Her Iteractive's Letter To The Fans

Here is Her Interactive's Letter To The Fans, or you can read it and all the others here.

JANUARY LETTER FROM HER INTERACTIVE

Dear Nancy Drew Fans,
As the New Year starts, we wanted to take a moment to thank you for being such great fans and loyal supporters of our Nancy Drew community.  We value your enthusiasm and comments, so we feel it’s important to keep you “clued in!”
In 2014, we had a busy year with two all-new PC/Mac mystery adventure games plus our expansion into mobile with the tablet version of Nancy Drew: Ghost of Thornton Hall. We were thrilled to hear that many of you liked the experience on mobile and are hoping to see more games available for “on the go” Nancy Drew fans. We believe there’s a great future for adding a mobile Nancy Drew experience because the devices offer so many fun ways for players to further engage with Her Interactive games. We are currently working on developing the best game experiences possible for you. Although we will not be moving forward with Nancy Drew: The Silent Spy for tablets, please keep looking for news and updates as we continue our development work on this exciting platform.
We have a lot in store for 2015. At the top of the list, we are very excited about the upcoming release of Nancy Drew: Sea of Darkness this spring.  Set in Iceland, it will truly be an epic game that we know you’ll love. After Nancy Drew: Sea of Darkness, we will have a new voice for our famous amateur detective. We didn’t take this decision lightly, and we’re hard at work on the casting process. Recasting an iconic character like Nancy is no small task, and we promise to bring you a voice we feel is equally as true to Nancy’s spirit and personality.
We hope you will grow to have the same emotional connection you have enjoyed with the previous Nancy Drew voice and all the other supporting characters. The feedback we have received from the community about the talented Lani Minella has been very heartwarming.  We know that for some fans, change is hard, but trust that our goal remains to continue the legacy of developing award-winning games for many years to come.  It bears repeating that Lani will always be part of the Her Interactive family.
In closing, thank you for being part of the Her Interactive family. It means the world to all of us to be the constant recipient of your insightful feedback and your wonderful enthusiasm for our games!
Cheers,
Team Her Interactive

- Samantha Quick

The Sea of Darkness

Nancy Drew #32, The Sea Of Darkness, I think will be a scary game. We have had 3 games since the last scary game, The Ghost of Thornton Hall, and by the looks of it, it will be a scary game! It takes place in Iceland, and we know that there is a phantom/ghost ship, and the color scheme so far is dark blues, blacks, greys etc. A.K.A Dark. I can't wait! Here is the teaser.
I really can't wait for this one, it looks like so much fun!

  On another note, I might go to the Her Interactive offices this spring!!!!!!
AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! I am beyond happy, because since I found out about the games, I have wanted to go. AND I COULD MEET LITTLE JACKALOPE!!!

Also, Her has been re-tweeting me very often. multiple ties this week, and I even got a reply!
Me: Will you guys be writting a game guide for Treasure in the Royal Tower?
Her: We are on it!

............ Yay! So look out for that!

   I am going to try to keep up with the book reviews, but I can't make any promises. I really want to, but I have been busy and I have been reading other books too, trying to branch out. I'm also trying to play more of the games, so I am playing LIE with my little sister, SPY with my mom, MHM with my other sister and SHAW by myself.

Enjoy The Sea of Darkness! It comes out this spring!!

- Samantha Quick

New Year!!!

Hello! I'm so sorry I haven't been able to post. I have been very busy, Which Her Interactive has been busy. As some of you may know, Her is replacing the longtime voice actress Lani Minella as Nancy Drew. Here is what she has to say about some things on the Her Interactive message boards.

"Yes very good point. This is what I was trying to articulate earlier but didn't do so quite as effectively. The main reason I'm uneased with Lani's immediate taking to social media is because look at all of the backlash and speculation that it has caused. We are hearing one hurt person's side. I was specifically thinking of the "new things" tweet. Everyone has been up in arms over this the last several weeks and it could very well be nothing of great significance. I'm not trying to imply that she said anything outright negative either. I just don't personally think it's appropriate for someone who no longer works for a company to speak out about their termination -- amicable or otherwise. Just my opinion. Doesn't seem very professional to me. "

 

   "First let me say I'm being asked to change my user name but before I do, I want to respond to some common threads regarding me etc. The term "new direction" as to why I should be replaced, didn't entirely make sense to me. But I was amicable and understanding and hugged the people telling me, saying "I know it was not your fault and thanks for many years of great work."

When Nancy's voice sounded older, it was because I was told to sound that way. I'm can sound any age and maintain that character. I think perhaps they knew the audience age range had matured. We also tried to give her a little bit more attitude sometimes when confronting a suspect we knew might be the bad guy. Mixed reactions were the result of those attempts. Can't please everybody all the time, right? This brings me to the second point.

Secondly: When we tried to make Nancy sound more cool, modern, or sarcastic, we were stopped in our tracks. Told it wasn't true to her persona. I could not even say "Gonna" instead of "going to." She could not believe in anything supernatural, could not pronounce foreign words very well etc. I had to go along with the acceptable persona....always nice, straight-laced, a bit clueless on how to pronounce things, and no slang. The writer and I both hoped many of the adlibs and fun recorded moments would remain in the game, but they would get nixed before release.

Thirdly, I was asked to remain until they found their new Nancy voice and they wanted to write me in as some recurring character, like a mentor to Nancy. I felt that fans might not resonate well with this, and I asked permission to thank the fans (for my closure and to allow Her to be able to do an open search without disguising what voice they were looking for) I waited for permission, and Her approved what I was posting before I posted it. The first post I made on FB where I did not have a lot of ND fans. I did this Halloween afternoon so as few people as possible would notice. I could not sleep and needed closure PLUS I wanted to let fans know how much I appreciated them and that I did not walk out on them or make anyone at HER upset with me

Lastly, It was never anything about a money issue, a talent issue, my not being available issue.....none of these. I can't totally fathom the logic behind this change, but I want to give both the fans and HER the respect they deserve. So please stop calling HER and me rude and unprofessional. I did not want them to do a tribute to me as it would be like an obituary. I am humble, and just wanted peace and closure without a lot of ceremony. I hope you all can respect that, and know I wish everyone all the best.

I am so grateful and frankly, very surprised at how many fans Nancy Drew has, and it's not just me, it's the games of course. The creative team at HER has been very supportive and gone through quite a bit. I wish them continued success and hope this post answers some questions and calms some nerves.
Thank you again for everything"

It will be sad that Lani is leaving, but I think it's sufficiently explained here.

Her also has a new photo in the merch store for just about every occasion! It says
It's a Nancy Drew thing, you wouldn't understand

- Samantha Quick