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“… (by Matt ) Thanks for the answer, Ken! I agree that the Sierra advertising worked very well toward the family market, but I still feel that it wasn’t as successful as you claim if the sale target was only 200,000 copies. It did and can still create the same family company and extremely strong company-client relationship, but was there ever thought of exporting that to a greater scale? Again, it’s very easy for us to look at this in hindsight, which is why I pointed out the techniques used by console video game companies at approximately the same time.Again, thank you for the answer, and I look forward to reading your response to the rest of my questions! (For example, was there much competition between Sierra and console companies, and, if so, how did you address that issue?)
–Matt
…”Hi Matt,
In the 80’s, and I think the early 90’s, the number of PC computers sold each year was greater than the number of all the computers in the world sold in previous years. I think that King’s Quest 4 broke an absolute record (best selling game of all time) when it sold about 250,000 copies, simply because this number was humongous in relation to the total number of computer-equipped possible customers.
Today there is a much greater number of people having computers, but with the huge budgets typical AAA games have, only a game selling millions of copies would be able to pay back for itself. (I don’t think such huge budgets are necessary, but that is another topic.) Regardless, there was no way back then that Sierra could have sold substantially more (i.e. millions), because there were not just as many computers to run the games :).
Of course, Ken has the final word and I’d like him to correct me if I’m wrong on something about KQ4.All in all, it seems that Sierra’s advertisement was quite, quite successful! Word of mouth is #1, because you get the opinion of a real person you know, not some marketing droid’s stereotypic message on a glossy sheet of paper.
-Vesko
In the UK, mobile cellular phones are the standard form of communication, preferred over landline telephone services for reasons of price and convenience. As such, video games for mobile phones are commonplace, and phones have been evolving toward a PDA type of package (e.g., widespread vidphone capability). Furthermore, as laptops, notebooks, and Tablets evolve, we see the merging of these two industries. This is already the case with the XDA and a similar project by Sony that merges a PDA — and full video and sound support — with completely wireless communication technology and Internet, resulting in handheld computer-vidphones reminiscent of Star Trek or Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict. Even standard phones now, at least in the UK, have the ability to download games so there is no need to remain connected to any wireless service.
We already know of the success of mindless arcade, card, board, and memory games on mobile phones and PDAs. These are especially popular among the commuters, who make up the vast majority of the city populations (particularly London) in the UK. The same can be said of other major cities, like New York, Paris, Tokyo. There is also the large long-distance commuter market, such as those who fly on a regular basis. As aforementioned, the technology already exists for all these people to enjoy these games at low cost, and that industry is rising.
Can adventure games become a viable source of entertainment on mobile phones and PDAs? I think the answer to this depends on the type of adventure games, specifically their length and interface. The average daily city commute is most likely less than two hours, and, since that market greatly outnumbers the long-distance commuter market, I will only consider them in my analysis. Based on an average gaming session of, say, an hour, is it possible to provide the commuter with something entertaining enough to be fulfilling and yet leave them with the desire to continue it the next day? The current games provide a quick break in monotony and do not require any investment of time or energy, while adventure games require patience and dedication (hence the savegame function). A major factor that distinguishes an adventure game from any other type of aforementioned game is its length and, by inference, replayability: all other aforementioned games have infinite (or infinitely looping) length allowing for limitless replayability, while an adventure game has a set storyline that, once completed, limits replayability due to the lack of surprises. The other types of games do not build such expectations and so can be replayed with greater entertainment than adventure games. Conversely, a storyline’s entertainment value decreases with length, so if we were to create an hour-long adventure, it would not be as enjoyable as a 12-hour one.
Likewise, the conventional adventure game interface is not conducive to short gaming sessions. The point-and-click interface can be frustrating unless pixel-hunting — arguably a major component of adventure gaming — is eliminated, and, even then, the interface does not cater to bumpy rides (e.g., those commuting by car, bus, or train). A text interface is even more frustrating, requiring too much time and effort to input a single command.
