Hi Jeff. Thanks for agreeing to the e-mail interview. If you could start off by telling us a little about yourself and what you do (to orient the reader), that'd be great. I am the president of Spiderweb Software, Inc., a small, Seattle-based company which has been selling shareware fantasy games for, oh, around 5 years now. We have 2 full-time employess and an ever increasing cloud of part-timers and freelances. We wrote the award-winning Exile series and Nethergate, and demos and such can be found at http://www.spidweb.com. Now for the questions: 1. I believe your college degree was in Mathematics. What made you get into authoring shareware CRPGS? I was in grad school, studying applied mathematics. Alas, this is a pretty miserable endeavor. As is, of course, grad school in general. After passing my qualifying exams, I decided to take a summer off. We'd just gotten a nice, spiffy new PowerMac (6100, the very first type), and I'd always wanted to write a fantasy role-playing crpg. So I did it. Then it started to sell well, and I started to hate grad school more and more. So i quit, took my masters, and started to write games full-time. 2. The Macintosh versions of your software always seem to be released first. Are you primarily an Apple fan, or is that done for technical reasons? I have found that this just works out better for me. I'm more familar with macOS, and all of my best development tools are on the Mac. Plus, it's the way I started to do things, so it's what I'm used to. I am a Macintosh fan. It is what I'm more used to, and I tend to work more efficiently on them, but I thing Win95 and 98 are pretty neat too. There are some things about how Win95 works that I really like. 3. With the success of your shareware series, have you ever thought about joining one of the many commercial development firms? If not, what keeps you doing shareware? I make more money writing shareware. Plus, i get to work in my basement. But I'm starting to think about trying to get freelance deisng work on fantasy and adventure games. I'm easy to work with, and I am pretty good and putting the things together. So if you're reading this, and you're looking for a design person, drop me a line. 4. Your first set of games were graphically similar, utilizing a "top-down" viewpoint. With your most recent game, you've switched to a more "isometric" view. Why the switch? Because the old way started to look really bad to me. It was nice, oh, say, a decade ago, but I am not immune to the neat to make things nicer and flashier. In general, I try to make the nicest, fanciest games my budget and technical skills allow, and, at this point, Nethergate is it. 5. You've just been assimilated by the Borg collective. Your first duty as a Borg drone is to assimilate unpopular Star Trek characters. Who goes first: Wesley Crusher, or the entire crew from Voyager? Neither. The first to go is Vic Fontaine. This is a no-brainer. Then they find the holodeck programmer who created Vic Fontaine, and kill him too. Then they go back in time and kill the grandparents of whoever invented the holodeck, so that no other Vic Fontain-type "characters" are ever created again. 6. You seem to be active in several newsgroups. Do fan suggestions mold the development of your games, or do you find yourself creating games based on a vision from within? The latter. My presence on the newsgroups is primarily for tech support and marketing purposes. I think a shareware developer should be present on as many discussion groups as he/she has time for. 7. Software piracy is always an unfortunate part of the computer game industry. What would you like to say to all the folks out there who think that software piracy is a victimless crime? We're just two people working hard to create neat games and sell them. We aren't a huge corporation. We sell these things to buy food and make house payments. If you met us, you'd like us. Why do you do things to harm us? But, over the years, I've gotten really blase about piracy. I used to get irritated, but now I've just been beaten down. I mutely accept it as an unpleasant part of life. And try not to make my games too easy to hack. 8. Tell us about your most recent creation, Nethergate. What features set it apart from the last game you distributed? (Note: if you give me screen shots, I will have them posted). Some nice shots are at http://www.spidweb.com/nethergate. It's our newest game, and I'm really proud of it. It takes place in ancient England, and is the story of a huge, vicious battle between the savage Celtic tribesman and their conquerors, the all-powerful Roman Empire. You can play both sides of the storyline, first as the good guys and then the bad guys, and see everything from both sides. It's really neat. For one side, a location might be a town where people help you out, but, to the other side, that same town is an extremely dangerous place you can go to to fight. Plus, the graphics are great and it's a lot of fun. 9. Blades of Exile is basically a game engine that allows players to create their own scenarios and distribute them to other registered users on the internet. How popular has Blades been for you, and are you considering doing a "Blades 2"? It's done really well. We got a lot of neat scenarios, and sales have been strong. However, we aren't considering doing a Blades 2. Doing a scenario design engine was really stressful and difficult, and, while it was an interesting exercise, I fear trying it again. 