[HN Gopher] Sierra was captured, then killed, by an accounting f...
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Sierra was captured, then killed, by an accounting fraud
Author : danso
Score : 195 points
Date : 2020-10-30 12:48 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| TT3351 wrote:
| "Had they done so, they'd have found only confirmation that CUC
| was a healthy, hungry start-up well-liked by Wall Street. While
| CUC wouldn't let Sierra see its internal financial data, it did
| have assurances from the Big Four accounting firm Ernst & Young
| that the books were not just in order but reflected a company so
| fabulously wealthy that it could pay for Sierra not with cash,
| but pieces of itself." 2 weeks ago on WSJ & HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24802741 "Firms That
| Imploded Have Something in Common: Ernst and Young Audited Them"
| LawnGnome wrote:
| The /r/Games thread on this is interesting, as Ken himself is
| commenting on it:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/jkbg4g/how_sierra_wa...
| gryson wrote:
| Ken Williams' initial comment there:
|
| "It does seem obvious that I was fooled by Walter Forbes, but
| so were most people. He was the Jeff Bezos of his time. He had
| a big-four accounting firm who signed off on their financials
| every 90 days. Henry Silverman (Avis, Howard Johnson's, and
| many other companies) believed in him, as did everyone. He had
| been on Sierra's board for five years. I thought I knew him
| well. I also thought we had structured the deal such that the
| software business couldn't be screwed up. And, I had so much
| faith that Sierra's market dominance was so strong that no one
| could ever screw it up. As you might imagine, I've looked back
| on the crash many times, and still believe I made the right
| move based on what I knew at the time. The problem was that I
| was dealing with snakes and didn't know it. MANY people lost
| their jobs and had their net worth wiped out. It was indeed a
| sad event, but I wasn't the only person fooled by CUC. Tens of
| thousands of people directly or indirectly were hurt by the
| financial scandal."
|
| There are others, too, that are worth reading for the
| interested.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I'm amazed people still trust audits.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I think he's right. Consider this: if you were the person who
| managed to sniff out that Forbes was bad news, you would be
| someone sniffing out $3B in fraud. That kind of makes you a
| wizard.
|
| The reason these people are so profound is specifically
| because they can fool a lot of people in a con over many many
| years.
| projektfu wrote:
| A very interesting article, indeed, but wow was it edited by a
| human? Parts of it seemed located in the wrong section, and there
| were lots of howlers like a photo caption "Robert and Ken
| Williams".
| tartoran wrote:
| I wasn't much of a gamer but oh boy, did I love all the quest
| games, they totally appealed to my tastes. I loved the 2D-ness of
| the games, the attention to details, the scripts, the colors, the
| music. You could tell there was a talented team behind those
| games. Games have now gotten so complex graphics-wise but it
| seems to me that they lost something it's very hard to pinpoint,
| maybe the limitations of that age was what made the games more
| creative? Or maybe it's pure subjectivity on my part.
| jasonv wrote:
| I'm not a gamer, either, but I might say that Space Quest was
| my one dip into games, and I played that a lot. That was a long
| time ago.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| These games still exist today, but come from small passion
| studies (much like early-mid Sierra)...and today, the number of
| games published is much, much greater than it ever was then.
| That is to say, generally only indie- or genre- enthusiasts
| know where to find the "good stuff" for any given category
| good, because the small studios don't have the marketing
| dollars to compete with the larger players or to cut through
| from "sleeper genre hit" to "genre hit," let alone from "genre
| hit" to "mainstream hit."
|
| The genre games that _do_ make it to mainstream are typically
| backed by distasteful in-app purchase schemes.
|
| Many people have heard about "Dwarf Fortress" at this point
| since it's been around so long, but mostly only the
| "traditional roguelike" fanbase is even aware of games like
| "Cogmind" (an ascii game with incredible attention to detail
| that extends beyond being just a great game to things like
| thoughtfully implemented accessibility features and lovely
| crafted ascii graphics using its own open sourced ascii engine,
| RexPaint). Within that enthusiast crowd, though, it's one of
| those obvious 'oh yeah I know that game' games.
|
| (Okay so my reply started out in good faith but then I couldn't
| help but use it as an excuse to gush about Cogmind[0] and the
| work of its author.)
|
| But anyway, as a genre- enthusiast I don't really know what the
| best forums are for finding other hits in other genres. But
| occasionally I watch YouTube videos reviewing games similar
| execution to, say, King's Quest 6, and I really do think
| there's a rich library of high quality new games coming out in
| that genre.
