoking or eating meat wants to be pounded over the head by the cancer society or the ASPCA. I respect that right absolutely. On the other hand, do we have the right to say that we think something is truly disgusting and has way crossed the line when it's our opinion that it has? Of course. Do we have a right to stick up for the kinds of games we like? Why not?

Almost every major game developer in the industry has a white male as its president or CEO. Has this lack of diversity hindered the development of different types of games?

I dunno. Personally, I prefer to not even think about race and gender. To me that's not what's relevant about a CEO or anyone else. But there are women who have started "girl's games" companies. I'm sure they'll contribute something interesting to the melee.

But what does that say about the core values of the industry that woman have had to start their own companies just to be able to contribute?

I'm not sure women have had to start their own companies to contribute. Women have certainly contributed at Sierra. If women have started "girl games" companies, it's probably because they saw a niche that made good business sense to fill. I guess I'm biased because I was a programmer before coming to gamedom, and at Hewlett-Packard there were also few women. The basic issue is that programming and gaming are high-tech fields and not that many women have gone into them as professions. I do believe that's changing. Now. Do the mainstream companies design games for women/girls? No. Again, I think it's a matter of the numbers. When marketing says to the CEO, the game market is 80 percent adolescent males (or whatever), it behooves the CEO to listen. What will change that is a big hit. The success of the Barbie CD-ROMS has no doubt financed many girl products. That hasn't happened for women yet.

What specifically must be done to make the adventure game a viable genre again?

I really don't know. It will probably take a killer app or some completely new technology. I also think there might be more leeway either on the Internet or on consoles.

Why haven't female gamers been recognized as valuable consumers in the industry? Especially since almost 50 percent of adventure gamers are women. What must be done to address this issue?

I haven't seen the numbers recently, but I think overall the numbers of women are still low industry-wide. They may constitute 50 percent of adventure gamers (no surprise there), but adventure game numbers are low. Again, I think what will make CEOs sit up and notice is the first product that targets women that sells a million units.

Rabid Gabriel Knight fans have argued the sexual preferences of von Glower for years. Is there any validity to these rumors, or are the fans reading more into the character than you intended?

Part of the interesting thing about werewolvery as a theme is that it's about primitive, carnal appetite. When I developed GK2, I was trying to express that in as many ways as I could—gluttony, drink, sexual appetite—a kind of voracious approach to life. In a word, hedonism. To me, von Glower was a character who was open to any and all forms of pleasure, though he had pretty refined tastes. And (to get blunt now) bisexuality implies an "anytime, anywhere, anyone" hyper-sexuality. That fit with the vision of the werewolf I had in mind. No morals, completely guided by instinct and desire.

Any possibility that if there is a future Gabriel Knight installment, he might drop Grace in favor of a brainy hotbody like Pamela Anderson Lee?

Ha! Well, you see, the "old" Gabriel would have gone after Pamela Lee and then dumped her. I'm not sure the new one would even do that much. We'll have to see how much he's figured out once I sit down to write the next piece.

If your career takes you in a new direction and you never do another interactive computer game, how would you want to be remembered?

Wow! Um, I'd love to be remembered as one the great "classic adventure" designers along with Ron Gilbert, Roberta Williams, Al Lowe, and others. I'd like to be regarded as someone who contributed new possibilities in the depth of interactive writing.

Okay, Just Adventurites, now it's your turn. Jane has graciously consented to answer questions from the readers. Drop me a line at randy@justadventure.com and I will forward your questions to Jane for possible inclusion in part 2 of the interview.