What Ever Happened to Tex Murphy?

Chris Jones and Aaron Conners?

Backup.  Today’s Zero Punctuation regarding Zack and Wiki features references to several old adventure games (Yahtzee himself being a designer of some very emotive ones).  Among these are two piece of box art that are probably unfamiliar to most people:  Under a Killing Moon and The Pandora Directive.

These two games are are the 3rd and 4th installments in what is generally referred to as the Tex Murphy adventure series.  You play a cynical middle-aged Private Investigator set in post WW3 San Francisco.  The first two games (Mean Streets and Martian Memorandum) are controlled in a reasonably standard side view that we have come to expect of adventure games, with the addition of a flight simulator-esque interface to travel from place to place.  Mean Streets in fact was originally designed as a flight simulator with some adventure elements added in, although the reverse ended up being the result.

The three latter games (Under a Killing Moon, The Pandora Directive, and Overseer) all use live character actors, and most of the game takes place in a first person view of a mostly photo-realistic environment which is accomplished by projecting photographs onto 2D meshes.  These adventure games were hilariously funny, intuitive, and kept you playing until the very end.  The interface was extremely ambitious for the time (Moon came on 4 CDs in 1994, Pandora came on 6, and Overseer on 5 plus an alternate version on DVD, the first game I ever saw do this).  Nevertheless, the game suffered from a variety of mostly technical issues, and were being made during the twilight of adventure game popularity.  Sales were, one can assume, not exemplary.

A year after Overseer was released, the Utah based Studio - Access Software - was acquired by, wouldn’t you know it, my company, Microsoft!  Microsoft was, I assume, primarily interested in Access software’s more lucrative property in Links Golf, because the Tex Murphy series was never heard from again.  This is particularly unfortunate because Overseer ends in a cliff-hanger.  In 2004 Microsoft sold Access Software, now known as Indie Built, to Take Two Interactive, and it became part of the 2K Sports brand, again emphasizing the golf label over the now defunct Tex Murphy series.  Indie Built created a snowboarding game for the launch of the 360, and was then closed by Take Two in 2006, with no public reasons given for the closure.

Chris Jones and Aaron Conners were the designer and writer, respectively, for this phenomenal series, with Jones playing the titular Tex Murphy.  Aaron Conners also made novel versions of Under a Killing Moon and Pandora Directive, which are pretty good for pulp fiction.

Both Chris and Aaron moved with the acquisition to Microsoft to work on projects there, primarily on the Links series and the Amped snowboarding series.  Aaron seems to have moved to 2K Sports following the second sale, and worked under the 2K label until Indie Built was closed.  He has subsequently left the software industry entirely, and has started a contracting company called WordPlay LLC.

Chris on the other hand appears to have left around the same time Indie Built was sold to Take Two, becoming a partner in an new company called TRUGOLF that makes life-sized golf simulators for what I can only assume to be the “I have a vacation house in the Hampton’s” crowd (One can assume that Chris Jones really, really likes Golf).  Both he and Conners still live in Salt Lake City, Utah.
So what’s to become of Tex? Well, Tex has a sizable following over at James LeMosy’s Unofficial Tex Murphy Site.  Last month Aaron Conners left a note on the forums saying that he and Chris have a new game they’d like to make, and are actively searching for a publisher.  If that goes well, they’ll try to use it as a shoe-horn to make the final chapter of the Tex Murphy series, in some capacity.  The story is finished, apparently, and waiting to be told.  It’s been 10 years since we last heard from Tex Murphy, hopefully it won’t be another 10 before he finishes his tale.

If you’ve been negligent, you should try to get your hands on a copy of Under a Killing Moon and The Pandora Directive.  If you copy the contents of the CDs into folders on your hard-drive, you can get DosBox to mount them as separate CD-ROMs, and you can avoid the interruptions you would have encountered at the time of having to switch CDs constantly because the games natively support putting each CD in it’s own CD drive (if you for some reason had 4 CD-ROMs in your PC in 1994).  There’s a lot to learn - both good and bad - in terms of game design from these games, and the writing is extremely rich in both.  I would highly recommend the investiture.

