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(re: First to Market?) i was curious of an example of a game that you recalled and reworked, *because* it wasn’t “first-to-market?”
I’m going to be traveling the next few days – so I’ll answer this when I can. For now, here’s an “off the top of my head” answer…
We did a product called Pro-Pilot that was similar to Microsoft’s flight simulator. Throughout development, we were monitoring Microsoft’s product. We wanted to differentiate the product by having some features they didn’t have. Overall, we knew we couldn’t compete with their product – they had a 20 year head start on us – but, we thought we could have a few features they missed – and, that these features would justify any flight simulator fan buying our product, in addition, to the Microsoft product.
During development, we were monitoring the rumors on Microsoft’s product. There were several features we had, that we thought were unique, that they announced. Argh! This product spent a lloonnnggggg time in development.
I’ll write more in a few days.
-Ken W(re: Games for the TI 99) ooh, please do post those screenshots! i’ve seen shots of KQ5 for the nintendo and was amazed at how different they were.
🙂 emily(Quest For Glory V Soundtrack – Pictures) from the Soundtrack that came with collection. (basically the very same product that sold as seperately)
(re: re: re: Old pictures of Ken and Roberta)
Havas is out of the picture. They were bought by Vivendi, which now owns Sierra. And yes, they own the trademark. Of course, the old Sierra logo might not be owned by them, and I can’t see why anyone would care about old logos.
(re: Quest For Glory V Soundtrack)
Brandon, Have you managed to get your scanner working yet? I would love to see some of the artwork and or liner notes for this CD.
(re: re: Old pictures of Ken and Roberta) Seriously re: the T-shirts. Does Havas own the Sierra On-Line trademark? Because I bet you guys could really sell some of those shirts if you put them on the website.
Great pics, but Ken should smile sometime 🙂mc
(re: re: re: re: Games for the TI 99) Dear Ken,
I own some great Sierra cartridge games, most mint with mint boxes, Some Sierra PCjr cart games, the King’s Quest for the Sega Master System, and King’s Quest V for the Old Nintendo. Would you like me to scan these for the site? If so, what section should I put them in?
Also, did you ever play the King’s Quest for the SMS?? I would like to post some screenshots here to show everyone how vastly different the KQ for the SMS was! (It’s awful) It has the Parker Brothers logo only on it, so I am guessing they did the terrible port, you guys must not have wanted the Sierra name on that one!
I also have thexder cart for the Tandy CoCo3. Hope these will bring back some memories!
Thanks again,
Ryan(Preliminary analysis) Vicc,
You (of course) already know this, but for anyone else reading the thread, we’re following this story very closely over at LarryLives.com. Some apsects of this new information mesh with some of the other rumors and quotes we’ve got, but we’re still being cautious. If there is a release sheet out there that lists a new LSL game for 2004, I suspect other sites will also begin making references to it shortly.
Here’s the larrylives.com official translation (compliments of Mattsius):
__________________________________________
RELEASE LISTS
Welcome to search through PAN Vision’s release lists for different product groups!
To the left you can find lists for games, movies as well as children’s products.
You can also get your own list directly sorted by media or by device by using the dropdown list to the left.If you have anything to ask about the release lists, you can send us an e-mail:
Games
Miika Vanhapiha
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.Original message:
2004
Leisure Suit Larry (Xbox)
Seloste: Klassista seikkailua nyky-yhteiskunnan varjopuolella pelimaailman ehkä tunnetuimman antisankarin löysäilevään ja opportunistiseen tahtiin.
Julkaisija:==========
2004
Leisure Suit Larry (Xbox)
Specification/description: A classical adventure in today’s society’s shady side to the loose-living and opportunistic pace of perhaps the gaming worlds best known anti hero.Publisher:
(Fan Fiction Poll) I’ll create a section for Fan Fiction – but, first thought I’d use this as an excuse to try my polling feature.
Click the link below to make YOUR opinion known. I’ll post the results.
THE POLL IS DONE: CLICK HERE TO SEE THE RESULTS!
Or, better yet: CLICK HERE TO POST YOUR FICTION!(re: re: Fan Fiction)
What Ugarte said. Stories written by fans about the games they play, involving the same characters.
(re: Fan Fiction) Fan fiction in general is any story or work written that is in the world of another existing work. For example, a Star Trek fan writes his own Star Trek story, but just for fun. Technically, it can be considered copyright infringement, but it seems to depend on the rights owners and how they feel about it.
Over the years, there have been fanfics, or stories by fans, in the world of various Sierra games. There’s Gabriel Knight fan fiction and King’s Quest fan fiction. There’s especially a lot of Quest for Glory fan fiction. Basically, some of us love the games so much that we write our own stories ourselves that take place in these game worlds.
