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OK – now I understand … you don’t realize I sold Sierra. Is that it?
Sierra was sold in February 1996. I ran it for the 18 years prior to sale, but after the sale, I was completely shut out. I haven’t been to the company for many years, and have no idea what they are doing today.
What amazes me is this: the people who bought Sierra paid a lot of money for it. Then, once they had it, the goal seemed to be to completely change it. Why not just stick with the people who made the company what it was? We were profitable and growing rapidly. I’m as frustrated as you are.
-Ken W
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From: Tony Loomin [mailto:phemail@cox.net]
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 12:49 AM
To:kenw@seanet.com
Subject: Re: You fell off KENNY BOY!! YOU FELL OFF!!!You blew it, Half life? garbage… Freddy Pharkas, that was quality…. The last king’s quest, complete garbage…. King Quest VI was great, have you heard of Tierra? now thats a great company in the making, how could you shut it all down… I grew up on sierra games, i’m 22 now… I loved getting the catalog as a kid… you ruined a beautiful empire… Long live the low boss…. What happend to Jim Walls? The Cole family? Al lowe? they were the best things going for you… They tell me good things about you, but it seems like all you cared about was money and a little fun….
Tony Loomin
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(RE: You fell off KENNY BOY!! YOU FELL OFF!!!) I did suspect what would happen, but convinced myself it wouldn’t. Generally when a large company buys a small company, the result is a disaster. But, I thought our acquisition would be an exception to the rule.
The company was purchased by one of our board members; Walter Forbes, of a company called CUC. I had known him for years, and had great respect for him. We were assured that I would be left in charge of everything product related, and none of the things that made Sierra special would be changed. I would not have sold the company, regardless of price, had I known, or had even the vaguest indication, of what would occur.
As it turned out, the Walter Forbes I knew may not have been the person I thought he was. His company, CUC, was fabricating hundreds of millions of dollars in fake profit. Promises made at the time of acquisition were not kept. Civil and Criminal litigation continues to this day. Mr. Forbes may someday soon experience real time in jail, along with other members of his senior management.
I was not the only one fooled by CUC. Investors across the country lost BILLIONs (seriously) through believing in Mr. Forbes and his company.
As to your question about making a new home for Sierra’s employees: I was locked out of the game business for five years. That time has expired, and I have thought from time to time about going back into the business. We may do so someday – but, I doubt it. I contacted Sierra a couple of years ago, to see if I could help them out, but they weren’t interested.
-Ken W
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From: Tony Loomin [mailto:phemail@cox.net]
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 7:42 AM
To:kenw@seanet.com
Subject: Re: You fell off KENNY BOY!! YOU FELL OFF!!!No, Mr. Williams, I do realize you sold it…. Did you not know what would happen? Come on… Market trends, cost effeciency… you know how the big companies work… How come you didn’t take that money and make a new home for sierra employees? what do u do now?
Tony
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(RE: You fell off KENNY BOY!! YOU FELL OFF!!!) Message As an avid fan in my 30s today, I agree that the quality and values of the “Old School” Sierra enterprise was outstanding. The company today (IMHO) is Sierra in name only. The sale and downfall, the job loss and loss of creative talent – an absolute shame.
But instead of criticizing Ken, I’ll instead extend my appreciation for the products and memories that you created. I am and will continue to be a fan of the true Sierra. And of Ken and Roberta. Great stories, great games.
And Tony – I’d forgotten how great those Sierra Catalogues used to be…and how excited I’d be not just to have purchased the latest Quest game, but to also have the latest listing of new products….thanks for the memory!!
Cheers
Kevin Byrnes
Ontario, Canada (eh) -
(RE: You fell off KENNY BOY!! YOU FELL OFF!!!) As an avid fan in my 30s today, I agree that the quality and values of the “Old School” Sierra enterprise was outstanding. The company today (IMHO) is Sierra in name only. The sale and downfall, the job loss and loss of creative talent – an absolute shame.
