Pinkerton Road to create games for third-person adventure vets as well as newcomers

Jane Jenson has said one of the reasons she was attracted to working in the casual market over the last few years, was due to her familiarity with the age and gender demographic.

Speaking in an interview with RPS, Jensen said over the years she worked with teams which would want to skip out on certain aspects of story design, something she felt was integral to the adventure genre.

With her new studio, Jensen said she would like to bring both the newcomers to the adventure genre into the fold, without alienating those who have been playing the genre for years.

"The reason I was attracted by [the casual] market in the first place is that the audience tends to be people like me – older women – and they’re much more interested in story," she said. "Having worked in this industry a long time, I’ve certainly found myself in positions where I was working on a project and the other people on it… usually guys… were like: 'Oh, well, there’s no point spending money on story, everyone’s going to click through, nobody cares about this…' and I was… 'well, you might not want to, but I know there are people out there who want to.'

"That’s something I really like about that audience, and I hope I’ve had some influence on the market and how it’s gone. I did a lot of hidden-object games, and every single time I’d try to put more adventure-play in it. First it was just hidden objects, and then we had inventory items, and then scenes between objects that were adventure game scenes, and character topics and every time, just wedge in a bit more of the adventure experience. I think right now there’s just so much hidden object gaming on the market and it’s all so much the same, a really good third-person adventure game that was cute and wonderful would be really great in that market."

Jensen said her new studio, Pinkerton Road, is focusing on bringing a new audience to third-person adventure games as well as existing fans of the genre with future titles as well as Moebius.

"It’s important for us to do that," she said. "The more units we can sell, the more designers we can hire and the more products we can put out, so it’s in the interests of the old-timers to welcome this new audience."