Unofficial Tex Murphy

Jack Vanian wrote:I'm really glad you like the interview!

Personally, I thought that Aaron's views on the casual market are pretty interesting after the experiences they made. It's quite a bummer that they won't be doing games like 3 Cards anymore and that Aaron doesen't even seem to be a part of Big Finish Games anymore. But welll, what can you do.

I know aaron is currently working on the sims project for electronic arts but I haven't heard anything re him leaving big finish games.
Maybe cub could answer this.

plumgas wrote:

Jack Vanian wrote:I'm really glad you like the interview!

Personally, I thought that Aaron's views on the casual market are pretty interesting after the experiences they made. It's quite a bummer that they won't be doing games like 3 Cards anymore and that Aaron doesen't even seem to be a part of Big Finish Games anymore. But welll, what can you do.

I know aaron is currently working on the sims project for electronic arts but I haven't heard anything re him leaving big finish games.
Maybe cub could answer this.

Officially neither of them work for Big Finish Games (on paper that is). CJ still holds his position at TruGolf and AC holds his at Electronic Arts. Big Finish was always the product of their decision to collaborate on projects together outside of their other full-time commitments to their respective companies. So Big Finish is not a company pre-se; rather, the name of their collaboration.

That said, even though AC is not working on the latest game to come out of Big Finish games, it's not a case of him 'Leaving', but more a case of him stepping aside to let CJ manage this one.

It's safe to say that if they were to leave the casual gaming market all together and focus on a more feature-packed game they would almost definitely have to leave their full-time commitments behind to focus on its creation. For the time being, it's not an option for either of them given their current positions.

The reason why they most likely opted for casual gaming to begin with was because they probably assumed it would not involve as much work, and hence they could do it alongside their other jobs. But as Aaron said, it's really quite demanding either way, and in order to please your customer base (no matter what type of game you release) you will have to constantly keep giving more and more. Eventually this cannot be managed without it being a full time commitment. This is also most likely the reason Aaron is choosing to not work on the new game with Chris. He realises that in order to make it good he would have to spend more time on it than he did with the 3-cards games, but cannot afford to. CJ might have more spare time, but that's just speculation.

The odds of a new Tex Murphy game weight heavily on the risk they are willing to take, because neither of them could afford to take the plunge unless they knew it would be a complete success. Which is why I agree with them when AC says if they were to make a Tex game, it would have to be done right, but everybody will have to have patience. It's a big ask to have them produce a top quality game at the expense of their current secure income.

-Cub. =o)

I think no matter what Chris would find a way to make it happen, even if they had to go back to shooting using home camcorders or using still images (like they did with Mean Streets) would be fine, the best thing for the company is to apply a back to basics policy towards any new tex games, they can quite easily pull off the same quality of game that we saw with Mean Streets/Martian Memorandum- and almost the same quality that we saw with UAKM, and in fact in this day and age it'd be cheaper and quicker to do.

Problem is that when you've gotten use to having all the flashy stuff (like 3D engines, Celebrity Actors, state of the art visual effects in FMVs) you don't want to go back. But I'd be quite happy (and I'm sure they rest of you would as well) if we got games just as good as the first 3 games in the series in this day and age. Pandora was ambitious, they pulled off something amazing there that's as good as it gets.. now they have to take a step back and go "ok what did we do last time we had this problem" lol because the early days Access wouldn't have had a huge budget to play with- they've had to do all this before, granted that they did have much more help in the past who built access into a great company.

So yeah they should look back on the past and try to replicate that same success, instead of trying to just focus on a new direction.

And yeah, Aaron no doubt would have thought that Means Streets was poorly written given it was basically the script from "Plan 10 from outerspace" just with futuristic stuff and less Hitler (though funnily Hitler made his way into UAKM ). I can understand why he thought that.

Should also point out that its Chris who's got the most experience managing a company and the finance end, so it makes sense for him to take over, Chris was one of the original co-founders of access so if anyone knows how to build and run a company it'll be him, no offence to Aaron, Aaron is such a talented creative mind and it makes more sense for him to do what he does best and let Chris sort out how to run everything in the background.

The thing is that Tex has been gone for so long that there is simply no reference, no scale, in this current setting, from which you can start building a new game from. Everyone sees, and rightly so, Pandora as the one starting point to build upon and expend, but it's silly to expect that of their "studio", or from any studio for that matter. Rockstar or EA wouldn't build a game of this magnitude today. Just like no one builds another Deus Ex, another Fallout 2 or another Baldur's Gate.

I'm not even discussing genres and game mechanics here, but the sheer scope of it. LA Noire, with a budget the size of Australia, plays in a week-end, and is as linear as it gets. Mass Effect, despite its epic proportions, is very limited in terms of environment variety and scope. It offers a clever illusion of largeness thanks to its setting, but is truly quite restricted. Mafia 2 was about one fourth of the size of its predecessor in terms of environment, worse so in terms of general length. Even the first Max Payne, with its dungeon-like environments, is enormous in comparison with other adventure shooters such as the fun but extremely limited Uncharted 2.

Therefor, even if budget were no issue, which it is, my question is, how exactly do you structure another Tex Game? How do you build a game which would feel as engaging as Pandora, while appearing up to date and on par with anything published today, but built on a realistic scope?