But instead of criticizing Ken, I’ll instead extend my appreciation for the products and memories that you created. I am and will continue to be a fan of the true Sierra. And of Ken and Roberta. Great stories, great games.
And Tony – I’d forgotten how great those Sierra Catalogues used to be…and how excited I’d be not just to have purchased the latest Quest game, but to also have the latest listing of new products….thanks for the memory!!
Thank you!!!!
I’ve been reading through some of the old InterAction magazines. They really made me miss “the old days”.
-Ken W
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(RE: You fell off KENNY BOY!! YOU FELL OFF!!!) Well dammit, before I was just pissed off at you for being greedy, now this is ridiculous…. I used to be so fond of you…. I thought you were the one guy with money who actually knew how to run a game company and who actually cared about the gamer…. There must be something you can do, you should get the team back together…. I think there still is an audience for the same type of games you were making…. As soon as you made KQV, ALL WAS LOST…. I knew from that point on it was only a matter of time before the quality of the games was lost to the quality of the graphics and everything else that did not matter…. The SCI hybrid engine that made QFG 2 was perfect, all you needed was a little better graphics…. Have you heard of Tierra? They made King’s Quest I and II vga remakes that are breath taking… Also they are making a QFG 2 vga remake that looks stunning… thanks for the reply… Also i think you did a very poor job with the sierra remakes, qfg-1 was the only one that added anything, kq1 and pq1 remakes were horrible, never played the sq1 remake…….. but boy did i love sq3… i think someone is making a good remake…… Also, how did you start these games? I contacted jim walls and he said you just found him one day and offered him the job… police quest…
Tony
(Grin) … Tony: I agree with you that Tierra is doing great work. Hopefully the new owners of Sierra won’t shut them down. As to me personally – I have no idea what the future holds. I did games for nearly 20 years. In some ways, I was burnt out on it. If I had a really awesome idea for a game, or if Roberta had a serious urge to do a game, we might consider it – but, that’s not reality. For right now, I like being able to travel and play golf – and, write code several hours per day.
-Ken W
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(re: RE: You fell off KENNY BOY!! YOU FELL OFF!!!)
For Tony –
There is absolutely no reason for you to insult Ken like you have been, nor to lose your respect for him. It seems to me that he has always done what he thought was best for everyone – gamers and employees alike – and while mistakes were made, negative hindsight is both useless and hypocritical, as -everyone- makes mistakes.
I have strong doubts that Ken ever wanted to sell Sierra, and I feel that he did so because he felt it was the only thing left for him to do at the time. It is hardly Ken’s fault that Forbes basically betrayed him and Sierra. Ken is not the one to be blaming here.
He is still a person to be respected. Think about what your gaming life would’ve been without him. Sierra was one of the biggest impacts on Adventure gaming. Heck, we probably wouldn’t even have Half-life today if Sierra hadn’t existed to be bought out in the first place.
So, instead of focusing only on what went wrong, as our species’ dear politicians have an exceedingly disgusting tendency to do – you should think about what went right. A lot of good things game from Ken, Roberta, Lori and Corey, Al, Josh, and all of the rest. For us imperfect humans, they did a pretty darn good job with what they had.
Adios,
Kyle -
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(Non-Compete Clauses, and More) At the time we sold the company, both Roberta and I signed a five-year non-compete clause. We agreed to not do anything in the consumer software, or videogame, business for five years.
It’s standard practice when companies are bought. The acquirer paid a lot of money for Sierra, and didn’t want me to wait two weeks, set up a new company, and hire away all the employees.
That said.. the odds are that my non-compete wouldn’t have been binding. The company that bought Sierra confessed shortly after Sierra was acquired that it had been cooking its books (reporting more profit than it actually had). Given this, and the huge negative impact on the ex-sierra employees (ourselves included), I doubt any court would have blamed me for violating the non-compete agreement.
All of which is irrelevant now. The five year period is long gone, and we could compete if we wanted to. Roberta would like to do something again, and I’m starting to think that direction.
