Speaker 1: I had. You know, we were talking in the last
Speaker 1: episode about having an eighteen year old babysitter. It's funny
Speaker 1: because I was listening to that episode and I was like,
Speaker 1: I said that I had a crush on the babysitter
Speaker 1: and when I and I implied when I was twelve.
Speaker 1: But I didn't have a babysitter when I was twelve.
Speaker 1: I think it was the mid nineties. I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't think I had a babysitter when I was seven.
Speaker 1: I mean I had older sisters, so it was rare
Speaker 1: that mom needed to get a babysitter. My parents both work. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's not the point. The point is also had this, uh,
Speaker 1: this friend of the family. I guess it was my
Speaker 1: older sister's friend. And I knew a lot of them
Speaker 1: because it was small town and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: community theater and stuff. And she her mom invited me
Speaker 1: over to the house to play games on their computer.
Speaker 1: If I ever wanted to about this, yeah, and I
Speaker 1: absolutely took her up on it. And even at the time,
Speaker 1: I think I felt kind of weird, just like going
Speaker 1: over and knock on the door and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: can I play games on your computer? And I would
Speaker 1: go up there and sit in their office myself playing
Speaker 1: games that I didn't you know, we didn't have those games.
Speaker 1: And I had a good time, but I was like,
Speaker 1: where am I and I've in a weird place? Is
Speaker 1: thisn't even my friend's house. I mean, I imagine now
Speaker 1: that I'm an adult, and I think I must be
Speaker 1: close to what that woman's age, you know, probably older
Speaker 1: than she was at the time, the mom, And I'm
Speaker 1: thinking she probably just said it. I didn't expect. Look,
Speaker 1: a nine year old kid takes things very literally, especially
Speaker 1: when it comes to video games. Maybe she did know,
Speaker 1: and she was just like, I mean, I got this computer,
Speaker 1: it was why not actually needed some damn company in
Speaker 1: the house or just to feel like someone was there.
Speaker 1: That was it. It's probably and this isn't very fair,
Speaker 1: but it's probably less creepy be since it was a woman.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm an older man had been like, hey,
Speaker 1: come over to play. I'm a computer, I'd be like,
Speaker 1: why did you go over there? That's dangerous? Yeah, like
Speaker 1: commander keen idea. Yeah, I know you have no idea,
Speaker 1: But somebody out there listening is like, yes, there were
Speaker 1: two games on my Grandfather's like Apple two or something,
Speaker 1: and it was Castle Quest. Did you play Castle Quest?
Speaker 1: It was like you were a vampire and you had
Speaker 1: to get from the top of the castle to the
Speaker 1: bottom or something before the sun came up and you
Speaker 1: couldn't see. I did not play this. I never beat
Speaker 1: it. It It was so hard. I'll say. Um, when I
Speaker 1: was very young, this would have been like first or
Speaker 1: second grade, and I got pulled out of class for
Speaker 1: being a little advanced state of a ship. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: for being amazing actually, for being a special, special boy
Speaker 1: who was obviously going to be president one day or something,
Speaker 1: and um, look at you now. And they set me
Speaker 1: up with this computer game called Rockies Boots and it
Speaker 1: was like a logic puzzle gate game, playing with electricity
Speaker 1: and switches and stuff. And it was the crappiest graphics
Speaker 1: you can think of, literally a little orange block moving
Speaker 1: around the screen. And man, I love that game and
Speaker 1: I played it recently and it really challenged me, I
Speaker 1: think more now than elastic mind back when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, back when you could have been president, nop
Speaker 1: did something to those brain cells many years. Got a
Speaker 1: dork though that, Like I loved educational games like ye,
Speaker 1: MAVs teaches typing, which is not even a game, but
Speaker 1: it was kind of a challenge. I guess they were
Speaker 1: trying to make you like, type as many words as
Speaker 1: you could. I had to follow along or something. I
Speaker 1: don't even ruber now, but I used to really like
Speaker 1: that game, not really a game, homework your math Blaster
Speaker 1: one that I played all the time. I loved that
Speaker 1: ship and it looked cute, like the graphics of it
Speaker 1: really cute. How about Treasure Mountain Challenge of the Ancient
Speaker 1: Empires one of the best games, so good. Obviously we're
Speaker 1: talking about nostalgic video games today, computer games in particular.
