Jeff Vogel Interview
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reason: The Avernum series doesn't have simple cookie-cutter outcomes. The adventures carry ethical overtones, both positive and negative, no matter what options you select. Is there something about that ambiguity that appeals to you?
Vogel: Yes. I'm fascinated by politics, and I'm fascinated by the process of how things get done how ugly and compromised pretty much any dream can become. I have very little patience, in general, with ideas of some people being absolutely good or absolutely bad, or some race of creature being absolutely good or absolutely bad. In The Lord of the Rings, there are these things, and they're called (orcs,) and they're all bad, and they're all evil, and their only purpose is to be killed. I find that to be extremely boring. Whenever I watch The Lord of the Rings, I find myself wondering, (So what are orcs like? Why are they like that?)
Obviously, there are some cases in real life where people are doing things that are all wrong, like the Nazis, or the genocide in Darfur. But most of the time, once you get under the surface, there are a lot of contests between people where either side isn't absolutely right or absolutely wrong, and I find that a lot more interesting.
So in the Avernum and Geneforge games, I like to give the players choices. No cut-and-dried solutions, but instead situations where they have to go, (What do I want to do here? What side, what faction, do I think really has more of a point?) If I get to the point where the player has to actually stop and think about it, then I think I've made an interesting game.
The games that are far more political, and far more philosophical, are the Geneforge games. There really is no good guy or no bad guy there; pretty much every powerful person has a faction you can join and fight for, and some of those factions are pretty ethically hairy. In Geneforge 5, the game I'm working on now, you can join probably the most morally appalling side that I've ever created; I mean, I almost feel awful about writing it. But it's really important to me to do that, because most people are going to pick the good guy side and I really want to create an awareness in the player of how bad things could possibly get. I like giving the player a horrible choice, not because I think they will take it but because I think you gain a lot from the awareness that that was a choice.
Those are the games where the people on the online forums argue for jillions of posts: (No, I think that this faction is correct,) (No, I think that this faction is correct.) That is the most satisfying thing to me, when I've created something where people can come out of it and go, (Yeah, he totally wanted me to join that side,) but they all think a different side is the one I wanted them to join. I love that.