Roberta would like to see us start a new company, which we may do someday. I’ve got a few ideas about how the software behind this site can segway into games, but want to get it finished, and successful, on its current track before I start thinking about taking it some new direction.
A couple of weeks ago, I did contact Sierra. I saw an article that indicated they were struggling, so I contacted them to see if there was anything I could do to help.
We’re already off to a bad start though, and it’s my fault. They asked if I could meet with their CEO (last week) in Los Angeles or New York, and I asked if it were possible to just have a conference call. They felt it was critical that our first meeting be face-to-face, and our meeting was deferred until April when I was going to be in LA anyhow. I did nearly thirty years of jumping on planes every few days, and always hated it. Roberta and I still do a fair amount of travel on our own, but it’s at a much more leisurely pace, and we’re together – and I spend my days playing golf, or with my computer – not in meetings. I would love to see Sierra regain its leadership position, and will do what I can to help, but hopefully this won’t include riding planes or showing up for meetings.
-Ken W -
(re: Non-Compete Clauses, and More)
I feel you have the right idea, Ken. I’ve been running small businesses for about a decade now, and all the local traveling and meetings, and finding this and that and so on and so forth . . . when do I have the time to spend the money? I guess that’s why I went back to college.
With who you are and such, starting a new company seems very encouraging, though retirement must be just as nice, or even better.
Picasso believed that by working all of the time, he’d live forever. He was 97 when in died in the ’70s. I guess he was right.
Picasso also believed great artist steal. But that’s another topic altogether.
People on this website, Al Lowe, video game chat rooms on Yahoo! and AOL are all complaining, time and time again, that video games are either sports games, lousy extreme games, first-person shooters, EverQuest clones, Mario 64 clones or Tomb Raider clones. What’s sad is both Mario and Tomb Raider games are not selling too well.
Lastly, in the last ’70s, you and Roberta did something that wasn’t possible to do on the computer. Then in 1984, you did it again. And in 1988. And in 1989. And in 1990. And in 1993, 1994, 1996 and then poof! I remember an old promo *.AVI file on the first King’s Quest collection that had somebody saying, “We were doing VGA on EGA, and we are doing SVGA on VGA–” then the clip switches from there to a similing Al I think. Hell, I watched all the *.AVI files on that CD. The in-sight was great, but the posting you do here really shares the actual work involved. The point is, though, you and Roberta have a magic touch in PC gaming that’s just hibernating and waiting for a comeback. What that is, I don’t know myself.
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(re: Non-Compete Clauses, and More)
Ken,
I like both ideas! No matter if you help Sierra, or start a whole new company, I for one would be waiting anxiously to see and hopefully purchase any game made by you and Roberta! It was just you and Roberta to begin with, so sounds like a great place to start….again!
Despite my childish excitment, I just wanted to say, go for it!!!
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(re: Non-Compete Clauses, and More)
Considering how many times you’ve contacted them and haven’t heard back, and considering what Al has said about how his negotations with Vivendi have been drawn out over so many months, I don’t think it’s unreasonable at all for you to defer the meeting until April — especially if you’re volunteering your time! Don’t feel bad about it. April’s not that far away.
I used to have to travel a lot for work, and it was so draining. Don’t have to as much anymore but I still do occassionally. I just got back from a 5-day trip and even though it wasn’t that long, I’m completely drained and disoriented. I can’t imagine going back to that type of travel on a regular basis!
-emily
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(re: re: RE: You fell off KENNY BOY!! YOU FELL OFF!!!)
I agree completely with Kyle.
I also just want to add that the move to more important graphics was, to my eyes, at the same time unfortunate (I’m still fond of old good AGI as Tony) and a must.
Look at what happened to Infocom, who remained faithful to a system that became a niche: it failed in less than 10 years. Both Companies left us many great games, but Sierra by going towards graphic had at least the chance to try and survive giving us also now good adventures, but, very unfortunately, the new owners of Sierra ruined it all by turning around on adv. (silly thing indeed). This is not fault of Ken for sure and he deserves for sure our full trust and thanks. Try to do what he and Roberta did !!!