That’s what fan fiction is. And just so you know, plenty of fanfics are the length of a novel, being numerous chapters, so keep that in mind.(re: re: Swamp Bug in qfg4) I have the same version of the game (CD-ROM / QFG Anthology) running under Win98 and would like to help.
However, my experience with the sci engine’s save game compatibility has taught me that sometimes, selecting another sound device can render save games unreadable (“This game was saved under a different interpreter. It can’t be restored.”)
So, nothing guaranteed for. It will take one or two days and I’ll probably just tell you that I couldn’t open your save games.
If you want me to try it anyway, send your save games to “samcormack-AT-gmx-DOT-net” and I’ll see what I can do.(re: Leisure Suit Larry goes MULTI-PLATFORM???) Translation is as follows:
“Classic adventuring on the shady side of modern society, with the slack and opportunistic style of propably the best known anti-hero character of the gaming world.”
Only time will tell!(re: Development Management) Wow — a great question. I do think that one of the major reasons that Sierra did so well was that we managed development better than our competitors.
That said…
We did a terrible job. Most projects finished late and over budget. We had a bit of an excuse, in that there were lots of factors that could radically impact a project in development. For instance:
A competitor comes out with something comparable (I never wanted to be “second to market” in a product category) This could result in radical redesign If it just isn’t fun. This happened a lot. The game would be playable, but just “wasn’t fun” – this always meant LOTS of additional work Someone had a cool idea for a new feature – that we all agreed would make the product sell a LOT better
Generally though, our problem was that our staff, like me, were all perfectionists. Everyone was always wanting to do things over and over until “it was just right”. This meant redoing a particular animation dozens of times. Rewriting a routine over and over until it ran in the fewest number of milliseconds possible.
Our industry was different than most. A competitor of ours, Blizzard, always refused to establish a budget or ship date (or, so goes the rumor). They would agonize over the smallest details, and throw away major chunks of code – over and over again, for years. As crazy as this sounds, I loved them for this. When they shipped a product, it was awesome. The problem was: how do you do this in a public company? Shareholders demand ship dates and revenue projections. On the other hand, perfection takes time. I always had trouble balancing these two goals.
None of this may be relevant to your question. One good thing we had at Sierra was an amazing staff. We were in the fortunate position that the industries best talent wanted to work for us. Generally, we never shipped a product late due to incompetence. We shipped late because of wanting to ship a perfect product.
That can be different than the problems one might see at a “normal” company. Sometimes, in the normal IT world, there really are project managers who don’t know what they are doing – and, who can’t manage people. It happens all the time. My best advice here is to look at someones track record before hiring them. If someone ships a product over budget, late, and buggy – they will ship their next product exactly the same way. Most projects (that fail), fail before they start, through bad staffing. I can’t say this strong enough. If you hire leaders who shipped their previous products late (or, quite often not at all) – you have my word that they will almost certainly do it again Avoid hiring people who always seem to fail, but have really good excuses. I don’t like excuses. Great people get things done under adverse circumstances. People who claim to be good, but who have constantly failed because “the dog ate their homework” are best left to competitors.
-Ken W(Fan Fiction) I don’t understand your question about “Fan Fiction” … what is this? Give me an example. Are you suggesting that we have a section where anyone can post their own story?
I certainly support this idea (I think) assuming I understand what it is…
-Ken W(re: Swamp Bug in qfg4) I own the Quest for Glory Anthology and the version is 1.0. If anyone thinks he/she can help please let me know. Thank you for your help.
P.S. I played the game under windows XP and windows 98. My saved games are compatible with the DOS version of the game.(re: re: re: Games for the TI 99) Bryan:
Here’s another piece of the story –
The President of Imagic was a gentleman named Bruce Davis. When Sierra went through their problems, Bruce was hired by our venture capitalists to “evaluate” what to do about Sierra.
Bruce’s goal was to advise the venture capitalists as to whether the company should be shut down, sold or ??? The venture capitalists decided to sell us, and I had to meet with several other companies who were considering to buy us.
There was a VERY famous meeting (or, at least famous at my house) where the VCs (venture capitalists) were trying to sell us to a company called Spinnaker. We had a board meeting in San Francisco, where the Spinnaker management presented their rationale for why the two companies should merge. Roberta disliked (a mild word) the idea, and decided to revolt. She came to the board meeting VERY late, dressed VERY casual (blue jeans and a t-shirt) and asked “So, what are we discussing today?” Her goal was to send a message to everyone that Sierra wasn’t in panic mode, and didn’t need to be sold. She was trying to tell the VCs: “Relax, and leave us alone. We have the situation under control. We certainly don’t need sold to these guys”.
Roberta carried the day. We were also helped by Bruce, who after studying Sierra, said “This is a good company, and worth backing”. I spoke with Bruce about working for Sierra, but he was hired by Activation as their CEO, and then immediately made his own effort to acquire Sierra- for $1 million!
