Christopher Jones (born March 4, 1955)[1] is a video game designer, video game producer, CEO, finance professional, and actor. He is best known for a series interactive movies starring Tex Murphy, a private investigator that lives in San Francisco in the middle of the 21st century. Murphy is played by Jones himself.
Career
Jones was a founding member of Access Software, along with Bruce Carver and his brother Roger Carver, and remained its CFO until it was sold to Microsoft in 1999.
At Access, Jones served as a finance executive, but, as the company's output turned toward more story-driven titles, Jones became more involved in writing, design, and production. He designed and wrote the point-and-click adventure games Amazon: Guardians of Eden and Countdown, and served as producer on various titles in the Links golf franchise, and others.
Jones is best recognized by many gamers for the creation and portrayal of Tex Murphy in a series of adventure games, beginning with 1989's Mean Streets. Initially, this meant little more than posing for the games' cover art, digitized sprites and assorted still frames, but as the series transitioned to full motion video with the third installment Under A Killing Moon Jones' role became increasingly cinematic, acting alongside established Hollywood actors such as Brian Keith and Russell Means.
After Access was re-christened Indie Built, and sold to Take-Two Interactive, he was the company's Chief Financial Officer until its dissolution in 2006.
Following the dissolution of Indie Built, the company's golf division was spun off into a new company, TruGolf, focusing on high-end golf simulators using real clubs. Jones serves as Finance Executive for TruGolf and, in 2007, he founded Big Finish Games, which shares the same office. Big Finish Games initially aimed to bridge the gap between casual games and the traditional adventure game audience, by offering simple hidden object games with a heavy focus on story. Their first title, Three Cards to Midnight, was released in May 2009. Other Big Finish titles include Three Cards to Dead Time (2010), Murder Island: Secret of Tantalus (2011), Escape from Thunder Island (2011), and Rita James and the Race to Shangri La (2012).
Big Finish, which employs several longtime members of Access Software, had hoped to raise funds to revive the Tex Murphy series, even going as far as announcing a new project, but after failing to generate enough, they instead decided to crowdfund the remainder of the money on Kickstarter. They successfully raised almost $600,000 on Kickstarter, exceeding their stated goal of $450,000*.[2] On June 18, 2012, Big Finish Games began production on a new Tex Murphy game that would again star Jones.
Personal life
Chris' late brother, Kevin L. Jones, played Mac Malden in the Tex Murphy games.
He is married to Audree Jones and has three children, two sons, Ryan L. Jones and Mason R. Jones; and daughter Courtney Jones.[3]
He is of Finnish extraction.[4]