Giovanni -
(re: re: re: RE: You fell off KENNY BOY!! YOU FELL OFF!!!) It’s an interesting question – “What would have happened to Infocom had they stuck with text adventures?”
Conventional wisdom is that they would have failed, which in fact did occur. However, they did not fail because of their adventure games, they failed because they refocused the company on business software, and invested a ton of money, only to watch their business product fail, and take down the whole company.
I cannot honestly say what would have happened had they stuck with text adventures. I’ve thought a lot recently that a text adventure could be an interesting direction.
Here’s what intrigues me:
Adventure games, when I left Sierra, were costing us $1-5 million to produce. This is a ton of money. Much of this product was flowing into art and music. If you count the code required to support all the animation, and 3D tools, it could be easily be two thirds or more of the budget that was spent against the fancy graphics.
I never saw any of Infocom’s budgets, but my guess was that they spent well under $1 million per game.
Think about what would happen if someone had continued to evolve the artform, and gave a project the kind of budget required for a graphic adventure. In my vision, the game wouldn’t be longer, it would be DEEPER. Characters would be more fully developed. There would be more subplots. The feeling that you are a part of the story would be greater.
I’ve sat through hundreds of meetings where games were compromised because “it would require too much animation.”
I think it would be an interesting experiment to build a game that really focused on having intelligent characters. It’s a little off-subject, but I remember when our flight simulators were being considered to train fighter pilots. Game programmers are the hottest engineers out there. If 20 of Sierra’s best engineers had focused on building a synthetic world that felt real, with characters that displayed real emotion and realistic unpredictability, but the game was described in text (or, perhaps dynamically constructed images) it would have been a game worth playing.
Part of why the industry has become stale is the high focus on production values (in my humble opinion). By this I do not mean to say that art and music aren’t important. My point is that they aren’t EVERYTHING. Unfortunately though, because depth of play isn’t usually visible, and art/music is, depth sometimes loses.
I’ve always said that computers are a new art form, simiilar but different than film and books. I remember when people thought film would kill the book industry. It didn’t. Books are books and films are films. Books aren’t bad. Book publishers shouldn’t stop making books, and become film companies. Generally, films don’t have the same depth of plot that a book does. The “graphics” get in the way. Plus, the fact that you only have 90 minutes to tell a story in most films. Computers are good at interactivity. It’s what they do that can’t be found in books or film. Some games forget that computers are a super-set of films and books. You have the ablity of a book to add depth to a story, the ability of a film to dazzle with graphics and sound, and the interactivity of a computer – to make the viewer a participant, not a spectator in the story.
I’m describing this poorly… but, hopefully you can see where I’m going with this.
The focus in a game has to be on building a great game. This comes through building a credible universe, and allowing people to role-play in it. I’m fairly convinced that a quantum leap forward could be made in the adventure game genre if the same kind of money (or more) were spent on “the game” as is spent on the art/sound track. Hopefully someday someone will experiment with a text adventure that blows me away. I like it when pre-conceived notions are shattered…
-Ken W -
(re: re: re: re: RE: You fell off KENNY BOY!! YOU FELL OFF!!!)
A few recent adventures (as in since around 2000 or so):
The X Files (PS1)
Final Fantasy series (PS1/2 & GCube)
Escape from Monkey Island (PS2)
Law & Order (PC)
CSI (PC)
Dracula the Resurrection (PS1)
Incredible Crisis (PS1)
Pokemon series (N64, GB, & GCube)
Banjo-Kazooie series (N64, GBA)I’m just pointing out that adventure has died at all. It has evolved. Ken, you’re absolutely right about focus. I notice, from my own ownership, that games like X Files or Banjo are really fun. I learned to accept that the adventures look and play different. I wouldn’t object to another King’s Quest that plays like 8, as long as there’s joystick support this time. I feel that LucasArts did good with Monkey Island 4, making it very Mario 64-ish, yet being Monkey Island. I’ve no idea what VU will do to Larry 9 (or whatever number Al’s going by) will be similar.
