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(re: Login in required)
The method of marketing Ken described is exactly how I got into Sierra games. I never saw any advertisements. My friend had SQ2 and KQ4 and we’d sit there and play those games for hours trying to figure them out. When my family finally got a computer we were able to buy our own copies and in the end I ended up having most of Sierra’s games where he still had only a few.
Alot of that had to do with InterAction Magazine and the whole idea that we were “part of the family.” Of the things I kept from my childhood I only kept my Lego sets and my Sierra games.
-Greg
(re: Login in required) I would pay a lot of money to anyone who could turn me into the “Ken” I was in the book. I’ve become much more boring with age…
Sometime I’ll write a long message about my philosophies on inhouse development for this board. For now, here’s the one paragraph version:
I wanted Sierra’s games to be different than any other companies. I really didn’t see Sierra as “just another publisher”. Publishers go into the open market and bid for products. In that market, the high bidder wins (meaning the company willing to show the lowest profit). Sierra, to me, was a creative group (our #1 priority was development, not publishing). I’m having trouble explaining this – but, I saw us as a vertically integrated developer, not just someone who marketed other peoples products. One of the major critiques of me, through the years, was that at Sierra developers were treated like gods, and everyone else as unnecessary overhead. This was a fair commentary. I felt we were in a product business, and that only product mattered. Good product sold, bad product didn’t. Customers are smarter than you think. You can’t turn crap into gold by spending millions on advertising. We ran almost no advertising, and spent almost no money on trade shows. What we did spend was against existing customers, and really it was just “informational”, not hype. I’m anti-hype. . I felt we were running a “club” where our job was to build cool product for people who had bought from us before (I did spend on direct mail, such as InterAction magazine). New people would “join the family” if our existing customers talked about our products. The idea of someone else building your product is a completely different kind of company than I ran.
-Ken W(re: Talkspot – or, life after Sierra)
Thanks for the interview! It was great hearing from you. Haven’t really heard anything about you or Roberta in a long time. Think maybe she’d do an interview too? That would be super fantastic!! Roberta is my favorite hehe.
(re: Login in required) Ken, you’re a genious! Seriously, that email idea is great and I think it would work very well. The big gaming companies today are totally anonymous. I’ve read about your philosophy during the Sierra era about holding on to your customers, and I believe it’s a strategy that pays off big-time. You probably have the numbers to prove so yourself…
I was also thinking about your philosophy to concentrate on in-house development. While I believe this has many advantages, not only the gaming industry but the whole industry seems to have gone the other way. In some ways I think this is a positive trend. In the 80’s, any good programmer could make a successful game at home if he/she was devoted enough. In the 90’s, the big games turned into massive Hollywood-style productions, culminating with Phantasmagoria. Today, game engines and development tools using the latest technology has again enabled small groups of enthusiasts to create new quality games. It’s kind of turned full circle. I think this has caused the current situation, with successful game studios growing out of fan-made products.
Also, I would like to mention that I find it quite amusing to read “Hackers” and learn that people were leaving Sierra in the early 80’s, feeling that it had turned “too corporate”. The way Sierra looked at that time would hardly be considered very corporate today. 😉(re: Login in required) Login Requirement – Who said I subscribe to the Hacker ethic? If you read the book Hackers, I’m actually the villain in the book. Steve Levy (the author) thought I was wrong to publish computer games. He thought all software should be free, and I was just profiting from the creative work of others. The SierraGamers site has been around for three or so years (including the time when it was Sierra-Online.com). Prior to the last month, it had collected exactly ZERO email addressess. Since I took it over, we’ve collected around 500 or so. I would never resell these names, but do want to collect them for a very important reason. My goal is to collect the largest email list possible. Sooner or later Roberta and I may do something again. When we do, it will help us in our marketing efforts to have a way to quickly “get the word out” to the most likely group of potential buyers. My background was in direct marketing. I believe a large well-targeted mailing (emailing) list is crucial to success. I will only use this list to announce something I consider to be VERY big news – such as Roberta and I starting on a game. I will not use it for spam (although purists would argue that the purpose I’m thinking of IS spam). By doing what I’m doing, I’m collecting a list, at a decent pace. If I drop the login requirement, site visitation might go up, but list size growth would go down. It costs me both time and dollars to operate the site. It seems a fair trade to me that I get to build a mailing list along the way. If someone disagrees, that’s their right. It’s like television – if I ever don’t like a program, I change channels. In actuality, the odds are that the email addresses collected will never be used. I seriously doubt Roberta or I will ever build another game. We both want to, but we don’t want to get into working with a huge team, and the kinds of products that succeed in today’s world are multi-million dollar projects with 50 or more people working for years on them. The idea of sitting still for two or more years, and dealing with the bureaucracy of a large team isn’t very appealing. Whereas if I could find something that Roberta could design, and I could program – we’d definitely do something.
