Gray matter anyone

The news came from an official press release from DTP/Anaconda. I´ve visited their page some seconds ago and one day after the german press release was published, they did an English transcription of it. I´ll post it right here, but I´ll also give you the source site : http://www.anaconda-games.com/forum/vie ... php?t=8141
The thing is 100 procent official ( straight from DTP) so it is definately the truth.
By the way they haven´t really been working on it for five years. In 03 Jane wanted to do the game with a northamerican company but they let her down, so GM never got anywhere.
In late summer 06 european marketleader for adventuregames DTP/Anaconda signed Jane Jensen and wanted her to finally create Gray Matter.
But here is the transcription:

Today Hamburg-based publisher dtp announces decisive news about the up and coming Jane Jensen adventure Gray Matter:

As of now, French development studio Wizarbox will take responsibility for the technical implementation of the game.

“We decided that from now on Gray Matter should be produced by a developer with experience in adventure games. In addition, our cooperation with Wizarbox has been fruitful and effective. We highly appreciate the studio’s professionalism. We decided to switch studios to make sure that the game will be finished in the highest possible quality. It was not an easy decision to make and we invested a lot of time, work, and money to implement it”, explains Marcus Windelen, COO of dtp entertainment AG.

“Gaining Jane Jensen’s consent for the switch-over was also very important to us”, Windelen explains further.

Achim Heidelauf, Senior Producer with dtp entertainment AG assures, “The switch to a new development team will not affect the Gray Matter project. Size and quality will stay the same, as will the look of the game. All assets and elements produced so far will continue to be used, so that the gamers out there won’t notice a difference.”

“I visited Wizarbox in their office near Paris and they are a very solid, experienced developer. I know they will bring a lot to Gray Matter and I’m looking forward to seeing the project completed in their hands. It’s going to be a great game”, comments Jane Jensen.

Jane Jensen is back: Gray Matter will be the first adventure by the famous genre author since the release of Gabriel Knight 3. Staying true to the Jensen-style, the story interweaves gruesome incidences and supernatural events.

Neuro-biologist Dr. David Styles is one of the main characters in the game: Ever since losing his wife in a terrible car accident many years ago, he has become a recluse, leaving his English mansion Dread Hill House only on rare occasions.

One day student and street artist Samantha Everett shows up on his door step unexpectedly, at a time Styles just happens to look for a new assistant. Sam gets the job. Coming from America, she has been travelling most of Europe for the last few years, so she can really use the money. Her first assignment involves finding six volunteers for an experiment planned by Styles at Oxford University.

The experiment begins harmless enough, but soon strange things start happening. Styles is visited by his beloved, but deceased wife. Now it is up to Sam to solve the mysteries of Dread Hill House.

In Gray Matter, the player takes control of Dr. David Styles as well as Samantha Everett as they are trying to unveil the secrets and find the truth.

dtp will release Gray Matter worldwide in 2009.

I wasn't questioning you being truthful, I was just saying that I couldn't find it and wanted to know where you got it... It's all good...

Seeing that this game has gone through so many "Delays" I'm not so sure they deserve my money for it... 5 years is just too much, they should never have advertised it...

I'm getting this pissed and I've only known about it for a couple of weeks... lol I feel for the people who got all Hyped up in May of 2003... If they were in the US, I would consider hitting them with a Class Action Lawsuit, make them sell the game for half price or something...

This is just uncalled for, seriously...

Bafitis wrote:I wasn't questioning you being truthful, I was just saying that I couldn't find it and wanted to know where you got it... It's all good...

.

I didn´t take it that way anyway
I just wanted to point out that it´s not a rumor or something.

But still you can only count the time from late 06 until now.
As far as I know the work on the actual game itself didn´t even start prior to that ( Of course Jane had the story, characters etc. in 2003. But she got backstabbed before things really got started.
So when the game will be released in 09 they will have worked on it for three years, so that´s still kind of accurate.
And the game WILL be worth the money, Jane really demands a lot of herself and aswell of the other people involved ( You´ll understand what I mean when you play the Gabriel Knight games ), and it seems that team Tonuzaba was not able to compete on that level, so in the end it was probably a quality decision. On the other hand this leaves the question why DTP made a comepletely unknown team do the work for Jane instead of giving Jane an experienced team right from the beginning.

