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Ken,
I truly hope the new CEO of Activision-Blizzard will receive this message, and take this truly to heart. You’re a true pioneer, and one of the souls that made this industry exist in the first place. 🙂
As a member within the organization myself, I’m pretty sure there’s no way I can ensure the message is heard by the addressee. However, this is something I’d like to present to people I can contact myself.
I’ve sent you an email to your seanet account, not sure if you got it. Simple re-cap, you told me ‘If you to succeed, be the best in QA.’ Well, it paid off. 2 years later still reminding myself of those marching orders, I’ve landed an amazing position within Blizzard. The position I’ve acquired comes from the inspiration from the games that I religiously played through many, many years. The games you helped create.
So, again, not sure if this can be passed along to the right people… but I’ll see what I can do. It would be amazing opportunity to have a chance to hear of the ideas you have, and what new ground we could break in today’s gaming times.
Why not combine MMO and the cell phone? Ok, maybe not MMO in the traditional sense, but something where multiple users could participate in a single game over the network.
A buddy of mine and I were contacted a few years ago to create a true multi-player chess game for cell phones (we essentially offered our services up for free on gamasutra.com for the experience). Players would be able to play chess against opponents anywhere in the world – all on the cell phone. It was a cool idea. I may be showing my ignorance here, but perhaps this concept could be extended to create a game with an endless user base (as opposed to 2 player).
I remember how much of a shock it was trying to develop for cell phones after coming from the MS world of development. There were so many different flavors of cell phones and so many version of Java. The IDE’s were not that great and the debuggers were even worse. It was really a hard time to develop. But now, and especially with iPhone, things appear to be much better. I have actually been creating a little app with Google’s Android SDK for cellphones. Things have improved greatly!
Wow. Thanks for sharing. I hope he takes you up on your offer and presents you with something enticing enough to put you back in the saddle. If you were to work again and keep a journal … similar to that of your offshore adventures – that would be priceless reading materials!
Hey your talking like your old(at this point in my life), you probably have another 40 years here.
Look at Steve Jobs he left(or forced out) and came back stronger than ever, so don’t think that you should stay gone unless you want to stay gone.
You know video games have become so mianstream nowadays and accessible to such a diverse age group, when I first started playing your games I was a minority.
Now parents and grandparents are playing games, My wife and my 2 sons, we all play them together.
I wouldn’t be surprized to see a flash version of King’s Quest on the internet nowadays.
I think guys running software corps now have no idea what a good game is and just push crap out with movie tie ins just to make a buck for the stock holders.
Times certainly have changed since you were “running the ship”.
Guys my age, I think really appreciate how far games and hardware has come. I am sure you could do something really interesting with whats out there , you have a great mind.
Do you still do programming or are you just oilling teak and scrapping your bottom?(het that could be a good LSL title:)
I’m sure Mr. Kotick will call, remember you are a rock star and he did produce Guitar Hero.(blush) — thank you!
Actually .. here’s a bit of a fun ‘scoop’ for you… I sent the email that follows to Activision CEO Bobby Kotich last week. They recently announced that they are acquiring what little there is left of Sierra. The following email should be self explanatory:
Bobby:
Greetings. I’m the Ken Williams who founded Sierra. We met a few times a life-time ago.
I understand that in a few months you’ll be owning what’s left of my prior company. My apologies for the idiots who bought the company, and the mess they made of it.
I’ve been a deadbeat since selling the company 10 years ago (mostly boating and traveling the world).
I’m toying with the idea of dropping back in. I’m well set for life, and don’t want to work full time, so don’t worry that I’m looking for a job. Specifically what I’m thinking is that it would be fun to have one small development team, and focus on doing something cool and innovative. I’m thinking small projects that break ground in some way.
For instance, I’d like to think about what kinds of games are possible on the iphone, that really take advantage of the features that are unique to iphone; some sort of platform game. Alternately, I’m still interested in something massively multiplayer. Remember that I did The Sierra Network (TSN was renamed as the Imagination Network) that was on the bleeding edge of multiplayer gaming. I’m not interested in running a big project with a big budget. My preference would be to think if there is something small that could be done with a small team (4-5 people) which can break through because it does something people haven’t seen before. A big budget would be better – but, I’m not interested in managing a big team at this point in my life.
My favorite project is if you get the rights to the old Leisure-Suit Larry line. I’d like to either do some sort of a fun platform game for the iphone using the Larry license (I have some “out there” ideas), or do something massively multiplayer on the PC, like the old Larryland (it was part of TSN).