With that said, is it possible to provide a meaningful storyline that can be played in an hour? Not by current (or past, meaning Sierra) standards. Any “port” of past games to this medium would be popular only among the die-hard fans, which is too small an audience to net any profit. (In fact, the cost to make, package, and advertise it would probably be significantly more than any expected returns.) So, old games are out, but there is still the possibility of creating entirely new games for this medium. It is definitely possible to create a game that randomly generates a new adventure — designed to be completed within an hour — each session, perhaps with the added bonus of a savegame or two, akin to LucasArts’ Desktop Adventures (but substituting storyline and adventure-style puzzles for arcade and maze elements). A further help would be to remove the need for savegames, making dying completely impossible (i.e., like Leisure Suit Larry 7, and LucasArts’ Monkey Island series).
But even in this case, it still caters to a limited audience that prefers puzzle-solving amidst storyline backdrop, and this also assumes that such an audience would enjoy playing their favourite type of game — usually requiring the amount of patience and dedication that can be found in the comforts of their own home — while on the move during a hectic business day. Thus, the audience for this type of game would probably be a small minority of the already small adventure game audience. In short, exporting past adventure games to mobile phones and PDAs is a wasted business venture, but it is, as you have proven, still a viable fan effort, albeit for very few fans. Creating new adventure games designed for short timespans, on the other hand, is definitely a potentially profitable venture, but only if the mainstream adventure game industry (i.e., for PCs) is revived.
In conclusion, it’s no surprise that Vivendi rejected your proposal at the present time. If adventure games ever re-emerged as a leading contender in the game industry, however, your idea — if modified in the aforementioned ways — could succeed.
–Matt
Thanks for the answer, Ken! I agree that the Sierra advertising worked very well toward the family market, but I still feel that it wasn’t as successful as you claim if the sale target was only 200,000 copies. It did and can still create the same family company and extremely strong company-client relationship, but was there ever thought of exporting that to a greater scale? Again, it’s very easy for us to look at this in hindsight, which is why I pointed out the techniques used by console video game companies at approximately the same time.
Again, thank you for the answer, and I look forward to reading your response to the rest of my questions! (For example, was there much competition between Sierra and console companies, and, if so, how did you address that issue?)
–Matt
You could almost make a book from all the posts that Ken has made in these boards. I’ve been keeping an archive of almost everything Ken’s said that’s interesting since the beginning, so you can look forward to some sort of a big collection of Ken wisdom sometime in the future.
I think it was re-arranged and got put there, when Ken implemented the new system. It was always around, I just don’t remember where it was anymore.
Yes, there are a few old Sierra pages stored by web.archive.org, but none of them go beyond the front page or a couple pages in, or to anything that is really interesting.
I didn’t notice all of the cool Sierra links on the homepage. Are those new?
Also I found this page with full graphics from 1996:
http://web.archive.org/web/19961219234100/http://www.sierra.com/
I think the game industry has become so much like the movie industry, it’s going to take another CEO like Ken to spot the trends before they are mainstream.
Let’s hope Ken’s writes a book so we can learn from his own experiences during the pioneer years. It’s still pioneer days on the Net, so there’s still a chance a new company could come along and spark new types of games that embrace new technologies.
“I’m just wondering what the secret is to sustain that over that long time and remain in business despite everything.”
Well BL I think that Ken gave some answers to that in his post above. Another part of Sierra’s success came from the fact that Sierra was born while the game industry was being born. Making great games also meant shaping the game industry and being in a great position to innovate. That is a huge, if not the most important difference, between game companies today and game companies 20 years ago.
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“…(by Benjamin Lindelof)
If the company is not successful, then guess what? No more games!
…”
I also said “But finances doesn’t matter to us the end-users, as long as the company is profitable enough to continue making great things.” I meant that as long as a company is profitable enough to be able to make games that are loved, it doesn’t matter to end-users how much more profitable it is than other companies out there. I love Sierra On-Line for their games, I do not love it for how much money it made. It is like saying that Victor Hugo has been more successful than Plato, or vice versa, because after adjusting for inflation, one of them made more money than the other.Vesko, Vesselin, et al:
You said: “it doesn’t mean that the company is less successful”
If the company is not successful, then guess what? No more games!
The whole point of the company is to create games so companies will avoid the “No more games” scenario at all costs. I’m just wondering what the secret is to sustain that over that long time and remain in business despite everything. (Between monochrome graphics and CD-ROM computer games? That’s Sierra entire history).