|
| Steam's recommendation engine has gotten better at helping you
| find what you're looking for, fwiw, but you still have to go
| looking.
|
| A bookstore is probably a good analogy for the experience
| today. If you only looked at the books in the front of a
| bookstore, or only read the "popular" books, you might come to
| the conclusion that most books being written are crap. It helps
| to go into a bookstore armed with knowledge of what genres you
| like and which authors are respected for quality before you
| even get to the browsing stage.
|
| [0] - https://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/
| citizenkeen wrote:
| This is mainly a mirrored effect from movies. AAA games /
| blockbusters are so much safer than they used to be, but
| there is so much more that is so much better (by any metric)
| than there used to be, as well. You just have to dig beyond
| sales.
| sidlls wrote:
| Games are richer in terms of both content ("things to do") and
| visual imagery, but the stories and gameplay are much more
| uniform now than 20 years ago (which is long after my childhood
| video game playing period ended). There is some subjectivity
| here of course, but I occasionally replay games from when I was
| in college or even elementary school (hello Apple II, Atari and
| Nintendo). The graphics and limitations are clear, but within
| those constraints it's hard to say games have improved that
| much.
|
| For all the advances in the tech we've had I don't believe
| we've seen equivalent gains in actual gaming experience.
| polytely wrote:
| See IggleSniggle's comment above
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24944816
|
| I would recommend Outer Wilds (2019) for a game that displays
| a real advance in gameplay mechanics. There is alot of
| exciting stuff happening in the indie game scene.
| sidlls wrote:
| Game mechanics is definitely one area that seems to have
| been lacking.
|
| Aside from that, there's a certain homogeneity to games
| these days. I think that's attributable to the fact that
| there are more of them and that to reach a broader audience
| there has to be some generalization that occurs.
| Retric wrote:
| Going 3D is a huge limitation on what kind of mechanics
| you can do. Decent was reasonably popular, but showed how
| much difficulty many people have given full freedom in 3D
| space. Sonic style fast scrolling or precise platforming
| games really don't translate well.
|
| VR is even worse in that respect as people get seriously
| disoriented much more easily.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Sierra On-Line's initials, SOL, proved prophetic.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I worked for a game studio that was acquired by Sierra in late
| 1995. Being acquired by Ken and Roberta was surreal; they were
| two of my idols from childhood gaming and they were every bit as
| great to work for (via multiple layers of bosses) as you'd hope.
| They were gamers; they cared about people having fun playing
| games. They were also hard-nosed about their development teams
| creating product that would achieve that goal. I remember having
| to answer to Ken in person in a meeting about what my plan was to
| get my title shipped. He was firm and fair, but he didn't like my
| hand-waving at the schedule and task-breakdown. (He'd come to
| visit our studio in general, not to ream me out about shipping
| late, but he was spot on that I'd not been diligent enough in my
| prep and planning. We didn't call it that, but my burndown chart
| was not tilted downward.)
|
| Every step along the rest of the journey with Sierra was a
| nightmare for employees. CUC, Cendant, Vivendi, and maybe there
| was another link in the chain, but I got fed up and quit in
| spring of 1997. We had incredibly talented and passionate artists
| (2D and 3D) and along the way a lot of that got shipped out of
| country to artists who seem to have never seen an American auto
| race. Several employees sued over shenanigans with our stock
| options treatment; I didn't join in (though perhaps I should have
| as I think we were getting screwed). IMO, the acquirers just
| sucked all the fun out of the room and a lot of talented devs and
| producers left. If you're not having fun working in computer
| gaming, you might as well go not have fun someplace that pays
| well.
|
| Ken and Roberta are two of the good ones in my book.
|
| 0 - Papyrus Design [IndyCar and NASCAR Racing]
| CMay wrote:
| Never had more than a passing interest in IndyCar or NASCAR
| races, but I remember enjoying both of those on a 486 DX with
| the turbo button on the case when I was a kid. Links: The
| Challenge of Golf was another one.
|
| Daytona USA was released around the same time... and had a
| karaoke mode so you could sing along to the soundtrack while
| racing. That was Papyrus' true downfall, they never identified
| karaoke as a critical feature in any of their games. :)
| sokoloff wrote:
| Ironically, Daytona _was actually one of our downfalls_ or at
| least a thorn in our side. Sega had the license to the
| Daytona name and usage for electronic games and that's one of
| the most well-known tracks and events. We had every other Cup
| and Indy circuit, but couldn't get Daytona.