I realize all of this is stuff that belongs much lower in your organization, and I’m not even 100% certain I want to do it – but, figured if you thought it would be cool to do, you could point me at the right bus-dev guy. The one thing I can guarantee is that I’d do something that would surprise people, or at least not burn through much money experimenting (which could all or partially be mine – I haven’t thought that far ahead).
Anyway, if this sounds like something you think is worth talking about, let me know who to contact, and I’ll do some soul searching to decide how serious I am about getting involved ..and, then make a call.-Ken Williams
I honestly don’t know if he’ll write me back or not, and am not sure if I care one way or the other. I do think I could do some cool things, but there’s also a good argument that once you’ve been gone for a decade, you should stay gone. If he calls back I’ll have some serious thinking to do. – Ken W
Ken,
I wouldn’t be to sure about that fact.
I just turned 40 and have wondered about how you and Roberta manage to accomplish everything you did.
Not only were you folks gods in my eyes but you seemed to be very nice people even though I never met you and only had snippets of information on who you guys were.
I had played most of the adventure games you wrote and spent many hours in front of my 286, it probably kept me out of trouble:)
I just wanted to let you know that I still think about sierra on line and the games you wrote and how it impacted my life.
It looks to me though that you have found a new adventure with your boat and believe you deserve to relax and enjoy your life, just know that there are still people out here who enjoyed what you and sierra had done and still think about the old days and smile.
Thanks KenThere actually is a bit of a book about the early days at Sierra: Hackers, by Steve Levy. It sold VERY well.
I doubt another book, about the company in the later years, would sell well. Sierra is fairly well forgotten at this point. It’s sad, but true…. I’d like to see a book written, but it would be a lot of work with no payoff.
-Ken W
Hmmm… wish I remembered. It’s been a while since I played. If you still need help, I’ll break out my copy and give it a try.
From what I remember, the Mac floppy version looked better than the PC floppy version. But it’s been a long time since I played the Mac version, and I only checked out the PC one out of curiosity. Of course the PC CD-ROM version looks the best of them all. But yeah, usually the Mac versions of games would have better graphics and sound back in the 90s. It all depended on whether it was taken advantage of or not. I remember Dark Forces looked way better on my Mac than on the PC. Plus you couldn’t go wrong with the Mac interface. DOS/Windows 3.1 was so cumbersome.
Not strange at all. It is a matter of porting. The game was primarily developed for the PC. Conversions were often poorly done. By the time that the game was released, Macs no longer had much of an edge over PCs. Amigas, which had out stripped Macs Graphics wise, usually had poor ports of Sierra games, too.
Maybe I’m missing something – but it’s a little odd that the Mac version of this intro looks far inferior to the PC version. Here’s the PC version of the CD-Rom edition, on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGlCjVVXy9c
Featuring better (and more) animation, along with somewhat higher resolution. And I remember the version included on floppy PC version also being superior to the Mac version discussed here.
It just seems odd – wasn’t Mac the top dog for graphic applications, at the time?I just dug up this thread because I’m reviewing KQ6 for Adventure Gamers and wanted to re-watch the Mac version of the movie. 🙂
(And it did have sound, originally. I just couldn’t figure out how to capture the sound when I made that video.)
David,
And your reply has made me smile. Â Less than a week ago a conversation took place in my forums where I talked about the exact contest you won. Â I tried very hard to be your competition.
http://gracenroark.net/roark/sierraboard/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=51&p=111&hilit=contest#p111
As for Ken Williams telling you not to read “Hackers” – that’s absolutley classic.  If you’d be willing to I’d love to use your writeup along with some of the pictures from that issue of InterAction on a new section of SierraVault at some point in the future.  It ‘s just too cool not to!
Andy
Thanks for posting these. I haven’t looked at them in years, and seeing them again made me smile.
A much younger and more dweebish version of me appears in Volume 4, #1, on page 43. I was the winner of the “Come Home and Meet the Family Contest” way back in 1990. I spent all summer reading old computer magazines and browsing microfiche to come up with the longest list of Sierra and On-Line Systems games produced over the previous ten years. I also read Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, which includes a rather sordid account of the early years of Sierra (concluding with KQ1 for the PCjr, I think). It’s funny to think that in this age of the Internet and Wikipedia, no company could ever run a contest like that one anymore; it would be too easy to collate a perfect list.
