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Speaker 1: I had. You know, we were talking in the last

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Speaker 1: episode about having an eighteen year old babysitter. It's funny

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Speaker 1: because I was listening to that episode and I was like,

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Speaker 1: I said that I had a crush on the babysitter

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Speaker 1: and when I and I implied when I was twelve.

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Speaker 1: But I didn't have a babysitter when I was twelve.

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Speaker 1: I think it was the mid nineties. I don't. I

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Speaker 1: don't think I had a babysitter when I was seven.

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Speaker 1: I mean I had older sisters, so it was rare

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Speaker 1: that mom needed to get a babysitter. My parents both work. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: that's not the point. The point is also had this, uh,

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Speaker 1: this friend of the family. I guess it was my

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Speaker 1: older sister's friend. And I knew a lot of them

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Speaker 1: because it was small town and there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: community theater and stuff. And she her mom invited me

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Speaker 1: over to the house to play games on their computer.

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Speaker 1: If I ever wanted to about this, yeah, and I

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Speaker 1: absolutely took her up on it. And even at the time,

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Speaker 1: I think I felt kind of weird, just like going

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Speaker 1: over and knock on the door and be like, hey,

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Speaker 1: can I play games on your computer? And I would

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Speaker 1: go up there and sit in their office myself playing

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Speaker 1: games that I didn't you know, we didn't have those games.

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Speaker 1: And I had a good time, but I was like,

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Speaker 1: where am I and I've in a weird place? Is

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Speaker 1: thisn't even my friend's house. I mean, I imagine now

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Speaker 1: that I'm an adult, and I think I must be

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Speaker 1: close to what that woman's age, you know, probably older

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Speaker 1: than she was at the time, the mom, And I'm

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Speaker 1: thinking she probably just said it. I didn't expect. Look,

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Speaker 1: a nine year old kid takes things very literally, especially

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Speaker 1: when it comes to video games. Maybe she did know,

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Speaker 1: and she was just like, I mean, I got this computer,

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Speaker 1: it was why not actually needed some damn company in

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Speaker 1: the house or just to feel like someone was there.

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Speaker 1: That was it. It's probably and this isn't very fair,

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Speaker 1: but it's probably less creepy be since it was a woman.

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Speaker 1: I feel like I'm an older man had been like, hey,

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Speaker 1: come over to play. I'm a computer, I'd be like,

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Speaker 1: why did you go over there? That's dangerous? Yeah, like

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Speaker 1: commander keen idea. Yeah, I know you have no idea,

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Speaker 1: But somebody out there listening is like, yes, there were

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Speaker 1: two games on my Grandfather's like Apple two or something,

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Speaker 1: and it was Castle Quest. Did you play Castle Quest?

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Speaker 1: It was like you were a vampire and you had

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Speaker 1: to get from the top of the castle to the

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Speaker 1: bottom or something before the sun came up and you

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Speaker 1: couldn't see. I did not play this. I never beat

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Speaker 1: it. It It was so hard. I'll say. Um, when I

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Speaker 1: was very young, this would have been like first or

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Speaker 1: second grade, and I got pulled out of class for

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Speaker 1: being a little advanced state of a ship. Oh wait,

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Speaker 1: for being amazing actually, for being a special, special boy

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Speaker 1: who was obviously going to be president one day or something,

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Speaker 1: and um, look at you now. And they set me

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Speaker 1: up with this computer game called Rockies Boots and it

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Speaker 1: was like a logic puzzle gate game, playing with electricity

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Speaker 1: and switches and stuff. And it was the crappiest graphics

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Speaker 1: you can think of, literally a little orange block moving

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Speaker 1: around the screen. And man, I love that game and

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Speaker 1: I played it recently and it really challenged me, I

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Speaker 1: think more now than elastic mind back when I was

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Speaker 1: a kid, back when you could have been president, nop

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Speaker 1: did something to those brain cells many years. Got a

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Speaker 1: dork though that, Like I loved educational games like ye,

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Speaker 1: MAVs teaches typing, which is not even a game, but

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Speaker 1: it was kind of a challenge. I guess they were

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Speaker 1: trying to make you like, type as many words as

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Speaker 1: you could. I had to follow along or something. I

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Speaker 1: don't even ruber now, but I used to really like

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Speaker 1: that game, not really a game, homework your math Blaster

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Speaker 1: one that I played all the time. I loved that

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Speaker 1: ship and it looked cute, like the graphics of it

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Speaker 1: really cute. How about Treasure Mountain Challenge of the Ancient

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Speaker 1: Empires one of the best games, so good. Obviously we're

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Speaker 1: talking about nostalgic video games today, computer games in particular.

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Speaker 1: And I'm Eli, by the way, I'm Diana's so good

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Speaker 1: to have you back on the show. Love you guys,

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Speaker 1: Love you guys, love having you here. And this one's

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Speaker 1: a really fun episode today again just dipping into the

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Speaker 1: nostalgia factor here talking about a couple that for me

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Speaker 1: personally had a huge impact on my life and uh

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Speaker 1: and their their marriage apparently um was a big part

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Speaker 1: of my childhood that I was totally unaware of at

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Speaker 1: the time. Wow, I know, well, I know we've played

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Speaker 1: I know you've mentioned The King's Quest games in this

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Speaker 1: podcast before. Oh yeah, I never stopped talking about the

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Speaker 1: King's Quest games because these games they were not only

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Speaker 1: I mean they were where I learned to read, write,

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Speaker 1: and type was playing King's Quest. And they also were

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Speaker 1: just like hugely formative in terms of my imagination, the

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Speaker 1: kind of storytelling I liked, the kind of puzzles that

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Speaker 1: I like today. I think they were just such a

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Speaker 1: huge part of that. And there's such good games, and um,

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Speaker 1: everybody should play them. Still there's still totally worth it there. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but we wouldn't have those games without these people that

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Speaker 1: were talking about today. So we're going to revisit the

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Speaker 1: marriage of Ken and Roberto Williams and uh and how

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Speaker 1: they brought to us to the world, because in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, this young married couple with two pretty much

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Speaker 1: completely different skill sets came together to revolutionized computer gaming.

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Speaker 1: They used Ken's programming brilliance and Roberta's imaginative ideas for storytelling,

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Speaker 1: and they formed the company Sierra Online, and they released

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Speaker 1: games like Mystery House, King's Quest, like we talked about

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Speaker 1: Space Quest, which is a blast um dr brain. If

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Speaker 1: anybody played those educational games or the Incredible Machine Leisure Suit,

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Speaker 1: Larry Fantasmagoria, just all these titles that, if you're like me,

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Speaker 1: are blowing your nostalgic circuits right now. Um, but none

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Speaker 1: of this would have happened if these young, shy teenagers

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Speaker 1: hadn't come together. And even if you've never heard of

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Speaker 1: these games, Uh, this is a very interesting story. And

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Speaker 1: if you have any connection to video games at all,

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Speaker 1: whether you love Kingdom Hearts or if you're playing Elden

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Speaker 1: Ring right now, or even those mystery search games on

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Speaker 1: your phones with the little pictures we have to find things,

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Speaker 1: play Seekers notes anyone, none of those might exist without

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Speaker 1: Ken and Roberto Williams. So let's go back look at

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Speaker 1: their story and find out how all this all happened.

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Speaker 1: I'm ready for this quest, Hey the French, come listen. Well,

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Speaker 1: Eli and Diana got stories to tell. There's no matchmaking,

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Speaker 1: a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships, a love

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Speaker 1: it might be any type of person at all, and

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Speaker 1: abstract concept are a concrete wall. But if there's a

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Speaker 1: story where the second glance ridiculous roles a production of

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Alright, so right off the bat, I

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Speaker 1: got a lot of this info from a very cool

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Speaker 1: book was called Hackers Heroes of the Computer Revolution by

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Speaker 1: Stephen Levy and um most of the information came from there.

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Speaker 1: Some of it didn't line up with other inner views

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Speaker 1: and articles that I read with Kenna. Roberta Um so

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Speaker 1: tried to kind of adapt there. But this is where

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Speaker 1: a lot of this kind of foundational information comes from.

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Speaker 1: Roberta Hewer was born in February of nineteen fifty three

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Speaker 1: in rural California, just east of Los Angeles, and her

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Speaker 1: father was an agricultural inspector. Her mother was a homemaker,

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Speaker 1: and her little brother was born a year after her,

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Speaker 1: and he had epilepsy. This really pulled a lot of

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Speaker 1: her parents focus Overberta herself just developed this really active

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Speaker 1: imagination and she would entertain her little brother and her

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Speaker 1: parents with these elaborate, sort of fairy tale adventure stories

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Speaker 1: that she would think up while she was lying in

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Speaker 1: bed at night. Now, otherwise she was kind of shy

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Speaker 1: and quiet, especially at school, where her sort of rural

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Speaker 1: upbringing really stood out. She even said later in life quote,

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Speaker 1: I never really liked myself. I always wanted to be

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Speaker 1: someone else. I love this idea of rural l a

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Speaker 1: in the in the eighties right now, it's probably you,

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Speaker 1: probably so. Kenneth Williams was born on October in Evansville, Indiana,

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Speaker 1: but his family moved to Pomona, California when he was young.

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Speaker 1: He had two brothers, Larry and John, and the three

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Speaker 1: of them often shared a bedroom. I know that life,

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Speaker 1: not brothers, but definitely Sharon bedroom growing up. You know,

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Speaker 1: it was fun and also an opportunity for ConfL many,

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Speaker 1: an opportunity for conflict. In school, Ken was brilliant. He

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Speaker 1: had no trouble skating by on his natural aptitude, but

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Speaker 1: he refused to do homework in junior high. Also sounds

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Speaker 1: very familiar. Yes, this was me. See this is the

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Speaker 1: difference between you and I in school. I think we

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Speaker 1: both had a bit of a natural aptitude. Kids skate

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Speaker 1: by pretty easily. But I again, I liked mabis teachers

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Speaker 1: typing My homework was so fun for me. Well, if

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Speaker 1: they had made homework video games, I would have been

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Speaker 1: all over it. You know, in school, I love that.

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Speaker 1: You know, we had computer lab in school kids. There

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Speaker 1: was a point in schools where there was a whole

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Speaker 1: separate room where they kept all the computers and you

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Speaker 1: would go in for forty five minutes of time and

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Speaker 1: learn how to type on them. Yeah. Or sometimes you

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Speaker 1: could play Oregon Trail exactly on special days when the

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Speaker 1: when the yeah, when the teacher wasn't feeling it. It

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Speaker 1: was like Oregon Trail, math blaster, learn how to use

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Speaker 1: the arrow keys. Kid, I'm hungover, shut up spacebar, over

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Speaker 1: and over again for an hour. So Ken was refusing

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Speaker 1: to do homework in junior high. He instead spent his

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Speaker 1: time compulsively reading whatever interested him the most. Now that

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Speaker 1: sounds like me. He loved The Hardy Boys and books

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Speaker 1: by Harold Robbins, like The Carpet Baggers, which features a

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Speaker 1: Howard Hughes like protagonist, and Ken said quote, that's where

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Speaker 1: I got my role model. I don't know about Howard

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Speaker 1: Hughes as a role model. I'm not. I'm just going

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Speaker 1: to throw it out there. I mean it depends. I

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Speaker 1: think you want to, you want to kind of have

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Speaker 1: a limit on that, like his his ambition, his success.

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Speaker 1: These are things I want wearing tissue boxes on my feet.

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Speaker 1: We'll stop before that, before we get there. So that

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Speaker 1: was like a real rags to Rich's story, The Carpet Baggers,

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Speaker 1: and because of that. When he hit high school, he

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Speaker 1: stopped just coasting. He started like working extra hard to succes.

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Speaker 1: Oh there's the difference. You needed to read the carpetbaggers like. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I continued to coast and not work very hard through

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Speaker 1: high school. I kept it on cuse control. Yeah, Ken

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Speaker 1: played in the school band. He quote learned how to

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Speaker 1: play the game of good grade is a game. It

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Speaker 1: is a game, very true, And he came up with

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Speaker 1: all kinds of clever ways to make money. Levy says,

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Speaker 1: quote he won so many sales contests on his paper

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Speaker 1: route that he was on a first name basis with

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Speaker 1: the ticket takers at Disneyland. Man. I mean, I definitely

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Speaker 1: also did not come up with clever ways to make

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Speaker 1: money in high school. That was not my bag. If

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Speaker 1: I'd had Disney World next door, I might have worked

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Speaker 1: a lot harder to be able to afford tickets. So

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Speaker 1: that's true what we're prizes in Georgia, I guess right.

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Speaker 1: I mean literally, my friends and I got jobs to

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Speaker 1: save up money to buy pieces for the computers we

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Speaker 1: were building so we could play better video games building.

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Speaker 1: And when I got well, when I got the part

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Speaker 1: that I needed, Uh, you know, hey, can I get

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Speaker 1: somebody to cover all my shifts next week? I just

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Speaker 1: pulled this computer. I want to play games. I don't

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Speaker 1: need money anymore. Done working, I got the one thing

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Speaker 1: I wanted. Yeah. So, Ken did have a girlfriend in

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Speaker 1: high school, and one time he went out on this

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Speaker 1: double date with a friend of his and his friend's

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Speaker 1: girlfriend was Roberta Hewer, and the two of them talked

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Speaker 1: a little bit, but she said she wasn't really impressed

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Speaker 1: with him. She said, quote, he was cute, but I

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Speaker 1: thought he acted kind of dumb. He was shy, so

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Speaker 1: to compensate he would go overboard, acting too aggressive. He

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Speaker 1: carried cigarettes in his pocket, but he didn't smoke. Roberta

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Speaker 1: was like poser. After this double date, they didn't really

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Speaker 1: see each other too much. Ken was so focused on

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Speaker 1: succeeding that he actually graduated high school early at sixteen

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Speaker 1: years old, and he went to the nearby California Polytech

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Speaker 1: Nick State University. And one of the reasons he chose

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Speaker 1: this place because it was close to home, he was

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Speaker 1: only sixteen, and also it only costs twenty four dollars

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Speaker 1: per quarter, which sounds obviously insanely cheap, but You've got

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Speaker 1: to imagine this was like nine seventy and if you

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Speaker 1: translate that, let me get the calculator real quick here

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Speaker 1: into today's dollars, that tuition would actually be a hundred

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Speaker 1: and seventy seven dollars. You imagine going to school over

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Speaker 1: a hundred and seventy seven bucks per quarters. A hundred

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Speaker 1: seventy seven dollars isn't even a parking passiously And and

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Speaker 1: just to check, because I was like, well, maybe California

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Speaker 1: Polytech is just, you know, an inexpensive school. I looked

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Speaker 1: them up and they're in state. Tuition today is ten

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars, so I think it's has surpassed the inflation

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Speaker 1: rate by a little bit. So if you're wondering where

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Speaker 1: all the Ken Williams of today are there instead and

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Speaker 1: saying that, and despite his confidence and intelligence, Ken was

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Speaker 1: totally intimidated by computers at first. He was naturally good

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Speaker 1: in grade school classes, but he was majoring in physics,

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Speaker 1: and college level courses were taking a different kind of

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Speaker 1: focus and learning that he wasn't used to. In a

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Speaker 1: four tram class, which is an old computer programming language,

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Speaker 1: he struggled and fell behind, but that determination kicked in.

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Speaker 1: He's like, I'm ana Howard used my way through this,

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Speaker 1: and he set himself a goal simulate a mouse running

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Speaker 1: through a maze. Okay, so like as a computer program. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he wanted to see if he could code that. But

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Speaker 1: he could not wrap his head around the power of

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Speaker 1: the computer. It was such a monster. It seemed so

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Speaker 1: much smarter than he was. That was new and scary.

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Speaker 1: And six weeks into the nine week course, something clicked,

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Speaker 1: Levy writes, quote, he came to a sudden realization the

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Speaker 1: computer wasn't so smart at all. It was just some

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Speaker 1: dumb beast following orders, doing what you told it to

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Speaker 1: and exactly the order you determined you could control it.

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Speaker 1: You could be God. So Ken got the mouse through

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Speaker 1: the maze, and he very suddenly was a brilliant programmer.

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Speaker 1: It was just magically easy to him now, and everyone

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Speaker 1: in the class could see that this kid was special. God.