|
| (For our in-house racing series, we had a "Florida" circuit
| that was the first and middle race in the schedule. For some
| reason, it was surprisingly close to Daytona International
| Speedway in design.)
|
| We'd have probably sold more boxes and surely would have
| gotten more online subs if we'd been able to offer Daytona.
| (Some of the Papyrus crew went on to form iRacing and they've
| got a great product over there; still no karaoke though...)
| CMay wrote:
| I guess that doesn't surprise me too much for a sim, though
| the future of racing games may be the other way around.
| Some of the most loved tracks in racing games are fantasy
| ones where you have full control to iterate on the
| experience and scenery.
|
| Would be nice to see next-gen racers returning to that in a
| big way and eventually have people wanting to license the
| tracks for real-world construction after they've been
| battle tested by millions of virtual drivers.
| danso wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! I played the Quest games as a kid and only
| heard in passing about Ken and Roberta and early Sierra (I was
| young enough to not know how unusual it was for a software
| company to be started and run by a married couple). In my
| completely presumptive head canon, Sierra petered out because
| LucasArts games were so much better, and Ken & Roberta sold out
| and moved into early retirement. I hadn't known Roberta was
| fighting to the very end for her vision on King's Quest VIII.
|
| (Speaking of LucasArts: peeking at KQ8's Wikipedia entry, I see
| Roberta made the astonishing claim that KQ8 sold twice as well
| as Grim Fandango: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Quest:
| _Mask_of_Eterni...)
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Yes, there were at least two genres where LucasArts seemed to
| make games that were strictly better than Sierra's:
| adventures and (arcade-ish) flight simulators. Not only
| better, but the best. For flying games, Origin was a
| contender, but despite all the advanced graphics and FMV,
| flying and shooting in Wing Commander was not as fun as in
| X-Wing and TIE Fighter.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I played only Wing Commander: Prophecy (one of the last
| ones) and I found it way better than the older star wars
| games, probably just a normal passage of time thing
| honestly.
|
| If you love those kinds of games and are missing them,
| check out Freespace, which you can get cheap on GOG, and
| the Knossos launcher, which allows you to download mods
| like the open source re-implementation of the game engine
| which vastly improves things, and some fan made
| campaigns/overhauls including a great Wing Commander style
| one.
|
| Alternatively, EA (the owners of Origin's intellectual
| property) recently released StarWars Squadrons, which has a
| short campaign that certainly scratches that old itch.
| However I don't know how I feel about the multiplayer.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Still remember those Hornet missiles from FreeSpace. So
| satisfying!
|
| (Veteran pilot of Elite, TIE Fighter, X-Wing and Wing
| Commander here.)
| ahartmetz wrote:
| This is not the first time I hear good things about
| Freespace. I had the first one, and I didn't think it was
| as good as X-Wing or TIE Fighter. Guess I should try the
| open source version of Freespace 2...
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Hmm, I thought Red Baron by Dynamics@Sierra was quite a
| critical and popular success as far as "arcade-ish flight
| sims" go...
| tclancy wrote:
| Man, I forgot I owned that and both of the Aces Over
| games. I miss things that came with spiral-bound manuals.
|
| No idea why though.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| That actually was briefly true as I recall. It was an early
| sign of the problems of "preorder culture" in games (a lesson
| we're still relearning/refighting time-and-again today): KQ8
| was a preorder darling with a ton of hype and anticipation.
| Grim Fandango was a sleeper that "no one" thought to preorder
| and the preorder shops (for their reasons) weren't pushing.
| Grim Fandango was considered a "flop" for a bunch of years,
| though obviously it's done far better in the long tail of
| post-preorder sales than KQ8.
| 737maxtw wrote:
| I think with Sierra you are right but it was a slower build
| up imo.
|
| I remember KQ6 being a big bit of pomp and circumstance
| with its production values etc, more promotion than you
| would see for a computer game at the time.
|
| And then KQ7 happened. A victim of a bit of overhypeing and
| a LOT of WinG pain. Could never get it running on a pc our
| family owned, even proper pentiums.
| bsenftner wrote:
| I worked for several game publishers as a developer, and would
| be called in to firefight games at other developers in danger
| of not shipping or shipping past a critical deadline. The
| Sierra productions were typically nightmares, at least the ones
| that needed publisher bailouts. I never interacted with Ren or
| Roberta beyond introduction, as firefighting a failing
| production tends to be upper management scarce.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > NASCAR Racing
|
| Oh man I spent so many hours on that. Thanks for the good
| memories!
