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Hi Ken,
Thanks for getting back to me. Congratulations on being “dead beats”. I knew the company would do well.
I was married once and had another long term relationship but have been single for the last three years. Great to hear John has been married with a couple kids.
If you and Roberta (or John) ever get to Hawaii, give me a call or email. Email me and I will send my phone number at Lynnrgy@alohabroadband.com. I’m on the Big Island and live about an hour south of Kailua-Kona. It would be great to see you again, it’s been a long time.
Aloha,
LynnHey Mike, Ken, and everyone,
I always wondered the same thing about a third game, especially since the events at the end of the second pushed heavily towards a sequel. To me, Manhunter: New York and San Francisco were the perfect games at the right time: I was barely ten or twelve, in my gore-and-monsters phase, and here was an interesting story told with images, technology, and characters that were both unusual and captivating.
Maybe I’m showing my ignorance, but I hadn’t seen anything like this before. Even back then, it seemed fresh. It wasn’t riffing off Blade Runner. Its alien designs were eerie and novel. Its point and click adventure style was different, too. It didn’t have the superimposed text like Deja Vu, Shadowgate, or the Lucasfilm games. And the idea that no one in the world could talk, that everything had to be expressed visually was a cheat that just added to the atmosphere. I poured through the reading materials offered for the game, and me, my brother, and my Dad tackled it together. Yeah, a lot of why I love the game probably comes from the way that I was exposed to it. Perfect timing, playing though it with the family, feeling like we’re unravelling a mystery.
Though I was already a huge fan of the Sierra games, this one came with a different visual style, interface, and personality. I did notice at the time that the graphics weren’t up to snuff with it’s concurrent Sierra releases, but the art style more than made up for it. And its use of the UI-less point and click was so damn farsighted.
You talk about bringing out a new one today, and I just don’t know how you could do that. It was never a huge success compared with the other Sierra games, though it seems to have its fans even today. It would basically be an unknown property, as hard to get off the ground as any new game idea. If you did want to do it, how would you approach it? You can see examples of how the genre has progressed with games like those from Quantic Dreams, or the newer Myst games. These have taken the threads that were created with the early point and click adventure games, and brought them into new directions. Would I love a Heavy Rain style Manhunter game? You can be pretty sure I’d go nuts about it. But that’s about $20,000,000 more development dollars than I think you’d manage to accrue.
Maybe a more realistic goal is for an “updated retro” like Braid, or the Bionic Commando remake. Have beautiful art assets, assembled in a relatively low-budget manner, but doing something novel and new. Hell, a flash game with similar input episodically continuing the storyline would be great. I think the trick is to make something on the cheap without appearing cheap, and that does require design, innovation, and a hell of a lot of talent. Imagine Manhunter as a 2D adventure game, rendered with some cel shaded, Frank Miller style artwork. It always seemed like a great comic book, maybe that sort of treatment would be more consistent with the world than a big budget 3D moneyfest anyway, right?
Do know that if you make anything, and you make it with the best of your effort, I am going to be there, first in line. And I’ll badger my friends about this old game that inspired me, and how it’s coming back. I do owe you guys that much.
Sincerely,
John BrandonSorry .. I should have jumped into this discussion sooner.
Give this a try in the editor: I would think it would work…
When in html mode, put the css onto span tags.
For instance…
<span style=”font-size: 30px; “>Test</span>
-Ken W
Nope. Not even the CSS. There may be some obscure option hidden somewhere I haven’t seen yet, but I highly doubt it. I even double-checked after I read your message, but no-go. I feel like a complete idiot now, though. There IS a small, tiny option at the very bottom of our edit screens that allows us to view and change the HTML code, an option I didn’t notice before. Nothing for CSS still, I’m afraid, but HTML, yes.
It really depends on the title. If you want the rights to something like the King’s Quest or Leisure Suit Larry series, you’re looking at a lot of money for the obvious reasons, whereas if you wanted the rights to something like the Manhunter series, the prices would be considerably lower for same reasons. What series do you want the rights to (if I’m even on the right page mentioning adventure games)?