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“…(by Benjamin Lindelof) You can’t compare the success of companies like you mentioned to the success of Sierra On-Line. Sierra On-Line was an empire. They were acquiring other companies like EA….”
Benjamin, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings or someone else’s, but why does it matter that Sierra On-Line was an empire? Only the end-products matter, the games that we loved. So, if a smaller company puts out a great product such as Sierra’s or better, it doesn’t mean that the company is less successful. In financial terms, sure, Sierra would be top. But finances doesn’t matter to us the end-users, as long as the company is profitable enough to continue making great things. And which, as the previous poster said, need NOT be, shamefully, multi-zillion dollar projects.-Vesko
You can’t compare the success of companies like you mentioned to the success of Sierra On-Line. Sierra On-Line was an empire. They were acquiring other companies like EA.
“Dreamcatcher, JoWood, Mindscape, etc” are nothing compared to what Sierra accomplished. But the games are just as great and seem to sell almost as much.
But the companies are not success stories — they might have succeeded but nothing like Sierra On-Line.
Publishers like Dreamcatcher, JoWood, Mindscape, etc. specialise in bringing to the public games that it would otherwise have no access to. And I’m very grateful for that. Most of their developers do not have access to the millions of dollars in development budgets that has somewhat ridiculously become the norm in today’s gaming industry.
Many gems, like Sanitarium, Gorky 17 (a.k.a. Odium), Spellforce, etc., have seen the light of day thanks to these publishers. And in many ways, these games are being sold through the same principles employed by Sierra all those years ago. Sanitarium is still selling relatively well six years after its release (and it really is an excellent game). And personally, good word of mouth has always had far more power to persuade me into buying a product than any amount of trailers, ads or reviews in the mainstream gaming press.
Sure, I fixed the link.
I strongly recommend that you right-click and then use “Save Target As…” and save it to your hard drive first, then open it to view it.
I can’t get the link for the file you posted to work. It’s been quite a while since you posted it, so could you update it or send me the file or something? Thanks so much!
That’s a vivid ad. I first saw it in a Compute! magazine at the public library and I told everyone I knew about it…
The funny thing was nobody changed sides. There were those of us who had to experience the magic that was King’s Quest IV, but most people didn’t have a computer back then. So what did they care?
Now it’s totally different. The games my wife enjoys from DreamCatcher aren’t big money makers. Somehow the crews were managed better at Sierra — or the budgets — or did they just sell more games at Sierra than DreamCatcher can today?
Brandon – that’s a VERY cool ad. I haven’t seen it in 20+ years. I had forgotten it. Thank you! It was an answer to an ad by Electronic Arts, which was titled “Can a computer make you cry?” We answered the question, honestly, as yes – and proved it.
-Ken W
Sorry about that, I tend to name things oddly and in this case, the email notification giving the link with spaces in it converted the spaces to “+” signs instead of “%20”. If you tried to see the image from the email, all you have to do is remove the “+” from the link in your URL address bar and change to ” ” or “%20”.
I am very happy to say, noticing how you’re now handling file attachments Ken, that I like the system and images will now be attached exactly as you originally have them. Well, don’t anyone abuse this by uploading huge files, but it’s nice to know how it’s working now. For showing scanned images, I’ve found somewhere around 800 pixels with JPG quality of around 8 usually gives a nice balance between file size and good quality for web viewing.
Sierra’s demo disks must have been really effective as a marketing tool. I have a news clipping about those… but what I’ll post now to also go along with this topic is an advertisement of King’s Quest IV from the November 1988 issue of Compute! It’s really cool, definitely one of the coolest ads I have. Unfortunately, the right side of the ad is actually cut off like that – that’s the actual proper dimension of the magazine.
On a side note, if anyone is interested in old computer mags, after I have carefully removed the Sierra content from them, let me know immediately or they’re just going in the recycling. I usually pull anything interesting, such as ads for the Ultima games or things that may be of interest from other computer companies, but who knows what someone else might find interesting. And the flip side of that is, if you have any old computer magazines with Sierra stuff in it that you can donate to my archival work, again as always that would be much appreciated.
