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The Old Sierra is, unfortunately, pretty much dead. They even axed the logo. Most of the old games have either been forgotten, or “upgraded” (a la KQ-8) to join a generation of games that simply aren’t as good.
But what if there were a new company?
Suppose some talented and ambitious young group of souls decided to go off on their own and make their OWN games. Games that would combine the modern technology while staying true to the ideals of the old games, incorporating a storyline, interesting characters, inventory puzzles, and humor. Certaintly there are companies out there right now producing such games, but they are no longer the core products, for the most part.
My question, is what do you think? What are the odds of somebody getting out there in today’s Industry in today’s Economy and making it? -
(re: What are the odds?) Check out:
Link: http://www.garagegames.com(http://www.garagegames.com)It’s by Jeff Tunnel, who worked for me at Dynamix. His technology is great. It might be a good way to build a game.
I definitely think it’s the right time to start a game company. The distribution model is changing. In my day, Sierra and Electronic Arts had a “lock” on distribution. All software was sold through retail, and retailers wouldn’t buy from small companies.
Today: it is starting to be possible to build a company that depends on net-distribution only.
If I were 20 years younger, I’d do it again, and use the net for distribution.
-Ken -
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(re: What are the odds?) Do you play any games now Ken?
None at all .. part of my problem was that after building games for 20 years, they had all started to look alike.
I was running out of ideas. Had I stayed with Sierra, I would have been thinking of some other directions to take the company. I’m not sure what this means, but it’s one of the reasons I liked online games .. no one at the time had done massively multiplayer games right when I was running Sierra. There must still be some uncharted territory, but I’m not sure what it is. My problem with playing games now is that they all look alike .. no one seems to be doing anything radically new.
-Ken
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(re: What are the odds?) I know what you mean, honestly in the past five years the only game that I have played is Team Fortress Classic the Half Life mod.I have played that for hours on end and am still not tired of it. It incorporates awesome teamplay and strategy. It is really the only game of its type that I enjoy. I do feel as though something is lacking of course since I grew up on your adventure games. I try to play other games even on consoles but they just don’t seem to captivate me and I quickly lose interest. I will sit and try to think about what could possibly be done different since the market is clogged with the same thing over and over. I hope something will come quick to revolutionize the game. There are too many uncreative people that have to jump on other’s ideas that they quickly diminish anything that may have hope.
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(re: What are the odds?) Well if you take even a cursory look around the internet you will see a huge number of people with absolutely amazing artistic abilities. That’s a big thing for me, because I believe that each part of the adventure game is equally needed: art, story, puzzles, characters, etc. Now of course not many of those people may be involved in adventure games, but some are, and others probably would be, if a company hired them.
Secondly, I think the odds are good. Take Tierra for example. Their long-term plan, as far as I last heard, is to start making commercial adventure games under a new company name, after they finish re-making old Sierra games in VGA (who knows how many more they will make, that’s up to them). -
(re: What are the odds?)
Don’t forget the team at http://www.kq9.org. While nothing has yet to be released, They have what looks to be a dedicated team of talent working on it.
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(re: What are the odds?) Hi All
Now would be a great time to get into the adventure game business. If you havn’t already you might try one of Dreamcatcher games. They are very close to the old Sierra games except for one thing. The graphics are ver y beutiful in my apinion they are missing on very important thing. They don’t have any clues hardly at all and can leave you wondering what to do next. They really need to take some lessons from the old Sierra crew. The Clues do two things. They help you get through the game and when you figure out what a clue is telling you to do it makes you feel really good.
Adverture game are taking off again and the reason is because they just learned that they were missing half the market by targeting the male teens with shoot’em ups. They found that woman and older people want to play games too but couldn’t fine anything that they thought they might like to try. This is all changing now and it’s companies like The Adventure Co. (Dreamcatcher) that are doing something about the problem. Another company that is targeting only woman is Her Interactive and they have some very big sellers as well.
Adverture Game are not dead any more and now that every one can find a game they might like to play I think it will only get better.Jim
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(re: What are the odds?) I played one Dreamcatcher game, and I looked at many others, and was not very impressed at all. I find the fan games, just for example those made by AGS users, to be much more entertaining. I really look forward to specifically-Sierra fan projects like KQ9, Hero6, and SQ7.
I also played the Syberia demo, and found it nice, but I don’t know if I’d buy it.
I forgot what else I was going to say. -
(re: What are the odds?) Yes, Syberia is probubly the closest to the old Sierra games as far as the way the story was done and the amount of little hints they hid around. I have almost all the Dreamcatcher games and you are right, they are all missing something that was present in Sierra games. The later Nancy Drew games do come close to old Sierra as well but some of the earler ones had a poor engine. Ovcourse I am a Gk, Kq and Lsl fan and I am aftaid no one will ever make a game as good as they were.
Another game I was very sad to see go was the Tex Murphy Sierries thanks to good old Microsoft. Ha ,Ha
I would love to see all the folks at Sierra start up again even if it had to be under a different name and I would be waiting in line to get there new games like a lot of others, I bet.
Jim -
(re: What are the odds?) yes my favorite games of all time are classic sierra games and the bards tale games. there are some other fan games being made that look very promising:
starflight 3 –
Link: http://www.starflight.com(http://www.starflight.com)new bards tale style game –
Link: http://www.devilswhiskey.com(http://www.devilswhiskey.com)the new fan sierra games look very promising as well, wouldnt that be neat if ken put all the teams that are doing these games together to produce some killer new sierra adventures?? 🙂
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