Adventura y Cía interviews Jane Jensen
Conducted by El Jones - March 2002
The staff from Aventura y Cía is honoured today by one of the Biggest Personalities of the genre, for granting us this interview. This guru of the entertainment is none other than Jane Jensen, a 38 aged pennsylvanian, who has spent the last 10 years in the designing and creation of graphic adventures. Her games speak for themselves: apart from her participation in the designing of the Eco Quest saga and the wonderful King's Quest VI, Jane has brought to life one of the most loved heroes in the adventure, as she's the "mother" of Gabriel Knight. The series of the bookseller of New Orleans is undoubtedly the magnum opus of Mrs. Jensen, and now that she has decided to go into a more literary life (she now writes novels), we can't help but bewail over the loss of the last of the Schattenjägers.... or maybe not....
AyC: Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Damned, Blood of the Sacred was the last "great adventure" by Sierra. We haven't got much news (in the adventure gaming world) about the members of the missing Sierra On-Line. On the other hand Jane Jensen does not seem to be wasting her time. What have you been doing in these 3 last years?
Jane Jensen: I've been working primarily on one big novel, "Dante's Equation," which is currently slated for release in Spring of '03. It has been a real challenge for me and has taken an ungodly amount of time. I also took a break at one point and wrote a second, smaller novel which is a romance novel. The theory is that if I have several different 'careers' going at once, I might actually be able to earn a living with this writing business.
AyC: Your creation, Gabriel Knight, was (and actually is) very acclaimed and praised both by the critics and also the players. Many people have said it is the most perfect adventure series, even better than king's quest, Monkey Island or Leisure Suit Larry... how does it feel to have such a success? And what is the formula?
Jane Jensen: I think one thing that has really worked for the GK series was having the format be a detective/mystery series. A detective naturally solves puzzles -- that's what they do. So the puzzles in the game can be integrated into the plot in a much more natural way than is the case with a comedy, for example. The other series you mentioned are all lighter comedy series. That's a terrific basis for an adventure game -- silly and fun. But I think GK has stood out simply because it has darker, more serious and adult storylines.
AyC: Let's have a look at the past... In 1988 your at that time incipient career as a writer was interrupted when you got the games "Manhunter: San Francisco" and "King's Quest IV", what did you see in graphic adventures, that liked you so much, and made you leave your --until then-- vocation?
Jane Jensen: I've always loved puzzles, and those early games were a revelation for me -- that you could combine puzzles and stories and graphics in that way. It also seemed to be something that I would be well suited for since about half my brain is sheer geek/programmer and half is storyteller. I guess the real thing that made me 'leave' writing at that time, though, was that I applied for, and got, an actual job as a game writer. At that time I was unpublished and not making anything on my fiction. My 'day job' was as a programmer and I leapt at the chance to do something more creative to earn a living.
AyC: Then you wrote Sierra On-Line and were finally replied and hired by the company that made the first games you played. When in 1991 you arrived to the firm of the Williams, what were your ambitions and where did you wanted to go?
Jane Jensen: There were a small number of us hired at that time by Sierra to be writers -- dialogue writers and so on. We were never meant to become game designers. But, naturally, that was the ambition we all had. We wanted to design and write our own games.
AyC: When you began to work at Sierra, you wrote manuals (like our friend Josh Mandel) and participated in the design of Eco Quest, a game rather different to your magnum opus. How was the transition from spending time face to face with the challenge of the blank page of a narration to the challenge of designing an adventure?
Jane Jensen: It worked out quite well because I didn't have too much time to 'think' about what I had to do. I was in a work environment and I simply had to produce. There was no time to sit and stare at a blank page. The mechanics of design was something that I really enjoyed and picked up quickly, again, because of my programmer background. It was actually easier for me, and in some ways still is, to approach a story from a very logical, step-by-step, IF THIS THEN THAT perspective than it was to sit down and spew out creative prose. In fact, I think game design really made me a writer. Up until then my fiction was fairly unfocused.
AyC: After Eco Quest, King's Quest 6 came up, a project in which you worked together with Roberta Williams, and that made the definite push to bring to reality the idea of Gabriel Knight. I suppose that you were asked this question many times, but what is the origin of the idea of the Gabriel Knight series? We know that you are a fan of Anne Rice and Stephen King's novels, and we see the influence of Rice in the New Orleans of the game, and the character of a frustrated writer of King's books in Gabriel Knight himself, but this could be considered as just a little homage to both writers. What elements of the games are product of your imagination and what were born from the mythology, from other novels or from the large amount of historic documentation you have?
Jane Jensen: I am a long-time reader of Rice and King, but I think GK was almost more influenced by graphic novels -- Hellblazer and Sandman in particular. The idea for the series started out from the thought that a detective series would provide a natural basis for puzzles. But I didn't want to do 'just' mysteries, I wanted more horror, so that lead to the idea of a paranormal investigator. Initially, GK was going to be a paranormal researcher, a professor. But as I began to develop the storyline for the first game, and had the ideas about using voodoo and tying that in to a backstory involving a Salem witch trials-like story and Gabriel's ancestor, the idea of the Schattenjägers was born. The storyline for the first game also brought out the idea that his family was cursed and he didn't know he was a Schattenjäger, etc. Really, what Gabriel is now developed slowly as I pieced together that first plotline.