Before I go on, I wanted to comment on your message real quick, keessp, since it relates somewhat to the rest of this message. The reason I mentioned that Vista and IE might be culprits is because I have used the internet on Vista machines with IE that did funny things with the pages I visited, whereas, for example, another computer sitting right next to it had no issues at all. I agree with you that that is probably not the case with your machine; I just brought it up because I’ve seen and heard of it happening with Vista and IE. Like I said before, I will look into it. 🙂 I’m also going to increase the site of the font on the header and reupload it. Thank you for telling me about the trouble you had! Like I said earlier in this message, I truly do appreciate it when anybody tells us these things. Whether ot not we are able to do something about a problem, it at least makes us aware of it. Again, like earlier, if you see any specific areas, feel free to inform us. As a message to everybody, I realize that forum messages are sometimes too small, but I think that’s less of a site issue and more of an issue with message writers not changing the font size. Oh, and one more thing, keessp…Sometimes, and I’m not saying it’s the case this time, but sometimes using a language set on Windows other than English (I believe you use Dutch, correct? I noticed the Netherlands ‘NL’ symbol on your image) can be a big factor on how things look or display, even if it uses a Roman-based alphabet. Web browsers, pages, programs, etc. sometimes assume that English is the language set being used, and so when another set is used, things may not show up properly. Do other ‘English-based’ sites ever show up funny, too? In any case, when the site moves to the new server, I will do my best to make sure the site looks okay on computers not using an English language set. If it’s okay with you, I might occasionally ask you to take a look at something to see if it looks okay on your computer before I make it official. 🙂
Before I go, I just wanted to tell everyone that it is an honor to be working on this site. Though Faith and I are doing the behind-the-scenes work, we couldn’t do it without the feedback all of you provide us. 🙂 It’s a cooperative effort. We want this to be the best site possible for a company and its games that we all love so much and remember so fondly. Now, just so everyone nows, Faith and I are not being paid to work on this site. It is entirely worked on in our own freetime. While we can’t dedicate 24/7 to this site, the time we spend on it is time spent out of care and love for Sierra, and we want to see it succeed. That’s why I hope everyone continues to contribute like they have been by writing those messages, providing material, making suggestions, and even criticizing a part of the site when necessary. It all helps, believe me. 🙂 This site belongs to everybody who has ever adventured through a King’s Quest game, cleaned up a Space Quest game, or thrown a million rocks in a Quest For Glory game, or for anyone who is new to the wonderful world of Sierra games.
Lynn:
Great to hear from you. I wondered whatever happened to you. I’m happy to hear your life seems to have turned out well. I’ll mention to John that you posted .. I’m sure he’ll also be curious to hear how you’re doing. John ran big chunks of Sierra’s marketing all the way through to when it was sold in 1996. He then worked on a dot-com making software for gas pumps. The company was acquired, and he is still with it working for a giant gas pump manufacturer. He has now been married 20+ years (gads — it’s scary to think it has been that long!) and has two little girls.
Roberta and I have been retired for nearly a decade, and are enjoying life as deadbeats (I’m typing this from poolside in St Tropez).
Enjoy Hawaii!
-Ken W
There have been numerous complaints about the font size being too on this site. These have usually been dismissed with the questionable notion that the vast majority of people still use 800×640 resolution. Rather than using a size that is a compromise, everyone else running higher resolutions needs to increase the font size in the browser. I don’t mean to sound like I am trolling, but there has been an almost blatant disregard for anyone using anything but IE on Windows at 800×600. It has been frustrating having a site that otherwise is one that I would like to frequent being a pain to deal with.
Any good website design need to consider other OSs, other browsers and various resolutions. The sites that offer screenshots of what a web page looks like with these variables has already been mentioned.
I am sure you can read it fine. But your question was if other persons had trouble with reading the text. And as you can see at the picture that I linked to the font is just way too small. (I tried other resolutions) I don’t think that Vista has anything to do with this, nor the use of Internet Explorer. I loaded your page in Windows XP with more or less the same result, and it made no difference using Firefox and Netscape. And when I watch your header.bmp (with the text) in a picture viewer (so without using a browser), the text is still too small.