My family and I flew to Oakhurst the day after Christmas, 1990. We had dinner with Ken, Roberta, and their sons that evening, and toured Sierra the next day. At the dinner, Ken looked really embarrassed when he heard that I had read Hackers. I remember him saying forcefully “Don’t read Hackers. Don’t play Leisure Suit Larry.” It was like a “This is your brain on drugs” moment. Hilarious. Roberta and I laughed about searching for the bridle in KQ4, and she apologized for making it so hard to find in the original version. I remember that one of my questions was whether they had considered integrating a hint system directly into the games. I was surprised when they said they would never do so because they actually made a lot of money from selling hints.
I don’t remember much of the tour. It was kind of a whirlwind meeting all the developers. Mark Seibert played the new music for SQ4, and Scott Murphy showed off the game itself. I remember looking at the screen and saying, “It says here Space Quest XII.” I think Scott said, “Oh, yeah, that’s just a joke. We still have to change that.” Looking back, I think he was trying to cover up for what was, in retrospect, a significant spoiler. My only other memory is of talking to Jim Walls. He told me he was working on another Police Quest sequel and I said, “But the Death Angel is dead!” He responded, “This time, it’s his brother.” I was too young to remark how much of a Hollywood clichĂ© that was, and instead just thought, “His brother! Brilliant!” Haha.
It was a great experience–a real dream come true for a huge fan who had been playing and replaying Sierra games for years. My son is just now getting old enough to be interested in computer games, and we walked through the AGD Interactive remake of KQ1 a few days ago. I still remember every detail. He calls it “the goat game” because he likes the part where the goat knocks the troll off the bridge. He’s also really into the dragon burning Graham up into ashes. Such a boy. It’s fun to be revisiting it all again.
As part of my early growing pains I’ve had to move the site to it’s own domain on my webspace.
New link:
SierraVaultÂThe actual domain is at http://sierra.graecnroark.net/ but you can get there via http://www.sierravault.com
The site has been busy – since we wen’t “live” about a month ago I’ve sent out around 60 gig of downloads. Â I am continuing to work toward getting scans of the missing InterAction issues but in the meantime have been spending a lot of time on box cover scans, articles and ads. Â Â There should be a video file update over the weekend with another 10-15 videos going up.
If you haven’t come by, come on!
Andy
Hey all,
This is one last quick post to let you know that I have completed my InterAction scanning project. Â 28 Issues of the Sierra magazines are available for download. Â I’m missing ten of the issues. Â If anyone has a copy of any of the missing issues I’d like to try to work out some way to get a scan of the issue from you so I can put it up with the rest, whether that involves you scanning, me scanning or whatever. Â I’ll even consider reasonable offers to buy a few of the issues.
My site is SierraVault
The InterAction Issues Available are:
Sierra Newsletter (1987-1989)
Sierra Newsletter Volume 1, Number 2 (1987) 3D Helicopter Simulator
Sierra Newsletter Volume 1, Number 4 (Winter 1988) King’s Quest 4
Sierra Newsletter Volume 2, Number 1 (Spring 1989) 1989 ReleasesSierra News Magazine (1989-1990)
Sierra News Magazine Volume 2, Number 2 (Autumn 1989) Roberta Williams
Sierra News Magazine Volume 3, Number 1 (Spring 1990) Conquest of Camelot
Sierra News Magazine Volume 3, Number 2 (Summer 1990) Sierra 10th Year Anniversary
Sierra News Magazine Volume 3, Number 3 (Fall 1990) Christmas Tree
Sierra News Magazine Volume 4, Number 1 (Spring 1991) Space Quest 4InterAction Magazine (1991-1999)
InterAction Volume 4, Number 3 (Fall 1991) First Issue
InterAction Volume 5, Number 1 (Spring 1992) Building a Computer Game
InterAction Volume 5, Number 2 (Summer 1992) Sneak Peek: Fall ’92
InterAction Volume 5, Number 4 (Winter 1992) Computer Football
InterAction Volume 6, Number 1 (June 1993) Space Quest 5
InterAction Volume 7, Number 1 (Fall 1994) Outpost
InterAction Volume 8, Number 2 (Fall 1995) Space Quest 6
InterAction Volume 8, Number 3 (Holiday 1995) Gabriel Knight 2 / Torin’s Passage
InterAction Volume 9, Number 1 (Spring 1996) Earthsiege 2
InterAction Volume 9, Number 2 (Summer 1996) Baseball Pro 96
InterAction Volume 9, Number 3 (Fall 1996) Lords of the Realm II
InterAction Volume 9, Number 4 (Holiday 1996) Rama / Golf
InterAction Volume 10, Number 1 (Spring 1997) Shivers
InterAction Volume 10, Number 2 (Summer 1997) Betrayal at Antara
InterAction Volume 10, Number 3 (Fall 1997) Red Baron II
InterAction Volume 11, Number 1 (Spring 1998) Sierra Sports
InterAction Volume 11, Number 2 (Summer 1998) Half-Life
InterAction Volume 11, Number 3 (Fall 1998) Starsiege
InterAction Volume 11, Number 4 (Holiday 1998) King’s Quest 8
InterAction Volume 12, Number 1 (Holiday 1998) Homeworld [Last Issue]The Issues i’m missing are:
Sierra Newsletter Volume 1, Number 1
Sierra Newsletter Volume 1, Number 3
Sierra / Dynamix News Magazine Volume 4, Number 2
InterAction Volume 5, Number 3 (Fall 1992) King’s Quest 6
InterAction Volume 6, Number 2 (Summer 1993) Betrayal at Krondor
InterAction Volume 6, Number 3 (Holiday 1993) Santa
InterAction Volume 6, Number 4 (Spring 1994) Gabriel Knight 1
InterAction Volume 7, Number 2 (Holiday 1994) King’s Quest 7
InterAction Volume 8, Number 1 (Spring 1995) Twisty Brained Kid
InterAction Volume 10, Number 4 (Holiday 1997) Lords of MagicThanks guys and I hope you enjoy the scans. Â I’ll be continuing to work on other parts of the site so keep checking back.
