About Us

Big Finish Games is committed to creating the very best story-driven games.

When you play a Big Finish Game, you can always expect:

  • Intelligent, fun, and meaningful gameplay that blends seamlessly with the story.
  • A variety of difficulty levels, allowing you to determine how challenging the gameplay is.
  • A great story, well told.

Big Finish, Inc. is a production company founded by Chris Jones and Aaron Conners. Three Cards to Midnight was the first game produced by Big Finish.


Company History

Access Software days

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 CountdownAmazon: 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 MoonThe Pandora Directive, and Overseer. After hashing out the story concepts and the game design together, Aaron would write the script while Chris handled production.

Microsoft and post Access Days

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 video game 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. Then in 2010 Aaron joined EA Games and worked on the Sims franchise through to early 2014, leading the creative direction for the Sims 3 expansion packs ShowtimeSupernatural and University Life, and doing pre-production for Into the Future and an unannounced mobile game.

Big Finish Games is born

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.

Between 2007 and 2011, Big Finish games released 3 additional casual titles: Three Cards to Dead Time, Escape from Thunder Island, and Rita James and the Race to Shangri La.

Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure

In 2012, Chris and Aaron announced a Kickstarter Campaign called Project Fedora that would help bring back the Tex Murphy series via crowdfunding. This campaign was launched in 2013, and achieved its goal within the allotted campaign time, raising $598,104 from 6,963 contributors. Production of Project Fedora began shortly afterwards.

The game was renamed to it’s official title ‘Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure‘ in late 2013, about the same time that ‘Atlus’ came on board to publish the title. Tesla Effect was completed and released in April 2014 via various online distribution platforms (including GOG, and Steam), and today holds a 4.6/5 star rating, and 9/10 rating on each platform respectively.

 


The Making of Tex Murphy

From humble beginnings in amateur film, to a multi award-winning video game franchise, this documentary explores the history of one of the world’s longest-running and influential Adventure Game icons: Tex Murphy.