I was so depressed by having to do all the layoffs, I was ready to take the deal – but, Roberta said “no way!” The VCs figured that we were in such bad shape that their investment was gone one way or the other, so they left the decision to Roberta and I. We did do a deal under which they loaned the company a small amount of money for a big piece of the company. Within a few months we turned it around, and repaid the loan. However, we had permanently lost a BIG chunk of the company, and the VCs made a huge amount of money on that short-term loan. And after that, the rest is history….
Anyway … there was a bit of a relationship between Sierra and Imagic around that time. Perhaps Imagic did the conversions???
You are right – I should have, or, someone should have, tried to hang onto at least one of each cartridge we produced. I don’t have any of them.
-Ken W
PS Feel free to post here any pictures you want, and to repeat what I’ve said on other sites. I just wish I had better memory about this topic….(re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Swapping and the Weezer Idea)
=P No worries; misunderstandings happen all the time, language being what it is (imperfect at best…).
(re: re: Games for the TI 99) Thanks for your reply. What TI did back in the early 1980s was make all the software houses have to publish through them, except for the few that get a GROM licence from TI or used cartridges only with ROM. The Sierra games were put out in TI packaging, so it is possible development was done there. This would have been 1983.
What did happen in 1984 was TI left the computer market and then there were two comanies that signed an agreement with TI to continue production of the TI-99/4A conversions TI originally put out, but under their own label. Apparently, Imagic and Sierra/Disney signed up to do this. I wonder what was in that warehouse, would have been neat to know. Any chance some people took one of everything for their own use before the stash was thrown out?
I’ll have to include this great info you gave me on the Web Site. Here’s a quote from you in a TI Users Group Newsletter from 1984: “We look forward to serving the large number of 99/4A Home Computer owners with this new software, and we hope to continue providing this and other software for the 99/4A,” said Ken Williams, president of Sierra On-line”. (February 1984).
Maybe I can put some screen shots here for you too, since I saw the TI Title Screen screen shot.
Sincerely,
Bryan Roppolo(re: re: tried everything you said) did you try them combined? i mean using moslo/turbo + speed bar all the way up + detail all the way down + selecting PC-SPEAKER for music (no-speech) + disabling all the CMOS cache from the BIOS menu ?
also, please supply your retail version (diskettes/CD/anthology/collection) and version number (search for a file called “version” , with no extension, in the QFG4 folder) , as well as your OS veriosn (windows etc..), which might prove useful(re: re: Swamp Bug in qfg4) This is really version dependant. I tried to help a friend of mine get by a scene in quest for glory 3 and it just gave the error – “This was saved under a different interpreter.” So you are going to have to tell me the exact version number and maybe I can help. Is it the CD version? Disk version (ver x.xxx)?
I own the cd version so if it’s not that version maybe someone else can help.(re: Leisure Suit Larry goes MULTI-PLATFORM???)
I’m not sure what to think. I have never really heard of this company or this project. I can’t read the language there, but I saw what you mean. There doesn’t seem to be much info…no screenshots or that sort. I wouldn’t be too over-excited…
(re: Games for the TI 99)
Bryan:
Sorry to tell you this, but I have no idea what games we produced for the TI-99. I’ve been trying to remember, but, honestly, had you posted this message and just asked if we ever did games for the TI-99 I’m sure I would have said no.
I’m curious if we did the conversions ourselves at Sierra, or if we licensed the product to someone else who made the games. Do the boxes have another publisher name besides Sierra on them?
There was a strange time in Sierra’s history that occurred in around 1983, that is chronicled in the book Hackers. At the beginning, we did only software for the Apple II. We were an immediate success, and had grown from just Roberta and I up to 120 or so employees. Then, we raised a bunch of venture capital, and decided to expand. We did cartridges for the TI-99, Com-64 and Atari 800 – and, even toyed with the idea of the Atari 2600 game machine. Unfortunately, just as we were receiving our inventory (cartridges in those days were very expensive, and had to be ordered in large quantities), the whole market for cartridges just ended. We had millions of dollars of cartridges in our warehouse, and no place to sell them. It almost killed Sierra. We laid 100 people off, which was the most painful thing I had ever done, and got a loan on the house, with which to make payroll. We also borrowed all the cash we could on several different credit cards. Luckily, we made it – but, most of those cartridges literally wound up being thrown away.
-Ken W(re: Swamp Bug in qfg4)
OK. First of all I would like to thank all those that answered to my post. However, even though I tried everything you suggested I cant get over this problem. So I have to ask if someone is willing to pass this scene for me. If anyone can help me, post your e-mail address and I will send you my saved games. Thank you very much!!!
