We reviewed Avadon, are hosting a giveaway of the game, showed you the gameplay. There was only one thing left to do at this point – interview the creator, Jeff Vogel.

Jeff is living the life many of us wish we could. His making games for a living and he does it for his own company. I mean, who of us did not think at some point in time, that if we only had the opportunity we could make the greatest game of all time with all the ideas in our heads.

Well the world is divided between those who do and don’t and guess which ones matter at the end of the day.

With the question being a rhetorical one let’s move on to our interview with Mr. Vogel and find out why Avadon will not be an MMO and more.

Interview

Jeff Vogel

RyJek: Hi, and thanks for taking some time for us. Let’s start off with – how did the story of you making games begin? When did SpiderWeb Software come into the picture?

Jeff Vogel: I’ve been obsessed with role-playing games of all sorts since I was in 4th grade. I spent much of my youth coding increasingly complex (but still all lame) RPGs in BASIC.
I wrote my first game for realz was in graduate school, studying applied mathematics, and I was slowly going insane. I decided to take a summer off and write an RPG on my new Mac, a game that turned out to be Exile: Escape From the Pit. I registered Spiderweb Software with the state, released the game as shareware and, oddly, people bought it. I quit grad school almost instantly.

RyJek: Are you able to work full time on the company alone, or is it more of a hobby and your day job is completely something else?

J.Vogel: Spiderweb Software has been my full-time gig for sixteen years. We have three employees, and, of course, we also employ a wide range of freelancers.

RyJek: What’s the most important thing in an RPG game?

J.Vogel: A satisfying feeling of progression. Role-laying games are about starting weak and gaining power. You have to gain power at a satisfying rate, not too slow, not too fast, and you have to feel that, in some way, you earned it.

RyJek: Would you like to lead a mainstream RPG game project one day, or is the “oldschool” genre where you feel more ‘at home’?

J.Vogel: Sometimes I dream about it. I would love to have a team and a budget. It would enable me to not cut the corners I have to working on low budget games.
And yet, I don’t think it’ll ever happen. There are already plenty of first rate designers out there. They don’t need me.

RyJek: Did you ever consider taking what you have and let’s say turning Avadon into an MMORPG?

J.Vogel: No. Doing multiplayer stuff is hugely time-consuming and demanding, and all it would do is distract us from what we’re really good at. I’m not ashamed of sriting single-player games. Single-player games are awesome, and there are lots of people who still love them.

RyJek: What is your best selling title and what number of copies are we roughly speaking of?

J.Vogel: At this point, it is Avadon: The Black Fortress. On Steam, on iPad, on our site, it’s been an enormous success for us. Far beyond anything I dreamed of when I was writing it.

RyJek: Your favorite RPG game?

J.Vogel: There have been a lot, but there’s something about Knights of the Old Republic that has stuck with me for a long time. At various points in my life, I have also revered Ultima IV, Ultima V, Everquest, Baldur’s Gate 2, Planescape: Torment, World of Warcraft, Dragon Age: Origins, and many others.

RyJek: What do you do in your free time?

J.Vogel: Keep my two small daughters from running out into the street or choking on Legos.

RyJek: Biggest success and failure in SpiderWeb Software?

J.Vogel: My biggest successes are Avadon: The Black Fortress now and, in the previous century, Exile 3: Ruined World. My biggest failure, in terms of sales, was a game called Blades of Avernum. It was cool and had an editor so anyone could make their own scenario, but it just never caught on.

RyJek: What can we expect in the future?

J.Vogel: Avadon will be a trilogy, and we are doing ground-up rewrites of our most beloved games: The Avernum Trilogy. The first of those, Avernum: Escape From the Pit, will be our for Windows/Mac/iPad in the next few months.

RyJek: Thanks for your time. If you want to have any closing words, here’s your chance.

J.Vogel: If you like a good role-playing game with tactical turn-based combat and a deep story, and you don’t mind graphics on the low budget side, come on over to our web site and try out a demo. We might make you very happy.