Gaming World. Welcome to the most Independent aimed article we have had so far. I've had the pleasure of being able to sit down over virtual coffee with Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Games success. The Writer and Developer of games such as The Shivah and The Blackwell Legacy who has had huge success in the Indie gaming market and generally nice guy of gaming.. We talk about Ghosts and everything except GAMES because that's how we roll...



Me
Hello Dave Gilbert, thanks for being here with us to talk about games and other stuff that people might be interested in reading about. I suppose you’re expecting the usual “What are your inspiration?” type questions right? Well you’re not going to get off that easily I’m afraid! Let’s start off easy however... How are you feeling today?

Dave:
You're starting with the tough questions early, eh?  Well, I'm doing good.  Recently spent a few weeks in Europe so I'm nice and jetlagged. 

Me
Splendid. Whereabouts in Europe did you go?

Dave:
England.  It was grey and cold and lovely.

Me
The Homeland huh... Didn't stop by to say hello though.

Now Dave, you’ve gained quite a bit of success creating your games. How do you separate the games you create from other adventure games? What processes do you take to make sure that your game is BETTER than the very games you aspire to be like. People look at adventure games as witty dialogue and arbitrary false-logic puzzles. So what makes you different?

Dave:
I guess the process is that I don't try to be better per se.  I have stories that I want to tell, and I've found that adventure games are a good medium for telling them.  I have no illusions of competing with the new Sam and Max series, or with any of the new AAA titles that are coming out.  The adventure game scene is small enough that there's room for us all. 

As for what makes me different?  It's hard to say.  I put a lot of myself in the stories I create, so I have a lot of personal stake in the game.  You don't get that with large AAA titles.



Me
A little off topic but do you believe that storytelling and great world and character design is more important than challenging puzzles or a great gameplay gimmick? Do you try and strike a balance between STORY/GAMEPLAY and if you believe that story is more important, why don’t you just make movies?

Dave:
They are BOTH important.  The one thing I have learned is that the balance between story and gameplay is very hard to strike.  Throwing in arbitrary puzzles slows down the experience and frustrates the player, while making it very story-heavy turns it into a movie you click through.  I had a lot of trouble striking that balance with Blackwell Legacy, but I learned a LOT from the experience and Blackwell Unbound was much better as a result.

Me
Well that’s enough about you. Can we talk about the Shivah? What sparked off the idea of a Jewish adventure game? I like to think of it as an edu-tainment game because I learnt so much about Jewish culture from it. I’m afraid it’s my only experience of Jewish culture so I hope you got your facts straight!

Dave
Hah.  Me too!  It wasn't my intention to teach anything about judiasm, but rather tell a story about being jewish.  There are a number of things that inspired the idea, but the main "spark" was that I had just come back from spending a year abroad in Asia.  It was the first time in my life that I was very aware of my jewishness.  Growing up in the New York area, I was always surrounded by jewish people.  Suddenly, I was in a place where I was the only jew around.  Most of the locals never met a jewish person before, and some didn't even know what Judiasm was!  I'm not a religious person by any means, but there's a lot of tradition and history that goes with being jewish and I felt very cut off from it.  When I got back, I felt the need to tell a Jewish story.  The Shivah was the result.

Me
Well it was fresh I can tell you that much.

Dave
Thanks!  I enjoyed making it.

Me
When you made the decision to take the Shivah and charge money for it, did you lose a lot of your fanbase? Did you have to strike up a whole new following from scratch or did your loyal followers not mind shelling out $5 for the game? I’ll be honest, as an unemployed GAMERTEEN at the time I felt a little annoyed at you for making that move. But of course with hindsight it’s easy for me to look back and realize that a lot of time and effort goes into making your games, and time and effort is not free! Were your fans at the time as sympathetic to your cause?

Dave
Most people were very supportive!  Over the course of making Shivah, I realized that I enjoyed the process so much that I couldn't envision doing anything else.  The decision to update it and sell it as a testing ground for future products came very quickly after finishing the free version.  There was a vocal minority that was annoyed but they soon quieted down.

As for finding another fanbase, that wasn't difficult.  True, the freeware gamers wouldn't look at my stuff twice, but they wouldn't be paying for the game anyway.  I learned quickly that you are taken MUCH more seriously once you attach a pricetag to a product.  You get a lot more mainstream attention.  The game was written about in game magazines, major game websites, and picked up by a portal (Manifesto Games) who pushed the game even further. 

Me
So would you recommend that other Indie game developers charge for their games?

Dave
It's hard to say.  It's not a matter of slapping a pricetag on the game and waiting for the money to roll in.  There's a LOT of work involved in selling a game, more work than I was prepared for.  I released Blackwell Legacy over a year ago and I'm still pushing to get it noticed by reviewers and gaming portals.  It never ends.  )
Of course, my intention going into this was to earn a living doing it.  So my work methods might be different than most.

Me
I'm sure. I also assume you have to have great confidence in the quality of your work. But let's move on.

Now the Shivah is old news. It was hard for me not to bring up “Two of a Kind.” I’m sure you want to talk about your new games! But I have to be honest with you here. This is an honest interview and I don’t want to pretend I know what I’m talking about when I don’t. I am an incompetent interviewer and I haven’t played them. Blackwell Legacy, Unbound and the upcoming Convergence. Can I start off by asking, is the current Blackwell series a sequel to or a remake of your earlier game “Bestowers of Eterernity?”