(I meant of course that the “visible” picture doesn’t look centered. Good thing you are going to change that too.)I’m at 1280×800 and can read it fine. I have really good eyesight when it comes to computer fonts (I can read printed out size 0.5 fonts), though, so I should probably go ahead and increase the size of the font. Also, the image actually IS centered. It’s just hard to tell. It’s hard to explain, but let me just say that with the way the system is setup, most of the image is hidden. Believe me; I know EXACTLY what you mean about it. I’m working on improving that tidbit; it bothers me, too. I’m also guessing that the fact you are using Windows Vista and Internet Explorer together are greatly influencing the look. The old system was developed before Vista came about, so it doesn’t take current standards into account. I’m willing to bet that things will look better and more normal once the site moves to the new system. It handles things very differently. Things look much better on it. You’ll see. 🙂 It may take awhile, but it will happen. Most of the current issues will very likely no longer matter and will be a moot point.
Anyway, sorry for rambling on. I hope I made some sense. 🙂 If I didn’t, I apologize.
I can’t read it very well, using a pretty common resolution (1024x 768).
This is what it looks like on my screen (click on the shot to see the real size)http://img110.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sierrafrontnu0.jpgPerhaps you should experiment a bit using the websites that show how your html pages look in various (browser) resolutions.
Like before the picture (with links) isn’t centered, which always upsets me a bit when I visit the site 😉I second that! I would say it’s one of the top games from Sierra… different type of genre, but very forward thinking, even by today’s standards.
Questions….
1) Mike Brochu–By naming him COO and President were you grooming him to be your eventual successor as CEO? Any idea why he left Sierra in ’97?
2) Whatever happend to Bill Davis? He didn’t seem to last very long….
3) I’ve heard that Roberta was working on a game called Scary Tales, parts of which eventually made their way into Phantas, but that Scary Tales was a separate game. Can you tell us anything about that?I’ve read the posts of the last week or so and took some time to reflect on them. The world of gaming continues to evolve. I read an article in EGM that discussed the number of games for 2008 is the same as the last few years, but the number of big budget games is down. Some of these games now have movie-sized budgets, and if they flop there’s no recuperating losses from the DVD release. I’ve been watching a lot of G4 lately. Nintendo caught a lot of flack on the network for what was considered a weak showing at E3. However, the G4 audience consists of the relatively hardcore gamer. Instead, Nintendo chose to cater to the casual gamer. The casual gamer, family-based gaming, is a cashcow right now. And Nintendo is making a good financial decision.
I picked up a Nintendo Wii last month and have had more fun with the games for it than I’ve had in 10+ years. For me, the new interactivity of the Wii is as cool and exciting as the interactivity of King’s Quest in the 80s. The first person shooters and roleplaying games of the past decade have not elicited this reaction for me, although I did try many times to get into them. I guess this brings me back to the idea that games continue to evolve, and I like the way they are going right now. Back to the basic FUNdementals. Is the gaming community ready for a King’s Quest revival if Activision sells the franchise and somebody chooses to run with it? I really don’t know. But the gaming industry is more family oriented now than it ever has been. And KQ particulary has always been a very family oriented series (the old KQ5 cover comes to mind when I write this). So, the waters may be right! And if nothing happens at least we will have fan games like The Silver Lining without Vivendi pitching a fit about the development.
Take care folks,
DanielSounds like good basic business fundamentals… build products/services people want and can be monetized…. something we forget in this heyday world of Internet “Time to market”.
That makes perfect sense too. I think only a smaller company could have that sort of mindset though. I think most people want to see Sierra turned back into a smaller company and see the classic franchises get revived, but I don’t know how realistic that would be. I think there’s definitely a market for that sort of thing though. Personally, I’d like to see all of the old classic Sierra games made freeware and then have new sequels to the major franchises and maybe some high quality remakes, like King’s Quest VI using 3D technology but still keeping the same art style and gameplay. I think there’s a huge amount of potential there for all of the Quest games.
