To Ken and Roberta

[Unknown,Unknown]

Dear Ken and Roberta Williams,
First, I hope you read this. Secondly I guess I just wanted to say some things as I feel I have a chance at reaching one of the people that was a incredible influence on my life, if not one of the pillars of my upbringing that made me who I am today. I’m a 21 year old male born and living in Iowa. I recently received my associate degree in LAN Management and am getting ready to transfer to a university.
I started playing your games when I was very young, around the time of the release of KQ3.None of this is going to be a revelation to you because I’m sure you’ve heard it before. After KQ3 I was a continual Sierra fan and played the rest of the KQ games, though 1-5 were definitely my favorites. I read interaction magazine religiously and even sent a letter to your company one day telling them that I wanted to grow up and become a game designer or programmer for Sierra.
I’m not sure if I still have the response somewhere but if I find it I will try to tell you the lady’s name that replied and scan it for you, she said they’d be eagerly awaiting my resume. And even though I can’t find that letter all these years it was a treasured gift for me.
Saying this brings tears to my eyes.
Oh, how much I wish I could apply for a job at Sierra under your lead.

Though my degree is in networking, I’ve taken programming classes and now teaching myself C++ as I’m entirely enthralled with it and always have been, I only avoided it at first out of high school because of the mathematics, my weak point but I have been taking more classes in that area and finding myself excelling more than I first assumed. Its ok because I’m the creative type, not left brained!!!!! I guess I’m just in my right mind. 🙂 I’ve been helping my cousin playing some guitar tracks for a HL mod based on Stargate SG1 (
Link: http://sgmod.hl2central.net/(http://sgmod.hl2central.net/) 
) and other projects. We’re young (he’s 17 and the modeler Ranger) but it’s a lot of fun. I have a lot of game ideas but I don’t think that would be wisest career path for me at this point.

I was noted by my schools growing up as being a ‘gifted child’ mostly because of my proficiency in the area of English. My family and I have always given credit to your text controlled adventure games. I hope you have some idea of how influential you really were, it’s more than just games and animation.
My favorite series was probably the Quest for Glory series and the original Heroes Quest was probably my single favorite but it’s a close tie with KQ3 and SQ series not being far behind :-). When I played Everquest I used names from the KQ series for my characters. 🙂 Mordack and Gwydion!
I own many of the originals of your games but also the collection packs of SQ and QFG. I never picked up the KQ collection and kick myself now for not doing so as I cannot afford them off of eBay but someday I’ll purchase them no matter the price, when I can afford it!

To me, you and your wife, the Coles and the two guys from Andromeda have as much admiration and respect as football players get from guys my age. I’m going to attach a photo so you can see your fan that has always read your words in Interaction and followed every move you put Sierra through.
BTW I still find the video included on the SQ collection CD to be hilarious.
I hope this doesn’t sound too much like drivel; I could go on for hours. I’m leaving out so much that I’d like to say and ask. I just wanted to take advantage of my chance to contact someone from the old Sierra and hadn’t found a way until this.
God bless your family and continue having a great retirement!
Work hard, play hard right?
Sincerest regards,
Mark Kinney
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Email-
Link:kinney82@hotmail.com (mailto:kinney82@hotmail.com)

PS- I think you and your talented wife could do a screenplay or movie. Since adventure gaming’s future is so vague maybe someday you would enjoy doing your storytelling on the silver screen or your own independant film?
You know that its unhealthy to ever completely retire! But to quote the SQ Collection video-
“Ken Williams is a bonafide genius” 😀
Take care.

A graduation photo from 2001

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