I Know, Another Kickstarter Project, But...Tex Murphy

Kickstarter is giving designers some ideas. Specifically, that idea appears to involve reviving game projects and concepts that fell to the wayside of gaming's past. The latest? Tex Murphy.

Sometime soon, it will stop being news that an ancient franchise is aiming for a comeback through Kickstarter, but some games just tug at your heart strings, and Tex Murphy does that for me.

Dubbed Project Fedora, the latest attempt to bring the FMV-laden Tex Murphy back comes via Big Finish Games, co-founded by Tex Murphy’s creative masters, Chris Jones and Aaron Conners.

The Kickstarter won’t begin until May 15, but following some Internet scuttlebutt, Big Finish Games has announced that it’s actually happening. The studio is looking for backer reward ideas, which you can submit through its website.

Big Finish Games claims plans were already in motion to bring Tex Murphy back, but Kickstarter prompted it to contemplate making something much bigger than had originally been scoped out.

“With the recent Kickstarter success stories for other Adventure Games--Double Fine Adventure & Wasteland 2--we saw an opportunity to create a game of a larger scale,” reads the announcement. “So, with that in mind, we hope to bring the next Tex Murphy game to an a much bigger, dare I say, epic level--more actors, locations, broader stories and yes, even meaningful, varied story paths.”

Look, as long as there’s a ton of FMV, I don't care what you do. Oh, but seriously, make it more like Under a Killing Moon than Overseer. See? They’ve already got me.

wow... kick-starters really seem to be taking off... hmmm what can I kickstart

Poop.

....What's a Tex Murphy?

Haha FMV. I would love that!

And first!

EDIT: Damnit! :(

Ummmm no

Neogaf seems to have it all

Better be FMV. If it is I'm so in.

I was sold at Tex Murphy. This is another one I can get behind. Kickstarters are going to kill me! haha

Are you listed on the credits if you donate to these projects?

Hell yeah FMV games

And here comes the inevitable avalanche of "me too" kickstarters.

Is kickstarter the new indie bundles?

I love this trend. I'd help fund a new Laura Bow game.

@SoledadBrother said:

Are you listed on the credits if you donate to these projects?

For the Double Fine one you get listed only if you put up $100 or more.

Just nobody give any money to that colossally moronic lottery winner trying to make an MMORPG who has 47 "idea men", and one programmer lined up to help him.

@Winternet said:

Is kickstarter the new indie bundles?

Ooh, once enough of these get made, we can have a Humble Kickstarter Bundle!

HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!!

nice of them to wait for May after the Wasteland one ends

count me in

This is super exciting to me. I was just a little kid when I first played Mean Streets and I couldn't really figure out how it worked, but that game shaped so much about my future tastes (both in video games and general fiction) that though I haven't finished it, I consider it one of the most important games I've ever played.

Super excited about this!

Part of me doesn't want to stay this out loud, but dude. Funcom? Longest Journey? That kickstarter needs to happen, because I don't think we're ever going to get a sequel to Dreamfall without it. C'mon Ragnar -- let's make an adventure game!

I found out about the announcement yesterday and have been waiting all day for them to reveal what it was.

I have have most of the games both original boxed ones and from gog.com

A kickstarter beginning on the day everyone buys Diablo III. Good plan.

Are you listed on the credits if you donate to these projects?

I have the Under a Killing Moon box and everything, those giant eye security guards or whatever scared the shit out of me as a kid. I will throw money at this.

AHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA....

That game is so hard to play now, but it is darn funny.

One of the top-tier rewards should involve being an actor in the game.

I don't think I fully understand this Kickstarter thing people are so excited about recently. Are people really funding the development of a game, and then also buying the game they helped pay to develop at a later time (which seems insane)? Or are they also getting some kind of reward, like an investor would receive some of the profits?

Just hearing that saxophone lick at the end makes me wet inside my panties! TEX MURPHY LIVES!

@Havox said:

And here comes the inevitable avalanche of "me too" kickstarters.