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Speaker 1: I wish, I wish we had the words to explain

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Speaker 1: epiphanies like that, when you're just like nothing makes sense

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Speaker 1: for weeks and weeks, and then all of a sudden

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Speaker 1: it does, like there's nothing to really describe that very

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Speaker 1: singular feeling. But Germany's got a word for it, you

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Speaker 1: know what, They probably did a million letters long, right,

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Speaker 1: but I would learn it. I feel that way when

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Speaker 1: I'm doing puzzle games sometimes. I was just playing this one.

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Speaker 1: It's called Patrick's Parabox, and it's a cool little um,

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Speaker 1: cool little game or I don't know. I'm not going

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Speaker 1: to go into the description, but it's one of these

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Speaker 1: games where I'm just staring at the screen, going, why

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Speaker 1: the hell can't figure out what I'm doing for like

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Speaker 1: twenty five minutes and then suddenly your brain just answers you,

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, why didn't I see that twenty minutes ago?

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Speaker 1: It's so simple, it's amazing. And I've heard that a

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Speaker 1: lot about computer programming, Like my dad's a programmer, for example,

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Speaker 1: and he said, uh, you know, it's just that you

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Speaker 1: kind of have to tame the beast and realize that

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Speaker 1: the computer is working for you. You know, it's not

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Speaker 1: actually any smarter than a person. I mean that might

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Speaker 1: be different now, but that's true, I guess in the

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Speaker 1: seventies versus today. But if you can kind of learned

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Speaker 1: to tame it and learn that it's you know, it's working,

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Speaker 1: it's it's not doing anything that you're not telling it

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Speaker 1: to do. It's an extension of your brain, you know.

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Speaker 1: So if you can kind of wrap your head around that,

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Speaker 1: it becomes much easier to sort of command. I'll take

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Speaker 1: your word for it, because I don't want to do it. So,

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Speaker 1: you know, school is getting a little bit easier for him.

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Speaker 1: He's starting to get by in class. And then out

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Speaker 1: of the blue one day, Can just suddenly remembered Roberta,

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Speaker 1: this girl from the double date, and he decided to

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Speaker 1: call her up. He nervously reminded her who he was.

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Speaker 1: You know, hey, remember that guy with the unlit cigarette

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Speaker 1: hanging out of his mouth, you know, the one who

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Speaker 1: was like kind of obnoxious because I was overcompensating for

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Speaker 1: being kind of unsure of myself. Uh, do you want

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Speaker 1: to go out? She's like, I remember being kind of

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Speaker 1: annoyed by you, and yeah, Roberta had dated a few boys,

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Speaker 1: and she said, quote, all the boyfriends I'd had before

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Speaker 1: were rather dumb damn, So you know, her bar for

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Speaker 1: men was probably pretty low. She thought what the hell

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Speaker 1: and decided to go out with him. She currently had

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Speaker 1: another boyfriend who lived upstate at the time, so robert right,

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Speaker 1: So at least this guy was closer. You know. She

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Speaker 1: was a little nervous about seeing this kind of insecure,

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Speaker 1: sometimes pushy young college boy. And which is actually interesting

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Speaker 1: because he was a year younger than her, but he

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Speaker 1: was a college kid now because he graduated early. But

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Speaker 1: one day they were talking and he really opened up

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Speaker 1: to her. She recalled quote, he was talking about physics.

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Speaker 1: I figured he was a really bright guy. He talked

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Speaker 1: about real things, responsibility, and within a week of dating

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Speaker 1: Ken convinced her to dump the other guy upstate and

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Speaker 1: go steady with him. Later on, Ken reflected about this quote,

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Speaker 1: I just didn't want to be alone. Not very flattering.

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Speaker 1: I mean, he's sixteen, he's in college. No one is

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Speaker 1: his age probably, and he's like away from home a lot.

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Speaker 1: And he's like, look, I'm not interested in doing this,

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Speaker 1: Like let me try and keep dating people. Like I'm done.

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Speaker 1: Just find somebody. I like you. You're cool. I don't

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Speaker 1: want to figure this out anymore, and done, all right,

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Speaker 1: like he said. Roberta was a year older than Ken.

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Speaker 1: As soon as he turned eighteen, he said to her quote,

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Speaker 1: we're getting married and that's it. And Roberta was like, okay,

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Speaker 1: And she told her mother quote, he's going to go

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Speaker 1: someplace to really make it be something. And they married quickly.

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Speaker 1: Within a year, Roberta was pregnant, giving birth to their

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Speaker 1: first son, DJ in nine. But Ken is still struggling

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Speaker 1: in his physics major, and he was worried about his

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Speaker 1: ability to support a family. Again, he's pretty young still

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Speaker 1: at this point in his life, and I mean, those

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Speaker 1: four dollars student loans aren't going to pay themselves off.

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Speaker 1: He's drowning and two double digit debt. What did we

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Speaker 1: do to our children the seventies? So cruel. But he

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Speaker 1: saw there were more and more jobs popping up for

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Speaker 1: computer programmers than physics jobs anyway, So Roberta's dad co

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Speaker 1: signed a loan for him to go to a trade

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Speaker 1: school called Controlled Data Institute for fifteen hundred dollars and okay,

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Speaker 1: that is over ten dollars today, but this is a

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Speaker 1: highly specialized school, so the you know, competition, I mean, sorry,

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Speaker 1: so the comparative tuition would be probably a million bucks

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Speaker 1: a semester today for for a school like that. Insane.

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Speaker 1: And he still wasn't changing the world with his programming

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Speaker 1: or anything. But he could get by. He could do

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Speaker 1: whatever was asked of him. He had a real fake

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Speaker 1: it till you make it style. He'd go into an

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Speaker 1: interview and they'd be like, oh, we're looking for someone

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Speaker 1: who can code in flurg nuts, and Ken will be like, Oh,

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Speaker 1: I ad flert Nuts. That's my middle name, and I

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Speaker 1: am fluent in Florna. I dream in flirknets. Like that's

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Speaker 1: basically when I talked flerg nuts comes out, you know what.

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Speaker 1: And then he'd get the job and then go home

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Speaker 1: over the weekend and be like, Okay, what the fund

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00:20:48,800 --> 00:20:51,280
Speaker 1: is flurgne And he would grab every book on the

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Speaker 1: subject he could find and just learn it real fast

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Speaker 1: and honestly, this is the way to get ahead. People cannot.

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Speaker 1: I wish that's someone and sat down and explained to

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Speaker 1: me more clearly when I was younger that that is

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Speaker 1: what most people do. No one knows what they're doing.

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Speaker 1: Everyone pretends and then figures it out when when they're

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Speaker 1: alone in the room at night. You know, Um, so

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Speaker 1: so just lie, Everybody's what I'm telling you. Lie on

368
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Speaker 1: your resumes, but you know you have to back it up.

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Speaker 1: You have to be able to figure it out. If

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Speaker 1: I put on my acting resume, like oh yeah, I

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Speaker 1: can ride a horse. I better show up on day

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Speaker 1: one knowing how to ride a horse, you know, instead

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Speaker 1: of being like, now, how do you get your leg

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Speaker 1: around him? Again? Remind me how to ride a horse again?

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Speaker 1: Real quick? Which one is the front? Which one's the horse?

376
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Speaker 1: You're getting on a pig? And they're like, hoaground, Mr Banks,

377
00:21:51,800 --> 00:21:57,119
Speaker 1: we have questions about your resume. So Ken's determination and

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00:21:57,160 --> 00:22:00,680
Speaker 1: his ability to learn quickly to you know, again, make

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00:22:00,760 --> 00:22:03,439
Speaker 1: something up and then figure it out real fast was

380
00:22:03,520 --> 00:22:05,600
Speaker 1: working really well for him, and it put him on

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00:22:05,600 --> 00:22:08,720
Speaker 1: a fast track to just better and better jobs. So

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Speaker 1: he's making more and more money. They moved to l

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Speaker 1: A and they ended up changing houses several times. Roberto

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00:22:14,800 --> 00:22:17,560
Speaker 1: would even say to Ken at night, Hey, wouldn't it

385
00:22:17,560 --> 00:22:20,080
Speaker 1: be cool if we made two dars more a week?

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00:22:20,600 --> 00:22:23,399
Speaker 1: And can of be like, yeah, it probably would, and

387
00:22:23,400 --> 00:22:26,199
Speaker 1: he'd go and pick up another gig. I definitely said that,

388
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Speaker 1: here's another couple of hundred dollars a week. Yeah, but

389
00:22:29,680 --> 00:22:33,960
Speaker 1: we're maxed out. There's no more jobs allowed, so you know,

390
00:22:34,119 --> 00:22:37,679
Speaker 1: he's working full time gigs. He's taken moonlighting jobs, and

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Speaker 1: even Ken himself started to think, I wonder if we

392
00:22:40,720 --> 00:22:45,480
Speaker 1: could retire at thirty the dream Now Roberto was pregnant

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00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:50,200
Speaker 1: with their second son, chris In, and Ken found himself

394
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Speaker 1: working with these super teams of the best programmers in

395
00:22:53,240 --> 00:22:56,520
Speaker 1: the industry. But his boss at this one job really

396
00:22:56,600 --> 00:22:59,679
Speaker 1: kept him stymied. When Ken asked to head up a

397
00:22:59,680 --> 00:23:02,480
Speaker 1: prog him and group, he was told, quote, you have

398
00:23:02,800 --> 00:23:08,159
Speaker 1: no talent for management. That quote alone shows that his

399
00:23:08,320 --> 00:23:12,359
Speaker 1: boss had no talent for managing exactly. A good manager

400
00:23:12,400 --> 00:23:15,920
Speaker 1: wants to create more managers, not just keep people employees.

401
00:23:16,200 --> 00:23:19,440
Speaker 1: Get your life right well. And also this probably really

402
00:23:19,480 --> 00:23:24,160
Speaker 1: lit a fire under him, and eventually Ken's outside work

403
00:23:24,280 --> 00:23:26,680
Speaker 1: was bringing him more money than his inside work, so

404
00:23:27,040 --> 00:23:30,119
Speaker 1: he left the corporate world to be an independent contractor,

405
00:23:30,280 --> 00:23:33,040
Speaker 1: and he worked with big companies like GM and Warner

406
00:23:33,080 --> 00:23:35,520
Speaker 1: Brothers and even a few of the big banks at

407
00:23:35,520 --> 00:23:39,400
Speaker 1: the time, like writing uh tax accounting code for them,

408
00:23:39,480 --> 00:23:42,439
Speaker 1: and things like that really boring software that you and

409
00:23:42,480 --> 00:23:45,480
Speaker 1: I don't even know exists, but that somebody like my

410
00:23:45,560 --> 00:23:50,480
Speaker 1: dad is working very hard on you until their eyes crossed.

411
00:23:51,119 --> 00:23:53,479
Speaker 1: So Kennon Roberto would sit in there hot tub at

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Speaker 1: night and fantasize about moving out to the woods, escaping

413
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Speaker 1: suburban life. And just having fun. They're talking about like

414
00:24:00,760 --> 00:24:03,280
Speaker 1: water skiing and getting a boat on the lake and

415
00:24:03,320 --> 00:24:07,280
Speaker 1: all this stuff. Yeah, lake like the dream, but running

416
00:24:07,320 --> 00:24:10,560
Speaker 1: the numbers it was really just a fantasy. There weren't

417
00:24:10,640 --> 00:24:12,359
Speaker 1: enough hours in the day for Ken to make that

418
00:24:12,440 --> 00:24:16,600
Speaker 1: kind of money. That's relatable. But Ken had a machine

419
00:24:16,640 --> 00:24:20,920
Speaker 1: at home called a teletype. It was like a glorified typewriter.

420
00:24:21,000 --> 00:24:23,000
Speaker 1: But it hooked up to a modem with the late

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00:24:23,080 --> 00:24:26,000
Speaker 1: seventies version of the Internet, and it allowed him to

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00:24:26,040 --> 00:24:28,919
Speaker 1: work some from home. I gotta tell you about this thing.

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00:24:28,960 --> 00:24:30,600
Speaker 1: I mean, it is just like it literally looks like

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00:24:30,600 --> 00:24:34,840
Speaker 1: an electronic typewriter. It plugs into this They had an

425
00:24:35,280 --> 00:24:39,280
Speaker 1: Internet back in the seventies. It was not the Worldwide Web, obviously,

426
00:24:39,359 --> 00:24:42,520
Speaker 1: but you know, you could communicate with computers in different

427
00:24:42,520 --> 00:24:46,879
Speaker 1: parts of the world through coding and like very specific

428
00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:49,800
Speaker 1: lines of text that kind of like sending a facts

429
00:24:49,880 --> 00:24:53,160
Speaker 1: through your computers sort of. I guess, so print out

430
00:24:53,160 --> 00:24:55,280
Speaker 1: on the other end, and it well, it printed out

431
00:24:55,280 --> 00:24:57,600
Speaker 1: on your end, you know, so I could type in

432
00:24:57,680 --> 00:25:00,600
Speaker 1: like as I understand it, I could wrong about this,

433
00:25:00,680 --> 00:25:02,639
Speaker 1: but I could type in, like show me the contents

434
00:25:02,680 --> 00:25:04,760
Speaker 1: of dr D on the main frame and it would

435
00:25:05,440 --> 00:25:08,480
Speaker 1: send the signal to Boston or whatever. And then the

436
00:25:08,520 --> 00:25:11,600
Speaker 1: signal would come back, and my little typewriter machine would

437
00:25:11,600 --> 00:25:14,639
Speaker 1: print out the list of files. Okay now, and then

438
00:25:14,640 --> 00:25:16,760
Speaker 1: I'd say, okay, open this one, and it would print

439
00:25:16,800 --> 00:25:21,200
Speaker 1: out the code. Interesting, weird, weird time, so much paper,

440
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:25,040
Speaker 1: I imagine. Yes, so he's got this teletype, and Ken

441
00:25:25,080 --> 00:25:28,639
Speaker 1: wrote quote. I was programming an income tax program on

442
00:25:28,680 --> 00:25:32,520
Speaker 1: a mainframe computer three thousand miles away from my l

443
00:25:32,560 --> 00:25:36,240
Speaker 1: a home. The machine was solely for that remote work,

444
00:25:36,600 --> 00:25:39,159
Speaker 1: but that didn't stop me from exploring the main frame

445
00:25:39,240 --> 00:25:42,880
Speaker 1: for anything else interesting to do. I will always remember

446
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:46,720
Speaker 1: the thrill of discovery when I saw something called adventure

447
00:25:47,160 --> 00:25:50,280
Speaker 1: and typed it just to see what would happen. The

448
00:25:50,320 --> 00:25:54,119
Speaker 1: computer answered back, and it would change their lives forever.

449
00:25:54,920 --> 00:26:06,520
Speaker 1: And we'll find out how right after this break, welcome

450
00:26:06,600 --> 00:26:12,040
Speaker 1: back to the show. Even that is like later than

451
00:26:12,760 --> 00:26:16,920
Speaker 1: they didn't have recorded voices, right. Well, if I could

452
00:26:16,920 --> 00:26:19,120
Speaker 1: tell a type y'all and welcome back to the show,

453
00:26:19,160 --> 00:26:22,719
Speaker 1: I would now. At this point in her life, ROBERTA

454
00:26:22,760 --> 00:26:26,240
Speaker 1: Williams had put all of her fantasies behind her. She

455
00:26:26,400 --> 00:26:29,240
Speaker 1: was a mother and a housewife in the nineteen seventies,

456
00:26:29,400 --> 00:26:33,800
Speaker 1: so you know she knew. Her understanding was that Ken

457
00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:36,680
Speaker 1: was making money, and she stayed home and took care

458
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:39,560
Speaker 1: of the other half of their lives. And her shyness

459
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:42,560
Speaker 1: only got worse in these days too. She said she

460
00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:46,000
Speaker 1: could barely make a phone call, and any creative fairy

461
00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:48,640
Speaker 1: tales that were still floating around in her head were

462
00:26:48,680 --> 00:26:52,040
Speaker 1: quickly buried away and told to no one. Her best

463
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:55,680
Speaker 1: escape was reading. She loved Agatha Christie novels and other

464
00:26:55,720 --> 00:27:00,920
Speaker 1: mysteries and adventure stories. And Ken's whole world was computers.

465
00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:04,120
Speaker 1: But despite that, Roberta really never had much interest in them,

466
00:27:04,359 --> 00:27:06,520
Speaker 1: and she also didn't really care too much for games,

467
00:27:07,320 --> 00:27:11,280
Speaker 1: so after Ken typed out Adventure on his teletype, she

468
00:27:11,400 --> 00:27:13,720
Speaker 1: probably rolled her eyes when he called her over and said,

469
00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:19,000
Speaker 1: you gotta see this game. But Ken was fascinated by it.

