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(re: re: Why not do something new?)
The problem is, People have been letting them know for some time now. They just don’t listen. I believe the current owners of Sierra haven’t a clue about the history and fanbase of the Adventure games of Sierra’s past. The “industry” seems to be all about multiplayer, FPS, Online RPG, or Real time strat. None seem to have an interest in a single player adventure. I think it’s going to take another company to release a great adventure title AND for it to sell well in order to get the attention of the other big companies. Though Sierra as it currently sits with it’s priorities, I don’t think I want them making an adventure game. Since they would no doubt butcher it into some kind of First person action game. I shudder at the thought.
(re: Gold Rush)
Yeah I have the original Sierra version but I think I’m going to have to order the collector’s edition too.
(re: Gold Rush)
What!? Are they actually re-releaseing it??? After 15 years? Not that I have a problem, the opposite!!! I’m going to order right away!!!
(re: Why not do something new?) BTW – Here, in Israel, adventure games are SO popular. Just thought I should let you know. Why does the current Sierra think adventure games are a bad profit? Why not let them know?!?!?!?!
(re: Why we’re not doing anything) It’s so sad. Sierra was such a classic thing. Just the name. I always dreamed of making an adventure game for Sierra. But now it will never happan.
BTW – if, by any chance, the current management of Sierra will let you make adventure games for her, will you??? Maybe they will finally understand that adventure games are a great profit??? (and fun to make them…)
(re: Gold Rush) Ken could you give some input into why this game is being published by another company? Thanks.
I have no idea. It’s possible that these guys purchased some old inventory.
I do remember that the authors (Ken McNeil(?), and his brother(?)) kept trying to get the rights back so that they could sell the game themselves. In a large company, it’s hard to make money selling a product that only sells a few hundred copies a month, or even fewer. Whereas for Sierra there wasn’t enough interest in Gold Rush to keep it on the price list, for the authors it could be worthwhile to sell the product themselves. The McNeils were constantly after me to let them sell the product themselves, and my remembrance is that I gave them permission. Most publishers wouldn’t. I’m aware of another author who is currently asking for the rights to sell one of his/hers products that Sierra hasn’t sold in years, and can’t get them (Sierra) to agree. As a former publisher, I understand both sides of this issue.
-Ken W(re: re: A big thank you)
I second that. I miss Sierra a lot. Sierra games have always been my favorite games. Always.
(Here’s my letter to the local newspaper asking that they run my goodbye letter) Morgan Voorhis February 24, 1999
Sierra StarMorgan:
Here is my letter to the troops at Sierra. I know it is long, but it is important to me that it not be paraphrased. If you can’t run it as free editorial, let me know and I will pay to run it as an advertisement. I would also prefer it if you could read to me any quotes you attribute to me within your article. My reason for this is that I have been poorly paraphrased in the past by some journalists (not you), and in this case, I believe that Sierra’s former employees and even the city have gone through too much trauma to risk any accidental misquoting of anything I said, or even poor word selection on my part. I care deeply for these people, who worked their butts off for me – and I don’t want to be part of anything is counter-productive.
Thanks! – Ken Williams
(re: Old page from Interaction)
I have a bunch of Interaction magazines in my parents attic back home in Alabama, Some even have The Sierra Magazine printed on the cover. I’ll see if I can get them shipped to me for scanning.
(re: The History of this website?)
Wonderful news to hear that the old content shall be up! Woohoo! :o)
(re: re: The site’s back up!) Hello!
Oooh! I’m so happy this site is back up again! It is so kewl! Is it just gonna be a message board now? Or will the rest of the content be back up again, too? If you need help here, I’ll be happy to help out. I so many old Sierra games, like Wrath of Denethenor (in box) and Mouskattack (in folder) among others.
— Sierra Planet :o)(re: Creators of Manhunter?) Thank you!
The Murrays were indeed the creators of Manhunter – and of Ancient Art of War for Broderbund. Very creative guys. I haven’t spoken with them for over 20 years, and am sorry to hear of Barrys passing.
