The phenomenon that is Kickstarter has been a lot of things to a lot of people. For some gamers it has been a chance to provide funding for new indie projects that wouldn’t seemingly exist otherwise, and for others it has been a chance for them to reconnect with their past. With quite a few new games coming from veteran developers born out of crowd sourcing, this has, if nothing else, laid bare an insatiable appetite for the games of yesteryear.

One guy from Andromeda - Mark Crowe in his office.

“ I never imagined I’d ever be involved with computer games again. The final years at Sierra had left an extremely bitter taste.

The Two Guys in Space Quest III.

Where it all began.

Mark, Scott and Chris at SDCC.

They've definitely got the 'hero pose' down.

“ One thing Mark and I learned very quickly after having not talked for so many years was that we still had that connection. It also occurred to me that when we were partners at Sierra we never had a significant disagreement in all that time...

So shiny!

A lead character who's a plumber?! That'll never work.

Amongst the many early titles vying for crowd funding in 2012 came a new game from the creators of the Sierra classic, Space Quest . Simply called SpaceVenture, the game is very much a spiritual successor to the classic adventures of Roger Wilco, but this time with players in control of an intergalactic plumber of sorts, Ace Hardway, instead of a janitor.I caught up with the Two Guys from Andromeda (Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe) to chat about the new project, its origins, learning from past mistakes and intergalactic poultry icons.Sierra had gone through some changes. Adventure games went away in the late ‘90s and so did I. They closed the Oakhurst operation, the birthplace of Sierra as a company in 1999, the year after I left. I went to parts north, then east and then west again, and then south. I never imagined I’d ever be involved with computer games again. The final years at Sierra had left an extremely bitter taste.These stories were extremely touching. It made me realize and be grateful that people cared so much about what we had done, how lucky and fortunate we were. Still, I’d only done just a couple of interviews over the years. One of those was with the persistent and patient Chris Pope who offered to come to where I was living to do a very rare face-to-face interview in the summer of 2011. A friendship grew out of that since I got to know him.Then, over a decade after Sierra’s demise and twenty years since we’d last been in contact, Mark tracked me down and emailed me about two months into 2012. We soon got on the phone and talked about the old days. In less than 15 minutes it was like no time had passed and we were back in stride.I’ve been in the game development business since the days at Sierra, living and working In Eugene Oregon (which does seem like an “entirely different planet” sometimes). I was Studio Design Director at Pipeworks, a console game developer, for 12 years before leaving to form the Guys from Andromeda with Scott and Chris [Pope]. The impetus for that, of course, was the success of Double Fine’s Kickstarter campaign. It proved there was still a large interest and a growing nostalgia for classic style adventure games. So I dug up Scott’s email and contacted him. It was great to be reconnecting after all those years and we both just really enjoyed recounting our years at Sierra.The planets just seemed in alignment, you could say. The potential of fan funding and online publishing allowed us to get around the traditional publisher hurdles. There’s also the fact that there were fan-made Space Quest games that had recently come out. Everything was pointing to this being the time to try and make it happen. Scott introduced me to Chris who impressed me right way as being super sharp and an all-around swell guy (and a little bit of a crazed/dedicated Sierra fan). With his social media and web development expertise, talent connections, and a driven dedication he was instrumental in making a new Two Guys adventure game a reality.Mark and I both had coincidentally just started hearing about Kickstarter projects and this new model for financing things. There were so many different kinds of projects but most interestingly to us of course were a couple of adventure games attempting to give crown funding a try. No established companies were interested in adventure games, and if they were, they were doing a damn good job of hiding it. Mark floated the idea of seeing what interest there was in what we used to do and giving Kickstarter a look as the way to go. We mulled it over and got more serious about it.We checked around and actually did talk to someone at Activision about Space Quest who then, and I believe now, still own all of the old Sierra IPs (intellectual properties). This actually occurred extremely close to the start of our Kickstarter