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Interviews
THE
BEST DAMN JANE JENSEN INTERVIEW EVER
Conducted by Randy Sluganski
Page
2
Randy-JA: What is your opinion of The Adventure Company being announced as the publisher of your as yet untitled game?
Jane Jensen: I think The Adventure Company is a godsend, not only for me personally, but for the entire adventure gaming community. We talked to a lot of publishers and some of the large publishers like EA and Microsoft and Midway will say right to your face that they’re only interested in the hardcore, young male audience. They realize that there are other people out there who are interested in games, but they have no interest in pursuing that market and that’s just down the line how the gaming industry feels. But Dreamcatcher, and especially the brand The Adventure Company, have made a successful business out of making product and buying product for this alternate audience, for older people, for a cross-gender audience, and not only are they the one publisher who has not ignored them, but they have also structured a successful business model to the point where they are now ready to fund Triple A adventure titles made from scratch in North America by good talent. They have also grown the adventure community. Some of their titles – like Crystal Key – have sold better than any of the Sierra titles ever did and I think there are two reasons: one is that more people of all genders and ages are playing games than was the case five years ago, so the potential audience for adventure games has grown, and second Dreamcatcher has done a great job of distribution; of getting shelf space and putting adventure product out there.
Randy-JA:
There’s been a great bit of positive feedback regarding the announcement
of your new game, but there has also been a lot of negative backlash
on two fronts: one that it is not a Gabriel Knight game and two that
the Adventure Company does not have a history of Triple A
titles from the ground up. What is your response to these criticisms
from people who are so negative without even having yet seen a screenshot
or a demo?
Jane Jensen: Well, I think it’s silly. If they’re waiting for Sierra to get back into adventure games, it’s just never going to happen. This industry more than any other industry, more than film or books or television, is a changing industry. It’s changing every year. From what I’ve seen The Adventure Company is the future. A lot of the titles they’ve done in the past where titles that they purchased from Europe and they were the only company publishing adventure game titles at all. I think they’re doing the right thing: they’re going after experienced designers, they wouldn’t have come to me if they didn’t want to make a Sierra-style, third person adventure game, they would have gone to somebody else.
Randy-JA: Can we ignore the quotes in the press release about a ‘Myst-like atmosphere with arcade elements?’
Jane Jensen – I wrote that line, me myself, and that is a perfect description of Gabriel Knight 3. Le Serpent Rouge is a logic puzzle and they have always been in my games, they will always be in my games. I love mysteries, I love adventure games obviously but you can’t have a game where all you do is walk around and talk to people. There has to be a variety of puzzles and that’s all that line was trying to convey that there is going to be a variety of puzzles. It is not an action/adventure game, there are no guns, there are no jumping and running puzzles. There will be possibly some mild arcades of a kind that there have always been in Sierra games just to mix the gameplay up a little bit. I’ve always done logic puzzles, for example, the drum code from Gabriel 1, so I think the fears can be laid to rest, this is not a first-person Myst-style game this is a full 3D Sierra-style, third-person adventure game.
Randy-JA: Besides the Gabriel Knight games, you’ve also worked on Eco Quest and King’s Quest VI. Every one of your games to date has been a critical and financial success. What do you do to continue that trend? You’ve been out of the industry for a while, is there a chance that maybe you’re not tapped into the marketplace; a chance that maybe you could fall on your face with this new project and it may not work?
Jane Jensen: Sure, it’s possible. After Gabriel 1 there was a lot of press about how it was a one-hit wonder and I would probably never be able to do it again. I think at this point I’ve done four major games, if you include King’s Quest VI, and also I’m just publishing my fourth novel (Dante’s Equation), so I have had a lot of experience at developing new stories and characters. I’m really thrilled with how the story has developed for this game. It’s got so much power in it; it’s got a lot of symbolism and depth and yet it is also satisfying on a sort of a pop scary level. I’m excited about it, and I know that the art resources that are going to go into this project from the Dreamcatcher side are going to be first rate, probably the best I’ve ever had, so I’m not too worried about it. All you can do is try to reach a place in the project where you feel passionate about the vision; that it is so complete for you personally, and carry that through production and hopefully when you get to the other side other people will feel the same way about it.
Randy-JA: Are you more the type of person who believes that your game should be based on what the consumer wants – since you do receive so much fan feedback, yet so much of it is so overwhelmingly positive and uncritical as to be nonproductive – or are you of the opinion that if you’re pleased with what you write, then you feel others will be pleased with it also?
Jane Jensen: When I do a new story, whether it’s a book or a game, the first step is to find a subject that really excites me. With my book ‘Millennium Rising’, I had picked up a book on millennium prophecy at a bookstore and I was up all night reading it and it was the kind of thing were every five seconds you’re going to your spouse, “Hey honey wake up, you have to hear this.”
That’s stage one, I have to find something that I think is really exciting and gets me excited as a subject matter. I think that’s maybe what sets my stuff apart a little bit is that all of my games and all of my books have been about something. It’s not just a story, but it involves something, a hint of real life subject matter that people find interesting. Because I come from that basis, I already have a pretty strong vision in my mind when I go into it and that’s the backbone of it. I am influenced by letters I receive, for example, I had a pretty clear picture going into this series of what things about Gabriel Knight were particularly appreciated. I get a lot of letters from people who have visited New Orleans or visited Munich and have actually toured Ludwig’s Castle and they’re so excited that they send me pictures of themselves from locations in the game.
For this new series we had originally contemplated setting it in a fictional Vermont town and a fictional university, but considering how important that experience of being in a real location has been to the Gabriel Knight fans I decided that was an element of Gabriel Knight I wanted to continue in this new series so the game is going to be set in a real location.