It's old school Spielberg magic, or early days John Carpenter imagination that is needed here. Build something as timeless and engaging as The Thing on a ridiculous budget, and use as many tricks and illusions as you can think of to make every single dollar work a hundred times its worth.

I always imagined that the guys had other income & big finish was only a spare time thing.
After all they need to eat & you can't survive on love alone.

I think aaron stated previously that their friends in the industry advised them that the casual games was where the money was but its unfortunate it didn't work for them.

However each little game they sell all adds up if not in sales but maybe some investers will see the potential of the guys work & give them a go.

If I ever win lotto I know where I would invest some money.

plumgas wrote:I always imagined that the guys had other income & big finish was only a spare time thing.
After all they need to eat & you can't survive on love alone.

I think aaron stated previously that their friends in the industry advised them that the casual games was where the money was but its unfortunate it didn't work for them.

However each little game they sell all adds up if not in sales but maybe some investers will see the potential of the guys work & give them a go.

If I ever win lotto I know where I would invest some money.

That's true, but the sad part is, when people refer to money in casual games, they are thinking of things like Angry Birds. Mindless, simple and repetitive games which you can enjoy on the train on while waiting for a bus. There is no where near enough scope in the market to have any developed form of story. The minute you do it becomes a lot more than just a casual game. This is where I think CJ and AC went wrong. That said, it was a noble effort to try and bring a complex and interesting storyline into the market, but it's not what "casual gaming" is all about. If it can't be ported to a mobile phone or similar device, it's not really casual.

-Cub. =o)

Thanks a lot for your very informative statements, Cubase. Now I definitely feel smarter than before and it was very interesting to find out all these things about the structure of Big Finish!

Half the trouble in the casual games though is that the bubble already burst, there's no money in it anymore, by the time big finish got around to it Zynga and PopCap controlled most of it- Casual Gaming is a crap place for an indie to get started.. I know because this is all I've been doing the past bloody 4 years and its gotten us nowhere. That said you can make amazing hardcore games on a Mobile, and I've been proud enough to have worked on some great games. But now that I'm stuck doing casual games I can see EXACTLY why they failed.

Truthfully you make more money per unit through hardcore games, but its the result of having to invest a lot of capital and time that pays off.. Many developers and publishers just don't want to take the risk because in this day and age MOST capitalists are forking cowards! this is why the GFC happened because they didn't have the balls to actually support their own countries, they invested it all into China and screwed the rest of us..

If you want to be successful in business, you need to do it the old fashioned way, get the capital there, produce something amazing that people want, they buy it, your company grows, your recapitalize it to make the product even better or introduce new products. Most gaming companies don't want to do this hence why we're stuck playing "<<NAME OF POPULAR FRANCHISE FROM THE 90s>> <<NUMBER IN SERIES>>" because to create a new idea is a risk and the cowards just won't do it.

As Aaron said, the fall of FMVs killed Tex Murphy, the only way we're going to see it return to its former glory is if we can remove the negativity which is associated with them and produce something amazing. I agree that FMV was abandoned prematurely, today with HD technologies we can do things so much better than we could back then, people need to balls up and actually try this out again.. I think the result would be better than we could have ever imagined.

mr_cyberpunk wrote: As Aaron said, the fall of FMVs killed Tex Murphy, the only way we're going to see it return to its former glory is if we can remove the negativity which is associated with them and produce something amazing. I agree that FMV was abandoned prematurely, today with HD technologies we can do things so much better than we could back then, people need to balls up and actually try this out again.. I think the result would be better than we could have ever imagined.

I agree with this statement. Some of the most fun I have had pertaining to gaming has come from games that were rich in story and used live actors to convey said story. The Tex Murphy games, some of the titles from the SEGA CD era....all these games that I enjoyed playing all had these 2 key elements. Aside from playing Guitar Hero: Metallica (because I'm a huge metallica fan) and occasionally firing up "24: The Game", I don't really get excited about games like I do when I play UAKM or Pandora.

But, for me...at this point right now...I am more interested in seeing what the rest of the story is for Tex. I've been listening repeatedly to the Radio Theater broadcasts in the past few weeks, and the more I listen to them, the more pumped I get at the idea of hearing the rest of the story. I think that's what we all want more than anything when it comes down to it. But that's just my opinion.

Heeeey, waitaminute. That's what SHE said!

-Fred

Yeah, but now I know where to get a great deal on Coach bags.

dcat151 wrote:Yeah, but now I know where to get a great deal on Coach bags.

LOL

well samantha has a repeater...........LOL

It was a damn good interview.

It is a shame about the casual market. I wonder if something like 3 cards would get more traction on mobile devices like iphone/ipad. Not only are quite a few adventure games getting released on those devices, but they look great, and most of them control well.

I say this in vein as i'd love to see more of these types of games come out of Chris and Aaron (and of course if they did well we might get a game with our beloved Tex)

Since the 3 cards games werent that successful, if they set up a donation center for the 'Revival of Tex Murphy' at Big Finish Im sure some hardcore gamers would donate some to at least get the ball rolling.