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Talking about nostalgia, I think the key thing that sets the Sierra of old apart from the current game-giants is the general attitude towards its customers. I’ve heard countless stories about how people used to get personal replies to their fan-letters, how the people in Oakhurst was like one big family making games just for the love of it and looking back at old articles and Sierra News Magazine/Interaction issues always gives a picture of a company that cared. And this shone through in the games as well. Even if many of them had their technical flaws, there is a special touch to them. Small internal jokes about Sierra itself and its game developers, wild and creative ideas, generally all the traces of people being enthusiastic about their art. That’s why so many people still fondly remember Sierra, and why there are so many fan websites out there today, even if the old Sierra is no more than a memory. It’s not only nostalgia at something great that used to be. I think it’s a clear sign to the current game-developers that many people are tired of what’s being produced today before it has even hit the shelves. I know you didn’t create much of the Sierra games Ken, but the way you ran the company back in the 80’s/90’s has made you a hero and raw-model for many years to come. 🙂 EA/Vivendi/whatever can only dream of making games like yours!
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(re: What made the old Sierra great) You are right that one of the key things about Sierra was our support. We were the only company to offer an 800 number for support, and we did one other thing which no other publisher would have the courage to do: we offered a 100% money back guarantee on all games. This was a big deal for us, because we gave the money back directly — and gave back full retail even those most product was sold through distribution at about 55-65% off. We lost about $20 on each returned copy. That said, we didn’t issue many refunds! Our support and return policy helped our employees understand the importance of getting it right the first time. (not that we always did, as Outpost owners will be quick to tell you)
-Ken -
(re: What made the old Sierra great)
i absolutely loved your return policy, where you said the person returning the game had to say why they didn’t like it. i thought that was great.
i remember calling to order something once, in the early 90s. i was playing Myst at the time and i got in a conversation with the support tech about how to solve a particular puzzle in Myst (i told him how to figure it out). i remember i was using my dad’s credit card and he kept looking across the room at me funny because i’d gotten into this long conversation that had nothing to do with the game i was ordering. the person on the phone was just so friendly… it stood out to me because that kind of service is so rare.
🙂 emily
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(re: What made the old Sierra great) One of the things I’ll always remember about the old Sierra was when I called their 800 number and asked the customer service rep for some demos. A few days later I got a cardboard box with about 20 floppies with 3 or 4 demos! I was amazed that it was free, especially since I live in Canada! Plus they sent me free copies of InterAction. Half a year later I called again and got another stack of floppies. This did of course make me want to buy only Sierra games, especially after seeing the Goblins demo 😉
– Jake Jensen -
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(re: What made the old Sierra great)
And it wasn’t just the return policy, it was the tech support — back in the days when the Internet was still considered a Wonder. I remember trying to get Police Quest 4 working — it took about three months of correspondence with Tech support and truth be told, I think I still have all that stuff crammed in the PQ4 box along with my boot disks and patches. That was part of the reason I always felt so confident buying Sierra games.
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(re: What made the old Sierra great) I’ve been a Sierra gamer for a long time, and I’m finding it hard to identify what made it great for me. It was definitely about building memories – going from Digger, Pacman and others to Hero’s Quest in 1988 was amazing. I remember all of our group of friends who lived in one apartment building peering over each others shoulders shouting out advice and trying to figure the game out.
I lived in a foreign country, so the 800 line never really helped me (it did much later on, when I had lost a disk in the States), but the little clues pushing you to move to the next objective, the death messages, the cute asides by people, being able to create conversation, trying out different words to see if they would work – it was all a true adventure. Maybe not in Spielburg etc., but they were truly adventures wherever they may be.
The variety of environments to play in was also what made it great – fantasy lands, building machines, police work, and all the others, and it all came from one company. That’s probably the key – most companies don’t have that personalization of each game while at the same time each game was unique.
In other words, the care and feeling of each employee of Sierra came through in the games – in their depth, in the details, in the backgrounds. -
(re: What made the old Sierra great) Living outside the US, I never noticed all that stuff about customer support. I actually had a rather bad experience with it – when I bought the first Gabriel Knight game (the CD version) it got stuck somewhere in the middle of the game and wouldn’t play beyond that point. The shop I got it from wouldn’t take it back, and when I
E-mailed Sierra about it I got no response at all.
It was rather annoying, since I assumed that if you spend your money on an original game, which I hardly ever do, you should at least have some certainty that you’ll be able to play it through.
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