Sierra sure had a unique style. But a “credible universe” is something more, so much more, important to a game than anything else. Note Diablo, EverQuest and Final Fantasy 11. I don’t think that King’s Quest Online is a bad idea, but more depths than a bunch Grahams running around is needed.
However, as I stated before, something’s around the corner here in gaming. We’ll know it when we see it 😀 -
(re: re: re: re: RE: You fell off KENNY BOY!! YOU FELL OFF!!!)
Glad to see my observation sparked a lot of comments from your side. It is indeed a point on which I thought a lot too. Here is my thinking.
Before all, your words on “deeper”, on “money spent on the game” are not only right, but a truth I do fully subscribe. As I wrote previously, also your first AGI games has more depth and every time you switched to a new technology, the first of your games suffered (I assume from the more time spent on tech vs depth in fact).
I would still buy with pleasure a good old text game and indeed I recently finished my collection of all Infocom games, thanks to eBay and Yois.However, on Infocom, I do have a slightly different opinion. Please do take it as an openly expressed opinion, from a fan and not a technical person as I am.
First of all, I believe we can all agree when you say that Infocom failed due to the shift to Business products.
Actually I even tend to say more than that, that they in the end did fail because they lacked complete convincement in what they were doing best (adventures). Where Sierra was focused, Infocom, even while happy for the good results of adventures, thought at adventure games as a source of cash for their real products to come: business products (maybe seing companies started by co-students prosper…).
In this way, they did fail in one of the basic in business: they tried to finance the new Cornerstone project by taking resources out of their then core and cash producing business rather than finance it and see it as something separate, a second division maybe.This said though, Ken, I must say that I am fully convinced that in the end, Infocom would have failed nonetheles, and here is why.
The evolution on computers to my eyes was towards the end of 80s making the situation more and more similar to Movies vs Books (I admit it, both much better, since interactive, but really a sort of).
Practically, more and more people were attracted by the increasing potentiality of technology, rendering the text side more and more a niche. On the other side, more and more the aficionados were getting stronger in defending their belief, but still more and more niche.In reality, the truth is that Movies and Books are not mutually excluding, a good Movie is good as well as a good Book, but if a Book is good it is much better than the Movie because, as you correctly said, it has more depth, and this is even more true if you consider computers, due to interaction capabilities.
So, why text adv aficionados were becoming more and more niche ? Less time to spend in front of a computer and easy catching graphics, plus the effect of new things and potentialities to see did the most I think. Computers were becoming more like movie theaters and people don’t go to movie theaters to see text of mute movies. That medium became suitable for something different…
… so what could have saved text adventures and Infocom (besides the core fans, like you and me of course) ?
Using the same paragon of Movies and Books, my guess is as portability played strongly in favour of books (you can read on a beach, on a sofa,… if a book is good it can spellbing you anywhere, in bed,…), only that same atout could have given to Infocom the new life it would have needed to survive: unfortunately it was not ready yet. Nowadays (more 2/3 years ago indeed) Palms and Handheld (even more than portable PCs) represent what in my opinion would be the right medium again for text adventures: I myself started again to play for example on the plane when travelling to Asia for work, or in bed,… a more suitable medium !
Unfortunately for Infocom, between the end 80s and the advent and real spreading of handhelds there were years in between, and for this I say that they could not have survived in their decision to stick to text.
Maybe they could have survived the interreign by moving more towards similar mix as Magnetic Scrolls (Infocom text and not many reinforcing high level still life pics), but it’s really hard to say.I repeat, this is my own and maybe elaborate opinion, and it may as well be completely wrong, but I feel it and I wanted to share it with you.
I close with a thank you for still caring so much about adventure games since passion transpires from your words.
