(re: Sierra and Disney)
Good question….
We approached Disney about doing games.
Unfortunately, there were creative differences between my staff and Disney. I always believe that each product should have one designer. My vision was that we would license the characters from Disney and then pay them royalties. I was young and didn’t know better. Instead, they formed a group that was then assigned to us – to help us design the games. Theoretically, the group was there to insure that we correctly represented the Disney licensed characters, but some of the people in the group interpreted this as “helping to design the game”. I liked the people we were working with, but design by committee doesn’t work. Each project went over budget and had long delays as my creative people and Disney’s fought creative battle after creative battle. The products that came out of the collaboration were great – I particularly liked the Black Cauldron game and Donalds Playground (both by Al Lowe). But, my recollection is that due to the cost overruns we lost money on all of them. Ultimately, we decided that it was too costly to produce the Disney products, and Disney started doing their own products without us.
-Ken W
