AG: Chris, as the actor that portrays Tex Murphy, it's hard not to think of you as practically synonymous with the character. Where exactly does Chris Jones end and Tex Murphy begin?

Chris: Well, our names are different. [ha-ha] You really have to consider Tex as my dream character – my alter ego. He lives the kind of life I’d like to lead – the stories, the mystery, solving crime, but not like James Bond. We see Tex with warts and all – he’s not Superman and I like that. He has problems to deal with, but it’s basically a believable guy in a plausible alternate universe that really appeals to me.

AG: Aaron, despite being a co-designer on the series, you don't get nearly the recognition that Chris does by virtue of being front and center in the games. Are you happy to stay more in the background?

Aaron: Couldn’t be happier! I can’t imagine how miserable it must be to get recognized in public. I’m a bit of a recluse by nature. Chris, of course, eats it up. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard him berate some stranger with “Don’t you know who I am?!”…

Chris: And just imagine if he got TWO dollars every time!

AG: And speaking of dollars, here’s the real money question: what are the chances that Tex will indeed be coming back?

Aaron: The chances of Tex coming back are directly related to how well our new game does (which I guess we’ll get to in a minute). Chris and I have always wanted to bring Tex back and now it’s really just a matter of financing the project. We did our new game in part as an experiment to see how good a game we could make with limited resources. As it turns out…we can make a really great game! But we didn’t want to experiment with Tex.

AG: I guess that really was a money question, more literally than I intended. But your answer is very encouraging! And you’re confident a Tex game could work with limited resources?

Aaron: A new Tex game will not be like the old ones… it’s just not practical. It cost over $4,000,000 to produce Pandora back in 1996. To get that kind of dev budget, you’d have to convince investors that we could sell at least 100,000 units at full retail just to break even. Could happen… but investors won’t bet the farm on it.

But there are other options. For us, we love the detective-style gameplay, the characters, the stories, the humor, and Tex’s world. These are all things that we could bring to a new game without having to spend millions in development.

AG: And about that new game (Aaron, be careful what you wish for), while Tex lingers in the background, Three Cards to Midnight is first up. We’ve already detailed our early looks of the game in its early incarnation, but in a nutshell, what more can you tell us about the game? In fact, forget the nutshell, just tell us everything!

Aaron: We’re really excited about Three Cards to Midnight. I think this is the best story we’ve ever had in a game and everything from the ground up was designed and built to enhance the story experience. The gameplay is a mix of classic Tex Murphy-style puzzles (all tied into the story) and new stuff that can be played at a relatively easy level, a challenging mid-range, or downright diabolical difficulty. Again, I can’t stress enough that the gameplay is inextricably woven in with the story; it’s not just “busy work” that has to be done before another story scene plays. Everything in the game connects together.

We’ve been making games for a long time now and we used every bit of ingenuity we’ve learned to make 3CM. It was really like making an indie film where it’s not about the multi-million dollar explosions and big-name actors – it’s about a great script, good execution, intelligence, respect for the audience, and creating a compelling overall experience.

One thing I want to address is the talk about this game being “casual”. Granted, 3CM isn’t on the scale of the old Tex Murphy games (multiple CDs, etc.), but in early testing, it’s taking people 6-8 hours to play through…on the easy level – longer on the more difficult levels. And the number of locations and puzzles isn’t far off from our previous games; we just don’t have all the random searching and experimenting with inventory objects.

The bottom line is, we’ve created a game we’re very proud of. It tells a great story in a compelling way, has tons of gameplay with scalable difficulty levels, and it’s something that Tex Murphy fans (and adventure games in general) should really like.

Chris: We also want casual gamers to buy it by the millions. Seriously! The casual game space is huge and moving closer all the time to games with adventure elements. It would be naïve to ignore casual gamers. We’re not turning away from our core audience – we just feel like this game offers a really compelling story-game experience that will appeal to both adventure gamers and casual gamers.

AG: Did you find it difficult to start over from scratch, or was it more liberating to have the total freedom that comes with a new beginning? Any unexpected challenges along the way?

Aaron: I really enjoyed creating this new world of Three Cards to Midnight. I knew from the beginning I wanted a female protagonist because it offers a whole new perspective. The game is set in modern day, which is somewhat easier to work with as opposed to the futuristic setting of Tex Murphy (sci-fi isn’t my forte…I’m definitely a film noir guy). No unexpected challenges, really. It was really fun.

AG: Full motion video adventures are all but extinct these days, which wasn't the case in Tex Murphy's heyday. Was FMV ever a consideration for Three Cards to Midnight?

Aaron: I still love FMV. FMV wasn’t the problem; the problem was that most FMV games sucked. It’s like Nicholas Cage movies. Yes, Leaving Las Vegas was great, but it was the exception.

We didn’t really consider using FMV for 3CM because we wanted to keep the scope of development as manageable as possible, and the whole process of casting, lighting, filming, processing, compositing, etc. would have been “non-trivial”, as we say. Initially, we were going to tell the story without any animation (as in graphic novel or comic book-style), but we came up with a simple style we liked that offered quite a bit of animation and worked well with the story and voice work.

AG: Have you felt restrained at all by going the indie route? Are there things you'd like to do but are too cost-prohibitive now? Or alternatively, does the freedom from publisher interference benefit the game in some ways?

Chris: From the business side, going the indie route is really overrated. We tried hard to get funding and we were right on the verge a few times. In the end, we had to do this for ourselves and, obviously, we’re glad we did. The financial limitations really pushed us, but I think it proved that creativity is independent of budget. What we always wanted was to provide a satisfying, rewarding experience and I think we did that.

Aaron: Having worked for Microsoft, Take Two, Ubisoft and EA, I have a pretty good idea of what it takes to get a game made. You need either a big IP – like a superhero or a toy brand or a pro athlete – OR you need to be in the top tier of management (or be buddies with someone who is). To get a game like ours produced – a game without BFGs, explosions and/or a superhero IP – you really have to go the indie route.

Fortunately, this is a good time to be doing what we’re doing. The growth of downloadable games represents the new frontier of videogames. It reminds me a lot of how things were back in the early ‘90s, before all the small games and companies got absorbed.