3 replies to this topic

[8TrackMind]

From Kotaku comes the news that The Two Guys, aka Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy, have reunited to form a new company with the hopes of producing an unnamed SF adventure game. Considering these guys made the venerable Space Quest games for Sierra back in the day, I can't wait to see what they come up with.

[aweeks007]

Having been a fan of Scott Murphy, he had participated in a very frank interview a few years back conducted by Adventure Classic Gaming, in which he noted the following of his relationship with Mark Crowe:

Do you feel you accomplished what you set out to accomplish with the Space Quest series? If the rights ever reverted back to you through some magical twist of fate, would you be interested in teaming back up with Mark Crowe and the gang for another go-around?

Overall, I feel pretty good about how the games came out. When Mark and I started the games we decided that we wanted to make games WE would want to play, and I think we did that for the most part. Would I want to work with Mark again? No, I don't think so. As I learned the hard way, Mark was not a very good partner in the long run. When he decided to go to Sierra's Dynamix division, he didn't have the decency to tell me he was leaving until we were headed to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. The only reason he told me then was that I was inevitably going to see him talking with Dynamix management personnel about the move while we were out there. I lost a lot of respect for him, and then lost more when I learned some other things about him a couple of years later from people I am not at liberty to name who made me understand that he had loyalty to only himself. I was really bummed to learn what he was really like, or what he'd become.

When we worked on the games together and did interviews I would compliment him to the media about how great he was at what he could do with a few pixels, that he was the best in the business, but never in my memory did ever say a single good thing about what I did, and I spent a hell of a lot more time on the games than he did, not to mention the VAST majority of the writing. I was very disillusioned with him for that.

In light of those past remarks, and the fact that it seems to have been an animosity that had been brewing for over 20 years, to have him suddenly have a change of heart in the wake of the recent flood of game developer pioneers making comebacks, particularly through their Kickstarter campaigns, makes it feel like a cheap attempt to cash in. It pains me to see someone I had admired to that extent suddenly appear to "sell-out".

Maybe it's just me. Or maybe nothing will come of it. I hope he knows what he's getting himself into.

[8TrackMind]

I linked to that interview off the post I made on The Dot Eaters, but I don't think I had read that part where he savages Crowe so badly. In that context, yeah it makes things look a bit shady. Perusing that article, however, he also mentions several times that all the stuff that happened towards the end of the making of the Space Quest saga is water under the bridge, so perhaps with time he had gotten over it. I think that interview is from 1999, so a lot of things might have changed. At any rate, I'm disposed to give him the benefit of the doubt and hope the new venture can produce something special.

[8TrackMind]

Here is a fascinating Gamasutra article on how Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe left the water under the bridge and ended a 20-year estrangement to collaborate on this new Kickstarter project.