AyC: One of the most attractive things in the Gabriel Knight series is the care and the meticulousness you have put in the script, yet a few people think that you have put so much efforts in the plot that the puzzles (specially in the third part of the series) are not that good. What do you think is more important, the story, or the puzzles?
Jane Jensen: I have always put a great deal of effort into puzzles because I love clever puzzles. I have always thought that GK had some really original puzzles, such as the drum and voodoo codes in GK1 and the tape splicing puzzle in GK2. In GK3 probably more effort was put into the puzzles than in either of the first two games. The entire "le serpent rouge" riddle/puzzle was really VAST. It took an enormous amount of time to work that out and was tied into the very landscape of the game. I always found it odd that reviewers hardly ever mention the puzzles -- they always talk about story! Oh, well, can't really complain about that. :-) But yes, I do put a LOT of time and effort into puzzles.
AyC: A lot of professionals of the entertainment world have said that the graphic adventure genre is practically dead, despite the heaps of fan lovers of the genre. Many experts clam that the bad thing about adventures is the impossibility to replay the game once you have finished it already, others say they will die because the inability to use the last technologies and the on-line feature on them. However, your games had always a steady technical progression, (cartoons, FMV and finally Real-Time 3D). What will be the next step?
Jane Jensen: Well, if I do make another game -- and I would like too -- eventually I would love to work in true VR. But that is quite far down the road. If I were to make a game next year we'd probably still be working in 3D, albeit better 3D. Personally, I think adventure games are more like film than any other kind of game. Does anyone say you shouldn't write a book or make a movie because you can't reread/rewatch it? What does that have to do with anything? How many times to people really spend replaying action games? Especially where there are always another 20 NEW action games released any given month?
AyC: Some others claim that making a good adventure is too expensive, and the companies prefer to go safely rather than making a adventure which won't probably be productive (in the US; in Europe the genre is between the 3 most sellers). Still, the amateur scene is becoming very popular, entertaining thousands of players with few resources and without using the newest technologies. What do you think is the reason of this contradiction? A possible solution to this problem would be the creation of generic engines that many companies could use, as they do with the first person shooters and 3D arcade games. Do you think this could be possible? Some time ago we read about the unlucky Leisure Suit Larry 8, which was going to be released featuring Real Time 3D graphics, was Sierra planning to use this engine in your GK3, and in the future production, like was did years ago with AGI and SCI?
Jane Jensen: The problem is that the game market expects and demands the latest, hottest technology. It's not just the fans but the media. A game that is not using the latest/slickest 'look' will probably get entirely ignored by the media. And yes, it is too expensive to develop an adventure game in that environment. Right now an adventure game vs action game is like an independent film vs a Hollywood action movie. If independent films cost as much to make as, say, "Terminator" then you wouldn't see any independent movies because they'd never make back that investment. And that is the problem we have with adventure games. They DO cost as much to make as the big action titles. That is a problem we need to solve. Would going to a single engine like the old days of SCI solve it? I do think that's a viable solution. But it would take a company committed to producing adventure games to make that happen and enough of a media venue for these kinds of games to get promoted to their own audience.
AyC: According to the "legend", only 3 days after the release of GK2 the first petition of the third part was made. Something similar happened with GK3; lots of fans are still requesting a new sequel... Many of us still remember that reference in GK3 when you typed "GK4" in Sidney. Were you actually planning to make that sequel? Was it going to be as the computer said?
Jane Jensen: Yes, you can see in the ending of GK3 that there were plans for a sequel. If I had thought "this is the last" I would have tried to wrap things up more neatly. And yes, my plans for GK4 at that time involved ghosts and was to be set in England.
AyC: In the last weeks some rumours were going round, and seem to have enough substance behind them. These point out that Sierra Studios is about to revive one of the best series of Sierra On-Line: Space Quest. We can't avoid to ask you: what do you think about this? Do you think it is possible that the "new" Sierra will give another chance to its classic series? If Sierra asked you to do it, would you make another GK4? Do you think this could actually happen?
Jane Jensen: It does seem as though the new management at Sierra is looking once again at Sierra's older properties and wondering what might be done with them. It's an encouraging sign. As for what may happen with GK or any of the other Sierra series, I really don't know at this time.
AyC: Now you're totally focused in the literal creation. You've now published Millennium Rising, besides the adaptations of the Knight series... Haven't you ever felt like coming back to the gaming world since 1999?
Jane Jensen: I have enjoyed the "time off" and wasn't really interested in doing another game right away. But I'm definitely feeling it's time to get back in there. If I get the chance to do something in the gaming world, I will.
AyC: Finally, a classic question, what would you say to that amount of fans that want to be like Jane Jensen?
Jane Jensen: I never know what to say to aspiring designers/writers other than to read and/or play the best stuff and not the crap because what you read/play will effect your own voice; learn what you really are drawn to and love because that's your field and you have to know what that is; and put your energy where your mouth is. Design if you want to be a designer. Write if you want to be a writer. Natural talent has an impact, yes, but just like a star athlete or musician, what counts in the end is the amount of time you are willing to put into practice, practice, practice.
Last update: November 21, 2007
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