<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Blood-Pigggy @ Oct 5 2007, 07:27 PM) [snapback]314825[/snapback]</div>
Quote:
I thought Jane Jensen (GAY NAME) was never going to do another adventure game after Gabriel 3 because it had such mixed reviews.
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Why would you think that? Garriott has gone on making games after receiving plenty of negative press for a range of his titles, and the same applies to a number of other developers/creators.
I interviewed Jensen about 8 years ago. She was pretty bitter about the way the software industry treated her and many other adventure game creators after the sale of Sierra Online. Her argument was that the rest of the gaming industry was big business alone, ruled by the accountants, and wanted nothing to do with adventure games, which they judged poor on investment return. She told me about several instances of accounting departments nixxing deals for adventure games at various companies, for various developers.
The conduct she described is not unusual. I can't give my source, but just 2 days ago I interviewed a CEO at a small but successful gaming company that had a deal to make several new versions of 1990s period strategy titles. The company that had the original titles knew they were abandonware, earning nobody anything, and thought this would be great. The CEO has a rep for doing great stuff, and it was a done deal--until his company got the accounting department's contract.
Basically, the old company, that didn't do any work since the 1990s, and had been sold three times since then?
They would own all the code on the new games. And they would have to approve even a mention of any of the games online. And all rights to publication, whatever deals may previously exist for the CEO and his firm.
The CEO dropped the deal. The games that are abandonware? Not being touched by anybody. An old English term for such a policy by accounting is called "pennywise, and pound foolish." And that's what Jensen was protesting, when she spoke to me about game companies that don't want to make some money on adventure games, because they think instead making the latest Diablo clone will make them so much more.