campaign. They said they had potential plans for all the old franchises but said they’d call us back and let us know what their thoughts were about us doing something with Space Quest after a group of executives had convened. We never heard back from them. We had a feeling that would be the case though based on the attitude of the guy we spoke with, so Mark and I thought we’d go another way based on what fans were asking us for since we couldn’t wait on Activision. For the record, we still haven’t heard back from them.In 2012 there still were no established companies interested in adventure gaming that we knew of so we started our own endeavour, Guys From Andromeda LLC, and began to move forward to see what could happen from there.The ‘riding a bike’ analogy is apt. One thing Mark and I learned very quickly after having not talked for so many years was that we still had that connection. It also occurred to me that when we were partners at Sierra we never had a significant disagreement in all that time, which is incredibly rare and fortunate in any partnership. It had never occurred to us while at Sierra since we were always so busy working on game after game and had come to see it as the norm. But the big difference now is that we aren’t working in an office in the same location. We’ve been working in the new ‘virtual office’.Yeah I suppose you could say working together again was as easy as riding a skimmer bike across a Keronian desert (cue: crickets). The ‘virtual office’ has been a mixed bag for us though. We work just a monitor away from each other (provided our connections don’t crap out and our working hours overlap). Speaking for myself, it’s great working from home and being able to shut­off the world when I need to focus. But, there’s certainly something to be said for being cooped up together in an office working consistently 8 to 10 hours a day with an employer checking­in daily and asking “is it done yet?”The virtual office has been a mixed bag for me personally too. In that room together back in the day there were often long hours of silence, but it was never uncomfortable to me other than the pressure felt from not being productive (and the above­mentioned annoying employer check­in). But at some point one of us would spout something out of the blue, really stupid or not, and we’d go off and run with it. We came up with some of our best stuff from initially incredibly stupid ideas. I don't think that’s uncommon based on some writers I’ve talked to. People have no idea how strange and pressure­filled the creative process can be, but mostly strange. We were learning a lot of lessons as we went along since there was no ‘adventure design school’, at least back then. One good thing is we’ve learned a lot about our past mistakes. SpaceVenture is benefitting from that.Since Space Quest wasn’t an option, and we knew that people wanted something like it, SpaceVenture became the next best thing. Space Quest had grown from a desire to break the Sierra mould and have a character that was anything but a knight or prince or anything of that sort. Roger Wilco was definitely not in that mould. We wanted something that was more like an ‘everyman’ type. That lends itself to humour, is relatable, and that’s what a lot of people like. Someday we’d really like to do something different but a game like SpaceVenture and a character like Ace Hardway are what our supporters told us they wanted first.Being pet lovers, we wanted to tap into that bond that people feel with their pets to boost the emotional investment from players. But Rooter is not merely a cute little companion thrown in for emotional effect. Rooter functions as Ace’s ‘walking toolbox’ assistant, that you can take control of to utilize Rooter’s unique set of skills and abilities. Rooter’s size becomes an advantage in overcoming certain obstacles or accessing places where Ace can’t go. Early in our story, Rooter’s personality undergoes an interesting metamorphosis that we think everyone will get a kick out of. We all love Rooter.Mark came up with Rooter and I fell in love with the little guy instantly. Like Mark said, people have strong bonds with their pets. I’m one of those people and it really grabbed me. I love Rooter. I have acquaintances on Facebook who are also fans of Space Quest. They’re raising two very young nieces due to some extremely difficult family circumstances. When Mark posted more finished art on the web I got a private message from that individual and was told about how they’d shown their nieces Mark’s artwork and how excited they were, how positively they’d reacted, touching the screen where Rooter was. It got to me just that much more.I really love the dynamic between Ace and Rooter, basically a boy and his mechanical, thruster powered dog. I know this is a long answer to a short question but I believe Rooter was a master touch by Mark, so much so that I wish he’d been my idea!