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(re: Dear Ken (sierra games for download?)) Thanks. Are you guys Mods here? I’m a newbie here, so are there some things I need to know?
I am. Anything you need to know? Not really. Play nice, talk about old Sierra games, and have fun! You’ll get the hang of the place as you get used to things around here.
(re: Dear Ken (sierra games for download?))
Thanks. Are you guys Mods here? I’m a newbie here, so are there some things I need to know?
(re: Adventure Games: Old and New) I suggest you read the thread. 🙂 Good graphics don’t make a good game, and vice versa.
(re: Ken – When you have more than a few minutes…)
What an answer! It was a great one, though. I wanted a response because it seems like there aren’t many couples whose relationship could survive the extraordinary circumstances (running a company, travelling, financial success, bad luck with selling the company, etc.) that your marriage has. It sounds like your good fortune in business pales compared to your good fortune in finding each other. No amount of business prestige or money could buy that. Congratulations!
(re: About running a business …) “… The thing that really caught my attention was the christtmas disks you sent out, in particular, how did you handle customers who did not celebrate christmas? Was there a specific question on a registration card, or just a crapshot?
(if it was a crapshot, do you think it created any “bad blood” between Sierra and customers?)
Also, do you recall the process a customer had to go through to remove themselves from your mailings? …”
LordKat:
Good questions…
I was young and naive in those days, as was the world around us. I’m not sure political correctness had even been invented yet. Nor had the word spam.
We sent everyone Christmas cards, because I didn’t realize that not everyone celebrated Christmas. Certainly, we knew that not everyone was christian, but it didn’t occur to us that there were people who might be offended by Christmas. I haven’t played the “christmas cards” we sent in chronologic sequence, but my guess is that you can see my, and Sierra’s, coming of age, in how they portray Christmas. My guess is that the early ones had scenes with mangers, then we shifted to “Seasons Greetings” and finally to not sending a card at all. I guess they call that progress…
As to the spamming issue: we never worried about it, and had no process for removing someone from our list. If someone called in, which happened VERY infrequently, we deleted them from the database — but, it really wasn’t an issue. No one received our mailings who hadn’t spent money on our products. In fact, it was the other way around — we wouldn’t mail you anything UNLESS you purchased our products. If you bought a product, but then didn’t buy anything else, we dumped you from our list. If you add together what we sent out, we had a $15-20 investment per year in each person on our list. If they weren’t spending $150-200 on software, we couldn’t justify sending them the newsletters, catalogs, etc. I didn’t really think of what we sent as marketing literature — we were helping people decide which of our products to buy. We were helping them make informed decisions, and distributing valuable information about strategies for playing our products.
This was more than a quarter century ago. The world was different then…
-Ken W
(re: Ken – When you have more than a few minutes…) You are asking how Roberta and I have stayed married so long? Couldn’t you ask something easier — like how to achieve world peace? I still wouldn’t have known the answer, but at least could have made something up that sounded relatively intelligent… I ignored your question at first, because I didn’t have the vaguest idea how to answer it.
As I write this Roberta and I have been married since 1971. That makes us 33 years married. I tease Roberta sometimes that the average sentence for murder is only 7 years, and I seem to be serving a life sentence!
On the serious side…
I’m not a psychologist, and honestly have no idea what makes some marriages work and others not work. Ours is amazing for several reasons, most of which are supposed to mean bad things for a marriage:
We were married as teens (I was 18 by only four days) Both her and I had busy careers. I traveled virtually non-stop for the first 25 years of our marriage. I’m a workaholic .. even in retirement I work most of the time Roberta works as hard as me, but on different things We’re very different people. She loves real-life adventuring, working out, anything to do with history or politics, etc. She’s really not a computer-geek at all. Whereas I am your average computer-geek, who can usually be found sitting at his computer writing code. I only know the little I do know about geography because Roberta forces me to go places non-stop. Even when we do travel, our tastes are different. I like beach resorts in warm places. She likes places with historical significance, be it Luxor (at 110 degrees) or Macchu Pichu.