Speaker 1: And I'm Eli, by the way, I'm Diana's so good
Speaker 1: to have you back on the show. Love you guys,
Speaker 1: Love you guys, love having you here. And this one's
Speaker 1: a really fun episode today again just dipping into the
Speaker 1: nostalgia factor here talking about a couple that for me
Speaker 1: personally had a huge impact on my life and uh
Speaker 1: and their their marriage apparently um was a big part
Speaker 1: of my childhood that I was totally unaware of at
Speaker 1: the time. Wow, I know, well, I know we've played
Speaker 1: I know you've mentioned The King's Quest games in this
Speaker 1: podcast before. Oh yeah, I never stopped talking about the
Speaker 1: King's Quest games because these games they were not only
Speaker 1: I mean they were where I learned to read, write,
Speaker 1: and type was playing King's Quest. And they also were
Speaker 1: just like hugely formative in terms of my imagination, the
Speaker 1: kind of storytelling I liked, the kind of puzzles that
Speaker 1: I like today. I think they were just such a
Speaker 1: huge part of that. And there's such good games, and um,
Speaker 1: everybody should play them. Still there's still totally worth it there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we wouldn't have those games without these people that
Speaker 1: were talking about today. So we're going to revisit the
Speaker 1: marriage of Ken and Roberto Williams and uh and how
Speaker 1: they brought to us to the world, because in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, this young married couple with two pretty much
Speaker 1: completely different skill sets came together to revolutionized computer gaming.
Speaker 1: They used Ken's programming brilliance and Roberta's imaginative ideas for storytelling,
Speaker 1: and they formed the company Sierra Online, and they released
Speaker 1: games like Mystery House, King's Quest, like we talked about
Speaker 1: Space Quest, which is a blast um dr brain. If
Speaker 1: anybody played those educational games or the Incredible Machine Leisure Suit,
Speaker 1: Larry Fantasmagoria, just all these titles that, if you're like me,
Speaker 1: are blowing your nostalgic circuits right now. Um, but none
Speaker 1: of this would have happened if these young, shy teenagers
Speaker 1: hadn't come together. And even if you've never heard of
Speaker 1: these games, Uh, this is a very interesting story. And
Speaker 1: if you have any connection to video games at all,
Speaker 1: whether you love Kingdom Hearts or if you're playing Elden
Speaker 1: Ring right now, or even those mystery search games on
Speaker 1: your phones with the little pictures we have to find things,
Speaker 1: play Seekers notes anyone, none of those might exist without
Speaker 1: Ken and Roberto Williams. So let's go back look at
Speaker 1: their story and find out how all this all happened.
Speaker 1: I'm ready for this quest, Hey the French, come listen. Well,
Speaker 1: Eli and Diana got stories to tell. There's no matchmaking,
Speaker 1: a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships, a love
Speaker 1: it might be any type of person at all, and
Speaker 1: abstract concept are a concrete wall. But if there's a
Speaker 1: story where the second glance ridiculous roles a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Alright, so right off the bat, I
Speaker 1: got a lot of this info from a very cool
Speaker 1: book was called Hackers Heroes of the Computer Revolution by
Speaker 1: Stephen Levy and um most of the information came from there.
Speaker 1: Some of it didn't line up with other inner views
Speaker 1: and articles that I read with Kenna. Roberta Um so
Speaker 1: tried to kind of adapt there. But this is where
Speaker 1: a lot of this kind of foundational information comes from.