Dave:
Neither a sequel or a remake.  More of a "let's pretend Bestowers of Eternity never existed!" 

Me
Hahaha Okay!

So what is the Blackwell series and how do you really go about creating it? Writing, Artwork, Music, Voice Acting. You are the creative director and what is the process in which the words on your screen become a game.

Dave:
Blackwell series is essentially a "supernatural mystery", starring a reluctant medium her equally reluctant spirit guide.  As for the creative process?  It varies.  I usually start with a pen and notebook in a cafe, jotting every idea that comes to mind.  When I feel I've nailed it, I compile it into a design document.  Then I get the artists working on the assets while I write the dialog and incorporate everything.  The actual process gets streamlined each time.  Although with this new Playfirst publishing deal, I've had to totally rearrange how I do things.  It's been a great learning experience.



Me
And how is work on Convergence coming along?

Dave:
Slower than I'd like. :(  I originally wanted the game done by now, but the new publishing deal is taking up a LOT of my attention.  Convergence is still being worked on, albeit slowly and when I have time to spare, and I hope to finish it by the end of the summer at least.

Me
Word around town is that you have broken the boundaries of independent gaming and are actually at the stage where you are living off the revenue from your games. I’m not going to ask about how much money you make or how you managed to do that, but was it a personal choice where you decided one day that you wanted to be a game developer and that is how you are going to live your life, or did the series of successful events just turn it out that way?



Dave:
Bit of both!  It was always my intention to try to make a living making these games.  I had some savings from renting out my apartment while I was in Asia, and figured I could live about six months on it if I was careful.  I wasn't doing this part time, it was my full time job.  Truth to tell, it was VERY tough for a long time.  I barely managed to squeak out enough revenue to pay my monthly expenses, and often I was late paying them, but I noticed things steadily improving.  Even still, it was touch-and-go for two years until things finally started to steamroll.  It was like I could breathe easily for the very first time!

Me
Modesty and Ego aside, how much success did you really think you would get all those years ago. Did you picture that now, in the future you would be here as “the guy who made it” in the impossible world of making a living doing what you love.

Dave:
Heh.  Heck no.  I figured I'd give it to the end of the first year and then I'd have to get a "real job."  I never envisioned being where I am now.

Me
That's Amazing.

Dave:
Heh.  I know!  I'm still amazed that I can do this.  It's like there was my life before I started selling games, and there was my life after.

Me
You recently signed some kind of contract with PlayFirst if I recall correctly. I’m a little hazy on the details being a lowly nobody of the internet but does this mean you are abandoning the adventure game format? Is the structure of your games and how you go about creating them going to change?

Dave:
No way!  Playfirst is a casual game portal, but they contacted me because they wanted an adventure game for their audience.  The game's interface will be a bit simple compared to the interfaces we grew up with, but aside from that it's an adventure game in the traditional meaning of the genre.
The only major change in terms of structure is that this game is MUCH longer than the games I've been currently able to make.  Plus I actually have a real budget, and a lot of resources at Playfirst to draw from

Me
So you're pioneering a new breed of "Casual-Adventure Game." Do you think this will bring a dead genre into a more modern day focus?

Dave:
It's hard to say.  When I was selling the second Blackwell game, I noticed that most of the returning customers fit the "casual demographic" pretty closely, so I started pushing to get the game on the casual portals.  As it turned out, I was right.  Blackwell was extremely popular with the casual audience, but Shivah barely got noticed by them.  Ironically, it was Shivah that got me noticed by Playfirst.  I wouldn't suggest that adventure game companies start marketing all their games to the casual audience, but it's a place that adventure games have been known to thrive.

Me
This is a long interview! It’s alright it’s nearly over.

So the audience that this article is aimed towards are aspiring indie game developers, all trying to climb the ladder of success with their art. If you can give them any one piece of advice what would it be?

Dave:
Just keep going.  You'll have a LOT of self-doubt along the way.  Even with all my so-called "success", I still have days of ice-cold panic where I'm convinced it's all going to come crashing down.  Just believe in your work, and keep going.  Also, try and get a support network.  There's only so much you can do while sitting behind your computer.  Get out there and meet people in the industry.  If there's a branch of the IGDA (Independent Game Developer Association) near you, join up and go to meetings.  It makes it more real and provides you a great well of advice to draw from.  It goes without saying that if it wasn't for the New York IGDA, I would never have had the courage to continue doing this.

Hey, that's two pieces of advice!  You owe me!

Me
You're right I do. That was pretty much the conclusion to our interview but since I now owe you and I've been asking you a lot of questions... Grilling you, some might say. Why don't you ask me a question, anything you like.

Dave:
What did you have for breakfast?

Me
Ghosts don't eat breakfast.

Thank you Dave! Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions and we look forward to seeing your new games in the future. Best of luck with them all. I of course have to play catch up with the last ones though.

Dave:
I've been interviewed by a ghost? Sweet!
No problem!  Thanks much.

If you enjoyed this interview and are interested in checking out Dave’s games you can get all the information you need over on the Wadjet Eye Games Website.

Thanks for reading.