Here’s my honest attempt at a guess: we’re both fairly mellow people. Roberta has much more of a temper than me, but neither of us is what I would call “hot tempered”. We never fight. We hardly ever argue. At best if I’m really angry, I’ll get silent for a bit — but, even that doesn’t happen very often. In my french lesson last week, there was an exercise where I was supposed to describe the attributes of people I dislike. I didn’t know how to respond. Generally I like everyone! I feel that almost everyone has something to say, and that most people are good people. I do know that there are bad people out there, but I’ve been fortunate not to have met many.I think both Roberta and I have a healthy set of priorities. We understand what is important and what isn’t, and tend not to get bogged down in things that aren’t important. I think we get along so well, because we both understand that we’re on the same team. Most of our discussions center around the goals we have in common. Our children, our friends, our vacations, what she’s working on, what I’m working on, our house, our boat, etc.
I suppose I could cop out, and just say “we’re madly in love” — which would certainly be true .. although, that’s a tough thing to define, and not a sure-fire guarantee of long-term happiness. For us, what has worked (I guess) is that we genuinely like being with each other, and doing things together. We’ve been together for 30+ years, and enjoy going out to dinner together today as much as 30 years ago.
-Ken W
(re: Boat picture (what kind of dog do you have?)) Hamsters rock. Mine are dwarf hamsters. They only live 1-2 years but they are good little pets and have tons of personality. This is my second pair – both from my first pair died young (6 months of diabetes, and 11 months of an unknown health problem, probably congenital). The second pair is about 7 months old now. They’re named Thing 1 and Thing 2 because initially I couldn’t tell them apart. (Now I can because Thing 1 is significantly fatter!)
It’s true that puppies (any dog, really) takes planning and patience. I fostered a rescue dog a few years ago. I was living in a studio apartment and since I worked all day I couldn’t give him the attention he needed, but I kept him until I could find a really good home for him. Now I have the space and live with my boyfriend who is home during the day 3-4 days a week, we have a whole house and a big yard – the problem is my boyfriend! I think we’ll get there eventually though, and we will probably go to the pound and pick out an older dog that we both like. Training a puppy would be too much for his first dog experience, IMO.
-emily
Thing 2 eating a dog biscuit
The things sharing a peanut
as babies)(re: Ken – When you have more than a few minutes…)
Not to be pushy, Mr. Williams, but you never answered the question… 🙂
(re: Boat picture (what kind of dog do you have?)) Most people don’t approach a dog/puppy with enough planning. The breeds vary greatly in temperament, size, and intelligence – all big factors in how well the dog will adjust to your family and lifestyle. I adopted a puppy at the beginning of the month and it’s been an incredible experience – fun and frustrating in varying degrees. Adoption isn’t a decision to be made lightly – have at least $400-$600 ready for the first year, depending on the size of the breed. Prepare to take time out of work for vets visits and plan on spending most evenings cleaning up messes and teaching the dog to act as civilly as possible.
Here is my pup:
Link: http://tweed.lowrock.com/(http://tweed.lowrock.com/) Ken – You mentioned Shelby is quite the international traveler – how do you get the dog through customs and avoid quarantines?
(re: Boat picture (what kind of dog do you have?)) I am trying to convince my boyfriend we need a dog. He isn’t convinced yet so I have to make do with hamsters for now. (Not that there’s anything wrong with hamsters…)
LOL… my brother’s wife really wants a dog… but they haven’t gotten one yet… guess what they’re getting instead? So, what’s up with hampsters!? 🙂
– Brandon
(re: Inter action magazines) Someone was getting bids to have them professionally scanned, but I haven’t heard anything on the project for months now.
Ah, I thought the last update was that it had been approved and that scanning *had* started. Guess not then! Well, I’ve emailed Brad, hopefully we’ll get a new update soon.