470
00:27:19,600 --> 00:27:22,320
Speaker 1: Everybody was. This game was blowing up. I mean, it

471
00:27:22,359 --> 00:27:25,480
Speaker 1: was just changing what everyone was thinking computers could do.

472
00:27:26,200 --> 00:27:28,280
Speaker 1: Tim Anderson, who was a programmer back in the day

473
00:27:28,280 --> 00:27:30,480
Speaker 1: who worked at m I T, said that when this

474
00:27:30,520 --> 00:27:33,520
Speaker 1: game came out, quote, it's estimated that it's set the

475
00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:38,080
Speaker 1: entire computer industry back two weeks because everybody just dropped

476
00:27:38,080 --> 00:27:42,080
Speaker 1: what they were doing to play this game, similar to

477
00:27:42,280 --> 00:27:47,080
Speaker 1: video games today. Back many a school, career, careers, whole industries.

478
00:27:47,119 --> 00:27:50,040
Speaker 1: I mean, I know a lot of grown adults who

479
00:27:50,160 --> 00:27:54,000
Speaker 1: stopped working when Elden Ring came out and their their

480
00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:56,760
Speaker 1: whole industry probably got set back two weeks as well.

481
00:27:57,400 --> 00:27:59,639
Speaker 1: Everyone's like, where's the thing that I asked you for?

482
00:28:01,160 --> 00:28:04,880
Speaker 1: So after some persistence, Roberta finally agreed to come look

483
00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:07,840
Speaker 1: at whatever nonsense he was a pitch into her, and

484
00:28:07,960 --> 00:28:10,560
Speaker 1: she sat down and saw the text that had been

485
00:28:10,600 --> 00:28:14,240
Speaker 1: written back. Quote. You are standing at the end of

486
00:28:14,240 --> 00:28:18,280
Speaker 1: a road before a small brick building. Around you is

487
00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:22,000
Speaker 1: a forest. A small stream flows out of the building

488
00:28:22,320 --> 00:28:26,159
Speaker 1: and down a gully. These were the opening lines to

489
00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:30,439
Speaker 1: the game Adventure also called Colossal Cave by Will Crowther

490
00:28:30,680 --> 00:28:34,040
Speaker 1: and Don Woods. It was one of the first video

491
00:28:34,119 --> 00:28:37,440
Speaker 1: games and it was all text based, no images at all.

492
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:39,800
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a Choose your own adventure book.

493
00:28:40,040 --> 00:28:41,680
Speaker 1: You would just type in what you wanted to do

494
00:28:41,800 --> 00:28:43,800
Speaker 1: or where you want to go, Like you type in

495
00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:47,520
Speaker 1: east and it would then print back. You are inside

496
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:50,920
Speaker 1: a building, a well house for a large spring. There

497
00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:53,800
Speaker 1: are some keys on the ground. There is a shiny

498
00:28:53,840 --> 00:28:58,479
Speaker 1: brass lamp nearby. There is food here, and you type

499
00:28:58,680 --> 00:29:01,560
Speaker 1: take keys or whatever and try to find the treasure

500
00:29:01,560 --> 00:29:04,240
Speaker 1: in the cave. And if you're like me, you never

501
00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:07,080
Speaker 1: heard of this game until you read the book Ready

502
00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:10,160
Speaker 1: Player One, maybe saw the movie right right, because I

503
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:13,120
Speaker 1: mean this was this game was groundbreaking and revolution. It's

504
00:29:13,240 --> 00:29:15,960
Speaker 1: definitely a point in history that you can look at

505
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:18,360
Speaker 1: and say like this is where it all changed. Yeah,

506
00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:22,400
Speaker 1: absolute and everything. So yeah, it was a big deal

507
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:24,880
Speaker 1: in the book. Yeah, of course, because it would, like

508
00:29:24,920 --> 00:29:27,160
Speaker 1: you say, it was like the first video game, and

509
00:29:27,200 --> 00:29:29,200
Speaker 1: it was all about people who obsessed with video games,

510
00:29:29,640 --> 00:29:32,120
Speaker 1: so it was like a well and of course Ready

511
00:29:32,120 --> 00:29:35,080
Speaker 1: Player One is the characters are based on the real life,

512
00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:37,600
Speaker 1: like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and these guys who

513
00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:41,520
Speaker 1: were who were literally at this time doing the same

514
00:29:41,560 --> 00:29:43,760
Speaker 1: thing as as kenn of Roberta here like pulling up

515
00:29:43,760 --> 00:29:45,880
Speaker 1: these computers and saying, what the hell can it do? Yeah,

516
00:29:45,920 --> 00:29:51,960
Speaker 1: they're having their their children's minds blown by this text game.

517
00:29:52,840 --> 00:29:57,320
Speaker 1: And it wasn't long before Roberta was hooked on this game.

518
00:29:57,760 --> 00:30:01,120
Speaker 1: And I know the feeling she said, quote, I couldn't

519
00:30:01,160 --> 00:30:04,640
Speaker 1: stop it was compulsive. I started playing it, and I

520
00:30:04,760 --> 00:30:07,120
Speaker 1: kept playing it. I had a baby at the time,

521
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:10,200
Speaker 1: Chris was eight months old. I totally ignored him. I

522
00:30:10,200 --> 00:30:12,360
Speaker 1: didn't want to be bothered. I didn't want to stop

523
00:30:12,360 --> 00:30:14,600
Speaker 1: and make dinner. I wonder if Chris ever read this

524
00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:18,640
Speaker 1: book and he was like, wow, yeah, so that's where

525
00:30:19,120 --> 00:30:23,280
Speaker 1: my obsession with hugging comes from. Now. Roberta stayed up

526
00:30:23,440 --> 00:30:26,560
Speaker 1: all night trying to figure out how to like get

527
00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:29,720
Speaker 1: around the snake or where the stupid keys went, r

528
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:32,840
Speaker 1: various puzzles like that, And when she wasn't playing it,

529
00:30:33,120 --> 00:30:35,800
Speaker 1: she'd be daydreaming about what steps she could take next.

530
00:30:36,520 --> 00:30:39,120
Speaker 1: She started imagining maybe how the story would go if

531
00:30:39,160 --> 00:30:42,360
Speaker 1: she had written it. Meanwhile, Ken kind of got bored

532
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:45,000
Speaker 1: with the game quickly. Roberta thought maybe that was because

533
00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:48,200
Speaker 1: he didn't like the game's sarcasm and humor, which I

534
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:50,120
Speaker 1: love in these old games. I was about to say

535
00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:52,440
Speaker 1: that would be the best thing about it, but only

536
00:30:52,440 --> 00:30:54,960
Speaker 1: if you're a certain I think for creative types. I

537
00:30:54,960 --> 00:30:58,120
Speaker 1: think for very literal people, you might be like, Okay,

538
00:30:58,240 --> 00:30:59,760
Speaker 1: I don't need all that. I want the data, I

539
00:30:59,760 --> 00:31:01,880
Speaker 1: want the information. I don't need that. They don't want

540
00:31:01,880 --> 00:31:03,880
Speaker 1: to play the game. Don't joke with me, don't have

541
00:31:03,920 --> 00:31:06,680
Speaker 1: fun with me, want to play this game. Levy gives

542
00:31:06,680 --> 00:31:08,560
Speaker 1: an example of this in the game. If you typed

543
00:31:08,600 --> 00:31:12,600
Speaker 1: out something like kill dragon, the game would respond, what

544
00:31:12,760 --> 00:31:16,720
Speaker 1: with your bare hands? But if you typed back yes,

545
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:20,320
Speaker 1: then the game would say, congratulations, you have just vanquished

546
00:31:20,360 --> 00:31:23,960
Speaker 1: a dragon with your bare hands. Unbelievable, isn't it? Take that?

547
00:31:24,320 --> 00:31:27,240
Speaker 1: And that give that dragon the old one to write

548
00:31:27,800 --> 00:31:30,320
Speaker 1: And that kind of sense of humor would definitely play

549
00:31:30,360 --> 00:31:34,280
Speaker 1: into Roberta's games. Later on, Roberta mapped out the game

550
00:31:34,320 --> 00:31:37,080
Speaker 1: on paper, so you know, when it said go east

551
00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:38,760
Speaker 1: and it would describe where you were at. Next she

552
00:31:38,760 --> 00:31:40,480
Speaker 1: would draw a little circle and say, this is the

553
00:31:40,560 --> 00:31:43,440
Speaker 1: room with the well, go west, this is the room

554
00:31:43,440 --> 00:31:45,480
Speaker 1: with the path, you know, and she would sort of

555
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:48,440
Speaker 1: design the whole game visually when it was only giving

556
00:31:48,480 --> 00:31:50,600
Speaker 1: you text, Oh my god, we did that when we

557
00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:56,680
Speaker 1: play a labyrinth. I remember, like months later, I found

558
00:31:56,880 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 1: the white board we used or the piece of paper something.

559
00:31:59,360 --> 00:32:01,640
Speaker 1: It just had all these little dots on it because

560
00:32:01,680 --> 00:32:04,160
Speaker 1: you're just like this room that we've tried that one over,

561
00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:06,280
Speaker 1: and I was like, if you didn't know what we

562
00:32:06,280 --> 00:32:09,920
Speaker 1: were doing. You look like a madman. What are you

563
00:32:10,080 --> 00:32:14,520
Speaker 1: doing on this paper? But this helped her kind of

564
00:32:14,600 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 1: visualize the game as a whole rather than just room

565
00:32:17,400 --> 00:32:20,360
Speaker 1: to room. Text not helped her track her progress, and

566
00:32:20,400 --> 00:32:22,880
Speaker 1: it brought a different kind of life to the game too.

567
00:32:23,520 --> 00:32:27,440
Speaker 1: After a month of playing, she finally solved the Colossal

568
00:32:27,480 --> 00:32:32,640
Speaker 1: Cave adventure. Then Ken's brother showed him this new, ugly

569
00:32:32,920 --> 00:32:36,680
Speaker 1: beige box he'd gotten. It was a machine called the

570
00:32:36,960 --> 00:32:43,480
Speaker 1: Apple Computer. Big deal, get it out of my house.

571
00:32:43,600 --> 00:32:46,520
Speaker 1: And even though Ken called it quote a toy compared

572
00:32:46,560 --> 00:32:49,680
Speaker 1: to the computers I had been using, a piece of junk,

573
00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:54,160
Speaker 1: a primeval machine, he knew that it was going to

574
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:58,480
Speaker 1: open new doors for programmers. And Roberto was excited at

575
00:32:58,480 --> 00:33:01,920
Speaker 1: the gaming possibilities of a computer with its own screen.

576
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:05,120
Speaker 1: So let's just pause right there and talk to you

577
00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:08,000
Speaker 1: about computers that did not have monitors. That's what I'm

578
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:10,920
Speaker 1: talking about with this printer, you know, this teletype machine,

579
00:33:11,720 --> 00:33:14,480
Speaker 1: just like, oh, you can look at it. Wow. I

580
00:33:14,520 --> 00:33:16,760
Speaker 1: wonder if anybody was like, also, it's so great. I

581
00:33:16,760 --> 00:33:19,040
Speaker 1: don't have to throw out all this paper every five minutes.

582
00:33:19,520 --> 00:33:24,360
Speaker 1: So Ken and Roberta agreed that Christmas of nine, they

583
00:33:24,400 --> 00:33:29,240
Speaker 1: would spend two thousand dollars for their own Apple two

584
00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:32,560
Speaker 1: as a gift for each other. Now that prices stayed

585
00:33:32,600 --> 00:33:36,479
Speaker 1: pretty much the same, the Apple computers still around two

586
00:33:36,560 --> 00:33:39,280
Speaker 1: k or, which means it's crazy cheaper now because man,

587
00:33:39,280 --> 00:33:41,600
Speaker 1: that would have been like seven grand back then. Ken

588
00:33:41,640 --> 00:33:44,240
Speaker 1: had hired a team of five programmers to try and

589
00:33:44,320 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 1: create a new compiler for the Apple personal computer that

590
00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:50,920
Speaker 1: he could sell to engineers and technicians. And when he

591
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:54,680
Speaker 1: wasn't using it, Roberta was picking up any other adventure

592
00:33:54,720 --> 00:33:57,240
Speaker 1: style games she could get her hands on and playing

593
00:33:57,280 --> 00:34:01,240
Speaker 1: through them. But they were all too simple and dull.

594
00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:04,720
Speaker 1: Nothing lived up to Colossal Cave. She's like, give me

595
00:34:04,760 --> 00:34:07,400
Speaker 1: a game that takes a month to solve. I know

596
00:34:07,520 --> 00:34:10,120
Speaker 1: that feeling too. Sometimes you play through just such a

597
00:34:10,160 --> 00:34:13,040
Speaker 1: good game and then you're trying to find that experience

598
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:15,279
Speaker 1: again and it's just like this sucks. That's easy, this

599
00:34:15,360 --> 00:34:18,200
Speaker 1: is boring, this is ugly, it's tough. It's like that

600
00:34:18,239 --> 00:34:21,160
Speaker 1: with books too. Should read a really good book. God,

601
00:34:21,360 --> 00:34:24,080
Speaker 1: all I want is that same experience, but a new

602
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:32,480
Speaker 1: book again. But playing these games, getting into these adventures,

603
00:34:33,160 --> 00:34:37,719
Speaker 1: something buried deep and Roberta's mind had been reawakened. Her

604
00:34:37,760 --> 00:34:41,959
Speaker 1: imagination was just jump started, and she started jotting down

605
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:44,799
Speaker 1: ideas that she had for her own story, which was

606
00:34:45,200 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 1: like a murder mystery kind of based on the Agatha

607
00:34:47,640 --> 00:34:50,040
Speaker 1: Christie novels that she read, especially the book and then

608
00:34:50,080 --> 00:34:54,319
Speaker 1: there were none for the first Agatha Christie that I read. Actually, yeah,

609
00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:57,600
Speaker 1: just like when she was playing Colossal Cave. She drew

610
00:34:57,680 --> 00:35:00,960
Speaker 1: out maps and she sketched the lay out and create

611
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:05,600
Speaker 1: all these landmarks for each screen, and she wrote vivid descriptions.

612
00:35:05,640 --> 00:35:08,840
Speaker 1: She fleshed out characters in her idea, and she started

613
00:35:08,880 --> 00:35:11,799
Speaker 1: to develop plot twists and puzzles, and after a few

614
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:15,719
Speaker 1: weeks she had this big stack of papers that contained

615
00:35:15,760 --> 00:35:18,120
Speaker 1: her whole story. And she and Kenn went out to

616
00:35:18,160 --> 00:35:20,879
Speaker 1: dinner one night and she started to describe to him

617
00:35:20,920 --> 00:35:24,720
Speaker 1: how this game would go this old Victorian house where

618
00:35:25,040 --> 00:35:27,680
Speaker 1: you start off looking for some jewels, but then you

619
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:31,799
Speaker 1: discover a body, and then people start getting killed off

620
00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:37,280
Speaker 1: one by one, their secret passages, surprise twists, betrayals, until

621
00:35:37,320 --> 00:35:40,680
Speaker 1: finally you need to uncover the murderer before you become

622
00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:45,719
Speaker 1: a victim yourself. Gripping, and Ken is starting to think,

623
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:49,120
Speaker 1: you know, there might really be something here. He thought, Hey,

624
00:35:49,120 --> 00:35:52,040
Speaker 1: if we could sell this, like I don't know, we

625
00:35:52,120 --> 00:35:54,520
Speaker 1: might be able to take a little trip, or maybe

626
00:35:54,560 --> 00:35:56,680
Speaker 1: even get some new furniture for the house or something.

627
00:35:56,719 --> 00:36:00,239
Speaker 1: Just little extra spending cash would be nice that week

628
00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:03,680
Speaker 1: or whatever. But Ken knew that most people who owned

629
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:07,719
Speaker 1: computers weren't trying to play games. Those were usually just

630
00:36:07,800 --> 00:36:11,640
Speaker 1: temporary distractions for programmers when they needed a break, or

631
00:36:11,960 --> 00:36:15,239
Speaker 1: maybe something to make their computer illiterate spouses comfortable with

632
00:36:15,360 --> 00:36:18,399
Speaker 1: these sticker price Yeah right, honey, I spent two thousand

633
00:36:18,440 --> 00:36:21,160
Speaker 1: dollars on the computer. But don't worry. You can type

634
00:36:21,160 --> 00:36:24,319
Speaker 1: your way through this coloss you can. You can talk

635
00:36:24,360 --> 00:36:27,600
Speaker 1: to the teletype. Yeah yeah, Like all right, I guess

636
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:30,680
Speaker 1: that does sound like fun. But if they wanted it

637
00:36:30,719 --> 00:36:34,080
Speaker 1: to really be worth something, he told her it really

638
00:36:34,080 --> 00:36:36,480
Speaker 1: needed to be something unique. He told her to look

639
00:36:36,520 --> 00:36:39,760
Speaker 1: for a hook, something that would stand out. And Roberta

640
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:44,279
Speaker 1: was like, you know, I actually had been thinking what

641
00:36:44,360 --> 00:36:47,160
Speaker 1: if it wasn't just text? Like what if there was

642
00:36:47,200 --> 00:36:51,200
Speaker 1: a picture there with it? I don't know, that sounds crazy.

