Ken Williams TSN/Yserbius Question

[Unknown,Unknown]

My name is Daniel Dickinson, currently of Phoenix Arizona. I have been a long time Sierra fan and huge gamer. We have recently put together a site dedicated to Yserbius, which you can see at Yserbius.org. We were wondering if you would be so kind as to join us in discussing bringing Yserbius back and how we may go about it. Offer insight on who we should talk to. Ups and downs and any other information you may be able to add that could help us. We’re a small group of people, run by Ex-Inners (Imagination Network) that only hung out in Yserbius, back in the day. We would be honored to have you join us.

Thank you for your time,
Daniel “Tiger” Dickinson

[Unknown,Unknown]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it is extremely unlikely anyone will ever release Yserbius. I’m not even sure who owns it. My guess would be AOL. We sold it to AT&T, who sold it to AOL. Although, that said, I also heard a rumor that Electronic Arts may have some claim to owning it.

But, that’s only the beginning of the mess.

Sierra published Yserbius, and had an independent developer, whose name I’ve forgotten (for the moment) who we paid royalties to. Also: Sierra sold TSN, and the rights to operate Yserbius, but not the Yserbius name.

In other words, for AOL (if it is them) to ever re-release Yserbius, AOL, Sierra (if it exists) and the author (who I can’t remember) would have to be negotiated with – by a person who probably has never heard of Yserbius.

It’s really sad, but I suspect Yserbius is dead.

Now, that doesn’t mean a game couldn’t be created that captured what was good about Yserbius, and improves on it — that doesn’t infringe on the rights of the original.

The tricky part about this is that you need designers, programmers, musicians, qa people, etc. I do believe something great could be built with a small team, but it’s hard to put one together.

Last year, there was an attempt by people on this board to build a game. It is still going, but it has been a long tough haul, and may never go anywhere. I hope it does, but it’s hard to assemble a team of volunteers and keep them interested in a project and working hard. I’m impressed the team has made it this far.

Good luck – Ken W

[Unknown,Unknown]

There appears to be a project that is attempting to re-create Yserbius:

http://www.xensoft.com/Yserbius.cfm

[Unknown,Unknown]

Thanks for the feedback Ken.

There’s alot of us on Yserbius.org that would love to see it released… We’re slowly getting volanteers and information gathered to recreate it.

Thanks again,
Daniel “Tiger”

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