Speaker 1: Roberta Hewer was born in February of nineteen fifty three
Speaker 1: in rural California, just east of Los Angeles, and her
Speaker 1: father was an agricultural inspector. Her mother was a homemaker,
Speaker 1: and her little brother was born a year after her,
Speaker 1: and he had epilepsy. This really pulled a lot of
Speaker 1: her parents focus Overberta herself just developed this really active
Speaker 1: imagination and she would entertain her little brother and her
Speaker 1: parents with these elaborate, sort of fairy tale adventure stories
Speaker 1: that she would think up while she was lying in
Speaker 1: bed at night. Now, otherwise she was kind of shy
Speaker 1: and quiet, especially at school, where her sort of rural
Speaker 1: upbringing really stood out. She even said later in life quote,
Speaker 1: I never really liked myself. I always wanted to be
Speaker 1: someone else. I love this idea of rural l a
Speaker 1: in the in the eighties right now, it's probably you,
Speaker 1: probably so. Kenneth Williams was born on October in Evansville, Indiana,
Speaker 1: but his family moved to Pomona, California when he was young.
Speaker 1: He had two brothers, Larry and John, and the three
Speaker 1: of them often shared a bedroom. I know that life,
Speaker 1: not brothers, but definitely Sharon bedroom growing up. You know,
Speaker 1: it was fun and also an opportunity for ConfL many,
Speaker 1: an opportunity for conflict. In school, Ken was brilliant. He
Speaker 1: had no trouble skating by on his natural aptitude, but
Speaker 1: he refused to do homework in junior high. Also sounds
Speaker 1: very familiar. Yes, this was me. See this is the
Speaker 1: difference between you and I in school. I think we
Speaker 1: both had a bit of a natural aptitude. Kids skate
Speaker 1: by pretty easily. But I again, I liked mabis teachers
Speaker 1: typing My homework was so fun for me. Well, if
Speaker 1: they had made homework video games, I would have been
Speaker 1: all over it. You know, in school, I love that.
Speaker 1: You know, we had computer lab in school kids. There
Speaker 1: was a point in schools where there was a whole
Speaker 1: separate room where they kept all the computers and you
Speaker 1: would go in for forty five minutes of time and
Speaker 1: learn how to type on them. Yeah. Or sometimes you
Speaker 1: could play Oregon Trail exactly on special days when the
Speaker 1: when the yeah, when the teacher wasn't feeling it. It
Speaker 1: was like Oregon Trail, math blaster, learn how to use
Speaker 1: the arrow keys. Kid, I'm hungover, shut up spacebar, over
Speaker 1: and over again for an hour. So Ken was refusing
Speaker 1: to do homework in junior high. He instead spent his
Speaker 1: time compulsively reading whatever interested him the most. Now that
Speaker 1: sounds like me. He loved The Hardy Boys and books
Speaker 1: by Harold Robbins, like The Carpet Baggers, which features a
Speaker 1: Howard Hughes like protagonist, and Ken said quote, that's where
Speaker 1: I got my role model. I don't know about Howard
Speaker 1: Hughes as a role model. I'm not. I'm just going
Speaker 1: to throw it out there. I mean it depends. I
Speaker 1: think you want to, you want to kind of have
Speaker 1: a limit on that, like his his ambition, his success.
Speaker 1: These are things I want wearing tissue boxes on my feet.
Speaker 1: We'll stop before that, before we get there. So that
Speaker 1: was like a real rags to Rich's story, The Carpet Baggers,
Speaker 1: and because of that. When he hit high school, he
Speaker 1: stopped just coasting. He started like working extra hard to succes.
Speaker 1: Oh there's the difference. You needed to read the carpetbaggers like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I continued to coast and not work very hard through
Speaker 1: high school. I kept it on cuse control. Yeah, Ken
Speaker 1: played in the school band. He quote learned how to
Speaker 1: play the game of good grade is a game. It
Speaker 1: is a game, very true, And he came up with
Speaker 1: all kinds of clever ways to make money. Levy says,
Speaker 1: quote he won so many sales contests on his paper
Speaker 1: route that he was on a first name basis with
Speaker 1: the ticket takers at Disneyland. Man. I mean, I definitely
Speaker 1: also did not come up with clever ways to make
Speaker 1: money in high school. That was not my bag. If
Speaker 1: I'd had Disney World next door, I might have worked
Speaker 1: a lot harder to be able to afford tickets. So
Speaker 1: that's true what we're prizes in Georgia, I guess right.