643
00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:53,239
Speaker 1: How do you put a picture onto a computer? Like?

644
00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:55,280
Speaker 1: What am I talking about? For? I forgot I forgot

645
00:36:55,320 --> 00:36:59,640
Speaker 1: what is the science fiction picture on a computers? Two?

646
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:02,520
Speaker 1: Thou one a space Odyssey. Next thing you know, they'll

647
00:37:02,560 --> 00:37:08,320
Speaker 1: be putting a calculator on your phone. Righteous, who would

648
00:37:08,360 --> 00:37:13,319
Speaker 1: do that? Well Ken heard this and he saw a

649
00:37:13,400 --> 00:37:17,239
Speaker 1: mouse and a maze. He was thinking about his own

650
00:37:17,320 --> 00:37:19,560
Speaker 1: challenge that he had set himself back the day, and

651
00:37:19,640 --> 00:37:24,880
Speaker 1: he was like going against convention, figuring out an impossible problem,

652
00:37:24,960 --> 00:37:27,440
Speaker 1: learning how to do something I've never even heard of before.

653
00:37:27,920 --> 00:37:30,319
Speaker 1: This is kind of his whole thing. It's like his

654
00:37:30,440 --> 00:37:34,320
Speaker 1: whole being right wrapped up into one project. And he

655
00:37:34,440 --> 00:37:35,920
Speaker 1: told her, you know, I might as well give it

656
00:37:35,960 --> 00:37:39,320
Speaker 1: a shot. So, using a new device called the Versa writer,

657
00:37:39,840 --> 00:37:43,520
Speaker 1: which translated drawn images on a tablet into these very

658
00:37:43,680 --> 00:37:47,680
Speaker 1: rudimentary shapes on a computer screen, they managed to put

659
00:37:47,719 --> 00:37:53,640
Speaker 1: this game together, and Ken absolutely defied convention by manipulating

660
00:37:53,640 --> 00:37:57,640
Speaker 1: the programming to get these images to fit on a

661
00:37:57,680 --> 00:38:01,400
Speaker 1: floppy disk. History link dot com writes that the Apple

662
00:38:01,480 --> 00:38:06,200
Speaker 1: two had sixty kilobytes of memory, and the five and

663
00:38:06,239 --> 00:38:08,879
Speaker 1: a quarter inch floppy disks of the time could fit

664
00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:14,440
Speaker 1: about kilobytes of data on them. Um Just for reference today,

665
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:19,719
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with file sizes, an hour long

666
00:38:19,920 --> 00:38:23,359
Speaker 1: episode of this show, for example, compressed into an MP

667
00:38:23,520 --> 00:38:28,600
Speaker 1: three file is about sixty thousand kilobytes, and you can

668
00:38:30,160 --> 00:38:33,360
Speaker 1: on this disc. So we could basically record ourselves saying

669
00:38:33,480 --> 00:38:37,239
Speaker 1: speculation station and like halfway through that train whistle sound,

670
00:38:37,320 --> 00:38:42,560
Speaker 1: that disc would explode. That's all you would get. How

671
00:38:42,560 --> 00:38:47,320
Speaker 1: many discs for one episode of Ridiculous Romance? A lot

672
00:38:47,640 --> 00:38:50,279
Speaker 1: more than there are left in the world today. We

673
00:38:50,280 --> 00:38:52,560
Speaker 1: should do one just as a gag and call it

674
00:38:52,640 --> 00:39:00,440
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Roman, Ridicculous Romance. Oh my god, order your box

675
00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:05,600
Speaker 1: set of this episode today. All this toll free, number

676
00:39:05,719 --> 00:39:10,120
Speaker 1: five dollars, but it's dollars shipping and handle no for

677
00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:14,920
Speaker 1: for For an easier example, one floppy disc might fit

678
00:39:15,080 --> 00:39:21,080
Speaker 1: a small jpeg of like a board ape. It's like

679
00:39:21,080 --> 00:39:24,640
Speaker 1: like a small jpeg. So it's very impressive that can

680
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:27,680
Speaker 1: actually manage to get this game size down to fit

681
00:39:27,840 --> 00:39:31,279
Speaker 1: on this disc. And beyond the technical aspects, the game

682
00:39:31,360 --> 00:39:36,080
Speaker 1: itself was revolutionary. Video game historian Lane Nooney writes, quote,

683
00:39:36,400 --> 00:39:40,560
Speaker 1: many designers began with what they could code. ROBERTA. Williams

684
00:39:40,600 --> 00:39:43,880
Speaker 1: began by mapping out the space within which she would

685
00:39:44,239 --> 00:39:47,400
Speaker 1: string up the components of a narrative. So she's basically like,

686
00:39:47,600 --> 00:39:49,399
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of people are starting with, well,

687
00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:51,480
Speaker 1: what can I program? I'll make a game out of that,

688
00:39:51,680 --> 00:39:53,480
Speaker 1: And she's like, no, no, I'm gonna come up with

689
00:39:53,520 --> 00:39:55,560
Speaker 1: the game and then you figure out how to make

690
00:39:55,560 --> 00:39:59,920
Speaker 1: it how to program it, so totally different approach. They

691
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:02,640
Speaker 1: still the content rather than the capabilities of the computer.

692
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:06,480
Speaker 1: Her lack of knowledge about computers is what let her

693
00:40:06,520 --> 00:40:10,360
Speaker 1: break the limits of the computer's capabilities, and Ken's skills

694
00:40:10,400 --> 00:40:12,680
Speaker 1: as a programmer let him find a way to make

695
00:40:12,719 --> 00:40:16,560
Speaker 1: it work. So they're the perfect team to bring something

696
00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 1: totally new to this world of gaming and even just

697
00:40:19,680 --> 00:40:22,399
Speaker 1: to the world of tech. And you know, I love

698
00:40:22,440 --> 00:40:26,280
Speaker 1: an expert opinion on anything, but that is so true

699
00:40:26,360 --> 00:40:31,040
Speaker 1: that sometimes if you bring in a completely new, untrained eye,

700
00:40:31,400 --> 00:40:34,200
Speaker 1: they will see things or think of things that you're

701
00:40:34,280 --> 00:40:38,640
Speaker 1: expert training would not, simply because you're blinded by the

702
00:40:38,680 --> 00:40:42,200
Speaker 1: conventions of your of your field or whatever. I mean.

703
00:40:42,200 --> 00:40:44,160
Speaker 1: You even talked about that a little with Hector Burlios,

704
00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:46,000
Speaker 1: because he was like, oh, I never learned the piano,

705
00:40:46,680 --> 00:40:49,480
Speaker 1: and that's what made me less traditional than all the

706
00:40:49,520 --> 00:40:54,719
Speaker 1: other composers and my contemporaries. Whatever. So anyway, Roberta's game

707
00:40:54,840 --> 00:40:59,960
Speaker 1: was called Mystery House, and there was no animation, no sound,

708
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:03,640
Speaker 1: owned no color that would definitely not fit on one disc.

709
00:41:04,640 --> 00:41:07,400
Speaker 1: It was just black and white line drawings with the

710
00:41:07,440 --> 00:41:11,359
Speaker 1: action in the text. After a few tepid offers from

711
00:41:11,400 --> 00:41:15,480
Speaker 1: software companies, including Apple Kenna, Roberta decided to sell the

712
00:41:15,560 --> 00:41:19,399
Speaker 1: game independently. Roberto went to the grocery store and bought

713
00:41:19,440 --> 00:41:24,120
Speaker 1: a few boxes of Ziplock sandwich baggies while Ken printed

714
00:41:24,120 --> 00:41:26,520
Speaker 1: out the game's title and cover art on a half

715
00:41:26,520 --> 00:41:29,040
Speaker 1: sheet of paper, and they slipped the disc in a

716
00:41:29,040 --> 00:41:32,000
Speaker 1: baggy with the folded piece of paper, and they paid

717
00:41:32,040 --> 00:41:35,080
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars for an ad in the computer magazine

718
00:41:35,400 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 1: Micro the six five O two journal, A gripping piece

719
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:42,040
Speaker 1: of reading. I will say I had a couple of those.

720
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:44,279
Speaker 1: They were vintaged by the time I had them, but

721
00:41:44,960 --> 00:41:46,640
Speaker 1: it was pretty interesting to look at these old, like,

722
00:41:47,080 --> 00:41:50,320
Speaker 1: you know, very late seventies, early eighties, little folded magazines

723
00:41:50,320 --> 00:41:53,120
Speaker 1: about computers. Sure, I bet that was those of those.

724
00:41:53,280 --> 00:41:55,839
Speaker 1: I mean, would be cool to again now talking about

725
00:41:57,160 --> 00:42:01,839
Speaker 1: is going to change the world. And you were like

726
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:07,239
Speaker 1: laughing your ass as you dialed up a O l Yeah.

727
00:42:07,520 --> 00:42:11,680
Speaker 1: I was in high school. My friends and I were

728
00:42:11,680 --> 00:42:14,800
Speaker 1: building computers. We were saving up money for at eighty

729
00:42:14,880 --> 00:42:22,719
Speaker 1: megabyte hard drive. Eighty what word? Did you need megabytes?

730
00:42:23,120 --> 00:42:27,360
Speaker 1: Just your phone is probably like thirty two gigabytes of storage,

731
00:42:27,400 --> 00:42:31,080
Speaker 1: and a gigabyte is a thousand megabytes. So my my

732
00:42:31,200 --> 00:42:34,319
Speaker 1: hard drive. I was playing Warcraft two on its circ

733
00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:41,160
Speaker 1: Uh you know, could you could fit thousands of those

734
00:42:41,760 --> 00:42:47,800
Speaker 1: your phone? Amazing? Well, they priced this game at which

735
00:42:47,840 --> 00:42:53,160
Speaker 1: you know, it's the eighties, so that's what about? Yeah,

736
00:42:53,280 --> 00:42:55,920
Speaker 1: And they gave their home phone number. They directed customers

737
00:42:56,000 --> 00:42:58,759
Speaker 1: to make their checks out to online systems at their

738
00:42:58,800 --> 00:43:04,399
Speaker 1: home address, and the release date was May five. By

739
00:43:04,440 --> 00:43:07,480
Speaker 1: the end of the month, they had sold eleven thousand

740
00:43:07,560 --> 00:43:12,040
Speaker 1: dollars worth of copies. By June they had made twenty dollars.

741
00:43:12,120 --> 00:43:15,320
Speaker 1: In July it was thirty thou dollars. That's a hundred

742
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:19,399
Speaker 1: k today, outrageous. Can I please make that much money

743
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:22,040
Speaker 1: in a month? I mean seriously, I would take it.

744
00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:26,040
Speaker 1: And for a while Ken kept his programming job full time,

745
00:43:26,120 --> 00:43:28,879
Speaker 1: but before long it was clear they had their own

746
00:43:28,880 --> 00:43:31,359
Speaker 1: business to run here. Roberta got to work on their

747
00:43:31,440 --> 00:43:34,879
Speaker 1: next game right away, and later that same year, they

748
00:43:34,920 --> 00:43:38,400
Speaker 1: released The Wizard and the Princess, which was more inspired

749
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:41,120
Speaker 1: by Tolkien's books, like it was that kind of fantasy.

750
00:43:41,320 --> 00:43:43,600
Speaker 1: It was released in September and it sold more than

751
00:43:43,760 --> 00:43:48,680
Speaker 1: sixty thousand copies. They moved close to Roberta's parents to

752
00:43:48,840 --> 00:43:51,480
Speaker 1: a rural home near Fresno at the foot of the

753
00:43:51,520 --> 00:43:55,440
Speaker 1: Sierra Nevada Mountains, and they considered their early retirement, but

754
00:43:56,040 --> 00:43:58,800
Speaker 1: none of them were really willing to stop this money

755
00:43:58,840 --> 00:44:03,840
Speaker 1: machine that they had develop. Roberta's father became their distribution manager.

756
00:44:04,040 --> 00:44:07,040
Speaker 1: Ken's brother jumped in as their advertising manager, and on

757
00:44:07,160 --> 00:44:11,560
Speaker 1: December one, they opened their first official headquarters in Oakhurst,

758
00:44:11,960 --> 00:44:16,480
Speaker 1: and they changed the company's name to Sierra Online. It's

759
00:44:16,520 --> 00:44:19,640
Speaker 1: probably just a lot more fun work too than whatever

760
00:44:19,680 --> 00:44:22,680
Speaker 1: he was doing. Like I was thinking about early retirement

761
00:44:22,680 --> 00:44:24,640
Speaker 1: when I was bored as fun every day, but now

762
00:44:24,680 --> 00:44:28,080
Speaker 1: I'm making games. This is fun for real. And then

763
00:44:28,120 --> 00:44:31,200
Speaker 1: just for that to come from from nowhere, like just

764
00:44:31,239 --> 00:44:34,319
Speaker 1: totally unexpected, Like at the beginning of this year, we

765
00:44:34,440 --> 00:44:36,560
Speaker 1: just assumed like I'll be doing this for the next

766
00:44:36,560 --> 00:44:39,480
Speaker 1: thirty years, and then three months later, holy sh it,

767
00:44:39,520 --> 00:44:43,520
Speaker 1: we have an incredibly booming business, right right, at our

768
00:44:43,560 --> 00:44:49,839
Speaker 1: fingertips here. Very exciting, well, talk about exciting. Maybe the

769
00:44:49,880 --> 00:44:53,399
Speaker 1: coolest thing that could ever happen to someone in that

770
00:44:53,480 --> 00:44:58,480
Speaker 1: year happened to Roberta Williams. Her phone rang, she picked

771
00:44:58,480 --> 00:45:02,920
Speaker 1: it up. See are online. This is Roberta speaking on

772
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:10,120
Speaker 1: the other end, Roberta. Hi, this is Jim Henson. I

773
00:45:10,120 --> 00:45:13,560
Speaker 1: would kermit flail all over that. Poll was that kermit

774
00:45:13,880 --> 00:45:17,440
Speaker 1: it was my version And you're just saw the arms

775
00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:23,080
Speaker 1: that looked right and this sounded like fozzy drowning. Well, Hi,

776
00:45:23,640 --> 00:45:29,200
Speaker 1: I would fozy drown all over that. Oh my god,

777
00:45:29,239 --> 00:45:32,279
Speaker 1: can you imagine it's two and Jim Henson calls you

778
00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:35,640
Speaker 1: forget it. If Jim Henson called me at any time,

779
00:45:35,760 --> 00:45:39,120
Speaker 1: I mean, I know he's not alive, called me today,

780
00:45:39,680 --> 00:45:43,440
Speaker 1: very startled. But if he was alive today and called me,

781
00:45:43,480 --> 00:45:47,719
Speaker 1: I would still flip my ship. That's Jim Henson. There's

782
00:45:47,760 --> 00:45:49,880
Speaker 1: not a year that Jim Henson could call where I

783
00:45:49,880 --> 00:45:52,719
Speaker 1: would not be unbelievably amazed that he was calling. I

784
00:45:52,760 --> 00:45:56,239
Speaker 1: would just be like a lot. I wouldn't be able

785
00:45:56,280 --> 00:45:58,759
Speaker 1: to be like okay, never mind, I guess no, no, no, no,

786
00:45:58,880 --> 00:46:04,040
Speaker 1: I can speak normally. Please continue see Jim Henson had

787
00:46:04,120 --> 00:46:07,240
Speaker 1: played the Sierra Games and he was a huge fan,

788
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:10,040
Speaker 1: and he wanted to create a video game out of

789
00:46:10,080 --> 00:46:13,480
Speaker 1: a little movie he had coming out called The Dark

790
00:46:13,560 --> 00:46:19,200
Speaker 1: Crystal Awesome. Roberta was probably like, gee, I ghost, We'll

791
00:46:19,200 --> 00:46:20,840
Speaker 1: think about it. Yes, of course I want to do that.

