Hi Ken and everyone!
I read this big exchange between Ken and Alistair about how Sierra could have been in the days it dominated the adventure game industry and I would just like to add this in case anyone here starts to believe that sierra might have been a company ran by an evil capitalistic CEO.
For anyone who has no experience in management and business, please know that once things take – off, you need to be there and focused on the ball, because when the business get’s big, if sales don’t happen with big projects, it’s going to cost a lot of money…
There is a big difference between being an artist creator and being a businessman. In business, you have no time off, it’s be quick or be dead… You have to foresee, understand, plan, control, work, work and work to meet the deadlines… It’s hard to be profitable, don’t forget that, and to be profitable you have to have the vision… how will you make those things happen? How will you make it so that it sells and that it becomes profitable…? It’s a very hard equation and it takes some out-of-the-blue budget cuts and changes of plan to happen… so get ready… It’s hard… just for the fun of it, try and calculate what it costs up front to develop, package, distribute, market and sell 200,000 copies of one single game. If those games don’t sale, that’s a lot of money you just spent… I was flabbergasted when I saw that over 150 people worked to create Unreal Tournament 2003!!!!! That means 150 people with an average of 40,000$ a year for two-and-a-half years of work, plus technology costs, plus marketing , plus distribution, plus packaging, plus even more things to account for that I don’t even know of…
That is hard business, so don’t be too hard on managers and ceos…
Ken Williams Rocks!!!
Marc-A.