Andy
SierraVault.comIf you haven’t already, make sure that you download the patches on sierra.com’s forums for the games. It vastly improves the playing experience of the AGI games (ie sound).
A friend of mine bought a copy of that collection and enjoys it very much. But, I personally don’t like the new Vivendi collections for Space Quest, King’s Quest, Police Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry. I find that all the older AGI games (Ex. King’s Quest II: Romancing the Throne) released on them were glitchy, and that some of the new games with parser interface had sound defects, but it might just be my PC. But, overall, the collection was fine, I guess. If you’re looking into buying this collection, the games on it are Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter (New VGA edition, no original), Space Quest II: Vohaul’s Revenge (Original AGI), Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon (Original SCI), Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers, Space Quest V: The Next Mutation, and Space Quest VI: The Spinal Frontier– All are original and in VGA unless otherwise stated. Thanks for reading.
Hey guys, sorry to bring this back after almost a year, but it appears as though planning is underway for the 2008 rendition of AdventureCon (Now going under the name Adventure Gaming Expo – http://adventuregamingexpo.malinche.net/ ). I know the list of attendees looks promising, and I will be flying in from Canada for the event. Ken & Roberta: you sure you can’t drop in even to say hi? Is anyone else planning on attending?
-Tyson Cote
Thank You for your advice.
You were right. In the credits of the Sierra game Phantasmagoria it mentioned World Wide Movie animals. I have visited their website and they claim to work closely with the American Humane Association.
I assume it is similar for all Sierra games that require Animals to be used.
T. Gallett
I worked on this in March for the monthly Dwelling of Duels video game remix competition. It won 4th place.
A Greatly Exaggerated Tale of Adventure:
OGG:
http://brandonblume.commerceculture.co.uk/new_dim/vgmixes/sq4_adventure.ogg
MP3
http://brandonblume.commerceculture.co.uk/new_dim/vgmixes/sq4_adventure.mp3Firehawk – Fifth Mission (alternate entry):
OGG:
http://brandonblume.commerceculture.co.uk/new_dim/vgmixes/5thmission.ogg
MP3:
http://brandonblume.commerceculture.co.uk/new_dim/vgmixes/5thmission.mp3Also check out the other entries, there’s some good stuff there.
http://dod.vgmix.com/past/mar08/Sad no more!
They have been trying but Ken is busy enjoying his retirement. If you think about it I’d say archiving this stuff is more OUR job anyway – we’re supposed to be the rabid fans here! Speaking of which, has the guy that was supposed to be stalking the Williams’ on their boat reported back in yet? I want to know if Chris Williams still wears that pith helmet from that issue of InterAction in the early 90s!
I am just burning off frustration and spare time after getting passed over for a promotion at work (typical corporate America: Good point – Makes quick decisions, Negative point – Tends to decide things too quickly. I am SO not kidding…..).
I hope Sierra Gamers will shamelessly take anything and everything from the site (as well as the rest of you too) and do with it whatever they want. I have a super secret agenda in doing all of this (we’ll call it Project X and it isn’t a big xylophone) but that may or may not ever come to fruition. In the immediate future I’d just like to see this stuff get scanned and maybe spur a few of you to fill in the holes by scanning a thing or two no one else has good clean copies of (while ignoring that durned “watermark” function in Photoshop)!
Andy