GameSpot wrote: Gabriel Knight's Jane Jensen Working on New Game
The acclaimed adventure game designer has signed a publishing deal with The Adventure Company to produce a game for 2004.
By Greg Kasavin, GameSpot
Posted May 13, 2003 9:04 am PT

Today The Adventure Company announced that it has formed an agreement with legendary adventure game designer Jane Jensen and the company she cofounded, Odyssey Digital Entertainment, to produce a new game. "I'm truly delighted to be working with Jane--we're all massive fans here,' said Adventure Company CEO Richard Wah Kan. "She brings an amazing level of intensity to adventure games." Jensen is best known for her suspenseful Gabriel Knight series of games, which have earned widespread acclaim for their engaging storylines and inventive puzzles. It's been some years since Jensen worked on games, though she has evidently been busy working as a novelist, and recently released a novel called Dante's Equation. Fans of adventure games will no doubt be pleased to hear she is back in the business, however.

Jensen is reportedly still in the design stages for her game for The Adventure Company, which is tentatively being called "Project Jane-J." It will be a third-person-perspective adventure game, a mystery in the vein of Gabriel Knight, again involving the paranormal. The gameplay will require players to investigate and make discoveries on their own, but also be prepared to solve puzzles using logic. The Adventure Company also says the game will feature "some arcade-style sequences." The main character will be a young female student exploring the mysteries of telepathy and other supernatural phenomena. The Adventure Company likens this character's having to use forensic science to solve mysteries to an episode of the hit show CSI, but notes that "the game and storyline will be based on real neurobiology and psi research."

Jensen's next game is slated for release in the fourth quarter of 2004, so it's a ways off. The designer will be in attendance at the Electronic Entertainment Expo this week, and we'll try to catch up with her to bring you more details on what she's working on.

Well that's what was posted back in 2003... According to the other parts of the ongoing article, she doesn't get Back-Stabbed, just doesn't get funding, kind of the same as AC and CJ...
Either way the announcements of the game being worked on should never have been made until the game was practically completed... I'm not trying to tear down just this game, I feel it should be that way for all games and all companies, no matter the product in question... Too many things can go wrong in today's world, that you can't/shouldn't promise something that isn't finished...

To me that´s a form of backstabbing. A good publisher should be aware if they can fund a game, before signing someone like Jensen and announcing a game and then telling that person,
oh hey actually we don´t have the money to make you and a team start working on it.
But there are some main differences between 2003 and now.
Like I said back then (as far as I know) the work on the actual game never really started, but this time they really started to develop the game ( As you can see on the screenshots) so that´s a big difference. And the people who finance the game are still the same, so it´s better the developing team is gone than the publisher
And it´s a secure thing, DTP publishes a lot of adventure games in Germany each year and when they announce something they don´t cancel it. ( They couldn´t allow themselves that after making it to the top, their reputation would be pretty damaged and a lot of the respect they earned in Europe would be gone), beside that they´ve got the money for it.
So thats what makes me feel good about it, even though its delayed at least it will be released for sure. This whole team exchange costs DTP a LOT of money and it shows that they are really willing to do everything to make Gray matter the best possible game. But still it just sucks- I´m not the only one that is waiting for a new Jensen game since 1999(!) and its just annoying to wait for one more year now, even though I know it´ll be worth it when it´s released.

But concerning the early pronounciations for games the early trailers etc. : I agree that it can be very frustrating and annoying ( especially since most games get delayed, some for years), but on the other hand thats the way the machinery works.
A lot of people want to have infos asap and are craving for every available news and adventuresites ( or generally game sites) like our site or PC Magazines have the job to write previews and to inform about upcoming games whenever there´s news about them, not to mention the publishers who want to spread the word asasp ( since everything else wouldn´t be good when it comes to commercial success). So that´s never gonna change even though I can absolutely understand your point.

According to what I read, it took her longer than expected to get through the first phases and when research came back with the numbers, Adventure Games had taken a dive that it wasn't ethnically reasonable to put that size amount into the budget to continue the game... In her interviews she didn't seem offended by the game being put on hold...


But for now, we'll just have to let the companies say, "That's Right Kiss Our Ass and We'll Give You Our Products When We're Ready"...