792
00:46:22,040 --> 00:46:24,719
Speaker 1: The movie wasn't even done being filmed yet, so he

793
00:46:24,760 --> 00:46:28,640
Speaker 1: sent her a script. Yeah you know that that'sn't like

794
00:46:28,640 --> 00:46:32,680
Speaker 1: a glass case somewhere, and he invited her to attend

795
00:46:32,719 --> 00:46:35,880
Speaker 1: the movie premiere in December of eighty two in Los Angeles.

796
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:40,760
Speaker 1: The game was released in three. It was also text based,

797
00:46:40,880 --> 00:46:44,560
Speaker 1: but the accompanying images were more detailed and artistic. They

798
00:46:44,600 --> 00:46:47,960
Speaker 1: had a few colors mixed right, you know, real high tech,

799
00:46:48,960 --> 00:46:51,839
Speaker 1: very rudimentary graphics, but still a big step up from

800
00:46:51,880 --> 00:46:56,160
Speaker 1: Mystery House and Wizard in the Princess totally. But two

801
00:46:56,360 --> 00:46:59,879
Speaker 1: was an equally exciting and tragic year for the will

802
00:47:00,000 --> 00:47:04,239
Speaker 1: ames Is. Apple co founder Steve Wozniak was hosting a

803
00:47:04,360 --> 00:47:07,520
Speaker 1: music festival in September and invited Ken and Roberta to

804
00:47:07,600 --> 00:47:10,960
Speaker 1: come out cool. They dropped their kids off at a

805
00:47:10,960 --> 00:47:15,280
Speaker 1: sitter and went to this probably amazing party. But while

806
00:47:15,360 --> 00:47:19,799
Speaker 1: they were there, their house burned down. No one was hurt,

807
00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:22,200
Speaker 1: but a lot was lost and they had to shift

808
00:47:22,280 --> 00:47:25,239
Speaker 1: to working out of the office headquarters. That's a lot

809
00:47:25,280 --> 00:47:28,239
Speaker 1: like Frederick Douglas in their house burned down. He lost

810
00:47:28,320 --> 00:47:32,120
Speaker 1: the entire, only complete archive of the north Star Look

811
00:47:32,200 --> 00:47:35,200
Speaker 1: that he wrote. Everybody take note, if you're gonna be

812
00:47:35,360 --> 00:47:38,839
Speaker 1: a famous historical person, please put your ship in a

813
00:47:38,840 --> 00:47:42,319
Speaker 1: fire safe box or just in case you think you

814
00:47:42,400 --> 00:47:47,799
Speaker 1: might bury it underground in your backyard. Something I think

815
00:47:47,800 --> 00:47:50,560
Speaker 1: about that. Steve Wozniak Party two also because of Ready

816
00:47:50,560 --> 00:47:54,960
Speaker 1: Player one, the character Ogdenmorrow was kind of based on him,

817
00:47:55,000 --> 00:47:57,520
Speaker 1: and I remember inside the what do they call it

818
00:47:57,960 --> 00:48:00,200
Speaker 1: the Oasis, he had that DJ party or he was

819
00:48:00,239 --> 00:48:03,120
Speaker 1: like the floating wizard rolling around, and I guess Steve

820
00:48:03,120 --> 00:48:06,200
Speaker 1: Bosniak was a party dude. I have to say. I

821
00:48:06,239 --> 00:48:09,520
Speaker 1: think that's why I'm so derisive of metaverse is because

822
00:48:09,560 --> 00:48:12,160
Speaker 1: I have this idea of what it should look like,

823
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:14,400
Speaker 1: and it's that it's like a wizard and you can

824
00:48:14,520 --> 00:48:17,640
Speaker 1: like levitate and dance in the mid air and all

825
00:48:17,640 --> 00:48:21,120
Speaker 1: this stuff instead of like these weird tin man looking

826
00:48:21,600 --> 00:48:24,759
Speaker 1: oil had people maybe one day because you know, we

827
00:48:24,800 --> 00:48:26,800
Speaker 1: had to have we had to have mystery house before

828
00:48:26,840 --> 00:48:29,680
Speaker 1: we could have Elden Ring. So it's true, I guess

829
00:48:29,719 --> 00:48:32,560
Speaker 1: I should get in on the ground floor. Let me

830
00:48:32,600 --> 00:48:37,719
Speaker 1: go ahead and get some crypto going, all right. But

831
00:48:38,520 --> 00:48:41,200
Speaker 1: regardless of the fire, maybe even because of the fire,

832
00:48:42,040 --> 00:48:44,680
Speaker 1: a new idea rose out of this tragedy that was

833
00:48:44,680 --> 00:48:49,600
Speaker 1: gonna once again revolutionize gaming forever, one that would certainly,

834
00:48:49,760 --> 00:48:52,759
Speaker 1: as I've said, change my life and set me on

835
00:48:52,800 --> 00:48:56,840
Speaker 1: a course for probably where we are today. It was

836
00:48:56,880 --> 00:49:00,120
Speaker 1: all about a night named Sir Graham and his king

837
00:49:00,680 --> 00:49:03,839
Speaker 1: and a quest for three treasures. And we will go

838
00:49:03,960 --> 00:49:12,040
Speaker 1: on that adventure right after this. Welcome back to the Quest. Okay,

839
00:49:12,080 --> 00:49:15,680
Speaker 1: So IBM, big computer company of the day. We don't

840
00:49:15,719 --> 00:49:18,399
Speaker 1: hear their name batting around anymore like we used to. Um,

841
00:49:18,440 --> 00:49:22,600
Speaker 1: But IBM had a new computer coming out in Ish

842
00:49:23,160 --> 00:49:26,560
Speaker 1: and it had a whopping two hundred and fifty six

843
00:49:26,640 --> 00:49:30,759
Speaker 1: kilobytes of memory that I'm just gonna throw. I love

844
00:49:30,800 --> 00:49:34,680
Speaker 1: these comparisons, they're so pointless to make. But but just

845
00:49:34,800 --> 00:49:40,040
Speaker 1: for reference, the PlayStation five has sixteen gigabytes of memory

846
00:49:40,400 --> 00:49:44,319
Speaker 1: or sixteen million kilobytes, so compared that to the two

847
00:49:44,440 --> 00:49:48,200
Speaker 1: fifty six back in the days, We've come a long way,

848
00:49:49,080 --> 00:49:53,320
Speaker 1: but tech tech advances exponentially, so it doesn't just double

849
00:49:53,360 --> 00:49:55,799
Speaker 1: every year like doubles and then quadruples and then goes

850
00:49:55,840 --> 00:49:58,759
Speaker 1: time sixteen. It's anyway, that's a whole other thing. It's

851
00:49:58,760 --> 00:50:02,440
Speaker 1: called Moore's Law and it's fascinating, So okay, it's nine

852
00:50:02,640 --> 00:50:06,759
Speaker 1: eight three. IBM reached out to Sierra Online and was like, hey,

853
00:50:06,960 --> 00:50:09,320
Speaker 1: you guys need to write a game that's gonna show

854
00:50:09,320 --> 00:50:15,399
Speaker 1: everybody the absolute power of this beastly machine we're putting out,

855
00:50:16,320 --> 00:50:20,479
Speaker 1: and they really wanted something highly replayable, but Roberta knew

856
00:50:20,520 --> 00:50:23,200
Speaker 1: that her stories were mysteries, so they were kind of

857
00:50:23,239 --> 00:50:27,279
Speaker 1: inherently not replayable, like once you knew, you knew. But

858
00:50:27,680 --> 00:50:30,200
Speaker 1: with IBM back in the project, with a bunch of

859
00:50:30,200 --> 00:50:32,960
Speaker 1: money at their bags, a bunch of new technology, the

860
00:50:33,000 --> 00:50:37,000
Speaker 1: couple was able to put out something revolutionary together anyway.

861
00:50:37,080 --> 00:50:41,000
Speaker 1: It was a fully animated graphic game that allowed players

862
00:50:41,320 --> 00:50:46,440
Speaker 1: to move their character through a three dimensional world, absolutely

863
00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:52,880
Speaker 1: unheard of at the time, and they released King's Quest.

864
00:50:54,560 --> 00:50:57,600
Speaker 1: This game, of course, was a massive hit. If you

865
00:50:57,680 --> 00:51:00,440
Speaker 1: haven't played it, dig it up you can find it

866
00:51:00,719 --> 00:51:03,359
Speaker 1: and it's really I know, the graphics are obviously like

867
00:51:04,040 --> 00:51:10,560
Speaker 1: forty oh god, forty years old, but they are very pixels. Yeah,

868
00:51:10,600 --> 00:51:12,640
Speaker 1: but it's fun and you'd literally like, you know, your

869
00:51:12,680 --> 00:51:14,520
Speaker 1: little this little dude, and you use the air keys

870
00:51:14,560 --> 00:51:17,120
Speaker 1: to walk up, down, left, right, you go from screen

871
00:51:17,160 --> 00:51:19,680
Speaker 1: to screen, You pick up items, you use them to

872
00:51:19,719 --> 00:51:22,640
Speaker 1: solve a little puzzles as you're going get your way

873
00:51:22,640 --> 00:51:25,759
Speaker 1: through the story. And it's so good. It's pretty too,

874
00:51:25,960 --> 00:51:30,000
Speaker 1: like the glass and all the trees and the lakes

875
00:51:30,040 --> 00:51:32,600
Speaker 1: and rivers. Yeah, they all look pretty cute. Really. The

876
00:51:32,680 --> 00:51:35,799
Speaker 1: artworks impressive, and um Ken talked about that at one point.

877
00:51:35,880 --> 00:51:38,920
Speaker 1: He said Roberto was never really an artist, so she

878
00:51:39,120 --> 00:51:42,000
Speaker 1: was really happy to be able to hire on artists

879
00:51:42,080 --> 00:51:44,400
Speaker 1: once they started making these games and have some real money.

880
00:51:44,760 --> 00:51:47,279
Speaker 1: And the artwork is gorgeous. I mean, if you can appreciate,

881
00:51:47,719 --> 00:51:50,560
Speaker 1: you know, that kind of old computer art, they do

882
00:51:50,640 --> 00:51:53,560
Speaker 1: really impressive things with it. And the music. The music

883
00:51:53,640 --> 00:51:55,960
Speaker 1: is so good too. So it's just beeps in a computer,

884
00:51:56,120 --> 00:51:59,240
Speaker 1: but you can hear it's like the orchestra just fills

885
00:51:59,239 --> 00:52:03,839
Speaker 1: into your head, right, and it's wonderful. So this game

886
00:52:03,880 --> 00:52:06,080
Speaker 1: comes out and by the end of that year, the

887
00:52:06,080 --> 00:52:11,799
Speaker 1: company's total sales had hit ten million dollars, making them

888
00:52:12,080 --> 00:52:15,440
Speaker 1: one of the largest independent software companies in the world.

889
00:52:16,719 --> 00:52:19,439
Speaker 1: The next year, they got a call from another little

890
00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:23,359
Speaker 1: startup company called Walt Disney Pictures, and they asked them

891
00:52:23,360 --> 00:52:26,480
Speaker 1: to help them develop three educational computer games, and in

892
00:52:27,320 --> 00:52:32,040
Speaker 1: four Sierra released Mickey's Space Adventure, which was the first

893
00:52:32,160 --> 00:52:35,360
Speaker 1: video game to feature Mickey Mouse. So again, all your

894
00:52:35,440 --> 00:52:40,239
Speaker 1: Kingdom Hearts players out there, it started here. That's right.

895
00:52:40,920 --> 00:52:43,200
Speaker 1: You would not have Kingdom Hearts if it wasn't for

896
00:52:43,360 --> 00:52:48,520
Speaker 1: Mickey's Space Adventure. So Ken was now full time managing

897
00:52:48,600 --> 00:52:52,000
Speaker 1: Sierra Online. To take that old boss who said he

898
00:52:52,040 --> 00:52:55,440
Speaker 1: had no talent from management. Almost wish you'd send him

899
00:52:55,440 --> 00:52:57,360
Speaker 1: a floppy disk. But when he put it in, it

900
00:52:57,440 --> 00:53:03,440
Speaker 1: just said like a big middle finger finger with some

901
00:53:03,520 --> 00:53:06,520
Speaker 1: gorgeous music. But yeah, it was like, my company's worth

902
00:53:06,520 --> 00:53:10,360
Speaker 1: ten million dollars, you dick. That's his follow up, Floppy

903
00:53:10,360 --> 00:53:14,000
Speaker 1: dosk too much for one kind of sixteen floppy disk

904
00:53:14,120 --> 00:53:17,799
Speaker 1: set insult. He had to put them in separately to

905
00:53:17,880 --> 00:53:21,439
Speaker 1: get the whole thing. Roberto was developing games with their

906
00:53:21,440 --> 00:53:26,000
Speaker 1: growing and talented staff, including Mixed Up Mother Goose and

907
00:53:26,120 --> 00:53:30,360
Speaker 1: the tie in game for Disney's The Black Cauldron. Parent.

908
00:53:30,480 --> 00:53:34,960
Speaker 1: Drum writes in I On Design magazine that at its start,

909
00:53:35,320 --> 00:53:40,359
Speaker 1: Sierra was quote a rag tag crew of energetic misfits,

910
00:53:41,239 --> 00:53:45,359
Speaker 1: some of my favorite kinds of cruise. Definitely being in

911
00:53:45,360 --> 00:53:47,960
Speaker 1: Oakland meant that they didn't have access to the best

912
00:53:48,080 --> 00:53:52,239
Speaker 1: programmers in their field. Right. Why is that? Were they

913
00:53:52,280 --> 00:53:55,920
Speaker 1: like in Silicon Valley? Right? Because, yeah, you know, Lucas

914
00:53:56,000 --> 00:53:58,520
Speaker 1: Arts was up in San Francisco. You know, we talked

915
00:53:58,560 --> 00:54:01,040
Speaker 1: about Merles County. You know, there's a bunch of other

916
00:54:01,080 --> 00:54:03,040
Speaker 1: software companies are popping up at the time, and yeah,

917
00:54:03,080 --> 00:54:06,719
Speaker 1: they sort of more centralized around San Francisco and the

918
00:54:06,800 --> 00:54:09,239
Speaker 1: value up there. So if you wanted to be a programmer,

919
00:54:09,280 --> 00:54:12,160
Speaker 1: you weren't going to move to this little town where

920
00:54:12,200 --> 00:54:14,399
Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of action happening. So a lot

921
00:54:14,400 --> 00:54:17,440
Speaker 1: of the best names are the quotes, best talent of

922
00:54:17,480 --> 00:54:19,879
Speaker 1: the day were willing to even move out there, even

923
00:54:19,920 --> 00:54:24,840
Speaker 1: if they were offered a job. Okay, So Sierra hired

924
00:54:24,960 --> 00:54:29,080
Speaker 1: quote literally anyone who could program or pick up a

925
00:54:29,120 --> 00:54:34,080
Speaker 1: phone or tape up a box. But of course, computer

926
00:54:34,120 --> 00:54:38,839
Speaker 1: science was a male dominated industry even then, despite many

927
00:54:38,880 --> 00:54:44,920
Speaker 1: women being very skilled. Weird how that happens? So wild

928
00:54:45,000 --> 00:54:48,880
Speaker 1: companies like LucasArts and Infocom had few women on staff

929
00:54:48,960 --> 00:54:53,880
Speaker 1: and fewer still in upper level positions. Sierra Quote had

930
00:54:54,000 --> 00:54:58,879
Speaker 1: a veritable army of women, including influential programmers and game

931
00:54:58,920 --> 00:55:03,799
Speaker 1: designers like Jane Jensen, Christie Marks, Lora Le Shannon, and

932
00:55:04,080 --> 00:55:07,760
Speaker 1: Laurie Anne Cole. And those women are amazing the minds

933
00:55:07,760 --> 00:55:11,839
Speaker 1: behind games like Gabriel Night, Quest for Glory, Phantasmagoria, all

934
00:55:11,880 --> 00:55:14,920
Speaker 1: things like this, um, super cool people in their day.

