Spiderweb Software Interview
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GB: Given that a lot stays the same within each iteration of Geneforge or Avernum, what do you think keeps people coming back for more? Jeff: The story. The setting. It is important to know what you can reuse and what you can't.
The reason people play my games is that they have great stories, cool dungeons, neat characters, and big worlds. That is our specialty. It's what we focus on. We take the time we could spend replacing the icon of a wolf with another icon of a wolf and instead focus on making more fun.
GB: Spiderweb has a very loyal following. However, given your business model and the current state of the industry, would it be fair to say that the available options for expanding your consumer market are fairly limited?
Jeff: Our possibilities for expansion are huge. There is an enormous market for single-player RPGs. Look at the sales of Baldur's Gate and Oblivion if you don't believe me. Those people exist, and they are not, for the most part, being served. A lot of them will be turned off by our low-budget graphics, but a lot won't.
The problem is publicity. Most people who would like our games haven't heard of us, and they will never hear of us. We buy as much advertising as we can afford, but that isn't very much.
GB: Do you worry about the people who do not play your games due to the graphics or are you not that interested in their market potential?
Jeff: Don't get me wrong. I love nice graphics as much as the next guy. I make our games as pretty as I can. I'm not ideologically attached to low-budget games. It's just all I can do.
But if someone wants a pretty game, I will not be able to please that person. And if I spend a bunch of money and an extra year making a game as pretty as I possibly can, I still will not please that person. The big companies use cutting edge engines and art departments with dozens of talented people, and they spend years working on one title. I will never ever, ever, ever be able to compete with that in the slightest way. So I don't.
There is one thing I can do: Make a cool adventure in a cool world. So I do that.
GB: What element of your games (in design, mechanics or storytelling) do you feel has improved most since Exile?
Jeff: Oh, God. All of it. It's all evolved so much in every single way that it would be hard to pick one thing out. Even after 14 years, I am still learning all the time. I'm always doing new things. After Avernum 6, I am setting aside Geneforge and Avernum and making a whole new world, and it will be more evolved that the previous games in every area.
So I have to chicken out on this question. Everything changes a lot all the time.
GB: For all other (prospective) independent game developers out there, please give some words of advice: what elements of game design should be a priority and what elements can mostly be ignored? What is the best way to find and reach a target market?
Jeff: I always say this: Your game has to be AWESOME. It's not enough for it to be fun. It's not enough for it to be really fun. It has to be fun enough to get people to pull out their credit card and give you the number. That's a high barrier to jump over.
Play games. Lots of them. Go to the casual portals like RealArcade and see what sells. See how much fun other people bring to the table. If you can, try Aegis Wing on XBox Live. It's fun, it's pretty, and it's FREE. Ask yourself: Can your game compete with FREE?
Try the flash games online. There are lots of them, many of them are fun, and they are FREE. Can you compete with that?
Then focus on making your game so fun and addictive that it can compete. Worry about everything else later.
Thanks for your time, Jeff! We look forward to checking out Avernum 5 once the Windows version is ready.
