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(re: Jane Jensen is working on a new game!) Well, I think that GK3 (a “new Sierra” product, as far as I know) is an excellent game. I would love to see a GK4 using a similar interface (I thought the GK3 interface was simply ingenious), with perhaps improved graphics…
Is there any word as to which company is Jane writing the game for, or anything about the story?(re: Sierra Talents) I’m trying to chase a bug (in some code) so I’ll be brief:
I confess that I wasn’t very scientific … Roberta was picked as a designer because she was my wife. Actually, it can be argued that she started the company more than me.
Other designers:
Jim Walls — lived in the town. I don’t remember how we were introduced
Jane Jensen — I assume she wrote me at some point
Al Lowe — I was looking for education product, and ran into him at a computer show — he had written some education games
Josh Mandel — don’t remember
Who am I missing? (there are dozens more, but my mind seems to have gone)
Generally I tended to work backwards from what I was attempting to accomplish. If it felt right to me to do a horror game, the next person who struck me as being creative and into horror, was given a chance. 99% of breaking through to me was timing.
-Ken W(re: a question about copyright) Can Jane only write a GK novel if Sierra says it’s okay?
Gabriel Knight was owned by Sierra. When I was CEO, I gave her the right to do a novel using the character – but, my recollection is that I only gave her the rights for one novel. I’m not sure what happened after I left.
At Sierra, I wanted to own all rights to everything we published. My philosophy was always that the first game in a series was a loss-leader — it cost more to promote than you could get back in revenue. It can cost millions to create a recognizable name. Sequels, and licensing represents the profit potential. Generally speaking, it’s the publishers millions that makes something into a recognizable trademark. Certainly, a gifted writer is also required – but, generally business is governed by the golden rule: He who holds the gold makes the rules.
-Ken W
(re: Thanks!) Hi guys
There was a very long time there when Sierra was the only game company I bought games from. I certainly wasn’t ready to see them go.
The old Sierra games where with out a dought the best on the market for many years and a lot of those old games of there’s are still better than a the new releases comming out today.
Jim(re: re: General Conversation about Sierra) Yes I have played both of them and I thought they were very good. I didn’t get the speech pack to work though but everything else worked just fine.
I don’t think they hurt the original games at all as they followed the story very close and I liked the few aditional add in’s that fitted in with the story line too.
Jim(re: What made the old Sierra great)
i absolutely loved your return policy, where you said the person returning the game had to say why they didn’t like it. i thought that was great.
i remember calling to order something once, in the early 90s. i was playing Myst at the time and i got in a conversation with the support tech about how to solve a particular puzzle in Myst (i told him how to figure it out). i remember i was using my dad’s credit card and he kept looking across the room at me funny because i’d gotten into this long conversation that had nothing to do with the game i was ordering. the person on the phone was just so friendly… it stood out to me because that kind of service is so rare.
🙂 emily
(re: What made the old Sierra great) You are right that one of the key things about Sierra was our support. We were the only company to offer an 800 number for support, and we did one other thing which no other publisher would have the courage to do: we offered a 100% money back guarantee on all games. This was a big deal for us, because we gave the money back directly — and gave back full retail even those most product was sold through distribution at about 55-65% off. We lost about $20 on each returned copy. That said, we didn’t issue many refunds! Our support and return policy helped our employees understand the importance of getting it right the first time. (not that we always did, as Outpost owners will be quick to tell you)
-Ken(re: I hate netscape) Thank you all! I found the problem on the text boxes, and will work on it later tonight or tomorrow morning….
The “fancy editing” I’m not planning to implement on the Mac … I bought the source code for the editor from a third party company and enhanced it for this site. They don’t offer it for Mac.
-Ken W(re: I hate netscape)
Indenting seems fine on a Mac running Netscape Communicator 7.0
To respond to the comment about fancy message options — those don’t work on my mac at all, in netscape or IE. I was surprised to see them when I first logged on at home with my PC! (Not actually too surprised because the Mac often doesn’t support stuff like that.) But the area to type the message is a fine size in Communicator 7.0, and it’s wrapping fine too. (Edit: okay, the edit box doesn’t wrap, but it is a fine size.)
Let me know if there are other things you need tested on a mac or if you want screenshots to see how things look.
-emily
(re: I hate netscape)
I’m using the worst version of Netscape I can imagine at work. It’s Netscape Communicator 4.73. And this site seems to be working perfectly! At least for viewing and posting messages. All the fancy options for message posting stuff doesn’t appear though, and the box to type stuff into doesn’t virtual wrap 🙁 And, for editing messages, it’s worse. The input box is only one row high and very small, and again doesn’t virtual wrap. You need to get those settings into your textarea calls.
(re: I hate netscape) Emily:
Thank you! Yes – please, give this a try on Netscape … let me know what happens.
Thank you for the bug …. it was doing that before and I thought I had it fixed .. oh well… will work on it tonight.Thanks again! – Ken W
(re: I hate netscape)
i am on a mac at work. the list seems to be indenting correctly. i am using IE 5.1; let me know if you want me to check it in Netscape.
i’ll take a screenshot so you can see how it’s indenting for me.
-emily
ps here’s a bug though! i uploaded the first screenshot (website bugs and discussion) fine. when i uploaded the second one (king’s quest area), it attached it to your message at the top of this forum, not to my message. i uploaded it again and the file is now attached to my message, but i can’t get rid of the one attached to your message…
website bugs and discussion
king’s quest area(Does anyone have a Mac???) I think I fixed some Mac bugs, but am not sure.