-Ken
PS Manhunter was great. Very innovative.(re: The site’s back up!) Hi there, Elsa! I rember you from SierraGamer’s old TSN2000 forum. Welcome! 🙂
– Athelas(Fix to most recent message posted) The list of “most recent messages posted” wasn’t shifting the menu to point at the same message being displayed. This has been fixed (I hope).
There are still some issues which I need to work on with this report. 1) It doesn’t display anything posted by anyone with “administrator priviledges” (such as Jouke and myself), and 2) It seems to display messages that were updated (not sure why). Oh well… I’m working on it.
-Ken W(re: Ken Williams – Powerpoint)
Wow, that’s really cool Ken. Thanks for sharing that. Nice to see a combination of Sierra philosophy as well as some facts about Sierra. Thanks again, enjoyed it! (The things us fans enjoy!)
(Ken Photo – Summer 1996 Interaction) A great photo of Ken, as oft are found in the Interaction magazines. I’ll post some more of these. It’s a neat article, but one I don’t feel I’ll make into a PDF, or at least it would be low on my list of articles to do. So, I thought I should post the picture.
On a related note, I have a spare copy of this Interaction magazine. It’s the Summer 1996 issue. Unfortunately about half the first page has been cut out, but it’s just ads. On one side is Rama and on the other side is Urban Runner. Otherwhise the issue is in great condition, light corner wear and edge wear from reading, but nothing major, there is an address sticker on the back. No folds, no rips, no spills, no cigarette smell. One page of the Phantasmagoria 2 article page has a slight wrinkle in it but it is still very flat. The staples are holding strong. The cover story is Lighthouse and there’s also articles on QFG Anthology, LSL7, and Roberta Williams. I won’t sell it, I will only trade for issues of Interaction I’m missing. If you’re interested, email me. Ken, if for some reason you don’t have it and want it, it’s yours. By the way I will add all the good articles in PDF format eventually as well anyway. Sorry for this long spiel, I’ll remove it once I find someone to trade with!
Now check out the photo 🙂(Ken’s garage) Wow, that is just unbelievably cool.
<envisioning garage…>
Looking forward to whatever you can post, whenever you get a chance to do it. Will also look forward to Jouke’s return.
If you don’t think there’s enough interest for a book, maybe something less official could be assembled. A PDF book perhaps. Check out the article I put into PDF in the KQ area. Hmm…
<Brandon moves to Seattle to help Ken sort through his garage>
EDIT: Oh, and by the way, if when you get into your garage, if you happen to find duplicates of anything, you know, design documents, old issues of the newsletter, remember us fans 🙂(re: Funny chart) It looks like a “revenue” number to me. Cool! I hadn’t noticed that.
As you can tell from the picture, Sierra’s revenues really exploded. I assume the $722,000 must have been a December number – that was always our biggest month.
-Ken W(re: From a life long fan) I have a whole garage full of stuff from the old days. I’m in Mexico now, but when I get back to Seattle I’ll start scanning stuff. I don’t think there would be enough interest to ever do a book, but I definitely have some very interesting surprises..
-Ken
PS No promises on timing. My son Chris has about a zillion boxes piled on top of my boxes, so until he gets an apartment it’s not clear I can find anything.(re: A big thank you) Thank you!
To this day, my favorite games we did are still: Leisure-Suit Larry, Space Quest and Phantasmagoria.
I miss Sierra….
-Ken(re: Page from Map ) Sorry for adding a new King’s Quest section, but I thought I had a better version of that opening image (which didn’t make sense as a “kq7 design stuff” header image anyway, since it’s from kq6), I figured for now it’s easier to have a section for each series instead of each game, and I wanted to upload the article I assembled.
So I assume Ken you added the map image, maybe you could move it into the King’s Quest Area. Also, is there any chance you have or could do a larger scan of the image? I don’t know how much space your server has but I assume with almost everything in the museum, the larger the better, up to 300 dpi so that anyone with a nice printer could print themselves a nice version of it.