Speaker 1: I mean literally, my friends and I got jobs to
Speaker 1: save up money to buy pieces for the computers we
Speaker 1: were building so we could play better video games building.
Speaker 1: And when I got well, when I got the part
Speaker 1: that I needed, Uh, you know, hey, can I get
Speaker 1: somebody to cover all my shifts next week? I just
Speaker 1: pulled this computer. I want to play games. I don't
Speaker 1: need money anymore. Done working, I got the one thing
Speaker 1: I wanted. Yeah. So, Ken did have a girlfriend in
Speaker 1: high school, and one time he went out on this
Speaker 1: double date with a friend of his and his friend's
Speaker 1: girlfriend was Roberta Hewer, and the two of them talked
Speaker 1: a little bit, but she said she wasn't really impressed
Speaker 1: with him. She said, quote, he was cute, but I
Speaker 1: thought he acted kind of dumb. He was shy, so
Speaker 1: to compensate he would go overboard, acting too aggressive. He
Speaker 1: carried cigarettes in his pocket, but he didn't smoke. Roberta
Speaker 1: was like poser. After this double date, they didn't really
Speaker 1: see each other too much. Ken was so focused on
Speaker 1: succeeding that he actually graduated high school early at sixteen
Speaker 1: years old, and he went to the nearby California Polytech
Speaker 1: Nick State University. And one of the reasons he chose
Speaker 1: this place because it was close to home, he was
Speaker 1: only sixteen, and also it only costs twenty four dollars
Speaker 1: per quarter, which sounds obviously insanely cheap, but You've got
Speaker 1: to imagine this was like nine seventy and if you
Speaker 1: translate that, let me get the calculator real quick here
Speaker 1: into today's dollars, that tuition would actually be a hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy seven dollars. You imagine going to school over
Speaker 1: a hundred and seventy seven bucks per quarters. A hundred
Speaker 1: seventy seven dollars isn't even a parking passiously And and
Speaker 1: just to check, because I was like, well, maybe California
Speaker 1: Polytech is just, you know, an inexpensive school. I looked
Speaker 1: them up and they're in state. Tuition today is ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, so I think it's has surpassed the inflation
Speaker 1: rate by a little bit. So if you're wondering where
Speaker 1: all the Ken Williams of today are there instead and
Speaker 1: saying that, and despite his confidence and intelligence, Ken was
Speaker 1: totally intimidated by computers at first. He was naturally good
Speaker 1: in grade school classes, but he was majoring in physics,
Speaker 1: and college level courses were taking a different kind of
Speaker 1: focus and learning that he wasn't used to. In a
Speaker 1: four tram class, which is an old computer programming language,
Speaker 1: he struggled and fell behind, but that determination kicked in.
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm ana Howard used my way through this,
Speaker 1: and he set himself a goal simulate a mouse running
Speaker 1: through a maze. Okay, so like as a computer program. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wanted to see if he could code that. But
Speaker 1: he could not wrap his head around the power of
Speaker 1: the computer. It was such a monster. It seemed so
Speaker 1: much smarter than he was. That was new and scary.
Speaker 1: And six weeks into the nine week course, something clicked,
Speaker 1: Levy writes, quote, he came to a sudden realization the
Speaker 1: computer wasn't so smart at all. It was just some
Speaker 1: dumb beast following orders, doing what you told it to
Speaker 1: and exactly the order you determined you could control it.
Speaker 1: You could be God. So Ken got the mouse through
Speaker 1: the maze, and he very suddenly was a brilliant programmer.
Speaker 1: It was just magically easy to him now, and everyone
Speaker 1: in the class could see that this kid was special. God.
Speaker 1: I wish, I wish we had the words to explain
Speaker 1: epiphanies like that, when you're just like nothing makes sense
Speaker 1: for weeks and weeks, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: it does, like there's nothing to really describe that very
Speaker 1: singular feeling. But Germany's got a word for it, you
Speaker 1: know what, They probably did a million letters long, right,
Speaker 1: but I would learn it. I feel that way when
Speaker 1: I'm doing puzzle games sometimes. I was just playing this one.