That bubble has to burst sooner or later. Unsurprisingly, it seems to be sooner, unless everyone with an idea decides not to just jump out for fan support

I'm already supporting about 20 kickstarters, so why the fuck not this one, too? For some reason, Tex Murphy always reminds me of RIPPER. I remember back in 1996, I grabbed it off the shelf at EggHead Software (kids, back in the old days, we had physical stores that you walked into and bought computer stuff like 28.8k USRobotics modems and actual software in boxes, but then they shut down their stores and turned into Newegg.com).

I took it home, installed it, and was floored at the cinematic opening sequence with Blue Oyster Cult and then, shortly after, seeing Christopher Walken, Paul Giamatti, Jimmie JJ Walker, John Rhys-Davies, and Burgess Meredith. In fact, this might have been the first game I ever bought at the ripe young age of 18 or 19.

Anyway, here are some other cool Kickstarters to check out:

• http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stoic/the-banner-saga(holy shit, this looks good)
• http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aunim/tempus-chronicle-the-rpg-series-tuesdays-at-6pm
• http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/seltaire/americana-dawn
• http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peterwhite/plague
• http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2063443760/spike-a-love-story-too
• http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/534715294/bacillus
• http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/630555339/guncraft-voxel-based-first-person-shooter
• http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/761471459/auditorium-2-duet
• http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/355932838/crowdsourced-hardcore-tactical-shooter
• http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/64409699/ftl-faster-than-light
• http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/230165553/game-history-book-high-score-3rd-edition
• http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1878253293/inspector-spacetime-the-webseries

@G0rd0nFr33m4n said:

Ummmm no

@PresidentOfJellybeans said:

I don't think I fully understand this Kickstarter thing people are so excited about recently. Are people really funding the development of a game, and then also buying the game they helped pay to develop at a later time (which seems insane)? Or are they also getting some kind of reward, like an investor would receive some of the profits?

Pretty much all of these kickstarters grant you the game if you give above a certain amount. 15$ or more will grant you the Double Fine game, for example.

Worst case scenario, you get a mediocre game in the end for what you put in. This whole kickstarter thing relies heavily on trust in whoever is making the game, but it's still a relatively small risk for the individual.

Fuck yes! I love Tex. Pandora Directive was so awesome when I was a kid.

Very happy to hear someone wants to bring back Tex Murphy - The Pandora Directive is one of my favorite games of all time.

Yay?

@PresidentOfJellybeans said:

I don't think I fully understand this Kickstarter thing people are so excited about recently. Are people really funding the development of a game, and then also buying the game they helped pay to develop at a later time (which seems insane)? Or are they also getting some kind of reward, like an investor would receive some of the profits?

In some cases, if you donate enough to equal a copy of the game, you are given a copy of the game as one of the investor rewards. I think it would be hard and detrimental to the project to offer profit sharing. But Kickstarter is fundamentally based around offering different tiers of incentives/rewards for potential investors.

I'd rather see games like this given another chance if the game world can support more stories, at least games like this over ones that have tons of sequels already & don't really need another game anytime soon.

@Winternet said:

Is kickstarter the new indie bundles?

I prefer to think of them as pre-orders done right.

@Draxyle said:

... Worst case scenario, you get a mediocre game in the end for what you put in. ...

Assuming they're ever actually finished. I doubt 95% of them will be. The Double Fine Kickstarter is great, but it is going to set a terrible precedent for people expecting results that just aren't going to happen. ANYONE can say they have a great idea, but they're not going to be able to execute it.

I hope we don't kill kickstarter with dream ideas. Lets just take this one dream at a time people. And slowly so we don't kill the market.

I'll be all over this shit.

Goddamn, I loved Under a Killing Moon. Overseer wasn't quite as great, but I'm totally funding this!

@gschmidl said:

A kickstarter beginning on the day everyone buys Diablo III. Good plan.

Everyone except me.

Why is everyone so mad at kickstarter?! God damnit yes it's begging for money we all know that but there will ALWAYS be people willing to give money to the products they want to own. I don't see why this is negative...

