Big Finish, Inc. is a production company founded by Chris Jones and Aaron Conners. Three Cards to Midnight is the first game produced by Big Finish.
Chris Jones was the co-owner and CFO of Access Software from 1982 until 1999, when the company was bought by Microsoft. Chris was the creative force behind many early adventure games, including Countdown, Amazon: Guardians of Eden, and the first two Tex Murphy games: Mean Streets and Martian Memorandum.
In 1991, Chris began a collaboration with Aaron Conners that resulted in three more Tex Murphy games: Under a Killing Moon, The Pandora Directive, and Overseer. After hashing out the story concepts and the game design together, Aaron would write the script while Chris handled production.
The partnership continued for several years after Microsoft acquired the company through a number of high profile (but ultimately unreleased) projects, including The Black Pearl, with Mark Hamill, and an action/adventure title based on the world of Steven Spielberg's A.I. Plans to develop another Tex Murphy game never materialized and Chris left the videogame business in 2004.
Aaron became Story Director for Indie Built (a subsidiary of Take Two), and his story for the Xbox snowboarding game, Amped 3, was nominated for multiple GameSpot awards. Aaron then went on to become a Creative Director at Ubisoft Montreal.
In late 2007, Chris and Aaron decided the time was right to take the plunge back into the adventure game genre and began work on the game that would become Three Cards to Midnight.
The Game Creators' Manifesto
Some of you may be familiar with our previous games: Under a Killing Moon, The Pandora Directive, and Tex Murphy: Overseer. Others may have heard of them, but never played them, while the rest of you may know nothing about the games, much less the yahoos that made them. Well, this message is for ALL of you and we appreciate you taking a few moments to read it.
We've been around for awhile and seen a lot of trends – both good and bad – but one thing has never changed: people enjoy good stories. It's the primary reason why most of us read books, see movies, and watch TV. Regrettably, stories in videogames have rarely delivered at a high level. And, as a consequence, videogames – adventure games in particular – have been stigmatized in the past. And the handful of games whose stories didn't suck was often overlooked.
For years, it was said that FPS games like Doom and Quake didn't have compelling storylines because gamers didn't want them – it was just a distraction from blowin' stuff up. Then along came Halo, which blew that misconception to pieces. Turns out, a good story only ADDS to the game experience! Who knew?!
For us, story has always been the core of our games and this is especially so for Three Cards to Midnight. The gameplay is simple, but fun, intelligent, and challenging. We designed it with multiple levels of difficulty so the game would be enjoyable for casual gamers and a test for hard core puzzlers. But the thing that both the casual and experienced gamer will appreciate equally will be the story experience.
In some respects, this experience has made us feel like independent filmmakers – we've had to rely on a good script, creative design, and a lot of called-in favors and work done on spec, but we've made the game we wanted to make without any creative restrictions. We're very proud of this game and hope that everyone who plays it enjoys the hell out of our efforts.
And, for those of you who've stuck by us all these years and waited with saint-like patience for a new game, THANK YOU! This game is for you.
Aaron Conners & Chris Jones