Aaron Conners and Chris Jones

Interview from Yug - Sunday, 10 May 2009 @ 11:02am

Aaron Conners and Chris Jones are responsible for one of my favourite video game characters of all time - Tex Murphy. Sure, the last game starring Tex game 'Overseer' was released over 10 years ago, but the fact that there is still such a strong online following proves how much of an impact the character and the games had.

Recently Aaron and Chris have started collaborating together again through their new company Big Finish Games, and their first title - Three Cards to Midnight - was launched online this week. I managed to get an interview with both Aaron and Chris to ask about their new Three Cards game, the direction they're heading in now, and a look back at the Tex Murphy games.

Yug: It might be a bit of a cliché opener, but I should start by saying I’m a huge fan of the Tex Murphy series of adventure games. Do you still get gushing emails of a similar nature?

Aaron: Not often enough...it can never be enough...

Chris: Actually, yes, there are a lot of fans out there and, interestingly, some of them seem to be quite young, 12-20 years old. I know they didn’t play the games the first time around, so their parents must be indoctrinating them or something.

Yug: Do you look back fondly at the experience of making the Tex Murphy games?

Chris: Absolutely. It was exciting being able to create the technology and help shape the genre. We enjoyed getting to drive it. It was an incredibly energetic period. And it was much less corporate, more personal.

Aaron: Those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end...

Chris Jones as Tex Murphy

Yug: Perhaps another obvious question is what have you both been up to between now and Overseer – it’s been a long time between drinks.

Aaron: Whew! Long story. Without all the boring details: when Microsoft bought Access Software, traditional adventure games were quickly going extinct. We tried to get a new Tex Murphy game made, but to no avail. After working together on a few interesting MS projects (that never got released), Chris left to run a golf software company, while I switched to another job at Microsoft. After a few years I was hired to be Story Director on Amped 3, for 2K Sports, and then became a Creative Director at Ubisoft. Last year, Chris and I decided to take another shot at creating our own game, essentially on our own dime.

For more details, see the About section on our website: http://www.bigfinishgames.com/about.php

Yug: Have you always wanted to continue working together on future projects outside of the Tex Murphy universe?

Chris: Well, yeah. It’s fun to work with someone who you’re on the same wavelength with, but who offers a totally different set of skills. It’s hard to find that kind of “different, but similar” relationship, and when you find it, you want to keep it together.

Aaron: We like working together.

Yug: The Tex Murphy Radio Theatre was an effective way to continue the cliffhanger from Overseer, do you have any immediate plans to continue the series via other mediums? (I recall hearing about flash ‘webisodes’ awhile back)?

Chris: We created our new game in part as a trial balloon to see if we could make new games. We’ve been wanting to do a new Tex game since 1998 and that’s always been one of our big motivations. People have a fondness for the series and, as I mentioned, there are younger people interested in Tex. So it’s hard to tell how big the audience, but we’d like to look into it.

Aaron: I think we HAVE TO finish up Tex’s story. We know exactly where he’s headed and I think there a bunch of people who’d like to come along for the ride. If that means we do it in a really simple, scaled-down way, I think that’s what we’ll do. Hopefully, though, we’ll be able to bring back Tex with all the bells and whistles.

Yug: You’ve started a new development company – Big Finish Games. What type of games are you looking to create?

Aaron: “Story Games” is how we describe them. Gameplay is great, but the stories are always at the heart of any game we make. And it doesn’t matter what type of game we’re making. Our new game is much more casual than our old games, but the work we put into the story – and the result – is at the same level, in our opinion. It doesn’t matter if we make an RPG, an FPS or a full-on traditional adventure game, a good story will be the core of the experience.

Chris: That’s it. If people don’t like our stories, I guess we’re screwed. We love having this big umbrella of good characters, pacing, plot twists, etc. I think back to Half Life and how much the story made that game so compelling...We want to try to create that kind of magic.

Chris Jones and Aaron Conners

Yug: You’re new game ‘Three Cards to Midnight’ has been released this week! First of all – congratulations! How difficult has the independent development process been?

