I totally agree with you! Like most of you Sierra fans, I also wanted to work at Sierra and Sierra only. I’ve read many interviews of game designers, artists, musicians etc working for Sierra that were so glad to be working with a really creative and dedicated team. Ofcourse other companies also have an amazing team but I always got a special ‘Sierra’ feeling when playing Sierra games. I did get the same feeling playing other games (MI3, Reunion, Broken Sword, Toonstruck, Diablo, Megarace, FF7) but still…
I always liked the idea that when you bought a Sierra game, you automatically became part of the Sierra Family. You knew the games were designed by people who loved adventure games and you knew that there was a big community that loved the games as much as you did.
I remember Ken saying in one of the video’s of the KQ collection, that in the old days, the whole industry (yeah that was a long time ago), went camping or something and were throwing buckets of water at each other. These gaming pioneers had one goal and that was to create games and show people how great a game could be. Technically advanced and fun! After this, Ken says that the thing that only matters nowadays is grabbing a few points of marketshare.
Things have changed big time, it’s all about the money! I really can’t blame game developers, but I can blame them for the quality of recent games. Sierra will never again be the company that we loved, and I’ve made my peace with that, but I’m still hoping we’ll see Gabriel Knight 4 someday!
It’s a good thing we still have those good memories 😉
Now I’m rambling too!