| rashkov wrote:
| Oh wow, I totally forgot about that game. I was not very good
| at it, but eventually I figured out that I could drive the
| car in reverse and because there was no hitbox on the bumper,
| the racetrack's wall just kind of guided me along while I
| accelerated to maximum speed. Fun memory
| myself248 wrote:
| Haha, yes, backwards was the best way to play Nascar!
|
| I remember being absolutely blown away that the game kept
| track of tire rubber on the track, and you could see your
| own spinouts and stuff on the next lap.
| stephankoelle wrote:
| By accident I bought: Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of
| Robin Hood [
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquests_of_the_Longbow:_The_... ]
|
| Didn't know what "an adventure game" is, at that time. So many
| good memories.
|
| What a great game.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| My perception has always been that that game was under-
| appreciated. Nice to run into a fellow appreciator. I think
| it's also the only DRM[0] I've ever encountered that was _a
| genuine pleasure to use_ (not that it would work today).
|
| [0] - Conquests of the Longbow required you to use the book
| that came with it to look up lore like coats of arms, to
| identify plants by their leaves, find out about superstitions
| around gemstones, etc in order to solve the puzzles in the
| game. At the time, people generally pirated by passing around
| floppy disks, none of the kids pirating had access to xerox
| machines, and the information in the manual was obscure, so you
| really kinda needed to _have_ the manual. But if you _did_ have
| it, it almost felt like a natural part of the game, and the
| information was fun to learn. Of course, now you can easily
| find it online:
| http://www.sierrahelp.com/Documents/Manuals/Conquests_of_the...
| stephankoelle wrote:
| Loved that part too, was really confusing at first, because I
| was not aware that the manual might have a use at all. I
| think the files are on the game creators webpage, there was
| even a photo of her at the back of the box.
| jessaustin wrote:
| I definitely encountered other games for which you had to
| look up stuff in the manual, and maybe it wasn't done as well
| because I always hated it.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Yup, CotL was uniquely well done.
| nitrogen wrote:
| I think in King's Quest it was looking up some specific
| code word in a random grid or something, before it would
| let you launch a boat?
| npongratz wrote:
| King's Quest 5's copy protection (floppy version only)
| was enforced with a requirement to use a magic wand to
| cast a "spell" at various points in the game, where the
| "spell" is a series of letters that the player matches to
| symbols in the printed manual. Launching the boat was one
| of the points in the game where this was required.
|
| https://kingsquest.fandom.com/wiki/Crispin%27s_wand#Behin
| d_t...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The BBC game Exile had a "novella" that came with it - the
| story of how things came to be before the player arrives. The
| copy protection had you look up a page number, line number,
| word number to proceed. Fun stuff. (I just found the text!
| http://inventivity.co.uk/exileami/novella.htm) (And the game!
| http://bbcmicro.co.uk//jsbeeb/play.php?autoboot&disc=http://.
| ..)
|
| In fact, how they squeezed what they did out of the BBC B is
| amazing.
| raptor99 wrote:
| If you'd like some further/alternate reading on parts of this
| story, a guy has recently released part 1 of his story of Richard
| Garriott, Origin, and his Ultima series. The name of the book is
| Through the Moongate.
| Joeri wrote:
| Here's something I don't understand: Sierra was a money-printing
| machine, earning easy profits and on a natural growth path. With
| a trajectory like that, why go public, why sell the business at
| all? There was nothing to gain really, whatever growth they would
| have gotten from going public and from the CUC deal (even if it
| had been on the up and up) they would have seen naturally. Gaming
| is not a winner takes all market, they had no need to grow more
| quickly.
| projektfu wrote:
| TL;DR Ken Williams had had a bad experience early on where the
| company was nearly bankrupt from a bad move, and he thought
| selling to a conglomerate would bulletproof the company, and
| was something of a duty to his shareholders. If the article is
| to be believed, they did so without being permitted to do due
| diligence on their buyer.
| drewwwwww wrote:
| this subject is covered at length in the article.
| jessaustin wrote:
| E&Y strike again! Any record that includes both CUC and WeWork
| betrays a deep rot. The Big 5 became the Big 4, not too long
| after the events of TFA. Why shouldn't E&Y be killed by the
| courts?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24802741
| georgiecasey wrote:
| Usually after Googling with the letters and some context I can
| figure out most acronyms but I've failed on this one. What's
| TFA?
