Women’s Murder Club: Death in Scarlet – An MSN Games exclusive interview!

James Patterson writes more books in a year than the average person reads. He’s sold more than 160 million copies worldwide – worth an estimated $2 billion - and notched up more Number One bestsellers than any other author in history. Prolific and very, very popular, Patterson has extended his reach into movies (“Kiss The Girls”, “Along Came A Spider”) and television (“Women’s Murder Club”) and has even inspired a class at Harvard Business School. And now he’s setting his sights on the world of casual games with the release of his first computer game, “Women’s Murder Club: Death In Scarlet”.

MSN Games caught up with the author during a busy work day at his home in Palm Beach, Florida, to chat with him about “Women’s Murder Club: Death in Scarlet.”

Many thanks for taking time to talk to us today. How’s your day going?
It’s been very hectic (laughs). I have the producers here and I just took them up to my office and they’re like ‘holy cow, you’ve got a lot of stuff on that burner.’ I’ve a lot going on, it’s fair to say. It’s fairly insane – I’m sitting here at my desk and there are like 16 projects in some form of shape. I manage to do a lot of things at the same time somehow.

So we’re here to ask you about “Women’s Murder Club: Death In Scarlet” project.  How did the move into video games come about?
We were interested in moving a couple of things we had into other mediums. We’re in the movie business, we’re in the TV business and we’re in the book business. Why not games? When I looked into it I found that gaming is this relatively tiny universe – there are so many computer screens out there and many people don’t play games because most games are not to their liking. And the producers promised they would put together something that would move the ball forwards in terms of combining different things into a casual game - embracing seek and find but also including elements of adventure games and puzzles. And it really does have a lot of cool elements for different people.

What does it have that other seek and find games don’t have? Does this take the genre to a new level?
In testing, the producers found that people really enjoy the story element of it which is a little more substantial than it is in most games of this kind. And players really do get involved in not just the individual pieces, like the seek and find, or the individual puzzles, but they really are caught up in the whole whodunit. And, from my point of view that’s great. There’s one huge difference than in the books, movies or on TV, because you solve the crime. You’re the one, it’s up to you. Although you’re playing as her character it’s not Lindsay Boxer who is cracking the case, it’s you.

And it’s an original story?
Yes – I thought that was important so players can’t have read the book beforehand and know who has committed the crime in advance. It’s not like an Agatha Christie where you could do that. Although I didn’t write the script for “Death In Scarlet” I was very involved with it. Producer Jane Jensen did most of  the work but we talked about it all the way though the process and discussed the elements of what makes the “Women’s Murder Club” books and TV series what they are, what drives the stories and what would be relevant to this project. I think that’s probably why this game has much more story in it than most games in this genre.

What was the inspiration for this particular tale?
I had the notion of doing something revolving around Chinese culture as it exists in San Francisco – it seemed pretty intriguing. It’s the kind of story that I would tell in one of my books. It’s got a lot of mystery, it keeps engaging and surprising you and that’s exactly what I try to do with my books.

How does creating a video game compare with writing a book?
It’s a whole different thing. There are so many technical parts to a game - it obviously takes a while to get the technical parts done and there’s nowhere near as much story in it as there would be in a book. The limitations are, obviously, that you can only put so much in. But I think players will still see that there’s a whole lot more story in this than in anything I’ve seen before in similar style games.

What have you done in “Death In Scarlet” to make the game engaging and involving for players?
There are several CSI elements throughout the story – you go back and forth to the lab, depending on who has been murdered (laughs). And there are blood samples, saliva samples and fingerprints to analyze. The items you search for are relevant to the case and there’s no sloppy storytelling which you do get in some games. I think a lot of passion went into this and a lot of hard work. I’m very pleased.

What made you choose “Women’s Murder Club” over some of your other properties?
It just seemed the most likely candidate. There are the books and the TV show and this will enable fans to get more deeply involved in the stories.  It seemed like a good match for where this ‘seek and find’ category is at right now – men enjoy it but it’s very big with women. I do think “Women’s Murder Club: Death In Scarlet” will be a popular game with women. And not just my readers!

What do you think your readers will make of it? Do you hope it will bring you new fans?
I think a lot of the fans of the books and the TV show will love it and the ones that aren’t oriented to playing games just won’t get involved. To play this you have to be the kind of person who gets a kick out of solving puzzles. I think puzzle solvers will love it.

 (Interview continues on next page…)

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