Would a “Constant Companion” connected device (like a tablet) for seniors be more practical now than it was originally?
I’m not sure. I haven’t looked to see what is out there. If the game I’m working on now does well I might dig into online multiplayer games, and just like with TSN I’d start with card games for seniors. I agree with you that a tablet is the easiest way to go.
My memory is very fuzzy on this one, but I remember signing up for it and I still have the letter from John Williams in 1995 saying it was canceled and money refunded. As I recall, it was supposed to be a quarterly CD-ROM sent along with InterAction. Do you remember this project?
Sorry — I don’t remember it at all…
I’m assuming the labels with the picture were very costly, was that the main reason for the change?
As for the game boxes, did they get thicker to accommodate more disks, or to have more space for screenshots on the spine? (or both?)
Every time marketing management would change, the incoming regime would want to change all the labels, logo and boxes. I always thought it was a waste of money but wanted to support my team. I thought of it like “dogs marking their turf.” Unless it offended me I just considered it part of the cost of hiring new people and went along with it.
What kind of considerations were made on the production and cost of all the physical things that went into a Sierra game? (Manuals, maps, the Space Piston and PlaySpy magazines, etc.) Were the extras considered part of the game design and thus, up to the designer? It seemed to me that Sierra spared no expense in that area. That attention to detail made Sierra the Disney of computer games.
The box cost was low compared to the development cost. In general, we were printing in such high volume that we could do about anything without hurting our bottom line. We always wanted the products to look like they were a class act (that they were Sierra quality).
In 8th grade English class we had to pick a CEO of a company whom we would “like to be” and write a paper about it, and I chose Ken Williams of Sierra On-Line! When I read it in front of the class, most of the kids were confused but the Sierra fans were grinning from ear to ear.
Yay! Thank you.