Jane Jensen

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This article is about the writer and game designer. For the musician, see Jane Jensen (musician).
Jane Jensen
Born Jane Elizabeth Smith
(1963-01-28) January 28, 1963 (age 61)
Palmerton, Pennsylvania
Residence Lancaster County, Pennsylvania[1]
Nationality American
Occupation Video game designer, video game writer, video game director, novelist
Known for Gabriel Knight series
Spouse(s) Robert Holmes[2]

Jane Jensen (born January 28, 1963 in Palmerton, Pennsylvania) is an American video game designer most known of the popular and critically acclaimed Gabriel Knight series of adventure games and an author of novels. She has co-founded Oberon Media and Pinkerton Road video game development companies and also writes romance under the name Eli Easton.

Early life

Jane Jensen was born Jane Elizabeth Smith, the youngest of seven children. She received a BA in computer science from Anderson University in Indiana and worked as a systems programmer for Hewlett-Packard.[3]

Career

Her love of both computers and creative writing eventually led her to the computer gaming industry and Sierra OnLine where she worked as a writer on Police Quest III: The Kindred and EcoQuest: The Search for Cetus.[3] After co-designing King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow with veteran game designer Roberta Williams, Jensen designed her first solo game: Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, which was released in 1993. The dark, supernatural mystery was a departure for Sierra but the game was enthusiastically received, with the strength of Jensen's writing, along with the game's horror and gothic sensibilities coming in for particular praise from the gaming press[4] and earning the Computer Gaming World's "Adventure Game of the Year" award.[5]

Jensen followed up Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers with two sequels: The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery in 1995 and Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned in 1999. Somewhat unusually for an adventure game series, each Gabriel Knight title was produced in an entirely different format to the others. Whereas the original was a traditional 2D animated game, the sequels were realised through full motion video and a custom built 3D engine, respectively. Despite further acclaim for Jensen's design in both cases (The Beast Within too was Computer Gaming World's "Game of the Year"[5]), the large expenses associated with making the sequels, coupled with the declining marketability of adventure games (especially within Sierra) meant that a fourth in the series was not commissioned.[6]

In 1996, Jensen published a novelization of the first Gabriel Knight game. A second Gabriel Knight novelization followed in 1998. In 1999, Jensen published her first non-adapted novel, Millennium Rising (later retitled Judgment Day). Her fourth book, Dante's Equation was published in 2003 and was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award.

Jensen has been involved in designing casual online games at Oberon Media, of which she is a co-founder.[7] Her work in the hidden object/light adventure category can partially be credited with moving casual games in the direction of full adventure games in puzzle and story sophistication. Some of her more notable recent games include Deadtime Stories (2009) and Dying for Daylight (2010). After leaving Oberon in 2011, she briefly worked at Zynga.

Jensen's next big adventure game Gray Matter was developed by Wizarbox and published by dtp entertainment in 2010.[8] The game, originally intended to be developed by Hungarian software house Tonuzaba, switched to another developer, French company Wizarbox in 2008: as a result, the tentative release was changed and shifted to 2010.

Jane Jensen owns a farm in Pennsylvania where she lives with her husband, composer Robert Holmes, who composed the music for the Gabriel Knight series and Gray Matter.[9] On April 5, 2012, the couple announced the formation of Pinkerton Road, a new game development studio to be headquartered on their Lancaster, Pennsylvania farm.[10] With this announcement, a Kickstarter campaign was launched to raise funds for the studio's first year of game development.[11] In 2014, Pinkerton released their first games, Moebius: Empire Rising and Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition.

Jensen was also a story consultant on Phoenix Online Studios' adventure game Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller.[12] Since 2013, Jensen has written gay romance fiction under the pen name "Eli Easton".[13]

Works

Games

Novels

As Eli Easton

  • "A Kiss in the Dark" (2013) (a novella part of Closet Capers anthology)
  • Before I Wake (2013)[14]
  • The Lion and the Crow (2013)[15]
  • Superhero (2013)
  • The Trouble with Tony (2013)
  • Puzzle Me This (2013)
  • "Caress" (2013) (a novella part of Steamed Up anthology)
  • Blame it on the Mistletoe (2013)
  • A Prairie Dog’s Love Song (2013)
  • The Enlightenment of Daniel (2013)
  • "Reparation" (2014) (a novella part of Stitch anthology)
  • Heaven Can't Wait (2014)
  • The Mating of Michael (2014)
  • "The Bird" (2014) (a novella part of Bones anthology)
  • Unwrapping Hank (2014)

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Gabriel Knight 1 reviews from JaneJensen.com.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Jane Jensen developer bio at MobyGames.
  6. ↑ Jane Jensen interview from Gamasutra.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Internet Archive Wayback Machine
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

Interviews

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