1) How did you and Roberta meet, and was it ”love at first byte”?
*** We’ve now been married almost 35 years! We met in high school on a double date. She was out with a friend of mine … and, later, after he and her had split up, I called to convince her to go out. I think I asked her to marry me on the second date, but we had to wait until I turned 18.
2) How did you come to found WorldStream Communications?
*** I sold Sierra prior to all the craziness of the Internet. We had real revenues and real profit. During the height of the internet craze companies with neither revenue or profit were making billions of dollars. I always wanted to do something with radio and television, and the idea of broadcasting on the internet interested me, so I raised venture capital ($27 million!) and got started. We did find it easy to attract an audience, but couldn’t sell enough ads to make money. I repositioned the company to target broadcasting for corporations, and also couldn’t make money, so we shut it down.
*** The whole WorldStream experience was very humbling. For me it was culture shock. My biggest problem was that it was a weird time in history to try to manage employees. It was a gold rush mentality. I was used to managing people to goals, and trying to pull the best work from people. During the height of the internet craze employees were focused on “getting rich” not on “getting profit”. I didn’t know how to manage in that environment.
3) Do you ever see yourself working at or founding another small non-entertainment company such as Worldstream again?
*** I’m kind of doing that now. Talkspot is doing VERY well, and seems to be exploding. We’re now doing the website for 30,000 small businesses.
4) Are there any plans to make Talkspot more than just a hobby?
*** Not really. I would like to see it break even, but haven’t thought beyond that. My guess is that I’ll get it to break even in the next year, and then keep it there until I lose interest 10 years from now, and sell it to a company like Google, Microsoft or Yahoo.
5) Have you ever considered writing a book on how to start off in business? Something like a beginners guide for a would-be CEO or entrepeneur?
*** I’ve thought about it — but, just haven’t had time. Business is actually easy. Get up earlier than everyone else, work harder, and stay up later. Give people two dollars of value for every dollar they spend, whether they are a customer, or your boss.
6) What would you say are the key ingredients for being a successful business manager?
*** Attention to detail and intolerance of medocrity. Ability to look at something and decide what is “really” important.
7) What was life for you and Roberta like before Sierra; where did you see your career going and what were you and her working as?
*** I was the classic “rags to riches” story. Both Roberta and I were aggressive from the beginning, and both of us decided early on we were going to do whatever it took to succeed. I worked three and four jobs simultaneously for most of my career, and when I wasn’t working I was reading business books.
8) Have you heard back from Activision’s CEO on that entertainment project you spoke of yet?
*** Yes. He invited me to Los Angeles to talk about doing something together. I wrote back to ask how serious he was, and he hasn’t responded.
One extra comment on this…..
Rather than focus on mega hits, I tried to focus on “niches”. My theory was that different people were “into” different things, and that money could be made by providing products with fairly small audiences. The trick was in sizing the potential market, and conforming spending to the revenue opportunity.
To put that in english: I believe the market consisted of different categories; for instance, flight simulators, action games, card games, FRPs, strategy games, adventure games, etc. It also broke into categories by subject: fantasy, comedy, thriller, reality, horror, etc. One of the things I used to always say was the software store of the future would have more categories than the book shelves at Barnes and Noble. My goal was to imagine that future book store, size the revenue opportunity from each shelf, and then in the top 100 categories find someone who was highly passionate about the category, and build the product (with a budget that made sense).
A typical Ken approach to things: When Vincent Bugliosi was writing non-fiction legal books (such as his book on Charles Manson), I saw that he was moving a lot of books. There were people who were interested in the true-crime category. So, I hunted him down and talked him into doing a game. The game never got made, but it shows the kind of product development approach I liked to take. Identify things in the non-computer business which people obviously care about, and then find a way to adapt it to computers.