I was a huge fan of Sierra’s money-back guarantee. I can’t begin to imagine a software company standing behind their product so strongly today.
I think it worked in Sierra’s favor that during their glory years, a lot of families were buying their first home computers, and they often saw Sierra’s products used in demos. My father made a nice living building computers to order in the ’80s and early ’90s, and a Sierra product (generally the latest King’s Quest) was always the centerpiece of the “Look at the cool stuff you can do with your computer!” pitch. Although he wasn’t a software seller, he did stock Sierra games. They basically sold themselves. I’m sure that thousands of people across the country were introduced into the Sierra fold in a very similar fashion.
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“… (by Brandon Klassen) … I would be interested as you to hear more from Ken about what courses of advertisement Sierra took in the early years.
…”Sierra’s success was largely attributed to our product, which is certainly true. But, equally important was our marketing. We had a very unusual approach to marketing, which might not work today, but was very successful at the time.
Prior to starting Sierra, I spent some time in the direct mail business. I thought of our business as a classic “cost of acquisition and customer retention” business. I invested heavily in building great product, and heavily in customer support. We also invested heavily in direct mail. InterAction magazine was VERY expensive to produce, and was only mailed to repeat customers.
During my time, word of mouth in the industry was everything. You couldn’t spend enough money to make a bad title sell, and by the time we released a new title, everyone knew about it (because of InterAction magazine).
I have a LOT more to say on this topic, but we have to run out now. I’ll try to come back here and post again sometime in the next few days.
Here’s the key concept:
If you burn a customer, they will never buy from you again. Because of our reputation, we didn’t have to do anything to get get potential customers to try at least one of our products. Once the customer was “in the family” we tried to “love them to death.” We always had an 800 number for support. I answered my email, as did all of our designers. If someone didn’t like a game, we gave them their money back NO QUESTIONS ASKED. We couldn’t promise that we would never make a mistake, but we did promise that no customer would ever spend a dime having a bad experience with a Sierra product (because of our refund policy).
We NEVER had booths at the trade shows (well .. actually I was dragged kicking and screaming into a couple of them, but hated the experience. Why spend money to show your competitors your products?) We almost never advertised (Customers bought from word of mouth, not ads. We had a large enough circulation for InterAction to get plenty of word of mouth.
-Ken W
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“… (by abgdf) Hi Ken,on the main page you write, people ask you about writing a book.
Why not write an adventure instead ?All the Best
abgdf…”
Roberta is the writer in the family. I did write a book ( http://www.lulu.com/content/90630 ), but only in my wildest dreams is it likely to surpass selling 500 copies. I’ve got another book I’m starting that will be fiction, but I’ve already got doubts that it will sell as well as this last one. I’m enjoying being able to be creative, but to really succeed you need talent, and I need work in that department.
Roberta on the other hand is quite talented, and will write something worth everyone reading. She threatened my life if I say anything about it — so, I’ll stop there. Don’t rush to your bookstore. She is wrapping up research, and should start writing post Christmas — but, it could easily be a couple of years before anything shows up at a bookstore.
-Ken W
I’ve been looking through old computer magazines trying to find anything about Sierra. I’ve found the occasional advertisement, or the occasional short article. Granted, I currently have a small selection material to draw from, and I hope to acquire more. But it does seem that Sierra did not rely so much upon advertising, as upon word of mouth and promotions within computer stores.
I would have to agree with your idea that so much of today’s consumer market (not just video games) is driven by force-fed advertisement. Companies look for any place that they can get an advertisement. Entire busses are painted to advertise (instead of just the advertisement panels), movies now have 10 minutes of product ads before the 10 minutes of previews, etc.
But I would be interested as you to hear more from Ken about what courses of advertisement Sierra took in the early years.
Are you asking if Ken will write an adventure-themed novel? Ken was never really a designer at Sierra – he was a programmer, a consultant to the creative teams, etc., but not one who would write that kind of story – though as you probably read, Ken recently posted that he wrote a book that is just now published about his summer boating adventures.
However, over the summer Ken also did mention that Roberta was thinking of writing a novel – so we can only hope that this is happening and that it will be somehow similar to the storytelling we’ve come to know and love through the many Sierra games that Roberta designed.