Aaron: It’s been challenging. Coming from Ubisoft where everyone is totally specialized, it’s weird to be handling about a dozen different jobs at once. I definitely work much longer hours now than I did with Microsoft or Ubisoft.That being said, it’s been wonderful to be accountable to no one (except each other) and be able to take full credit – or full blame – for how the game turns out. Except for bugs – we have someone to blame for that. :)

Chris: Games have gotten so big, it’s insanely expensive to make them. No one has the kind of money we used to throw around making the Tex games. That’s why we got into the casual side of games and then worked back toward the adventure side. It was a window that we saw and tried to jump through. And, honestly, it was the only way to make this happen.The difficulty is how to make a business case. Spending our own money put a bit of a lump in our throats, but we thought the window of opportunity – the state of the market, combined with our skills – made it a good risk. In particular, the downloadable format and the smaller game size kept the scope within reason.

Yug: A big focus of ‘Three Cards to Midnight’ is on the audio quality and voice acting. How important do you feel this is to create an immersive game experience?

Aaron: Other than the story and script, it’s the most important thing. There’s just no comparison between a page of text and an interesting, well-performed, aurally captivating scene.

Chris: On top of that, it’s the other elements: timing, pacing, scoring, building in the intrigue...it all pulls you into the illusion.

Yug: What was the process for coming up with all the word associated objects within the locations in ‘Three Cards to Midnight’?

Aaron: I’m not sure if you’re asking about how we settled on that mechanic or how I came up with list of objects – so I’ll answer both!As for the list of objects, I scoured the internet, looking through dictionaries, etymology sites, etc. It was tricky because the words had to be “representable” as objects. Plus, it was all so subjective. A term that some people are very familiar with may be totally unknown to other people. I had to make a lot of judgement calls and I know that most everyone will have a gripe about a few.

As an example, in one recent review, the author mentioned that a HORSE object could have been connected to Night, as in NightMARE. The problem was, we were already using the Horse object for the term High HORSE. There were lots of complicated situations like that, so we just did the best we could. And that’s why we offer lots of Hints and Misses on the two easier levels!

One of the scenes in 3 Cards to Midnight

In regards to how we came up with the mechanic, it’s another long story :) It all started two years ago when we were in negotiations with a big casual gaming company to produce a new game. They insisted that we have a single, core mechanic in our design. We looked around and saw how many popular games were using the Hidden Object gameplay, but we immediately decided that it was much too simple. When we came up with the storyline – in which the lead character is using psychological techniques to help retrieve suppressed memories – we added the dimension of having to DEDUCE which objects were relevant, making the gameplay much more challenging and, while still fairly casual, it tied in very well with the story content and structure.

Ironically, once we had the first demo of Three Cards ready to show, this same casual game company did a 180 and said games shouldn’t have a single core mechanic. Fortunately, we’d already added in all the standalone puzzle elements to balance out the gameplay.

Yug: Are there plans to release this game (and potentially future titles as well) on other platforms such as Xbox Live or the iPhone?

Chris: We’re looking into the possibilities – there are a lot of options out there.

Aaron: We’re open to anything, but it will depend on how well the game sells initially.

Yug: I noticed Chris voices a character in the game – are you worried of being typecast as a P.I. ;)

Chris: I don’t think I’ve been type cast. Let’s see – I’ve played a futuristic P.I., a robot P.I. and a contemporary P.I. They’re all completely different. J

Yug: In fact, if I remember correctly you also voiced a detective type character in the Machinima project Stolen Life? How was that experience?

Chris: It was unique and fun. I enjoyed the process. It was interesting to work on someone else’s project – I’ve always done my own projects. It was flattering to be asked to do it and I think it turned out very well.

Yug: Now that ‘Three Cards to Midnight’ has been released, what is the next step for Big Finish Games?

Chris: We’re filing for Chapter 11 on Thursday.

Aaron: We’re talking to several companies about joint ventures. And, if Three Cards does as well as we hope, we’ll be coming out with a sequel or two.

Yug: Can you give any hints regarding the secret ‘Fedora’ project listed on the company website?

Aaron: It’s a typo. It should have said “Deborah”. It’s a big Deborah Kerr musical.

Chris: We’re also looking to cast someone to play Yul Brynner.

You can find out more about 3 Cards to Midnight at the official website where it is available to download and play right now.