935
00:55:14,960 --> 00:55:17,920
Speaker 1: And yeah, it just goes to show like these women

936
00:55:17,960 --> 00:55:20,239
Speaker 1: were probably more talented than some of the men who

937
00:55:20,239 --> 00:55:22,600
Speaker 1: were getting hired by Lucas Arts, but they just weren't

938
00:55:22,600 --> 00:55:25,080
Speaker 1: getting hired because they were women. So Sierra was like,

939
00:55:25,120 --> 00:55:28,279
Speaker 1: we'll take you. Oh, look surprised because we were willing

940
00:55:28,280 --> 00:55:31,239
Speaker 1: to hire these women. We have the best programmers. Yeah,

941
00:55:31,280 --> 00:55:35,160
Speaker 1: we have amazing games, cool imagination, and buddies very motivated

942
00:55:35,200 --> 00:55:37,480
Speaker 1: to do their best work. I wonder where that comes from.

943
00:55:37,560 --> 00:55:46,280
Speaker 1: Se Feminism benefits everyone. Hello, Hello, Hello. So Sierra continued

944
00:55:46,320 --> 00:55:52,720
Speaker 1: to expand, including eight total King's Quest games and okay,

945
00:55:53,239 --> 00:55:55,759
Speaker 1: all right, sorry, just give me a second here. King's

946
00:55:55,840 --> 00:55:59,440
Speaker 1: Quest two pretty straightforward story of King Graham rescuing a

947
00:55:59,480 --> 00:56:02,040
Speaker 1: Princess felinists from a tower and making her his queen,

948
00:56:02,120 --> 00:56:04,360
Speaker 1: like you know, very standard fairy tale kind of stuff,

949
00:56:04,840 --> 00:56:07,680
Speaker 1: very cool stuff, whole magical door floating in the middle

950
00:56:07,680 --> 00:56:10,560
Speaker 1: of nowhere. There's a dolphin. Uh, there's some great stuff

951
00:56:10,560 --> 00:56:13,600
Speaker 1: in King's Quest Batman. Uh, there's a whole Batman think

952
00:56:14,800 --> 00:56:17,560
Speaker 1: they pulled a lot of other stories and pop culture

953
00:56:17,560 --> 00:56:22,440
Speaker 1: references into their games. Sometime Batman, where's the Batman? King's

954
00:56:22,520 --> 00:56:27,160
Speaker 1: Quest crossovers in Quest too. I'm telling you well in

955
00:56:27,200 --> 00:56:33,239
Speaker 1: Batman and the dc U, King's Quest three broke the

956
00:56:33,239 --> 00:56:35,919
Speaker 1: storytelling mold and that shifted to a whole new time

957
00:56:35,920 --> 00:56:39,040
Speaker 1: and place. And then King's Quest four, The Perils of

958
00:56:39,120 --> 00:56:42,320
Speaker 1: rose Ella, shifted the protagonist to King Graham's daughter, the

959
00:56:42,360 --> 00:56:44,919
Speaker 1: Princess Rosella, who set out on an adventure to save

960
00:56:44,920 --> 00:56:47,600
Speaker 1: her father from the help of a powerful fairy. And

961
00:56:47,719 --> 00:56:52,920
Speaker 1: this was the first major adventure game with a female heroin.

962
00:56:53,560 --> 00:56:56,160
Speaker 1: And it's one of the best games ever made. Side note,

963
00:56:56,480 --> 00:56:59,640
Speaker 1: it's very good and you've got to play it. And

964
00:56:59,640 --> 00:57:01,480
Speaker 1: then king Quest five goes back to King Graham, and

965
00:57:01,520 --> 00:57:03,160
Speaker 1: the game's kind of goofy, and it's got a lot

966
00:57:03,160 --> 00:57:05,160
Speaker 1: of memes that have come out of it. There's a

967
00:57:05,160 --> 00:57:08,160
Speaker 1: whole wizard Society storyline that's super dope. I think King's

968
00:57:08,200 --> 00:57:10,120
Speaker 1: Quest six is one of the best fantasies ever told,

969
00:57:10,120 --> 00:57:11,960
Speaker 1: with the most delightful and wonderful characters, and they throw

970
00:57:11,960 --> 00:57:13,839
Speaker 1: references to classic fairy tales all the time, and it's

971
00:57:13,840 --> 00:57:15,879
Speaker 1: just completely immerses you in this world. And then King's

972
00:57:15,960 --> 00:57:17,880
Speaker 1: Quest seven is about the Queen and the Princess again,

973
00:57:17,880 --> 00:57:19,720
Speaker 1: you get to choose between the two protagonists and it's

974
00:57:19,720 --> 00:57:21,200
Speaker 1: just so good. And all I'm saying is, let me

975
00:57:21,240 --> 00:57:25,040
Speaker 1: make this TV show. I'm saying, Kenna Roberta, if you're listening,

976
00:57:25,120 --> 00:57:28,400
Speaker 1: call me. We're gonna we'll figure it out. We're gonna

977
00:57:28,440 --> 00:57:31,080
Speaker 1: get the rights, we're gonna go to HBO, and we're

978
00:57:31,080 --> 00:57:34,919
Speaker 1: gonna make the next Game of Thrones, but better. He's

979
00:57:35,200 --> 00:57:37,720
Speaker 1: very serious. I am not kidding. I have got it

980
00:57:37,840 --> 00:57:40,680
Speaker 1: sketched out. I know what I'm doing, and I'm ready

981
00:57:40,760 --> 00:57:44,320
Speaker 1: to go. College game is its own season I've seen

982
00:57:44,520 --> 00:57:46,280
Speaker 1: not even there's I'm not gonna give it all the way,

983
00:57:46,320 --> 00:57:47,760
Speaker 1: but there's some overlap because you have to play with

984
00:57:47,800 --> 00:57:50,480
Speaker 1: the timelines a little bit. It's gonna be very good.

985
00:57:50,520 --> 00:57:59,120
Speaker 1: Just call me, Okay, I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm picturing

986
00:57:59,160 --> 00:58:03,680
Speaker 1: the Charlie day me where Yarn, that's you. It is

987
00:58:03,840 --> 00:58:08,800
Speaker 1: basically Quest, but it's better than that, but better so

988
00:58:08,880 --> 00:58:12,440
Speaker 1: with King's Quest four. Roberta was worried about releasing a

989
00:58:12,480 --> 00:58:16,360
Speaker 1: female heroin with Rosella, she thought guys would write in

990
00:58:16,400 --> 00:58:19,200
Speaker 1: and say, I don't want to be a girl. I

991
00:58:19,240 --> 00:58:21,640
Speaker 1: don't know what made her be worried about that. It

992
00:58:21,680 --> 00:58:23,840
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like something a lot of guys that like

993
00:58:24,000 --> 00:58:28,400
Speaker 1: games do, but she said it was actually never really

994
00:58:28,440 --> 00:58:33,040
Speaker 1: an issue. Fan Mail poured in, largely from women who

995
00:58:33,240 --> 00:58:38,280
Speaker 1: Sierra estimated to be of their audience base, and Drum

996
00:58:38,400 --> 00:58:42,320
Speaker 1: shares one of these letters in her article, quote, Dear Sierra,

997
00:58:42,680 --> 00:58:45,760
Speaker 1: this is a love letter, pure and simple. I do

998
00:58:45,880 --> 00:58:48,880
Speaker 1: not fit the profile for adventure gamers. I'm a forty

999
00:58:48,880 --> 00:58:50,760
Speaker 1: five year old woman who works for L L Bean

1000
00:58:51,200 --> 00:58:55,000
Speaker 1: and as a freelance writer. I love these games. I

1001
00:58:55,040 --> 00:58:58,840
Speaker 1: am addicted. There seems to be no known cure. I

1002
00:58:58,880 --> 00:59:04,280
Speaker 1: hope no one ever mines one. Please continue to create forever, Forever, yours,

1003
00:59:04,600 --> 00:59:09,240
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Hood and wherever you are, Elizabeth, right into HBO

1004
00:59:09,280 --> 00:59:13,959
Speaker 1: and ask for Eli show because you know it's true,

1005
00:59:13,960 --> 00:59:16,360
Speaker 1: and that that addictive quality. It was the same thing

1006
00:59:16,440 --> 00:59:18,680
Speaker 1: Roberto was talking about, and she just couldn't step away.

1007
00:59:18,680 --> 00:59:20,880
Speaker 1: And I think that's you get it in books, you

1008
00:59:20,960 --> 00:59:22,840
Speaker 1: get it in TV. We see it a lot in

1009
00:59:22,880 --> 00:59:25,160
Speaker 1: TV now, where's just like I have to know what

1010
00:59:25,240 --> 00:59:28,160
Speaker 1: happens next. Yeah. Well, it's such a great thing about

1011
00:59:28,160 --> 00:59:30,880
Speaker 1: brain teasers because it literally teases your brain even when

1012
00:59:30,920 --> 00:59:33,240
Speaker 1: you're not playing. You're just like, oh, who do we

1013
00:59:33,400 --> 00:59:35,240
Speaker 1: do that? Well? And I was gonna say, and the

1014
00:59:35,280 --> 00:59:38,240
Speaker 1: fact that they're not just puzzles, but there's a story

1015
00:59:38,320 --> 00:59:40,760
Speaker 1: with them. You want to watch it unfold and you

1016
00:59:40,800 --> 00:59:42,520
Speaker 1: have a hard time stepping away from that. And I

1017
00:59:42,560 --> 00:59:45,080
Speaker 1: think that also is what a lot of success with

1018
00:59:45,160 --> 00:59:48,960
Speaker 1: these games owes itself too, is that kind of addictive nature.

1019
00:59:49,000 --> 00:59:51,560
Speaker 1: I know they exploit that in games now, like literally

1020
00:59:51,560 --> 00:59:54,600
Speaker 1: they have psychologists working for game companies saying, how do

1021
00:59:54,640 --> 00:59:57,479
Speaker 1: we get people not be able to put it down? So,

1022
00:59:57,800 --> 00:59:59,960
Speaker 1: you know, trying to stay on the romance topic here,

1023
01:00:00,040 --> 01:00:02,440
Speaker 1: not get too suction at the detailed video game history

1024
01:00:02,480 --> 01:00:05,320
Speaker 1: of it all. Roberta and Ken were just one of

1025
01:00:05,360 --> 01:00:08,640
Speaker 1: the ultimate power couples in the gaming industry and the

1026
01:00:08,680 --> 01:00:12,920
Speaker 1: tech world. So they came out with this controversial game, Phantasmagoria,

1027
01:00:13,200 --> 01:00:16,800
Speaker 1: and it made twelve million dollars. It was continuing to

1028
01:00:16,800 --> 01:00:19,280
Speaker 1: push the envelope as they did. It was the first

1029
01:00:19,320 --> 01:00:22,560
Speaker 1: game to include live action video. Obviously this was a

1030
01:00:22,680 --> 01:00:28,240
Speaker 1: CD ROM game, but it was literally grainy video footage

1031
01:00:28,280 --> 01:00:30,400
Speaker 1: of this woman. You know, you would tell her where

1032
01:00:30,400 --> 01:00:32,440
Speaker 1: to walk, and they just filmed her turning in every

1033
01:00:32,440 --> 01:00:35,480
Speaker 1: direction you showed. You showed me some and they do

1034
01:00:35,560 --> 01:00:38,640
Speaker 1: look a little weird because I mean you have to

1035
01:00:38,680 --> 01:00:42,440
Speaker 1: animate her body, and it's very weird, like old, very

1036
01:00:42,520 --> 01:00:47,960
Speaker 1: kind of um not spotty, but jumpy. I guess CD

1037
01:00:48,120 --> 01:00:51,200
Speaker 1: I um, but I was just thinking about the acting

1038
01:00:51,240 --> 01:00:54,880
Speaker 1: gig for this person. Okay, now close the car door

1039
01:00:55,320 --> 01:00:58,360
Speaker 1: and turn your entire body at the same time, and

1040
01:00:58,400 --> 01:01:01,280
Speaker 1: then just stand there with your hands by your side

1041
01:01:01,920 --> 01:01:06,880
Speaker 1: while they make a decision. Okay, now walk forward. You know,

1042
01:01:07,600 --> 01:01:10,560
Speaker 1: just a weird job, very weird stuff. It's a little

1043
01:01:10,600 --> 01:01:13,240
Speaker 1: uncanny on Canny Valley. I gets not really, but it

1044
01:01:13,280 --> 01:01:15,200
Speaker 1: just looks weird, like like that's not what I want.

1045
01:01:15,240 --> 01:01:21,200
Speaker 1: I wanted all animated or nothing animated. It's a weird combo.

1046
01:01:21,600 --> 01:01:24,200
Speaker 1: This game was also very controversial because it had like

1047
01:01:24,400 --> 01:01:26,680
Speaker 1: a rape scene in it and a lot of really

1048
01:01:26,720 --> 01:01:29,480
Speaker 1: bad violence. Um. I never played it all the way through,

1049
01:01:29,600 --> 01:01:33,200
Speaker 1: but yeah, at this murder and all kinds of stuff. Um,

1050
01:01:33,240 --> 01:01:37,760
Speaker 1: but it did sell a lot, sure, and Drum points

1051
01:01:37,760 --> 01:01:40,720
Speaker 1: out in her article that these games were not just

1052
01:01:40,920 --> 01:01:44,040
Speaker 1: ROBERTA and Ken like. We need to remember that these

1053
01:01:44,040 --> 01:01:48,600
Speaker 1: games took teams and teams of people, and the stresses

1054
01:01:48,600 --> 01:01:53,760
Speaker 1: of creating games was incredibly difficult. She writes that quote. Generally,

1055
01:01:53,840 --> 01:01:56,080
Speaker 1: many employees recount their time at Skara as some of

1056
01:01:56,080 --> 01:01:58,440
Speaker 1: the most fun they've had in their careers, but they

1057
01:01:58,480 --> 01:02:02,919
Speaker 1: also report being under tummendous, debilitating stress, and some people

1058
01:02:02,960 --> 01:02:05,600
Speaker 1: couldn't even talk about their experiences later on because it

1059
01:02:05,640 --> 01:02:08,320
Speaker 1: was just too much to think about. Yeah, and that

1060
01:02:08,480 --> 01:02:10,720
Speaker 1: kind of still a thing. So that's a bigger thing,

1061
01:02:10,800 --> 01:02:13,600
Speaker 1: I think today than ever you hear about deadlines being pushed,

1062
01:02:13,760 --> 01:02:16,440
Speaker 1: especially the way game releases now are like movie releases,

1063
01:02:16,480 --> 01:02:18,520
Speaker 1: Like they set a date and they give you a

1064
01:02:18,560 --> 01:02:21,960
Speaker 1: trailer months beforehand, and they're like get ready, alight. Saying

1065
01:02:21,960 --> 01:02:26,280
Speaker 1: about Cyberpunk seventy seven whatever that is that they came

1066
01:02:26,320 --> 01:02:29,520
Speaker 1: out probably too early, and immediately people were like, oh it.

1067
01:02:29,640 --> 01:02:32,680
Speaker 1: JOSEPHS glitch and it looks weird and it's not cool

1068
01:02:32,920 --> 01:02:34,920
Speaker 1: and whatever, and I think it's fine now, but again,

1069
01:02:34,960 --> 01:02:38,000
Speaker 1: it was like you you had to sort of really

1070
01:02:38,080 --> 01:02:42,280
Speaker 1: piss off your whole buyer base first, and it's an

1071
01:02:42,320 --> 01:02:45,080
Speaker 1: apologize later, like a better version. And that's the thing.

1072
01:02:45,120 --> 01:02:49,560
Speaker 1: It's a mix of corporate overpromising and trying to sell

1073
01:02:49,680 --> 01:02:53,000
Speaker 1: things that don't exist, that that they don't know will exist,

1074
01:02:53,520 --> 01:02:57,200
Speaker 1: and a mix of consumers being assholes and like just

1075
01:02:57,320 --> 01:02:59,800
Speaker 1: freaking out because something wasn't exactly what I thought it

1076
01:02:59,840 --> 01:03:01,520
Speaker 1: was gonna be. It's like those people who tried to

1077
01:03:01,600 --> 01:03:04,640
Speaker 1: sue that movie because Anna to Armis was in the

1078
01:03:04,680 --> 01:03:07,600
Speaker 1: trailer but her scenes got cut and they went and

1079
01:03:07,600 --> 01:03:10,640
Speaker 1: saw the movie and sued for false advertising. And I'm like,

1080
01:03:10,880 --> 01:03:14,439
Speaker 1: shut up. If you only went to that movie because

1081
01:03:14,440 --> 01:03:16,720
Speaker 1: you saw Anna to Armis for two seconds in the trailer,

1082
01:03:16,760 --> 01:03:19,360
Speaker 1: then you deserve to lose your sixteen bucks or whatever.