In short, Sierra’s product strategy was based on studying consumers to see what they wanted to do, thinking about if there was something fun that could be done on a computer, and then sizing the opportunity, figuning out an R&D budget that made sense, and writing software.
-Ken W
This isn’t specifically on this subject (or at least the direction this subject is going) but I thought I might throw this out there. Â I think the computer game industry is due for a radical readjustment, much like what has happened to the recording industry. Â The idea of “Sierra” was largely formed in a different time when the industry was radically different than it is today. Â In today’s gaming world the only games that get a “green light” are those that fit a very narrow decision gating process: the genre has to be profitable enough to justify the “R&D” costs (in gaming, the engine development and programming) and with the current demand for cutting edge everything that usually hits a number in the multi-millions. Â Companies, specifically public corporations, can be very constraining as they are usually led by businessmen who may or may not have any direct experience with the product being developed. Â Some of you may remember that the head of Cendant was on the Sierra Board of Directors prior to the 96 merger? Â The CEO of a travel company serving as a board member on a computer game company? Â He didn’t know games but he did know business and Ken Williams was around to guide the game development. Â Guys like that rely on basic business skills, taught in MBA programs all over the country and the more profitable a company is the more of a demand from the owners (stockholders) that the company is led by someone who can maximize the return on their investment. Â The point of all of this? Â The gaming industry has fallen into the same self destructive loop that the motion picture and recording industries have fallen into – flash over substance, safe over risky, lots and lots of PR and marketing and a reduction in any “unneccesary” costs to maximize stockholder returns. Â This approach works wonders in a lot of industries (mine included) but I’ve often wondered what bonehead thought it was a good approach to any creative endeavor.
At this point I’ve started to see the games on the shelf at Best Buy as the digital equivalent of the latest Britney Spears or Madonna album – the formula has been time tested and honed to maximum revenue generation potential, the PR has been insane and countless hours have been poured into focus group testing and trend analysis to make sure that the 30 million used in development won’t go into the next Diakatana or Battlecruiser 3000AD. Â Cross platforming is required as the big budgets require the maximum revenue from every platform to hit the “magic” numbers so the game is crippled to the slowest or least limiting system on the market. Â In short, mainstream games are the product of a Least Common Demoninator development process that ends up with the single least risky but highest selling package of manufactured “same” that we’ve all seen a hundred times before.
At this point I’d bet almost any of you over the age of 25 or so have a collection of CDs that you can’t find at Best Buy and won’t find on Top 40 radio. Â Personally mine is alternative country music from Texas. Â A friend of mine listens to post-modern emo rock mixed with punk. Â There are hundreds of musical genres that have sprung up over the last ten years since digital distribution and direct to customer selling became a reality in the wake of the Internet – almost none of which can be found in any traditional distribution form. Â I think music was the first art form to go this route, mostly because the relative difficulty of getting a CD recorded and “available” is pretty low compared to the other creative endeavors. Â Indy movies are all the rage these days and their distribution is slowly becoming more and more prevalent as the Internet and a million cable channels make it possible. Â I think at some point in the future games (and specifically computer games) will go this route. Â The idea of “making it” by getting on a major publishing label will fade away – just as it has in the recording industry. Â The gatekeepers on gaming will slowly find themselves less and less inflential as more people turn away from the brick and mortar approach and toward getting more variety at a lower fixed cost from alternative distributions.
All of this is my way of saying that seeing the “Sierra” name fade away really isn’t bothering me too much.  Just like it didn’t mean anything when Ken Williams was driving his zip locked baggies around California in the early 80s the name of whatever computer game company is going to break the next real barrier in gaming means nothing now.  Rather than hope that something pretty unlikely will happen (like Sierra getting picked up by a benovelent publisher in an industry full of Earnings Per Share slaves) I’ve started looking elsewhere for my gaming.  The more people that leave the plastic boxes sitting on the shelves in Best Buy and start tossing their cash toward hard working, innovative, non-established game developers the sooner we may all see something close to what Sierra used to be – and I think that’s a good thing.
I’ll shut up now.