A Week in Cuba

As previously mentioned, I went on vacation last week, and apparently the world does not stop while I’m laying on the beach.

Big news of the last week.  Apparently it was GDC or something.  I wasn’t there, so if you want juicy GDC goodness, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Microsoft

• Microsoft, in a new initiative called Dreamspark is making much of its developer software free to students.  This software includes Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server, XNA Game Studio, XNA Creator’s Club Subscription, and Expression Studio.  That should be plenty of tools for would be game developers to muck about in.  Details are here.
• Microsoft is dropping support for HD-DVD with the discontinuation of the add-on for the Xbox 360.  All remaining units are being cleared at firesale for $50.  I would not be surprised if there was a Blu-ray add-on in the future.
• Microsoft announced during the GDC 2008 Keynote a new service, the so-called Xbox Live Community Games.  Under this service, users can build a game using XNA Game Studio, and then upload it directly to a community portal where the game is democratically reviewed.  The reviewing process is intended to look for infringing or objectionable material.  The best of these games get automatically uploaded to Xbox Live for the masses to enjoy.  No specifics on pricing, or if the developer is getting kickbacks (as one would assume they would if Microsoft is collecting on their work).

Sony
On the Sony side of things, Phil Harrison, one of the founding members of Sony Computer Entertainment, and the president of SCE Worldwide Studios, has submitted his resignation.  Changes in leadership often come with widespread changes across the board, but it depends on the size and momentum of the company in question, and Sony is rather largeish, so I would not anticipate a massive change in the direction of their games.

Australia

Australia is talking about finally getting a new rating that will allow more mature titles to be sold there.  Unfortunately, I doubt this will alleviate the massive delays they usually incur before North American/Japanese release, and release to the land down under.

Electronic Arts

EA is offering to buy Take Two!  I would suggest in reaction to the recent Activision/Vivendi merger, EA is looking to add some more meat to its already colossal frame.  EA’s new CEO John Riccitiello has mentioned that he’s extremely unhappy with the scores EA’s games have been getting of late, so there might be some incentive to own some games that are critically acclaimed (which might have fueled the recent acquisition of Bioware as well).  Take Two is brimming with talent, including the developers of the Grand Theft Auto series (Rockstar), Bioshock (2K Games), and Civilization (Firaxis).  While EA’s initial bid is a bit lower than Take Two is looking for, most analysts are expecting this deal to go through eventually at some price point.

On a side note, Take Two is the current owner of one of my favorite IPs of all time, the Tex Murphy series.  This series was created by Access Software (later renamed to Indie Built) in the 90s.  Microsoft acquired them for the Links Golf series, and then sold the company to Take-Two who then shut it down.  While a revival is not likely at EA, it’s marginally more likely than at the parent who shut them down in the first place.

EA has a habit of killing great teams by using simple business math.  If you have everyone using the same tools and processes, costs are lower.  Unfortunately, this slows down and breaks the dynamic that produced the great team in the first place.  This is something you can do with teams that are having trouble realizing their full potential, perhaps due to infrastructural problems, but when you acquire a really solid team, it’s important that you just leave them alone to do their thing.  Riccitiello seems to be aware of this, so perhaps Take Two’s properties are not going to join the legacies of Westwood, Bullfrog, and Origin.

Havok

Havok is free, to which I say, OMGWTFBBQ.  Well, okay, it’s only free on the PC, but as of May 2008, you at home will be able to download your very own copy of Havok Complete (which includes the Physics and Animation packages).  This is a non-commercial license, but it allows hobbyists to get their hands dirty with the most widely used physics engine in the PC gaming space, which is good for companies looking to hire people who know Havok already.  This theoretically lays some groundwork for Havok’s more specialized products for behavioral animation, deformable solids, and cloth rendering.

And that’s all that happened this week, I’ll be posting on a more semi-regular basis now.