1083
01:03:19,960 --> 01:03:22,600
Speaker 1: Like watch the movie, right, and then just go watch

1084
01:03:22,640 --> 01:03:26,760
Speaker 1: Knives Out. You'll see a bunch of her great So

1085
01:03:26,800 --> 01:03:31,160
Speaker 1: by the fall of Sierra Online had five hundred and

1086
01:03:31,200 --> 01:03:35,480
Speaker 1: forty employees and fifty million dollars in sales and was

1087
01:03:35,600 --> 01:03:39,400
Speaker 1: still growing. Ken Williams said in a later interview that

1088
01:03:39,440 --> 01:03:45,160
Speaker 1: between n and NIX their revenue tripled, So yeah, a

1089
01:03:45,160 --> 01:03:47,960
Speaker 1: lot more than this uh little trip or some new

1090
01:03:48,000 --> 01:03:52,280
Speaker 1: furniture that they had originally made their goal. And then

1091
01:03:52,320 --> 01:03:58,160
Speaker 1: on February Walter Forbes said that his company see You

1092
01:03:58,200 --> 01:04:04,640
Speaker 1: see International or Internet, I wanted to buy Sierra Online

1093
01:04:04,800 --> 01:04:09,000
Speaker 1: for one point five billion dollars. Holy sh it in

1094
01:04:09,040 --> 01:04:13,720
Speaker 1: the nineties to billions of dollars, like unthinkable money. It's

1095
01:04:13,800 --> 01:04:17,240
Speaker 1: in the sane price. It was totally unexpected. But Ken said,

1096
01:04:17,360 --> 01:04:21,480
Speaker 1: quote as CEO, I had a fiscal duty to shareholders

1097
01:04:21,560 --> 01:04:25,720
Speaker 1: to take the deal. So Forbes had this big idea,

1098
01:04:25,840 --> 01:04:29,680
Speaker 1: He's going to bring together all these big old companies,

1099
01:04:29,680 --> 01:04:34,720
Speaker 1: including Lucas Arts, broder Bund, Davidson and Associates, which owned

1100
01:04:34,800 --> 01:04:38,640
Speaker 1: Blizzard Entertainment and also Sierra Online. He was basically going

1101
01:04:38,720 --> 01:04:44,920
Speaker 1: to like create a big game Monopoly Umbrella broder Bund.

1102
01:04:45,200 --> 01:04:47,360
Speaker 1: Broder Bund, by the way, the company that made Missed,

1103
01:04:48,160 --> 01:04:52,360
Speaker 1: also an incredible games. Well, of course the Lucas Arts

1104
01:04:52,360 --> 01:04:55,600
Speaker 1: deal fell through. Of course it did by Lucas Arts

1105
01:04:55,680 --> 01:05:00,280
Speaker 1: unless you're Disney, and even then you wait for pretty

1106
01:05:00,320 --> 01:05:02,960
Speaker 1: years to do it. For George to get tired. Yeah, okay,

1107
01:05:03,200 --> 01:05:06,240
Speaker 1: remember our Marcia and George Lucas episode. And I had

1108
01:05:06,280 --> 01:05:08,320
Speaker 1: a bit of a control problem when he was younger,

1109
01:05:08,360 --> 01:05:14,480
Speaker 1: And yeah, he was not interested. And Sierra's software development

1110
01:05:14,560 --> 01:05:19,320
Speaker 1: got very little focus and attention. Bob Davidson became CEO

1111
01:05:19,440 --> 01:05:23,880
Speaker 1: for the whole publishing body, and he had like a stiff, dated,

1112
01:05:24,080 --> 01:05:28,760
Speaker 1: conservative management style that really clashed with Ken's bold, brash innovation.

1113
01:05:29,520 --> 01:05:32,480
Speaker 1: So Sierra became more of a publishing platform than a

1114
01:05:32,560 --> 01:05:36,080
Speaker 1: development studio. And not for nothing, they did publish the

1115
01:05:36,160 --> 01:05:39,440
Speaker 1: Valve game Half Life, which is awesome. Okay, I've heard

1116
01:05:39,480 --> 01:05:41,560
Speaker 1: that one. People love half games out there. It's a

1117
01:05:41,560 --> 01:05:43,840
Speaker 1: great game. I mean, Half Life to one of the

1118
01:05:43,840 --> 01:05:45,680
Speaker 1: best games of all time. But half Life is great.

1119
01:05:45,840 --> 01:05:47,960
Speaker 1: Isn't there a big joke about Half Life Freeze coming

1120
01:05:47,960 --> 01:05:51,920
Speaker 1: out any day now? Half Life to half Life three

1121
01:05:51,960 --> 01:05:55,440
Speaker 1: will come out as soon as cars fly, as soon

1122
01:05:55,480 --> 01:05:58,600
Speaker 1: as pigs fly, all these things, that's when we'll see

1123
01:05:58,640 --> 01:06:02,520
Speaker 1: Half Life three. Um. Anyway, Ken left the company in

1124
01:06:04,080 --> 01:06:08,120
Speaker 1: and Roberta stayed with Sierra until when King's Quest eight,

1125
01:06:08,240 --> 01:06:10,840
Speaker 1: the final game, Mask of Eternity, came out. Just like

1126
01:06:10,880 --> 01:06:13,000
Speaker 1: a first person game, they were trying. They're always trying

1127
01:06:13,040 --> 01:06:15,360
Speaker 1: something new, and this was like a first person action game.

1128
01:06:15,400 --> 01:06:17,560
Speaker 1: It's pretty fun. It's not as replayable as the others

1129
01:06:18,200 --> 01:06:23,000
Speaker 1: um But soon after that, a massive accounting fraud at

1130
01:06:23,080 --> 01:06:27,520
Speaker 1: COUC was uncovered and Walter Forbes was later convicted of

1131
01:06:27,600 --> 01:06:31,040
Speaker 1: three charges of fraud by the SEC. So yes, that

1132
01:06:31,120 --> 01:06:34,640
Speaker 1: whole purchase thing probably a big scam like that was

1133
01:06:34,720 --> 01:06:37,360
Speaker 1: just a bunch of moving money around, somebody just trying

1134
01:06:37,360 --> 01:06:41,280
Speaker 1: to scan their way into more money, Totally fraudulent. The

1135
01:06:41,280 --> 01:06:44,880
Speaker 1: company ended up selling its computer entertainment division and Sierra

1136
01:06:45,040 --> 01:06:48,440
Speaker 1: was massively cut back. About two d and fifty people

1137
01:06:48,440 --> 01:06:51,480
Speaker 1: lost their jobs. And then over the next couple of

1138
01:06:51,480 --> 01:06:56,040
Speaker 1: decades a bunch of mergers and acquisitions happened, and it

1139
01:06:56,120 --> 01:06:58,720
Speaker 1: just kept getting smaller and smaller and doing less and less.

1140
01:06:59,000 --> 01:07:02,440
Speaker 1: Sierra is still a round today, and in fact, they

1141
01:07:02,480 --> 01:07:04,400
Speaker 1: kind of had a little a little bit of a boost.

1142
01:07:04,400 --> 01:07:07,200
Speaker 1: Their website was revamped a few years back, and it's

1143
01:07:07,240 --> 01:07:09,840
Speaker 1: kind of got more of its original independent spirit now,

1144
01:07:09,880 --> 01:07:13,400
Speaker 1: I guess in some capacity, but it's just a fraction

1145
01:07:13,440 --> 01:07:15,920
Speaker 1: of a fraction of a fraction of the scale that

1146
01:07:15,960 --> 01:07:18,439
Speaker 1: it once was. They do even have a new King's

1147
01:07:18,520 --> 01:07:21,479
Speaker 1: Quest game out now, which I haven't played yet, but um,

1148
01:07:21,480 --> 01:07:25,240
Speaker 1: but it's just much smaller everything about it. Ken said

1149
01:07:25,360 --> 01:07:28,560
Speaker 1: in an interview with Wired that his logic in selling

1150
01:07:28,960 --> 01:07:33,520
Speaker 1: was right, but it was quote the absolute worst thing

1151
01:07:33,640 --> 01:07:36,920
Speaker 1: that could have happened. He said, with the information he

1152
01:07:37,000 --> 01:07:40,280
Speaker 1: at the time, it was definitely the right decision, but quote,

1153
01:07:40,400 --> 01:07:43,680
Speaker 1: I think of it as like someone crossing an intersection.

1154
01:07:43,880 --> 01:07:46,640
Speaker 1: When someone runs a red light, it was impossible to

1155
01:07:46,680 --> 01:07:50,160
Speaker 1: know that the guy coming at you wasn't going to stop. Yeah, like,

1156
01:07:50,240 --> 01:07:52,680
Speaker 1: you did all the right things, so you can't say

1157
01:07:52,800 --> 01:07:55,000
Speaker 1: I should have done it differently. Right, but if they

1158
01:07:55,000 --> 01:07:57,600
Speaker 1: had kept the company and not sold, it might still

1159
01:07:57,600 --> 01:07:59,960
Speaker 1: be one of the biggest names in gaming today. Well,

1160
01:08:00,080 --> 01:08:02,600
Speaker 1: was no telling if they had focused on if they

1161
01:08:02,600 --> 01:08:04,840
Speaker 1: had let them focus on game development. I think that

1162
01:08:04,920 --> 01:08:07,200
Speaker 1: was really the main thing that happened was it was

1163
01:08:07,280 --> 01:08:09,360
Speaker 1: like they weren't interested in the kind of games they

1164
01:08:09,400 --> 01:08:11,360
Speaker 1: wanted to do, So why did you buy him? They

1165
01:08:11,400 --> 01:08:14,160
Speaker 1: just wants a brand. Yeah, if you're like, that's what

1166
01:08:14,320 --> 01:08:18,120
Speaker 1: makes you so much money, But don't do that thing anymore.

1167
01:08:18,160 --> 01:08:20,960
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know the fine details, and I'm

1168
01:08:20,960 --> 01:08:24,479
Speaker 1: no businessman, but you definitely see that sometimes where some

1169
01:08:24,520 --> 01:08:26,920
Speaker 1: of these high level execs are just like all that

1170
01:08:26,960 --> 01:08:29,519
Speaker 1: matters is the brand. People will buy whatever I staple

1171
01:08:29,560 --> 01:08:32,040
Speaker 1: to the brand, and then you get, you know, fantastic

1172
01:08:32,040 --> 01:08:34,439
Speaker 1: peasts and nobody goes to see it just because it,

1173
01:08:34,439 --> 01:08:37,000
Speaker 1: says Harry Potter on it does not mean everybody's going

1174
01:08:37,040 --> 01:08:39,960
Speaker 1: to go out. Still got to make a good movie. Now.

1175
01:08:40,040 --> 01:08:42,960
Speaker 1: Ken has a book out called Not All Fairy Tales

1176
01:08:43,080 --> 01:08:46,639
Speaker 1: Have Happy Endings, and he talks about maybe one day

1177
01:08:46,680 --> 01:08:50,160
Speaker 1: having a real documentary made about the story of Sierra.

1178
01:08:50,920 --> 01:08:53,360
Speaker 1: He said, quote, the story doesn't have a happy ending,

1179
01:08:53,520 --> 01:08:56,120
Speaker 1: but neither did Titanic, and that movie was a success.

1180
01:08:56,360 --> 01:09:00,240
Speaker 1: People like a good shipwreck, and Sierra certainly was one.

1181
01:09:00,880 --> 01:09:02,800
Speaker 1: At least you got a sense of humor, right right.

1182
01:09:04,560 --> 01:09:07,960
Speaker 1: But Ken and Roberta they're doing just fine today. I mean,

1183
01:09:07,960 --> 01:09:13,120
Speaker 1: they did sell Sierra for over a billion dollars. In fact,

1184
01:09:13,160 --> 01:09:16,080
Speaker 1: if they burned through that, they really had to try.

1185
01:09:17,120 --> 01:09:20,040
Speaker 1: And Ken's got a blog about their sailing adventures around

1186
01:09:20,080 --> 01:09:22,559
Speaker 1: the world. They've been seeing all kinds of different ports

1187
01:09:22,560 --> 01:09:26,840
Speaker 1: and countries. Sounds really nice. And during the pandemic, just

1188
01:09:26,920 --> 01:09:29,280
Speaker 1: like everybody else, they were kind of locked down and

1189
01:09:29,560 --> 01:09:31,880
Speaker 1: just had their own minds to sit with for a while,

1190
01:09:31,920 --> 01:09:34,679
Speaker 1: and they got to thinking and then out of nowhere.

1191
01:09:35,160 --> 01:09:40,200
Speaker 1: Just last month in March, they announced that they were

1192
01:09:40,200 --> 01:09:44,000
Speaker 1: coming back and they were putting together a brand new game.

1193
01:09:44,880 --> 01:09:47,120
Speaker 1: For this they were going back to their roots and

1194
01:09:47,160 --> 01:09:50,479
Speaker 1: what their plan is is to recreate the text based

1195
01:09:50,520 --> 01:09:54,600
Speaker 1: game that started it all for them, Colossal Cave Adventure.

1196
01:09:56,320 --> 01:09:58,439
Speaker 1: So they reached out to the game's original creators for

1197
01:09:58,479 --> 01:10:03,000
Speaker 1: their blessing and they've started building a three D graphics

1198
01:10:03,040 --> 01:10:08,000
Speaker 1: based version of the game, including a VR version that's cool,

1199
01:10:08,080 --> 01:10:10,280
Speaker 1: which they said they were kind of against at first.

1200
01:10:10,320 --> 01:10:12,720
Speaker 1: The company Unity that's publishing it, wanted them to do

1201
01:10:12,760 --> 01:10:15,400
Speaker 1: a VR version. They were like, that's a lot, but

1202
01:10:15,479 --> 01:10:17,880
Speaker 1: they're doing it. They're going for it because that's what

1203
01:10:17,920 --> 01:10:21,320
Speaker 1: they do. They figure it out. Kim Williams like Batman, Like,

1204
01:10:21,439 --> 01:10:23,439
Speaker 1: you give him a problem and what he does he

1205
01:10:23,439 --> 01:10:27,200
Speaker 1: figures it out. So, you know, if the VR version

1206
01:10:27,200 --> 01:10:30,240
Speaker 1: comes out, hopefully we get a chance to kill the

1207
01:10:30,320 --> 01:10:32,800
Speaker 1: dragon with our bare hands in real life. You can

1208
01:10:32,840 --> 01:10:35,320
Speaker 1: really see it happen. You can actually give the dragon

1209
01:10:35,320 --> 01:10:38,639
Speaker 1: the old one too. Yeah. But in an interview, Ken

1210
01:10:38,680 --> 01:10:43,040
Speaker 1: realized this project was quickly getting bigger than they anticipated

1211
01:10:43,080 --> 01:10:46,720
Speaker 1: when they jumped in. He said, quote, I got blindsided

1212
01:10:46,760 --> 01:10:50,799
Speaker 1: by the fact that it's a humongous, complex, deep game.

1213
01:10:51,600 --> 01:10:54,120
Speaker 1: And I always told people I would never do anything

1214
01:10:54,200 --> 01:10:58,320
Speaker 1: where I had employees. Again, maybe he wasn't cut overmanagement,

1215
01:10:59,160 --> 01:11:01,479
Speaker 1: just had enough. It's like I did that. I'm done.

1216
01:11:01,600 --> 01:11:04,240
Speaker 1: I'm living on a boat now. This is great. I mean, true,

1217
01:11:04,320 --> 01:11:07,120
Speaker 1: that does sound pretty amazing, just sail around the world.