@Phished0ne said:

@PresidentOfJellybeans said:

I don't think I fully understand this Kickstarter thing people are so excited about recently. Are people really funding the development of a game, and then also buying the game they helped pay to develop at a later time (which seems insane)? Or are they also getting some kind of reward, like an investor would receive some of the profits?

In some cases, if you donate enough to equal a copy of the game, you are given a copy of the game as one of the investor rewards. I think it would be hard and detrimental to the project to offer profit sharing. But Kickstarter is fundamentally based around offering different tiers of incentives/rewards for potential investors.

Not even that. Typically, $15 will get you a copy of the game. Often DRM free. Sometimes as little as $10 or even $5. Even if it's a game that's clearly going to sell for $50 or $60. For some reason, people seem to have a really hard time comprehending what kickstarter is about.

Take the guy making amazing machined aluminum pens "Premier Pen" for the Pilot Hi-Tec-C 0.3mm/0.4mm ink cartridges. He had a great idea. Did a lot of research. After many months, had a design, prototypes, and leads on getting them produced. Only problem? He needed a big enough order and cash advance to pay to have it done. So he created a kickstarter looking for about $7,000. So many people wanted the pens that he has done almost $70,000 in orders, so far. People get their pens. He gets the production run that he couldn't have afforded otherwise.

People regularly (somehow) get the idea that you're "donating" to these projects or that you're "investing" in them. While you have the option to do pledge without getting anything in return, that's rarely the case. People are usually selling you an item - and giving further incentive for further pledges (for example, with the High Score 3rd Edition book, you can pay $250 to have dinner with Will Wright or John Romero or Sid Meier or Lorne Lanning or Peter Molyneux or many others... in addition to the item in question -- sounds pretty awesome to me. Enough so that I pledged for dinner with John Romero).

In other words, Kickstarter exists to facilitate connecting people who want to buy a cool product and have the money with people who have a cool idea to make that product, but need the capital to get it done. Simple as that.

@tourgen said:

@Winternet said:

Is kickstarter the new indie bundles?

I prefer to think of them as pre-orders done right.

That's a good way of thinking of it. You could pre-order a game from a large retailer, which just lets them earn interest on your eager investment in something they didn't make, or you could pre-order a game directly from the people making it.

@Deusx said:

Why is everyone so mad at kickstarter?! God damnit yes it's begging for money we all know that but there will ALWAYS be people willing to give money to the products they want to own. I don't see why this is negative...

Because people are too stupid to bother going to kickstarter.com and reading about how it works. Also, it's not begging for money. A guy on the street asking for money and offering nothing in return is begging. These are people saying "I have this neat idea for a game, movie, album, product, design, book, game, board game, event, business but I don't have the necessary capital for it" and then offering to give you the product (and additional incentives) if, in exchange, you and many others who find the thing they're offering to create valuable enough to buy in advance.

It doesn't get much simpler than value-for-value and a lot of fantastic products have come out of Kickstarter.

Instead of being excited that there is potentially a new way for games that could never get publisher funding to still be produced if enough fans are interested, people are pissing and bitching over someone wanting to give them something in exchange for money (OH NO!). And acting like there is a finite amount of resources if everyone starts going to kickstarter. I mean, that's absurd. How many game developers and publishers are there? How many games are put out each year? Yeah, a ton. And nobody says "well, now everyone is just making video games, so this can't possibly last!". The only difference is that these particular games live or die on the idea of whether it appeals to enough people (or if it's an existing franchise, if it appeals to enough of the old fan-base).

Having more options is awesome. Getting games you've wanted for a long time (or never knew you wanted) for a mere $15 (give or take) is also awesome.

God I hope it has a remake of this intro music:

I just got my Cards Against Humanity in the mail today, coincidentally.

I don't think this was a good idea though. All of the excitement and goodwill is going to manifest itself right now and not in a few months when they actually need the money.

It's like going up to a person and saying, "Surprise! We're going to have a surprise party for you in 2 months!" and then two months later, "Surprise!!!!! ...why aren't you surprised?"