The someone might in the end be you, never thoguht about it ?
Ciao,
Giovanni -
(re: re: re: re: re: RE: You fell off KENNY BOY!! YOU FELL OFF!!!)
Signor Giovanni is right about Infocom.
I do believe that the adventure isn’t dead at all, but is merely evolving into something we don’t know.
It’s the same evolution made by a new generation of hardware every 2.5 years.
As I have stated in previous posts, I believe in adventures played like console adventures (Banjo-Kazooie format), then the type of games we liked could be made easily, and extremely similar to play mechanics as the older adventure games we all love.
This’s where, I believe, King’s Quest 8 was headed in the right direction. Though I personally don’t like KQ8, it’s pretty good, nonetheless.
The other way adventure could go in back to the VGA days in play mechanics. I mean, why not? It wouldn’t cost the company any money compared to today’s standards, and I really believe that the games would be snatched up, for 2 reasons: 1) The game should be priced between $10 and $20 on a standard CD-ROM and 2) It would be so simple of a program (like Tierra’s remakes) that the games could run on a 486 or Pentium, making it usable for a group of consumers that were buying Sierra games a decade or so ago. With a few drivers and such, these games can run on multiple OSs such as Linux and Mac as well as Win 3.x or whatever. Hell, it could be designed so far to even run on a console or DVD player, but it would be very crude from my own visions.
I feel that this market out there, like the techno market in music (sells in every nation the genre is released, but not even promoted in the US making the record companies blame us for piracy when it’s actually bad music=bad sales), there is an audience for good, cheap games that are simple to run/install and play, and aren’t graphically confusing.
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(re: re: re: re: re: RE: You fell off KENNY BOY!! YOU FELL OFF!!!) I’m not completely sold on the idea of RPGs being the same as adventure games. I love both, but I feel like RPGs have less interaction in a way. They’re usually very straightforward, go get this item, then fight this monster. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Final Fantasy games and the new Mario & Luigi RPG is fantastic.
I think of adventure games as requiring more thought than RPGs though. I’m working my way through the 2 most recent Monkey Island games now (Escape and Curse). But there’s definitely a market for adventure games now and I think publishers are realizing it. -
(re: re: re: re: re: re: RE: You fell off KENNY BOY!! YOU FELL OFF!!!)
Well, sort of, but maybe I did not clarify suff. my thought in the post: I see you refer to a market to old VGA games, I personally do not see it.
What I do see is a market window which can bring “old style” adventures to new life, and this is handhelds and palms: technically they are reliving fastly the evolution of PCs of old times (this helps) but above all they are portable.
This would be the perfect window even for the perfect text adventure Ken was describing in his latest post. I’d love to see it happen, but time runs out fastly, the window opened up a few years ago and will last still for some more on (from handhelds into third gen phones maybe but then, in another 5 years from now, whi knows ?).
I’d love to read also Ken’s comment and opinion on this.
Ciao,
Giovanni -
(re: re: re: re: re: re: re: RE: You fell off KENNY BOY!! YOU FELL OFF!!!) I realize I only mentioned Monkey Island in my post before. But there are a whole bunch of PC adventure games that have come out in the past few years. These games (Syberia, Out of Order, Runaway) DO breath new life into the genre.
I think I see what you’re saying though. But people have been playing text-adventures on Palms for years already. I also am not a big fan of portable gaming. I love my Gameboy, but it rarely leaves my living room. How can you immerse yourself in a game if you’re just killing time before a meeting? It lends itself to disconnection with the story and characters. I have Dope Wars on my cell phone because it’s quick, mindless, and I don’t care about finishing.
Example: if yesterday I had my gameboy with me waiting to meet a friend, I would not have seen a childhood friend I lost contact with 12 years ago. I would have been hunched over a little screen trying to get the Princess through Teehee Desert. Games are for home and maybe long trips. I don’t want to be involved in some adventure when I should be paying attention to what’s around me in the real world.
Thus concludes my rant on portable gaming. -
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