Ken 'Sierra On-Line' Williams Interview

DasJan writes "Adventure-Treff has conducted an extensive interview with Ken Williams, the founder and former boss of Sierra On-Line ("Leisure Suit Larry", "Space Quest", "King's Quest"...) Ken tries to give insight into his gaming philosophy, and talks about the history of Sierra and adventure gaming. He also mentions several little-known and intriguing anecdotes, such as his meeting with Bill Gates or how he tried to buy id Software."

Comments

Hmm...

[funkhauser]

...or how he tried to buy id Software.

First-person Leisure Suit Larry... sounds like fun to me! :)

Re:Hmm...

[stefanlasiewski]

sounds like fun to me!

Fun? Fun?!? My god man, would you like to sleep with Carmack?

I cannot believe...

[Dot.Com.CEO]

how little attention this thread has been getting! Sierra games basically sum up my adolescente computer game playing. I remember being stuck with an Atari ST with a mono monitor (640x400 resolution baby) and Sierra and Lucasarts games were the only ones playable on the machine without needing to occupy the family TV. Anyhow, I remember playing Police Quest, yes, Leisure Suit Larry, Hero's Quest, the ultra-funny Space Quests and, of course, the epitome of frustration that was King's Quest IV. I still remember that stupid scene where you had to tiptoe on a whale's tongue....

Even though everyone remembers them for the "Quest" series, the memory of playing the two Manhunter games. Truly a testament to excellence. Manhunter and Loom were two of the most original games of the 80s, and I cannot help but think of the Manhunter people doing Loom 2...

Ah, I guess I'm getting old...

Re:I cannot believe...

[TwistedKestrel]

Yeah, me neither. Everybody in my house was into the Quest games, on our Tandy ... what was it, 100? It was the one with three-voice sound. Man, I miss that thing. Anyway, my mother, my brothers, I don't know about my sister ... my dad always stayed away from it for some reason though. But Sierra games are definitely an important part of my fledgling geekdom.

The interview was a great read. Ken Williams seems to come off a bit strong, though, but I guess it worked for handling his company. It was very interesting to hear from one of the men who had a tremendous effect on the gaming industry.

And since there doesn't seem to be too many threads on the article, it seems like there is not enough people reading it! Come on, people! In addition to the ID reference, there's a Steve Wozniak reference, and a mention of a dying music company! Read it!

Good old games...

[ude]

Man.. I just remembered how much fun I had with the old Kings Quest series and my favourite, Quest for Glory series. But I also enjoyed Space Quest.

I think it's too bad that all games now are "point-n-click". I actually enjoyed typing in what I wanted to do.

hmm.. all those good memories... And the nice graphics aswell. I think it's the expectation that the games now should be so stylish, and they completely forget about gameplay. Which in my opinion is the most important thing.

Anyway.. I could always play those games on my old AMD K-6 233Mhz.

Old Games on Apple

[robbway]

Interestingly enough, Ken doesn't remember that the Roberta Williams Collection, a very good buy (don't know about XP compatibility), had an Apple II emulator on it to play Roberta's Apple games. He didn't have to download it at all, his own company sold it.

He's right though, old games typically don't hold your interest, mainly because we're used to a higher standard for graphics and sound.

[The first Sierra game I played was Sammy Lightfoot on the Apple II (a Donkey Kong clone). You literally had to line up pixels before you jumped back then.]

Who killed sierra?

[SmallFurryCreature]

The interviewer asks why sierra is no longer the company it once was. Read to the very bottom of the article and you will see the answer.

After talking to Bill Gates (Just the person to ask about making profit on games :) he decided to switch the company around. No longer make HIT games but focus on edutainment (yah kid love that) and renewable games.

So who killed Sierra, the founder after talking to gates.

Re:Who killed sierra?

[Torgo's Pizza]

You've got it all wrong. This was actually a *good* thing. Have you even noticed the instability in the game industry? It isn't a question of making hit games, but weathering the storm when the bad times come. This is how Sony has survived the past decade. When the electronics giant had some serious problems due to the economy, the Playstation saved its butt. When the economy improves, Sony can use its other divisions to prop up the gaming side.

In fact, the most successful game publishers have other divisions that complement the game development. Lucasarts has the myriad of George Lucas properties. Cendant had hotels, car rentals to help them during slow periods. (Of course, the recession hit all their industries hard.) Microsoft became a juggernaught by using their other divisions to prop up the XBox and game publishing side. Heck, even Electronic Arts has edutainment software.

So it ends up being not just making hit games, but being able to take on the slow periods. If the game industry has another year like 1984, only those companies who have a large enough nest egg or are able to lean on other sources of income are going to survive.

just me?

[Baron_911]

... or does Ken kinda come off as a big ass?
I had no tolerance for anyone who didn't understand my goals. I thought of business as war. Sierra's employees were my soldiers and competitors were the enemy. If someone wanted to have fun at work, they should do so - but, not at Sierra. Go elsewhere.

I bet all the fun was Roberta's idea, and dude was the grumpy money guy. He doesn't even PLAY games for cryin out loud! Sry... I do love old Sierra games BTW, so im not tryin to be too cruel >:)

Wow

[Monkeylaser]

Judging from the interview, now I can figure out the exact point at which Sierra games started to suck. Those perennial products and edutainment games weren't what people wanted to see from Sierra, as far as I can tell. At one point I think Sierra or Dynamix, (they tend to sort of run together in my mind), produced a football game that was pretty brutally bad. It got pretty much owned by Madden, if I'm not incorrect. Can someone tell me what the relationship of Sierra and Dynamic were? I just remember Sierra's magazine always selling Dynamix products such as A-10 tank Killer and the game with the futureistic hovertanks in it, the name of which escapes me at the moment. Stellar 7, that's it. King's Quest 4 was the first game I picked up for my 286. The copy protection came as something of a suprise for a 10 year old, as I thought everyone was trustworthy and wouldn't steal games. You'd have to literally memorize the entire manual to get around the copy protection. It wasn't much fun at all, but the game was cool. Well, if you liked a single misstep sending you plummeting to your doom, or otherwise dying in a relatively amusing way in-game. I never realized the kind of production values and work that went into these games until I saw the crap that gets churned out today without a single interesting story thread. And no, I'm not some retro freak, I still play games, I just wonder whether these EGA graphics and text combining games didn't somehow lend themselves better to storytellers rather than corporate moneymongers.

Re:Wow

[xingix]

I forgot to add that I used to love that Sierra magazine InterAction. It was very cool in the day (or so I thought) especially when Ken and Roberta's son had his own column every week. He was around my age so I thought he must've been the luckiest kid alive. I used to pore over every word of that magazine every 3 months that it came out.

Back in the early 90's I used to call up Sierra's customer service several times a year requesting free demos and they used to send me boxes of floppies with 5 or 6 demos for free! The company seemed like they really wanted to keep their customers :-D