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Dear Ken,
Wow, so much to say, and only one thought process trying to say it. Maybe even one brain cell. Who knows? I’m still blown away that this site is here.
I was wondering something.
I used to follow “Sierra On-Line” back when I first slipped the cardboard sleeve off of the freshly unwrapped Kings Quest 1 Game.
I have to admit, I was devastated that Sierra was sold off. I continued to follow the company but once I noticed that everything was shifting to “3D” (And 3D back then meant a bunch of shapes plucked together to make another shape, nothing like today) I sort of stopped following the company.
Then today, while I was looking at PC Magazine and the “Top 100 Sites You Didn’t Know You Couldn’t Live Without”, I found Al Lowe’s site. And then I found this site. Well, actually I didn’t find it right away. I just remember coming to Talkspot.com for the shows, and I did a “I wonder if this site is still dead?” and here I am.
If you don’t mind, I have a few questions for you. Some might have been asked a million times, but I can’t find them. Hey, some might even be new. Who knows? So here goes…
Ken, “YOUR” company, Sierra On-Line was nothing short of great. In my mind, Sierra will always be Ken and Roberta Williams and the team of talented minds you collected. I’m sure you would admit that the team was like instruments in an orchestra.
So with that said, are you planning on getting back into the saddle again?!?!? I don’t mean as some off the sleeve opinion giver to the falling apart Sierra of today, I mean, back in there. I know you will say your not as young as you were back then, but Henry Ford wasn’t that young either and he got back on the saddle many of times.
So do you ever think about it? I mean seriously think about starting yet another great company like Sierra and get back to where you left off with your wonderful games?!?!?
Do you ever ponder (That is, keep looking at Sierra’s Value and it rapid decline) buying it back and getting things back on track?!?!?!
I know you have said that many of the greats have moved on to bigger and better things, but you probably know if the phone call was ever made with the question of “Do you think we could do this?” that many if not all would seriously contemplate it.
I guess in a round about way, I’m saying I miss the Sierra that I grew up with. There is a strong resurgence of people out there who are breaking out the old games and giving them more thought now. When every game out there looks like the next, this is a beautiful breath of fresh air.
I’m hoping that you have considered it.
My personal dream is that you eventually can’t take it anymore, and see the company you founded and nursed to greatness fumble on the ground, and you pick up the ball and start running again. Start bringing back the games of yesteryear, even new episodes of them with today’s technologies. Bring back Sierra like it once was. (I won’t even go to the site anymore, I’m still that disgusted and it’s been what, 7, 8 years? I know, I’m pathetic!)
Adventure gaming isn’t dead. The whole industry has shifted to the “Rock-em sock-em Robots” run run run, shoot shoot shoot. But let me ask you, in 10 years do you think people will be pulling those games off of their shelves and giving them another go like Classic Sierra games have been know to do? In 10 years they won’t even have them. They would have been thrown away years before. But I look at my shelves upon shelves of every Sierra Game ever made. And notice a lapse. Hum. Not one new one since the company was sold?!?!?!
Since most of the games are shall I say “Dead” I think it would be great for the rebirth of Sierra to happen with Ken and Roberta once again at the helm. I don’t care what you make, or what you sell. I’ll be there with me $50.00 bucks. If nothing more then just because it was a Sierra Title.
Thanks for reading,
Hope all is well. And ROBERTA!!! I read that you were still bugging him to do something, KEEP IT UP!!! FOR GODS SAKES KEEP IT UP!!!!
Take Care, Tom.
P.S. And if you ever did think about it, one thing would go for sure. A 20 CD set of every classic Sierra Game. All of them. Every single one while you were in command. I would slap down major bucks for that one, and I think most people would as well.
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(re: Wouldn’t it be nice if…)
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Adventure gaming isn’t dead. The whole industry has shifted to the “Rock-em sock-em Robots” run run run, shoot shoot shoot. But let me ask you, in 10 years do you think people will be pulling those games off of their shelves and giving them another go like Classic Sierra games have been know to do? In 10 years they won’t even have them. They would have been thrown away years before. But I look at my shelves upon shelves of every Sierra Game ever made. And notice a lapse. Hum. Not one new one since the company was sold?!?!?!
<< You got me thinking, too… When Toy Story (movie) came out, the whole movie industry did not say “This is the future.” We still use humans. When the first 3D games came out, the whole industry changed to that way… it wasn’t really until Flash came about that people really started to care about 2D passionately. Movies had close to a century of history so it wasn’t changed significantly, but computer games had around a quarter century, and yet everything went one way. Yet anime and cartoon tv shows seem to be a lot more popular than 3D tv shows. Why is there a different standard for games than other forms of entertainment? Why do we like romance, drama, action, adventure in movies and tv shows, but only realism in computer games? The biggest argument I hear is “It’s more real.” Honestly, there’s enough “real” out there in the real world, I don’t need a computer to tell me. I want to be entertained and have a chance to escape reality!
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(re: Wouldn’t it be nice if…) Hi Dave,
IMHO you are 100% on track, dude 🙂
I only think that games must not try to be a means for reality escapism by inundating you with senseless fantasy, but rather teaching you (without preaching) by a creative, entertaining, etc. plot, the graphics, sound, etc. only of secondary importance. In other words, I think that fantasy must be carefully controlled to serve a meaningful purpose or the plot would suffer.Best regards,
VeskoDave Kristula WROTE:
You got me thinking, too… When Toy Story (movie) came out, the whole movie industry did not say “This is the future.” We still use humans. When the first 3D games came out, the whole industry changed to that way… it wasn’t really until Flash came about that people really started to care about 2D passionately.
Movies had close to a century of history so it wasn’t changed significantly, but computer games had around a quarter century, and yet everything went one way. Yet anime and cartoon tv shows seem to be a lot more popular than 3D tv shows.
Why is there a different standard for games than other forms of entertainment? Why do we like romance, drama, action, adventure in movies and tv shows, but only realism in computer games? The biggest argument I hear is “It’s more real.” Honestly, there’s enough “real” out there in the real world, I don’t need a computer to tell me. I want to be entertained and have a chance to escape reality!
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(re: Wouldn’t it be nice if…) The best indicator I have had of how awful todays games are is when I get my friends together who stopped playing games around 95 when 3D saturated everything. I sit them in front of stuff like GTA, Metal Gear Solid 2, Halo, Super Mario Sunshine.
And they think its a pile of rubbish – too complicated, too much to learn, too many tutorial levels to get through, too many over complicated controls, too many meaningless cut-scenes.
But if I sit them in front of my MAME emulator machine with X-Arcade joystick board or ZSNES emulator running on it they just absolutely love it. They can pick up a game in 5 minutes, it doesn’t take 2 hours to learn how to play.
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