Speaker 1: It's called Patrick's Parabox, and it's a cool little um,
Speaker 1: cool little game or I don't know. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to go into the description, but it's one of these
Speaker 1: games where I'm just staring at the screen, going, why
Speaker 1: the hell can't figure out what I'm doing for like
Speaker 1: twenty five minutes and then suddenly your brain just answers you,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, why didn't I see that twenty minutes ago?
Speaker 1: It's so simple, it's amazing. And I've heard that a
Speaker 1: lot about computer programming, Like my dad's a programmer, for example,
Speaker 1: and he said, uh, you know, it's just that you
Speaker 1: kind of have to tame the beast and realize that
Speaker 1: the computer is working for you. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: actually any smarter than a person. I mean that might
Speaker 1: be different now, but that's true, I guess in the
Speaker 1: seventies versus today. But if you can kind of learned
Speaker 1: to tame it and learn that it's you know, it's working,
Speaker 1: it's it's not doing anything that you're not telling it
Speaker 1: to do. It's an extension of your brain, you know.
Speaker 1: So if you can kind of wrap your head around that,
Speaker 1: it becomes much easier to sort of command. I'll take
Speaker 1: your word for it, because I don't want to do it. So,
Speaker 1: you know, school is getting a little bit easier for him.
Speaker 1: He's starting to get by in class. And then out
Speaker 1: of the blue one day, Can just suddenly remembered Roberta,
Speaker 1: this girl from the double date, and he decided to
Speaker 1: call her up. He nervously reminded her who he was.
Speaker 1: You know, hey, remember that guy with the unlit cigarette
Speaker 1: hanging out of his mouth, you know, the one who
Speaker 1: was like kind of obnoxious because I was overcompensating for
Speaker 1: being kind of unsure of myself. Uh, do you want
Speaker 1: to go out? She's like, I remember being kind of
Speaker 1: annoyed by you, and yeah, Roberta had dated a few boys,
Speaker 1: and she said, quote, all the boyfriends I'd had before
Speaker 1: were rather dumb damn, So you know, her bar for
Speaker 1: men was probably pretty low. She thought what the hell
Speaker 1: and decided to go out with him. She currently had
Speaker 1: another boyfriend who lived upstate at the time, so robert right,
Speaker 1: So at least this guy was closer. You know. She
Speaker 1: was a little nervous about seeing this kind of insecure,
Speaker 1: sometimes pushy young college boy. And which is actually interesting
Speaker 1: because he was a year younger than her, but he
Speaker 1: was a college kid now because he graduated early. But
Speaker 1: one day they were talking and he really opened up
Speaker 1: to her. She recalled quote, he was talking about physics.
Speaker 1: I figured he was a really bright guy. He talked
Speaker 1: about real things, responsibility, and within a week of dating
Speaker 1: Ken convinced her to dump the other guy upstate and
Speaker 1: go steady with him. Later on, Ken reflected about this quote,
Speaker 1: I just didn't want to be alone. Not very flattering.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's sixteen, he's in college. No one is
Speaker 1: his age probably, and he's like away from home a lot.
Speaker 1: And he's like, look, I'm not interested in doing this,
Speaker 1: Like let me try and keep dating people. Like I'm done.
Speaker 1: Just find somebody. I like you. You're cool. I don't
Speaker 1: want to figure this out anymore, and done, all right,
Speaker 1: like he said. Roberta was a year older than Ken.
Speaker 1: As soon as he turned eighteen, he said to her quote,
Speaker 1: we're getting married and that's it. And Roberta was like, okay,
Speaker 1: And she told her mother quote, he's going to go
Speaker 1: someplace to really make it be something. And they married quickly.
Speaker 1: Within a year, Roberta was pregnant, giving birth to their
Speaker 1: first son, DJ in nine. But Ken is still struggling
Speaker 1: in his physics major, and he was worried about his
Speaker 1: ability to support a family. Again, he's pretty young still
Speaker 1: at this point in his life, and I mean, those
Speaker 1: four dollars student loans aren't going to pay themselves off.