| [deleted]
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| The F----ing Article. Slashdot-speak for the article being
| discussed here.
| sparky_z wrote:
| "The fucking article". As in, "RTFA".
| nitrogen wrote:
| Also sometimes "The Fine Article".
| jessaustin wrote:
| HN search is often helpful:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.
| ..
| SamBam wrote:
| As someone who adored the old Sierra games as a kid (the _Quest
| ones, mostly), as well as LucasArts ones (Monkey Island, Day of
| the Tentacle, Indiana Jones), can anyone recommend great modern
| games in the same vein? And maybe iOS ones? I'd love games of
| those style and quality to be my 7-year-old's daughter's first
| experience with video games.
| blevs wrote:
| The 2015 King's Quest is quite enjoyable. It's a great deal
| less obtuse than the adventure games of old, which is probably
| a good thing.
| BorisTheBrave wrote:
| I liked the Deponia series, which has a similar look and comedy
| tone to Monkey Island 3.
|
| However, I wouldn't recommend it for a 7yo. The puzzles are a
| bit tough, and the protagonist is a complete asshole (for comic
| effect, of course).
| [deleted]
| StillBored wrote:
| Check out Thimbleweed Park. I haven't finished it yet, but I
| heard about it on HN. Its a great flashback, and i've enjoyed
| it so far, I'm taking it it small slow pieces to fully
| appreciate it which is why I haven't finished it yet.
| joshschreuder wrote:
| +1 for Thimbleweed Park, though I probably wouldn't recommend
| it for a 7 year old.
|
| But Tim Schaeffer's studio Double Fine did Broken Age which I
| think would be great for a younger audience. Otherwise a lot
| of those games mentioned have been remastered in recent
| times, like Grim Fandango adding a non-tank control scheme or
| Full Throttle.
| StillBored wrote:
| Yes, "The Hidden World" by Fire Maple Games are probably
| more appropriate for a younger audience, my kids played
| that game around that age.
| ballenf wrote:
| There's an Easter egg for anyone who's intro to Javascript
| was The Good Parts in the game. The game was a lot of fun. I
| played the mobile version on an iPad.
| MetallicCloud wrote:
| Disco Elysium has it's roots in the old school point and click
| adventures, but has a more dynamic storyline. It would easily
| be the best point and click game I've ever played.
| lkramer wrote:
| The Blackwell games hit the right nerve for me:
| https://www.gog.com/game/blackwell_bundle
| indigochill wrote:
| I loved "Pillars of the Earth" by Daedalic. Also Memoria, same
| company.
|
| Wadjet Eye Games does more retro adventure stuff. Unavowed sits
| comfortably alongside old adventure game classics for me in
| terms of presentation and story. I've heard good things about
| their other games as well but haven't played them yet.
|
| I wouldn't recommend Unavowed for a 7-year-old, though, as it
| can get quite dark.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| why not go with the classics? Tim Schaeffer somehow got the
| rights to his classics back from Lucasarts/Disney and has
| published remakes of Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango and
| even Full Throttle, and he has a new one that is very age-
| appropriate for your daughter called Broken Age. All the Monkey
| Island games are available in one for or another, and Ron
| Gilbert has a new-ish one called Thimbleweed Park.
|
| There's also an "episodic adaptation" of King's Quest from 2015
| that was surprisingly well-received.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Quest_(2015_video_gam...
| mseepgood wrote:
| Why was Sierra called "On-Line" if none of their games were
| online games?
| jccooper wrote:
| It started as a business software play called "On-line
| Systems". It seems doubtful that Ken Williams was considering
| actual networked software on Apple II at the time (though the
| machine could do it) but probably it sounded advanced and cool.
| In 1979 "on-line" would have been recognizably computery, but
| not mean much else to most people, who would never have seen a
| computer network.
|
| Says Jimmy Maher, who should know, On-Line Systems was "a name
| fairly typical of the vaguely futuristic, vaguely compound, but
| essentially meaningless names (Microsoft, anyone?) that were so
| common in the era." https://www.filfre.net/2011/10/ken-and-
| roberta/
| jessaustin wrote:
| "Online" used to mean "not batch-processed". Most of their
| games reacted immediately to player input, so in that sense
| they weren't batch programs.
|
| This plausible explanation might not have anything to do with
| the actual reason for the name...
| cperciva wrote:
| _" Online" used to mean "not batch-processed"._
|
| Computer scientists still refer to "online algorithms" as
| meaning "algorithms which process each input as it comes in".