1218
01:11:08,080 --> 01:11:10,840
Speaker 1: But it's taken them back to their early days where

1219
01:11:10,960 --> 01:11:14,360
Speaker 1: Roberta is obsessing over the adventure details and Ken is

1220
01:11:14,439 --> 01:11:17,480
Speaker 1: learning how to make things happen in new programming languages

1221
01:11:17,560 --> 01:11:20,720
Speaker 1: and breaking down barriers. So it's like they're both of

1222
01:11:20,760 --> 01:11:24,880
Speaker 1: their great skills coming back working back together on something

1223
01:11:24,920 --> 01:11:28,080
Speaker 1: new and exciting, pretty cool. Maybe they feel really young,

1224
01:11:28,320 --> 01:11:30,280
Speaker 1: or maybe they feel really old. It's probably both at

1225
01:11:30,280 --> 01:11:33,240
Speaker 1: the same time, but I don't know. I mean, it's

1226
01:11:33,280 --> 01:11:36,760
Speaker 1: tough to sell classic games and independent games, you know,

1227
01:11:36,800 --> 01:11:39,719
Speaker 1: in a landscape where there is stuff like it again

1228
01:11:39,760 --> 01:11:43,600
Speaker 1: elden Ring taking up the spotlight. Um, but you know

1229
01:11:43,640 --> 01:11:46,040
Speaker 1: they said that don't really care about the money. Ken

1230
01:11:46,080 --> 01:11:48,880
Speaker 1: says quote if the game sinks or swims, it ain't

1231
01:11:48,880 --> 01:11:51,599
Speaker 1: gonna change our Life at all. So it's really about

1232
01:11:51,640 --> 01:11:55,760
Speaker 1: honoring the original designers legacy. And they've seen other designers

1233
01:11:55,880 --> 01:11:58,759
Speaker 1: kind of make a comeback and make less than perfect games,

1234
01:11:59,280 --> 01:12:01,800
Speaker 1: and Ken says, we don't want to do that. We'd

1235
01:12:01,880 --> 01:12:03,960
Speaker 1: rather throw it in the garbage than do something that

1236
01:12:04,000 --> 01:12:07,400
Speaker 1: ain't good. Roberta said, yes, it has to be good,

1237
01:12:07,720 --> 01:12:11,280
Speaker 1: which is a great place to come from because again,

1238
01:12:11,400 --> 01:12:14,559
Speaker 1: so many people set out and they're like, here's an idea. Uh,

1239
01:12:14,600 --> 01:12:17,840
Speaker 1: if it doesn't work, here it is anyway, and they're like,

1240
01:12:17,880 --> 01:12:19,400
Speaker 1: come on, we're gonna try it. If it doesn't work,

1241
01:12:19,400 --> 01:12:23,280
Speaker 1: I'm not going to give you garbage another ten years

1242
01:12:23,360 --> 01:12:29,040
Speaker 1: on something good like Half Life three. But I'm thinking

1243
01:12:29,080 --> 01:12:32,519
Speaker 1: now about how like, you know, it takes years, years

1244
01:12:32,560 --> 01:12:35,000
Speaker 1: and years and years and thousands and thousands of people

1245
01:12:35,080 --> 01:12:37,519
Speaker 1: to put together these big video games that dominate the

1246
01:12:37,520 --> 01:12:41,759
Speaker 1: market today. And I'm going back to you know, Mystery

1247
01:12:41,800 --> 01:12:45,400
Speaker 1: House had come out in May and Roberta had their

1248
01:12:45,439 --> 01:12:49,240
Speaker 1: next game out by September, The Wizard and the Princess, right,

1249
01:12:49,320 --> 01:12:52,599
Speaker 1: and it was just her and him. Um, so it's

1250
01:12:52,640 --> 01:12:56,280
Speaker 1: definitely a lot has changed. But that's kind of amazing too.

1251
01:12:56,280 --> 01:12:59,720
Speaker 1: I Mean that's true of movies. You know, I mean,

1252
01:13:00,080 --> 01:13:03,439
Speaker 1: not not quite that scale, but back in the forties

1253
01:13:03,520 --> 01:13:07,200
Speaker 1: or something thirties, even what was a movie crew like

1254
01:13:08,479 --> 01:13:12,559
Speaker 1: twenty people total total, and now like ten of them

1255
01:13:12,600 --> 01:13:16,360
Speaker 1: are getting paid. And I watched the Marvel credits and

1256
01:13:16,439 --> 01:13:18,799
Speaker 1: it takes it takes three years just to watch the credits.

1257
01:13:19,280 --> 01:13:21,719
Speaker 1: And they're all over the world. There's a whole there's

1258
01:13:21,720 --> 01:13:25,800
Speaker 1: a London team, Plano team, and Norway to write anything.

1259
01:13:26,080 --> 01:13:29,040
Speaker 1: And here we had, we had people on the moon

1260
01:13:29,160 --> 01:13:33,840
Speaker 1: working on this movie. Like why why they do it?

1261
01:13:33,840 --> 01:13:37,120
Speaker 1: It seems overly complicated, but it was really interesting to

1262
01:13:37,120 --> 01:13:40,120
Speaker 1: me to learn how much gaming had to do with

1263
01:13:40,320 --> 01:13:44,320
Speaker 1: making computers for personal use. Yeah, I hadn't really considered

1264
01:13:44,320 --> 01:13:47,639
Speaker 1: that before. I thought it was I guess if I

1265
01:13:47,640 --> 01:13:49,479
Speaker 1: hadn't even thought about it. But if you had pressed

1266
01:13:49,520 --> 01:13:50,920
Speaker 1: me on it, I would have been like, I guess

1267
01:13:51,000 --> 01:13:54,280
Speaker 1: it just got to a point where people were like,

1268
01:13:54,400 --> 01:13:56,800
Speaker 1: I don't want to type on a typewriter. See if

1269
01:13:56,800 --> 01:13:59,240
Speaker 1: you can make a word process and I'll use that instead.

1270
01:13:59,600 --> 01:14:01,479
Speaker 1: Like I would have thought it was more about still

1271
01:14:01,600 --> 01:14:05,400
Speaker 1: business reasons, you know what I mean, for work reasons.

1272
01:14:05,439 --> 01:14:08,080
Speaker 1: But it's really interesting to think that actually this is

1273
01:14:08,120 --> 01:14:10,479
Speaker 1: this is what people might use a computer for put

1274
01:14:10,520 --> 01:14:14,160
Speaker 1: it in their house and actually want one, want to

1275
01:14:14,160 --> 01:14:16,519
Speaker 1: spend the money. These companies like Apple and IBM and

1276
01:14:16,520 --> 01:14:19,559
Speaker 1: stuff were like, I'm gonna put a computer in every home,

1277
01:14:19,600 --> 01:14:23,440
Speaker 1: which was an outrageous idea in the seventies because computers

1278
01:14:23,479 --> 01:14:26,760
Speaker 1: were huge, you know, they were mainframes of like you

1279
01:14:26,840 --> 01:14:28,800
Speaker 1: had punched cards with holes in them, and you stuck

1280
01:14:28,840 --> 01:14:30,519
Speaker 1: them in a slot and then you punch holes in

1281
01:14:30,520 --> 01:14:33,519
Speaker 1: another card in a certain pattern, and like just I

1282
01:14:33,560 --> 01:14:37,320
Speaker 1: can't even wrap my head around that. But this idea

1283
01:14:37,320 --> 01:14:39,760
Speaker 1: of like, well, how do we sell a game to everyone, Well,

1284
01:14:39,760 --> 01:14:42,360
Speaker 1: it's got to have someone for everyone in the house, right,

1285
01:14:42,400 --> 01:14:44,840
Speaker 1: everybody's got to have a reason to want it. Otherwise,

1286
01:14:44,960 --> 01:14:46,160
Speaker 1: you know, you're not just going to sell it to

1287
01:14:46,160 --> 01:14:47,920
Speaker 1: the program or dad his family is going to be

1288
01:14:47,920 --> 01:14:51,120
Speaker 1: pissed that he dropped two thousand dollars on this unk

1289
01:14:51,320 --> 01:14:53,400
Speaker 1: junk that just sits on the corner. And you've got

1290
01:14:53,439 --> 01:14:56,719
Speaker 1: things like Atari coming out, you know. So they people

1291
01:14:56,760 --> 01:15:01,320
Speaker 1: were already into the idea of digital gaming um and

1292
01:15:01,360 --> 01:15:03,720
Speaker 1: computers were like, let's tap into that market. There's a

1293
01:15:03,800 --> 01:15:09,479
Speaker 1: there's a thirst for it, and things like King's Quest, Uh,

1294
01:15:09,560 --> 01:15:12,360
Speaker 1: everybody wanted that ship because it's so good because you're

1295
01:15:12,360 --> 01:15:14,840
Speaker 1: getting everything at once. You're getting a book and a

1296
01:15:14,880 --> 01:15:19,000
Speaker 1: movie and a game, and a brain teaser and and

1297
01:15:19,000 --> 01:15:22,559
Speaker 1: and a form of expression to some degree too, and education.

1298
01:15:23,000 --> 01:15:25,400
Speaker 1: Right like I said, I mean, Mom sat me down,

1299
01:15:25,640 --> 01:15:28,559
Speaker 1: was like, let's try and play this game. What do

1300
01:15:28,600 --> 01:15:30,360
Speaker 1: you do? And you sure, you move around with the

1301
01:15:30,360 --> 01:15:34,040
Speaker 1: air keys and stuff like like an atari game. But

1302
01:15:34,760 --> 01:15:36,200
Speaker 1: think about it. What do you want to say to

1303
01:15:36,240 --> 01:15:37,479
Speaker 1: the game. What do you want the game to do?

1304
01:15:37,560 --> 01:15:40,280
Speaker 1: You tell it. I want the guy to open the door.

1305
01:15:40,320 --> 01:15:41,840
Speaker 1: I want the guy to climb the tree. I want

1306
01:15:41,880 --> 01:15:44,360
Speaker 1: the guy to fight the dragon um and you kind

1307
01:15:44,360 --> 01:15:46,320
Speaker 1: of had to work your way through these puzzles and

1308
01:15:46,320 --> 01:15:49,360
Speaker 1: then you're getting these storybook fairy tales at the same time.

1309
01:15:49,800 --> 01:15:53,080
Speaker 1: So good. They are super fun. I'm very glad we

1310
01:15:53,479 --> 01:15:56,240
Speaker 1: spent part of our pandemic yeah them so that I

1311
01:15:56,280 --> 01:15:58,880
Speaker 1: could learn what we what with all the fuss was about.

1312
01:15:59,479 --> 01:16:03,080
Speaker 1: We had downtime obviously in and we downloaded all the

1313
01:16:03,120 --> 01:16:06,320
Speaker 1: old files and got like a doss emulator and started

1314
01:16:06,360 --> 01:16:08,800
Speaker 1: playing through the whole King's Quest series. We never got

1315
01:16:08,800 --> 01:16:10,599
Speaker 1: to play seven. We have to figure that out because

1316
01:16:10,640 --> 01:16:15,280
Speaker 1: it wasn't working on and then we tried Space Quest

1317
01:16:15,400 --> 01:16:17,400
Speaker 1: or something, but it had like a glitch where we

1318
01:16:17,400 --> 01:16:20,000
Speaker 1: couldn't get out of a hallway or something, so we

1319
01:16:20,120 --> 01:16:22,920
Speaker 1: ended up not doing it. But Space Quest is also awesome.

1320
01:16:23,000 --> 01:16:25,280
Speaker 1: It's a bit funnier than King's Quest. It's like a

1321
01:16:25,280 --> 01:16:27,360
Speaker 1: lot of it's a you know, you're like a space

1322
01:16:27,439 --> 01:16:30,360
Speaker 1: janitor who ends up having to say of the universe.

1323
01:16:31,040 --> 01:16:33,360
Speaker 1: So it's real goofy and sarcastic and stuff, and it's

1324
01:16:33,360 --> 01:16:35,760
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. But yeah, they were. It was

1325
01:16:35,760 --> 01:16:38,160
Speaker 1: fun to revisit those because they do look I mean,

1326
01:16:38,240 --> 01:16:41,280
Speaker 1: there's just nothing like that anymore, right that the games

1327
01:16:41,320 --> 01:16:43,400
Speaker 1: simply don't look like that. They just don't and they

1328
01:16:43,400 --> 01:16:46,240
Speaker 1: don't really operate that way either, So it was it

1329
01:16:46,280 --> 01:16:50,240
Speaker 1: was a nice little revisiting, I guess of childhood. And

1330
01:16:50,320 --> 01:16:53,280
Speaker 1: the artwork in the old King's Quest games is so beautiful.

1331
01:16:53,840 --> 01:16:57,200
Speaker 1: It was like little paintings. Yeah, it's like Thomas Kincaid

1332
01:16:57,800 --> 01:17:01,040
Speaker 1: a little bit. It's a very pastoral, you know, and

1333
01:17:02,880 --> 01:17:05,560
Speaker 1: just pretty nature or whatever. But they are really pretty.

1334
01:17:05,600 --> 01:17:10,000
Speaker 1: Every like, uh, geriatric millennial and gen X are out

1335
01:17:10,040 --> 01:17:13,120
Speaker 1: there who played these games is nodding along with us

1336
01:17:13,200 --> 01:17:15,479
Speaker 1: right now, and everyone else is like, what the fuck

1337
01:17:15,560 --> 01:17:18,640
Speaker 1: are you guys talking about? Well, those of you are

1338
01:17:18,680 --> 01:17:20,920
Speaker 1: saying that, just go look it up, go find out,

1339
01:17:21,000 --> 01:17:24,960
Speaker 1: check it out. It's a good time. Yeah, it really is. Um.

1340
01:17:24,960 --> 01:17:26,920
Speaker 1: But I hope that the story is still really interesting

1341
01:17:26,920 --> 01:17:28,360
Speaker 1: to you. I mean, I just think these are such

1342
01:17:28,439 --> 01:17:32,200
Speaker 1: cool people who just took their kind of disparate skills

1343
01:17:32,840 --> 01:17:35,639
Speaker 1: and found a way to make them work together, um,

1344
01:17:35,680 --> 01:17:38,519
Speaker 1: as a couple. And that's that's really something impressive to me.

1345
01:17:39,280 --> 01:17:44,680
Speaker 1: So many creative couples are very similarly minded. I mean,

1346
01:17:44,720 --> 01:17:46,360
Speaker 1: even you and I have that to a degree where

1347
01:17:46,400 --> 01:17:49,519
Speaker 1: we sort of like are good at similar things. Um.

1348
01:17:49,560 --> 01:17:52,000
Speaker 1: But it's so cool to see like the the kenn

1349
01:17:52,000 --> 01:17:55,360
Speaker 1: of Robertas or the Susan and Robert Downey's people like

1350
01:17:55,400 --> 01:17:59,479
Speaker 1: that who come together with completely different skills and that

1351
01:17:59,600 --> 01:18:03,559
Speaker 1: marriage create something new altogether. I love those stories. Well,

1352
01:18:03,600 --> 01:18:05,519
Speaker 1: I hope you all were inspired by this story. I

1353
01:18:05,520 --> 01:18:07,760
Speaker 1: hope you love Kenna Roberta as much as we do.

1354
01:18:08,200 --> 01:18:10,280
Speaker 1: Kenna Roberta. I hope you're listening, and I hope you

1355
01:18:10,320 --> 01:18:12,880
Speaker 1: loved this story too. I'm sure it's of a loose

1356
01:18:12,920 --> 01:18:16,160
Speaker 1: interpretation of your amazing lives, um, but thank you for

1357
01:18:16,200 --> 01:18:19,599
Speaker 1: this incredible body of work you've given us, and yeah,

1358
01:18:20,040 --> 01:18:23,479
Speaker 1: call me. We're gonna track down HBO. We're gonna make

1359
01:18:23,520 --> 01:18:26,559
Speaker 1: this work. We're gonna change that. We're gonna change a

1360
01:18:26,560 --> 01:18:30,000
Speaker 1: whole new medium, We're gonna change a whole other industry. Yeah,

1361
01:18:30,160 --> 01:18:32,320
Speaker 1: we get on board. Let's do it. Let's do this

1362
01:18:32,400 --> 01:18:37,080
Speaker 1: and make up billion dollars. It'll go viral. I'm just kidding.

1363
01:18:38,240 --> 01:18:40,080
Speaker 1: Please let us know what you thought. We'd love to

1364
01:18:40,120 --> 01:18:42,200
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can email us at ridic Romance

1365
01:18:42,240 --> 01:18:45,440
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com right or we're on Twitter and Instagram.

1366
01:18:45,479 --> 01:18:47,840
Speaker 1: I'm at Dynamite Boom and I'm at Oh Great, It's

1367
01:18:47,920 --> 01:18:51,360
Speaker 1: Eli and the show is at Riddick Romance. Thank you

1368
01:18:51,400 --> 01:18:53,800
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in again today and always, and

1369
01:18:53,800 --> 01:18:56,040
Speaker 1: we look forward to seeing you the next one. Love

1370
01:18:56,080 --> 01:19:00,320
Speaker 1: you by so long. Friends, it's time to go. Thanks

1371
01:19:00,360 --> 01:19:04,320
Speaker 1: for listening to our show. Tell your friends, neighbor's uncles

1372
01:19:04,360 --> 01:19:07,479
Speaker 1: and dance to listen to a show. Ridiculous Roll Dance

1373
01:19:09,479 --> 01:19:09,519
Speaker 1: m