Speaker 1: He's drowning and two double digit debt. What did we
Speaker 1: do to our children the seventies? So cruel. But he
Speaker 1: saw there were more and more jobs popping up for
Speaker 1: computer programmers than physics jobs anyway, So Roberta's dad co
Speaker 1: signed a loan for him to go to a trade
Speaker 1: school called Controlled Data Institute for fifteen hundred dollars and okay,
Speaker 1: that is over ten dollars today, but this is a
Speaker 1: highly specialized school, so the you know, competition, I mean, sorry,
Speaker 1: so the comparative tuition would be probably a million bucks
Speaker 1: a semester today for for a school like that. Insane.
Speaker 1: And he still wasn't changing the world with his programming
Speaker 1: or anything. But he could get by. He could do
Speaker 1: whatever was asked of him. He had a real fake
Speaker 1: it till you make it style. He'd go into an
Speaker 1: interview and they'd be like, oh, we're looking for someone
Speaker 1: who can code in flurg nuts, and Ken will be like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I ad flert Nuts. That's my middle name, and I
Speaker 1: am fluent in Florna. I dream in flirknets. Like that's
Speaker 1: basically when I talked flerg nuts comes out, you know what.
Speaker 1: And then he'd get the job and then go home
Speaker 1: over the weekend and be like, Okay, what the fund
Speaker 1: is flurgne And he would grab every book on the
Speaker 1: subject he could find and just learn it real fast
Speaker 1: and honestly, this is the way to get ahead. People cannot.
Speaker 1: I wish that's someone and sat down and explained to
Speaker 1: me more clearly when I was younger that that is
Speaker 1: what most people do. No one knows what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Everyone pretends and then figures it out when when they're
Speaker 1: alone in the room at night. You know, Um, so
Speaker 1: so just lie, Everybody's what I'm telling you. Lie on
Speaker 1: your resumes, but you know you have to back it up.
Speaker 1: You have to be able to figure it out. If
Speaker 1: I put on my acting resume, like oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: can ride a horse. I better show up on day
Speaker 1: one knowing how to ride a horse, you know, instead
Speaker 1: of being like, now, how do you get your leg
Speaker 1: around him? Again? Remind me how to ride a horse again?
Speaker 1: Real quick? Which one is the front? Which one's the horse?
Speaker 1: You're getting on a pig? And they're like, hoaground, Mr Banks,
Speaker 1: we have questions about your resume. So Ken's determination and
Speaker 1: his ability to learn quickly to you know, again, make
Speaker 1: something up and then figure it out real fast was
Speaker 1: working really well for him, and it put him on
Speaker 1: a fast track to just better and better jobs. So
Speaker 1: he's making more and more money. They moved to l
Speaker 1: A and they ended up changing houses several times. Roberto
Speaker 1: would even say to Ken at night, Hey, wouldn't it
Speaker 1: be cool if we made two dars more a week?
Speaker 1: And can of be like, yeah, it probably would, and
Speaker 1: he'd go and pick up another gig. I definitely said that,
Speaker 1: here's another couple of hundred dollars a week. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: we're maxed out. There's no more jobs allowed, so you know,
Speaker 1: he's working full time gigs. He's taken moonlighting jobs, and
Speaker 1: even Ken himself started to think, I wonder if we
Speaker 1: could retire at thirty the dream Now Roberto was pregnant
Speaker 1: with their second son, chris In, and Ken found himself
Speaker 1: working with these super teams of the best programmers in
Speaker 1: the industry. But his boss at this one job really
Speaker 1: kept him stymied. When Ken asked to head up a
Speaker 1: prog him and group, he was told, quote, you have
Speaker 1: no talent for management. That quote alone shows that his
Speaker 1: boss had no talent for managing exactly. A good manager
Speaker 1: wants to create more managers, not just keep people employees.