In 1996, Ken wasn’t just making adventure games; actually adventure games represented 5% of sales by the time Ken left (or so he said a few years back). Sierra was branching out–See games like Half Life, Hunter Hunted, Hellfire, Cesar , Mask of Eternity, Nascar, etc. By 1996, Sierra (which at the time was the market share leader of PC gaming) was MUCH more than just an adventure game company. Only two out of twelve studios by late 1997 were developing adventure titles (Bellevue and Oakhurst). You had products like Civil War Generals, Print Artist, Hallmark Cards, the Sierra Educational Game Series, Nascar Racing, Half Life, Cybergladiators, Cesar II, Driver’s Ed, CookMaster, Submarine, etc. Adventure games were in the minority of titles being produced by Sierra by the time Ken left. Now, ten years later, you have a lot of lucrative licenses plus all of those old Action, Action/Adventure, and RPG titles.
Sierra was branching out into action, MMORPGs, RPGs, simulations, sports, racing and home productivity. I remember Ken saying that if he came back the focus would be on MMMORPGs, which are HUGE nowadays.
While Home Productivity isn’t lucrative today, all of those other catagories are, and Sierra has at least a hundred different franchises to choose from, many of them not adventures. Could adventures be part of a newly Ken Williams run Sierra, if he chose to bring it back? Sure. But the main focus would be the catagories. There’s still a place for Sierra; there just needs to be someone who understands what Sierra is supposed to be and what Sierra’s business model should be. Vivendi, a water company, didn’t understand that.
People aren’t playing PC games? Tell that to the 9 million+ players of World of Warcraft.
You do understand I was not trying to say it was WORTHLESS, don’t you? I’m in the same boat as you (even though I’m a new fan, not a long-time one such as yourself) and would love to own a bit of Sierra. But recently I emailed Al Lowe, and he shone some light on it’s (Sierra’s) situation that us fans are trying to ignore. Sierra will never be what it was– it will never be mainstream again if the markets remain the way they are. The majority of the gamers today have no desire to use (note that I did not say ‘waste’) hours and hours playing an adventure game. Shooting, sports and other types of games are more exciting, quicker, and not to mention more social (something most old Sierra adventure games cannot be, sadly)– and, from what I’ve seen recently, those types of games (shooting, sports etc.) are NOT Sierra’s area. And, in case you haven’t noticed, the computer gaming industry is on the way out– who want’s to get fat in front of their PC when they can go use the Wii? I believe Al is right. Though I do support Ken rebuying Sierra 100% because my personal interests, what would he do with it? What he was doing with it back ’96: making best-selling adventure games? In the markets I’ve been talking about, fat chance. And (Ken if you’re reading this, don’t take any offense) don’t forget Ken hasn’t really been in the computer/gaming industry for over a decade. Things have changed dramaticly in the past 10 years– faster than ever– and Ken didn’t catch that train. Though the things Sierra could create under his direction would no doubt entertain and delight ME greatly, THE REST OF THE WORLD requires (isn’t pathetic?) that it all be state-of-the-art– somthing I’m not sure Ken would be capable of. I’d like to imagine otherwise (Ken, you’re great in our eyes), believe me. I’m sorry Ken– I’m sorry everyone, but that’s how it is. Until someone can find a way to get the public interested in adventure gaming again, what is Sierra really worth to anyone other than us? Really?
P.S. Ken, I hope this doesn’t scare you away from the chance… I’m so sorry…
1) How did you and Roberta meet, and was it ”love at first byte”?
2) How did you come to found WorldStream Communications?
3) Do you ever see yourself working at or founding another small non-entertainment company such as Worldstream again?
4) Are there any plans to make Talkspot more than just a hobby?
5) Have you ever considered writing a book on how to start off in business? Something like a beginners guide for a would-be CEO or entrepeneur?
6) What would you say are the key ingredients for being a successful business manager?
7) What was life for you and Roberta like before Sierra; where did you see your career going and what were you and her working as?
8) Have you heard back from Activision’s CEO on that entertainment project you spoke of yet?