10. It seems that you have a passion for spiders - from the talking ones found in Exile, to the real pet tarantula you have at your house. Where did this fascination begin? Can you tell us a bit about your pet tarantula? When did it begin? I honestly have no idea. But I fail to see how anyone could look at an intricate, freshly-made spiderweb and not be left in awe by the elegance of it. I've had my pet tarantula, Spider, for about 6 years now. Since she's still alive, she's probably a female. They live a long time. They're also extremely delicate. Most people don't know thta, but tarantulas are amazingly fragile creatures. 11. Self publishing can be tough, but I see that Spiderweb Software offers distribution services for other shareware authors. Tell us a little about that service (what it costs, how it works, etc). We charge a fee per registration, which is negotiable depending on the product, and, in return, we take care of everything. We host it on our web site. We take orders, and handle tech support, and answer the phones, and help find graphics and sounds if need be, and do PR, and make up and send press releases, and place it in shareware libraries, and press your CDs if need be, and do the billion little things involved with running a successful shareware business. Then, promptly at the end of any month, we send you your money. So, if you have a neat game and want someone who actually cares about it to be answering the phones, that address is: spidweb@spidweb.com. We handle both Mac and Windows. 12. We've been told that one of the hardest parts of shareware game development is getting all the graphics together. How have you managed this for Nethergate? Do you have an artist, or have you drawn everything yourself? I have freelance artists. In Nethergate, I had six of them. I give them instructions and money, and they give me art. 13. Most games are inspired by earlier works by other authors. What game (or book) inspired you to write the Exile series? There's a classic short story by Robert Silverberg called, oh, my memory is failing me, Hawksbill Station. It demands to be read. As for Nethergate, it probably wouldn't have been written if I'd never seen I, Claudius. 14. What spurred you to base Nethergate in Roman controlled Britain as opposed to some other country or time period? It's an ancient period, but we knowa fair amount about it. The Romans were fascinating. The Britannians were fascinating. And they were fighting a lot. It fit really well, and they had my interest, so it was a pretty natural choice. 15. You find yourself trapped for eternity inside your favorite computer game. Which one is it and why? Deer Hunter II. That way, I can be sure of having something to eat. 16. You state on your web page that you tend to do most of your development at night. Can you describe you development environment for us (what kind of PC are you developing on, OS, programming language, etc)? I write my Mac games on a PowerMac 7200/120, using CodeWarrior. I then do the Windows version on a 300MhZ HP, again using CodeWarrior. I love CodeWarrior. 17. We've found that many shareware game authors are also fans of traditional pen and paper RPGs. Do you have a favorite among the commercially available rule sets (AD&D, GURPS, etc)? Oooh. Tough one. I've run much, much AD&D in my lifetime. I use a heavily tinkered with 2nd edition. However, over the years, the AD&D system has started to chafe me a bit. On the other hand, I'm not familiar with any of the alternatives. But if I had to pick a tabletop RPG which has provided me with the most fun per hour spent, the answer is Paranoia. No question. 18. Are there any characters in your games that you consider to be your "alter-ego"? If so, which ones? After giving it some thought, I would have to say no. However, the characters that I felt the most for out of all my games are the three crones in Nethergate. I find their plight and eventual fate to be extremely poignant, and I'm really pleased with how they turned out. 19. Lastly, what's in store for us beyond Nethergate? Our next game will be called Avernum. It will be a modern retelling of Exile, using the Nethergate engine and piles more quests, locations, and special stuff. The truth is, Exile is a really neat game, but hardly anyone buys it anymore. I'm going to turn it into something really great. - Jeff Vogel Spiderweb Software, Inc. http://www.spidweb.com