How large is you team and in how many areas of the game development are you involved personally? It seems a huge amount of work - writing the game concept with all the details, doing the graphics the programming, the sounds, scripts and so on…in my mind it would take a huge team - So how big are you and how long have you been working on your latest game Avadon the Black Fortress?

J.V: Spiderweb has three full-time employees and a handful of freelancers. Art is done by others. I do design and coding. Avadon took about fifteen months of hard work. Fortunately, I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’ve become very efficient.

I understand you got the idea for the plot from an opera you saw (blue beard) obviously the idea mutated from the original story to become you game or base for your game - could you elaborate on your process here? (do you write/brainstorm/teamwork/ just let it be until it happens alone)

J.V: It took years. Once I had the basic idea, I worried at it in my head for a long time, rounding it out, adapting it to work as I game, and putting in the neat ideas that slowly came to me.

The theme in Avadon is Power and how you can use (or misuse it), and as you stated - that could potentially lead to a game with a very dark mood. You prefer a humorous game - How do you accomplish that without compromising the theme and not making a farce out of it? Power after all, is quite a serious thing.

J.V: It is possible to mix serious issues and humor. Fantasy RPGs lend themselves very well to this. It’s a big world with tons of characters and writing. I can put in a lot of variety in mood.
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