| The obvious algorithm for "find the minimum element" is
| online for example, since you can stop at any point and say
| what the smallest you've seen so far is; however finding the
| _median_ takes more work (you need to maintain two heaps, vs.
| simply collecting all the data and sorting it at the end).
| Shivetya wrote:
| If you want to read up on Cendant and the fraud that was this [0]
| is a good story on the subject. This covers CUC and HFS
| (Hospitality Franchise Services) and shows how that merge
| uncovered the dirty accounting at CUC
|
| [0]https://www.econcrises.org/2016/11/29/cendant-corporation/
| yters wrote:
| I wonder how much of Sierra's demise was due to CUC vs. just the
| change in gaming landscape. Compared to the early 90's adventure
| gaming is non-existent minus nostalgic kickstarters. Sierra may
| still be alive today, but it may be on the same shelf as Nancy
| Drew mysteries.
| gryson wrote:
| By the mid- to late-1990s, Sierra's publishing output was far
| more diversified than just adventure games. They owned a large
| number of subsidiary development companies (such as Dynamix,
| Impression, and Papyrus) that were creating games in a wide
| range of genres.
|
| They also published a little-known game called Half-Life in
| 1998...
| yters wrote:
| Great point. I forgot HL was originally Sierra. It seems they
| were able to adapt to the new market, so CUC can probably be
| blamed for their demise.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| The cause and effect is really tough to straighten out.
|
| There's certainly an argument to be made that Sierra's demise
| was the final nail in adventure gaming and the genre might
| still be alive if Sierra themselves had survived (and/or if
| Roberta Williams was left with the budgets to keep making
| them). Sierra helped push the budgets of adventure games to the
| point where no one could compete with them (except maybe
| LucasArts, and LucasArts didn't seem interested in competing to
| the same costs) and then after setting that unreasonable market
| perspective of what a AAA adventure game "should" be, they
| died. Even today most of the controversy with the "nostalgic
| kickstarters" is that a Kickstarter can't approximate
| (adjusting for inflation) even a tenth of Sierra's final few
| adventure game budgets (much less a quarter to a half of
| LucasArts' last few).
| mancerayder wrote:
| I don't know, look at what sells well: massively multiplayer
| games, and FPSes. As I mentioned in a previous comment, there
| are exceptions, but as a rule it seems if you're a game
| developer you're more likely to make a reaction-based shooter
| or real time thing, versus a subjectively-paced adventure
| game with point and click puzzles like Sierra or LucasArts
| games were.
|
| It might be gaming culture changed as consoles got big and
| more people got interested.
| jnurmine wrote:
| It would be awesome to have the old Sierra games like
| King's Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest, etc. re-born as
| first-person adventures with photorealistic graphics.
| mancerayder wrote:
| Almost everything is a FPS or multiplayer... I mean all the big
| budget releases. Cyberpunk and Wasteland III are exceptions, as
| is Divinity OS and games like that. My theory is people want
| reaction-time games versus think-and-do games.
|
| Or maybe I'm old and don't like the reaction-based (and
| certainly not multiplayer) games anymore.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think it's interesting that the development team wanted to
| turn King's Quest VIII into an RPG, despite Roberta Williams'
| attempts to direct them back toward the adventure genre.
|
| As much as I look back on the adventure genre with a lot of
| fondness, it's definitely _looking back_ ; it's a pretty tiny
| part of the market these days.
| electrondood wrote:
| It's fascinating to me that a company that became such a huge
| impact in the computer gaming industry started in, and kept a dev
| office in Oakhurst.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Is it normal to be acquired using stock? From a naive
| perspective, it seems like a conflation of 1: Getting paid, and
| 2: Gambling on a stock. Was there part of the agreement that
| stated the Williams' couldn't immediately liquidate upon deal
| completion?
| kelnos wrote:
| It's not unusual. Some acquisitions are all cash, some all
| stock, and some a mix.
| krallja wrote:
| There is usually a blackout period after acquisitions to
| prevent the new hires from quitting immediately.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I still think Sierra created some of the best games that have
| ever been made. If I saw a Sierra logo on a game as a kid, I knew
| I wanted it and I knew it would be quality. Lots of interactions,
| puzzles, and outcomes especially compared to what I was playing
| on console. I still think about how I could have plotted my
| course on Codename Iceman more accurately. I miss these games, I
| miss the style, I miss the casual aspect of not being a button
| mashing or accuracy god which I am no longer.
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