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Jane's interviews

Jane Jensen - Game designer

Jane Jensen is the ultimate story-teller. She breathes life into her newborn plot; invents her characters' ideas and thoughts, creates the time and the place for the adventure, and decides the destiny of her characters. Jensen revels in creating her story, and in watching it come to life.

She considers herself, at heart, a writer - a novelist. Her main literary influences are Stephen King and Anne Rice. She is also a researcher, putting hundreds of hours into the depth of her stories. She believes this research truly creates the feel for the story, and gives depth to its realism. Jane's fiction work incorporates her passions -- history, the occult, philosophy and religion.

Life and works

Jane Jensen was born Jane Elizabeth Smith - the youngest of seven brothers - in Palmerton, Pennsylvania, in 1963. She received a BA in Computer Science from Anderson University in Indiana and worked for six years as a systems programmer for Hewlett-Packard.

Her love of writing eventually led her into the computer gaming community: her career in interactive entertainment began at Sierra On-Line in February 1991. Since then, she has had the opportunity to work on such hit titles as Police Quest 3; Ecoquest; King's Quest VI and Pepper's Adventures In Time. As designer of Gabriel Knight - Sins of the Fathers (1993), Jane was honored when the game won Computer Gaming World's Adventure Game of the Year and also Best of Show at CES. This accolade was actually surpassed with her next Gabriel Knight adventure, The Beast Within (1996), which netted Jane the top honor that Computer Gaming World can bestow: overall Game of the Year. Gabriel Knight III - Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned (1999) confirmed the series to be the most story-intensive games ever developed. During the next years she expressed interest in the future of the series, admitting she would be glad to work on some future installments.

Jane's next goal was to publish a novel and in 1996 she published the first of her two novelizations of the Gabriel Knight games. In 1999, her first original novel, Millennium Rising, was published in hard cover by Del Rey and was also released as an audiobook and mass market paperback (retitled Judgment Day). Between 1999 and 2002, Jane focused on her fourth book, Dante's Equation, which was released in July 2003 by Del Rey in the U.S. and by Little Brown in the U.K..

In 2002 she co-founded a company called Oberon Media, which is focused on developing and publishing, games for the casual game market online; under the Oberon Media label Jane released many mixed mode games - among others, Inspector Parker, Betrapped, and Death on the Nile - all quite successful within the casual gaming market.

Jane's newest project is a return to her roots of adventure game designer. The new game series, developed by French studio Wizarbox and published by dtp Anaconda, is a classical point-and-click investigative mystery dealing with the powers of human mind. The series is titled Gray Matter, and its first installment, Such stuff as dreams are made of, is due to be released in 2009.

Jane Jensen lives in Seattle with her husband, Robert Holmes, and her step-daughter, Raleigh.

Website: http://www.janejensen.com
Contact: jane@janejensen.com

Games

1. Police Quest 3: The Kindred (1991), Sierra On-Line, Inc.
2. EcoQuest: The Search for Cetus (1991), Sierra On-Line, Inc.
3. King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (1992), Erbe Software, S.A.
4. The Dagger of Amon Ra (1992), Sierra On-Line, Inc.
5. Pepper's Adventures in Time (1993), Sierra On-Line, Inc.
6. Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (1993), Sierra On-Line, Inc.
7. Space Quest (Collector's Edition) (1994), Sierra On-Line, Inc.
8. The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery (1995), Sierra On-Line UK
9. King's Quest: Collection Series (1999), Sierra On-Line, Inc.
10. Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned (1999), Sierra On-Line, Inc.
11. Inspector Parker (2003), Oberon Games, Inc.
12. BeTrapped! (2004), Oberon Games, Inc.
13. Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile (2007), Oberon Games, Inc.
14. Agatha Christie’s Peril at End House (2007), Oberon Games, Inc.
15. Gray Matter (2009)
    

Books

1. Gabriel Knight - Sins of the Fathers (1996), Roc
2. Gabriel Knight - The Beast Within (1997), Roc
3. Millennium Rising (a.k.a. Judgment Day) (1999), Del Rey
4. Dante's Equation (2003), Del Rey

 

Last update: April 10, 2008

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