-Ken W
PS One more thought on the “login” issue. I also need to start work on having an “official” privacy policy, and a “end user agreement” for this website. Theoretically, someone could post something offensive, or inflammatory and I could find myself in litigation over the website. I need to put people through some sort of registration so that they can accept responsibility for anything they post on the site (and, agree not to sue me for anything they see on the site that they don’t like).
Â(re: So Ken, how much were you involved in Half-Life?)
Half-Life was a Sierra product, and was one of the last products I shipped during my time running Sierra. That said, Valve deserves 99% of the credit for Half-Life. It was developed at Valve, and Sierra wasn’t really a big part of the creative effort.
Sierra was unique in the industry, in that essentially ALL of our development was inhouse. We had over 700 people just in product development. I was opposed to external development for dozens of reasons, many of which I’m sure Sierra has come to understand in recent years.
Half-life (and, Homeworld) were the very rare exceptions to this rule. Even though I didn’t want to deal with external developers, I changed my opinion after meeting the team from Valve. The demo for Half-Life blew me away. It was early in development, but clearly going to be a megahit.
I was heavily involved with the negotiations on Half-Life, and made the decision on our picking up the product – but, was not on the front-lines during development. During development, I spent a day reviewing the product about every 90 days, but that was about it. Scott Lynch, who I believe is presently with Valve, worked for Sierra as a divisional General Manager. Scott was the person at Sierra who “found” the Valve team, and pushed me to “change the rules” and sign Valve. He was also the person who dealt with them on a day-in, day-out basis. Most of my involvement was at the corporate level making big-picture decisions about things like how many marketing dollars to allocate Half-Life.
On most other Sierra products I was much more directly involved.
Most of my time was spent going from project to project (we had as many as 50 games in various stages of development at times), and talking to the teams. This wasn’t easy. Our development groups literally spanned the world (Yosemite, San Francisco, Dallas, Salt Lake City, Berkley, London, Paris, Boston, Seattle, and more). By the time I would complete one road trip it was time for the next one to start. I loved hanging out with developers, and liked being able to directly impact products. But, ultimately, it was the travel that lead me to “burn out” on Sierra. I was sleeping in hotel rooms over 150 nights per year!
-Ken W(re: The faery folk in Quest for glory 4: Shadows of darkness) sorry, i erased the saved game -_-
im starting a new game,thanks for your interest anyway, when i arrive at this part i will let you know how it goes(re: Quest for Glory 4 freeze up) I’m always happy to help. 🙂
If the game still freezes when you use the tips I gave, you could also E-Mail your saved games to me, and I’ll take you past the bug.(re: What made the old Sierra great) I’ve been a Sierra gamer for a long time, and I’m finding it hard to identify what made it great for me. It was definitely about building memories – going from Digger, Pacman and others to Hero’s Quest in 1988 was amazing. I remember all of our group of friends who lived in one apartment building peering over each others shoulders shouting out advice and trying to figure the game out.
I lived in a foreign country, so the 800 line never really helped me (it did much later on, when I had lost a disk in the States), but the little clues pushing you to move to the next objective, the death messages, the cute asides by people, being able to create conversation, trying out different words to see if they would work – it was all a true adventure. Maybe not in Spielburg etc., but they were truly adventures wherever they may be.
The variety of environments to play in was also what made it great – fantasy lands, building machines, police work, and all the others, and it all came from one company. That’s probably the key – most companies don’t have that personalization of each game while at the same time each game was unique.
In other words, the care and feeling of each employee of Sierra came through in the games – in their depth, in the details, in the backgrounds.(re: I miss Sierra) Despite the shift in genres and development houses, Sierra is still at the top of its game when it comes down to it. The company may not produce or publish adventure games (right now 😉 ), but the genres of profit they produce for are of top-notch stuff. Action games like Half-Life and SWAT are quite good, and their strategy/simulation games are amazing, such as Pharoh or Zeus. If anybody gets the chance to purchase “The Great Empires Collection II”, I suggest you do so :), that’s a whole lot of gaming for 30 bucks.