Does anyone out there have a Mac? If so, does the menu seem to be indenting correctly? (the left frame)
-Ken W(re: Fond Memories)
Thank you! (although — to be honest, 99% of the work was done by my team, not me.)
I used to have a quote on my wall, that I’ve unfortunately lost, and forgotten. It was from Walt Disney when someone asked him what he did. He responded something like: Well, I don’t draw the cartoons, I don’t write the scripts, I don’t act, direct or write music. My job is to just keep things moving (or, something like that – and, he said it about a million times better – maybe someone out there has the correct quote)
-Ken(re: I hate netscape) Oops .. I forgot to answer the AGI question…
AGI was mostly mine (including my idea). SCI, its’ sequel was mostly Jeff Stephenson. SCI was ahead of its time. I think it was the first true object oriented programming language.
I don’t know what the encryption key was for AGI games … if it is a ladies name, it might be either Bob Heitmans wife, or Jeff Stevensons wife (Jeanine(?) or Avis repectively). Sorry — you are talking nearly a quarter century ago!
-Ken(re: I hate netscape) I’m having trouble getting it to indent right on netscape .. I can get it to indent, but then it doesn’t line wrap properly.
I’ll figure it out…. it’s like an adventure game!!!
-Ken(re: I hate netscape) I hate netscape too. It’s pretty much evil as far as I’m concerned. Don’t even get me started on the drugged up versions of Netscape, such as Communicator. I’m having enough problems just with Netscape 7.02 on a site I’m currently working on.
Actually the worst thing about Netscape is not the bugs, it’s all the stupid Netscape ‘features’ that basically mean some things are unsolveable.(Ditto : Netscrape Bites) Nothing worse than when a client wants cross browser compatability, on a web page and even worse – cross platform compatability, and then to top it off they want it compatible with the past 5 versions. Netscape on the PC and Netscape on the Mac are two different beasts. Any stats on what % of the world is still using Netscape?
Okay, now off my little soapbox and let me seguey into a more appropriate topic : AGI. Was that your brain child to create a language that was universal on any platform, and only had to be run through it’s appropriate interpreter? Was that common in the day (albeit way back in the beginning there was alomst only you) or were you kind of a pioneer in that respect (among other respects of course). It is such a simple yet effective way to open up your market with very little overhead.
Also, my memory is failing me, but it seems like you guys had the interpreter encrypted.. and the password was something like “Dorris” the name of your secretary at the time, or something. Thought maybe you could roll that in for us die-hard trivia fans.
Anyway – with all that said I will stop and let you digest all of that.
Thanks Ken.
-Brad(re: I’m finding a Ending Song of Phantasmagoria) If you’re saying that you want a file with the end credits song for Phantasmagoria, you’re in luck.
Link: http://www.shaftnet.org/quest/tastand.mp3(http://www.shaftnet.org/quest/tastand.mp3)
I hope this helps. 🙂
(re: A picture I made a long time ago.) LOL, cool. This may want to be moved under my post “Sierra Fan Art,” and you may even want to move Sierra Fan Art into it’s own section.
(re: A picture I made a long time ago.)
lol, ya know, I never really saw it in that light until now.
(re: A picture I made a long time ago.) Cool! But, I have no doubt what Al Lowe would say about that nose ….
-Ken W(re: Kq9) Since I’m a member of the unofficial KQ9 team, I thought I should comment a bit on this.
First of all, the game itself – if it will be completed according to current plans – will be awesome! Unlike Tierra, we’re developing our own game engine, so there’s lots of work to do but we’re also free to do more or less whatever we want. And the game design will be something really fresh and unique. Of course I cannot tell you more details at the moment. 😉
As for Sierra, their attitude to fangames has been ambiguous so far. To me it would seem sensible to have a consistent approach to them, but there’s no such thing it seems. The KQ7 fangame could indeed have been targeted only because there was an official KQ7 project in development. Tierra on the other hand has only produced remakes of old games so far, and the charts seemed to indicate that the release of KQ1VGA boosted sales of the then already old King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity, so it might be that while they really didn’t like what Tierra was doing, they decided not to contact them because there was economic profit in it. They could hardly gain much from taking legal actions against fans working for free. Indeed, they would be better off treating their fans well, like Sierra used to in the “good ol’ days”. But when you’re basically nothing but a a puppet under a huge conglomerate like Vivendi I guess it’s hard to keep a personal touch on your business…
Anyway, if Sierra would contact our team, I believe they would at least have the decency to warn us first. And if they do so, we might just change the name of the characters and locations in the game and release it anyway. At the very least, the ambition is not to give up on our game creation just because Sierra puts spokes in our wheels.
This whole thing makes me think of the PacMan/Jawbreaker lawsuit way back in 1981. It’s a funny thought to imagine us in a courtroom arguing that Sierra did more or less the same thing back then as we do today. 😉(re: Where is everyone now?) Ken,
I read your letter above and I think you are wrong. You were sounding like the new Sierra Guys there. Gaming was definatly for the younger audiance when you sold Sierra and remained that way for a very long time but I have been to game sites and read a lot of what there designers are saying now. There are a lot of them claiming that they have been missing too much of the market because of targeting the younger male players with arcade and action games. Two companies that are talking about this right now are Her Interactive , Makers of the Nancy Drew sieries and Microids , Makers of Syberia.
Jim
