WADJET EYE GAMES

How Dave Gilbert found his niche, and turned a passion for point-and-click into a career

- LEWIS PACKWOOD

Over the past decade and a half, Wadjet Eye has carved out a cosy niche as a purveyor of point-and-click adventures, including the five-game Blackwell series and the supernatural-themed Unavowed. It’s a relatively tiny market, but one filled with dedicated fans, and founder Dave Gilbert has kept the company going by deliberately keeping it small. Indeed, for much of the studio’s early history, he was the sole full-time employee.

“For a couple of years, I had a full-time designer on staff, and that was a little stressful,” he explains. “Not because of him – he’s great – but having to earn enough to pay another fulltime salary to someone was very stressful. The more people I pay, the more I have to make sure the games earn. And I think that has also been a major key to how we’ve lasted so long: our overhead is very low. We keep our expenses very small.” That includes working from his home in New York, or in cafés, an arrangement that Gilbert says he prefers: “Sometimes, once in a while, I rent an office. And then, three months later, I’m sick of it.”