What I wish they would do is start cranking out new collections! Like I said above, Great Empires is a good collection, and they recently released a new Half-Life Collection that has just about everything a Half-Life newbie needs. But what about adventure collections? I wouldn’t mind a new King’s Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, or Leisure Suit Larry Collection updated with the proper software enabling them to run properly on new systems (like Windows XP). It’s not like it would cost them a bunch, just some new modifications to tweak the system requirements.
Another thing bothering me about Sierra lately is: are they even really a company anymore? Everytime I read GameSpot or IGN they list most Sierra pulished games, like Half-Life 2 I’m assuming, as Vivendi Publishing. Why not Sierra? They don’t do that for Universal Games or Blizzard, so why Sierra?
Oh, by the way, I’m new! Let the iniation begin!(re: Quest for Glory 4 freeze up) The problem is that modern computers are too fast for certain parts in old SCI-1 games, such as QFG4 and GK1. There are several Slow Down utilities available on the web, but there is but one that will get you past the dreaded Error 52/Swamp bug: CPU Killer, it’s available here;
Link: http://www.cpukiller.com/products/cpukiller/(http://www.cpukiller.com/products/cpukiller/)
Slow down your computer BEFORE you enter the swamp. Fight and kill the Chernovy, take the ritual, and leave the area.
On a side note; Something that is often mistaken for a bug in the Swamp area, is when the screen turns completely black after casting Reversal. This isn’t a bug, but a Darkness Spell cast by the chernovy. 🙂 In this case, cast Juggling Lights.(re: Dryad musical theme in HQ1) Yes, you are right. Wonderful song…
Now compare Grieg’s “Anitra’s Dance” to the tune you hear in Hotel Mordavia, QFG4. 🙂(re: re: Sierra Movies?) Never (or, at least not that I can remember….)
-Ken W
PS Jon Peters visited me one day, to talk about which games could be made into films, but nothing ever came of it.(King’s Quest IX Uncovered) In the latest issue of the adventure magazine The Inventory that you can download from
Link: http://www.justadventure.com(http://www.justadventure.com)
you can see the first in-game screenshots of the most ambitious fan-made game to date, and as it seems it looks like it is going to be a worthy sequel to the King’s Quest saga.
uploaded 5/26/2003 9:18:13 PM(re: Kq9)
New screenshots are out of KQ9 go to http://www.justadventure.com and read the newest Inventory magazine
(re: Where is my last post?) If the post doesn’t appear in the “Display Recent Messages” list, then for some reason it didn’t make it onto the board.
I had an ugly bug that got introduced on Friday morning, that lasted through late last night, when I finally found it. There was a hard loop that was slowing down, and occasionally crashing the whole system. A couple of times I had to reset the server. Your message may have gotten lost during this time.
Sorry about that..
-Ken W(re: Interview With Lorelei Shannon)
Amazing stuff you guys! 🙂 I didn’t even know Lorelei had a website!
(re: Interview With Lorelei Shannon)
If you haven’t played Phantasmagoria II, but played other Sierra games, like KQ and SQ, well, I also have an interview with Mark Seibert at the same place. 🙂
(re: What made the old Sierra great)
And it wasn’t just the return policy, it was the tech support — back in the days when the Internet was still considered a Wonder. I remember trying to get Police Quest 4 working — it took about three months of correspondence with Tech support and truth be told, I think I still have all that stuff crammed in the PQ4 box along with my boot disks and patches. That was part of the reason I always felt so confident buying Sierra games.
(re: Sierra and Half-Life 2)
I’d agree that the HL2’s physics are outta this world (in terms of what’s available currently). But that download from FilePlanet just doesn’t do justice to the actual footage inside the theater they were showing it in at E3.
(re: The faery folk in Quest for glory 4: Shadows of darkness) Could you send your saved games zipped to
Link: martijn_van_es@hotmail.com(mailto:martijn_van_es@hotmail.com)
? I’ll take a look at the problem.
Do you have the diskette or CD-Rom version of the game?(re: Sierra and Half-Life 2)
I agree, HL2 seems to be one of the greatest games ever made. I’m really looking forward to it (although it’s not an adventure).
(re: The faery folk in Quest for glory 4: Shadows of darkness) yes, as i havent got anything more to do i trained hard my skills, i think i will restart the game and try to do something diferent… :S