(I’d work on scanning the magazines – it’s just that I would want scanning copies, and not my own personal copies (which is not a complete collection anyway) – the best way to scan a magazine is to take it apart, and I don’t want to take my own apart – I’m not sure what Brad and Robert were doing)
I do have another issue fully scanned I believe, other than the test issue that is already posted here. I’ll check out what specs Brad used for the test issue, and then I’ll see about getting the issue I scanned up. Give me a bit of time, because my monitor recently died and I’m stuck with an old one that I can’t do graphics work on. I’m going to see if I can get another cheap free one in the next week or so (my brother works at a thrift store where they have old monitors that they don’t really sell).
Brandon Klassen, archivist ~ SierraGamers.com admin team ~
(re: Inter action magazines) Robin:
I have almost all of the magazines. Several people have indicated an interest in scanning them — but, it’s really too big a project. Tooooooo many pages.
Someone was getting bids to have them professionally scanned, but I haven’t heard anything on the project for months now. I’m willing to contribute money to getting them scanned, if we can find a way to get it done affordably.
-Ken W
(re: Dear Ken (sierra games for download?))
Well, I suppose if he wanted to keep it a secret, he wouldn’t have put it on this site’s home page. ;o)
(re: Dear Ken (sierra games for download?)) Ken answers your question about Sierra games for download in the following threads:
As for the age question, he’ll have to answer that himself… if he wants to 🙂
Brandon Klassen, archivist ~ SierraGamers.com admin / dev team ~
(re: Computer Sound)
Right, Sierra was leader in games supporting PC soundcards!It was a revolution, but in France it was quite difficult to buy such Soundcards at that time.
I first acquired a Creative Labs SoundBlaster 1.0, but the sound was not perfect.
So in 1991, I bought a Roland CM32L just to replay Sierra GAMES (Space Quest IV, King Quest V) with their original musics !
It really changed the experience… There was such a big difference between the Soundblaster and the MT32.
Nowadays all this has been forgotten by players; All games use waves/mp3, the magic is gone…
(re: Inter action magazines) Yes, Ken has a complete set.
Actually, Brad is the one running the show here, he has a near-complete set I believe and any he was missing, he was going to borrow to fill in the gaps. Brad was having the job done by a guy who works at Kinkos and also has his own graphics business – so it’s just a matter of waiting until they’re done. I’ll send Brad an email today and find out what the delay is. In the meantime, there is a sample issue on this message board.
(re: Phanta 2 WinXP)
If you want to play the DOS version in Win XP then go here to get the patch. It works fine for me.
(re: Adventure Games: Old and New) Argh… I didn’t even want to read the entire thread.
No new players (today) would have played the originals. Can you blame them?? CGA and EGA graphics doesn’t look very good at today’s standards! These remakes introduced millions to Roberta’s KQ. I know this, because I’ve encountered many people who played these games and this was a first for them!! And everyone of them knew very well that Roberta Williams created the original, since AGDI made sure she was credited in each game!
And many of these new fans would jump at the chance to buy the originals now… if they could.
(Inter action magazines)
I know there have been some people strating little projects to get all of these magazines on the net, but I still dont see any of the magazines? Ken do you own any of these magazines?
-Robin
(re: Greetings from KQ9 Fangame Project Director)
Your project looks really good. I cant wait for SQ7, Hero6 and KQ9 to come out. Its a dream come true! 😉
-Robin
(re: Boat picture (what kind of dog do you have?))
Oh, look at that grin! (I mean Shelby’s of course.) She is beautiful. Is that a life vest around her neck?
I am trying to convince my boyfriend we need a dog. He isn’t convinced yet so I have to make do with hamsters for now. (Not that there’s anything wrong with hamsters…)
-emily
(re: re: Boat picture (what kind of dog do you have?)) Actually … Shelby, the dog in the photo, would be deeply offended by any comment that implies that she belongs to Roberta and I. Shelby has no doubt who is in charge. Roberta and I are her humans, and she runs the household.
Shelby is a Norwegian Lundehund, and travels with us everywhere. If dogs had passports, hers would be overloaded with stamps from various countries.
-Ken Williams
