TEX MURPHY; AÚN HAY ESPERANZA

Well, I read through the RIP Tex topic, had myself a good cry, made a nice cup of tea, snuggled up to my PC and decided to write you all a message of good cheer.

Now, some of you might be saying: Aaron…come ON! A cup of tea?! Snuggling?!! What about the bourbon and the cigarette, the corner table at the bar, the world-weary gallows humor? Well, there’s a time and a season and to everything – turn, turn, turn.

Does this rambling have a point? Not really. There are some things I’d like to tell everyone, but it’s not the time. There are other things I’d like to talk about, but they’re confidential. There are, however, yet other things I CAN tell you about. So I will.

The rights to Tex Murphy are not belong to us. I don’t want to go into details, but suffice to say that we would really like to secure them and may be able to do so. At the very least, we are confident that we can make arrangements to use them (…but for a price, Ugarte, for a price…). Bottom line is, CJ and I have every intention of bringing Tex back for at least one last hurrah (a la Indiana Jones). In fact, I’ve already done a fair bit of work on the Game That Will Be.

I see there’s been some discussion as to what form this game might take. Trust me, we’ve debated this at length. Bottom line is, we MAY do FMV. We may also do rendered characters. We could even do graphic novel-style. It all depends on whether we produce the game ourselves or in collaboration with someone else. Both are legitimate possibilities. What the game will NOT be is a big budget console title. It will not be an Action/Adventure title using a FPS engine. However it’s presented the game will be about story, character, conversation, humor, and detective work – solving puzzles, collecting clues, etc. It will be simple and satisfying and, I would like to think, elegant.

There are forces at work – other than just CJ, myself, and you loyal folks – who would like to see Tex return to a PC screen near you. Nothing is official, but I can honestly say I haven’t had this much realistic hope – even expectation – since being absorbed by the Borg in 1999. Trust me when I say: as soon as it’s official, you’ll be the first to know.

However…in order to make this a reality, CJ and I feel it’s best to pursue a different project to pave the way for Tex’s return. And we’re doing that. Again, I wish I could share details, but it wouldn’t be appropriate. I just want you to know that things are afoot.

Now, I know you’ve heard this kind of thing before. Herr Jones and I have had our hearts broken several times over the years – some of the disappointments were almost unbearable. This is why we’ve scaled back on expressing our optimisim over the past couple years. That being said, this time around seems very different. We have a much greater degree of control over what we’re doing and people who we know and trust are in the key decision-making positions. Most importantly, we’re pursuing a project that is much smaller scale, less expensive to produce, and perfectly suited to our skills as game designers and storytellers. There’s a consensus that there’s a solid (and exploitable) market for our types of games and people with money who emphatically agree.

With any luck, we’ll have an official announcement to make within the next the 2-3 months. If our beating, bloody hearts are torn from our chest cavities yet again, I promise to let you all know, but I really don’t think that’s going to happen this time around. If you want to help, keep your fingers crossed and send good thoughts into the Universe on our behalf.

I look forward to dropping in again sometime before summer (or winter, you drongos Down Under).

With great fondness,