Chris Jones and Aaron Conners Interview - Making Three Cards to Midnight

Somewhere between the Sierra Quest games and the massive contraction of the adventure game market, there was a series of games that pushed technological boundaries while delivering enthralling storylines, a combination that consistently redefined what a game is capable of as an art and entertainment medium: the Tex Murphy series.

Tex’s many fans will be disappointed that he isn’t quite ready for a comeback yet, but they have been thrilled that the games’ creators, Chris Jones and Aaron Conners, have started their own studio in 2007: Big Finish Games. Big Finish put out its first game, Three Cards to Midnight, last May, and a sequel, Three Cards to Dead Time, will be out soon.

Listening to guys like Chris and Aaron talk about games and game design is always a good way for a gamer to spend some time and with their new company about to release a sequel to their first game there was plenty to discuss. It was an excellent moment to sit down and see what they are up to.

The audio of the interview will be up shortly is up. There is plenty of interesting and funny stuff in there we just don’t have room to cover here, so you’ll have to download it for all the juicy bits.

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Big Finish Games’ About Us page makes it clear that Chris and Aaron are still all about making games with deep and involving stories. I started with the obvious question: what is the hardest part of interactive storytelling; which Aaron fielded. “Uhh, you got like an hour?

“That’s a significant question in our line of work… It’s almost like the Holy Grail. How do you balance that out? How do you give people a lot of freedom to have some control over what goes on but not compromise the integrity of the story. It’s that ongoing battle of how interactive do you make it and how much do you lose by giving people control over it. For us it’s an ongoing process of trying to find that perfect balance.”

Three Cards to Midnight had, not only a great story, but gameplay that was closely tied to it. There wasn’t a disconnect between story and game which is so common, where both gameplay and plot are good, but seem cut and pasted together. I asked about how this closeness was achieved. Chris answers:

“I think in looking at the particular market that we were going after, which was more of a casual gaming design, we looked at the products that were out there and obviously we felt like there was a lot of room with that in terms of bringing a story, but because story was so critical to what we were doing, we had to start with the story and work on the aspects of how do we integrate solid light adventure and casual gaming into the design, without compromising the story. So we really did start with the story itself, and then, with the experience that we’ve had, we found, I think, an excellent way to integrate the two.”

Aaron: “It was hand in hand. It was ‘Ok. let’s look at what type of gameplay we have available, what is the best story scenario to fit that?’ We thought someone trying to retrieve their memories, through this word association, that that gameplay and that story would really work hand in hand very well.”