Speaker 1: Get your life right well. And also this probably really
Speaker 1: lit a fire under him, and eventually Ken's outside work
Speaker 1: was bringing him more money than his inside work, so
Speaker 1: he left the corporate world to be an independent contractor,
Speaker 1: and he worked with big companies like GM and Warner
Speaker 1: Brothers and even a few of the big banks at
Speaker 1: the time, like writing uh tax accounting code for them,
Speaker 1: and things like that really boring software that you and
Speaker 1: I don't even know exists, but that somebody like my
Speaker 1: dad is working very hard on you until their eyes crossed.
Speaker 1: So Kennon Roberto would sit in there hot tub at
Speaker 1: night and fantasize about moving out to the woods, escaping
Speaker 1: suburban life. And just having fun. They're talking about like
Speaker 1: water skiing and getting a boat on the lake and
Speaker 1: all this stuff. Yeah, lake like the dream, but running
Speaker 1: the numbers it was really just a fantasy. There weren't
Speaker 1: enough hours in the day for Ken to make that
Speaker 1: kind of money. That's relatable. But Ken had a machine
Speaker 1: at home called a teletype. It was like a glorified typewriter.
Speaker 1: But it hooked up to a modem with the late
Speaker 1: seventies version of the Internet, and it allowed him to
Speaker 1: work some from home. I gotta tell you about this thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is just like it literally looks like
Speaker 1: an electronic typewriter. It plugs into this They had an
Speaker 1: Internet back in the seventies. It was not the Worldwide Web, obviously,
Speaker 1: but you know, you could communicate with computers in different
Speaker 1: parts of the world through coding and like very specific
Speaker 1: lines of text that kind of like sending a facts
Speaker 1: through your computers sort of. I guess, so print out
Speaker 1: on the other end, and it well, it printed out
Speaker 1: on your end, you know, so I could type in
Speaker 1: like as I understand it, I could wrong about this,
Speaker 1: but I could type in, like show me the contents
Speaker 1: of dr D on the main frame and it would
Speaker 1: send the signal to Boston or whatever. And then the
Speaker 1: signal would come back, and my little typewriter machine would
Speaker 1: print out the list of files. Okay now, and then
Speaker 1: I'd say, okay, open this one, and it would print
Speaker 1: out the code. Interesting, weird, weird time, so much paper,
Speaker 1: I imagine. Yes, so he's got this teletype, and Ken
Speaker 1: wrote quote. I was programming an income tax program on
Speaker 1: a mainframe computer three thousand miles away from my l
Speaker 1: a home. The machine was solely for that remote work,
Speaker 1: but that didn't stop me from exploring the main frame
Speaker 1: for anything else interesting to do. I will always remember
Speaker 1: the thrill of discovery when I saw something called adventure
Speaker 1: and typed it just to see what would happen. The
Speaker 1: computer answered back, and it would change their lives forever.
Speaker 1: And we'll find out how right after this break, welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show. Even that is like later than
Speaker 1: they didn't have recorded voices, right. Well, if I could
Speaker 1: tell a type y'all and welcome back to the show,
Speaker 1: I would now. At this point in her life, ROBERTA
Speaker 1: Williams had put all of her fantasies behind her. She
Speaker 1: was a mother and a housewife in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: so you know she knew. Her understanding was that Ken
Speaker 1: was making money, and she stayed home and took care
Speaker 1: of the other half of their lives. And her shyness
Speaker 1: only got worse in these days too. She said she
Speaker 1: could barely make a phone call, and any creative fairy
Speaker 1: tales that were still floating around in her head were
Speaker 1: quickly buried away and told to no one. Her best
Speaker 1: escape was reading. She loved Agatha Christie novels and other
Speaker 1: mysteries and adventure stories. And Ken's whole world was computers.
Speaker 1: But despite that, Roberta really never had much interest in them,
Speaker 1: and she also didn't really care too much for games,
Speaker 1: so after Ken typed out Adventure on his teletype, she
Speaker 1: probably rolled her eyes when he called her over and said,
Speaker 1: you gotta see this game. But Ken was fascinated by it.
Speaker 1: Everybody was. This game was blowing up. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was just changing what everyone was thinking computers could do.
Speaker 1: Tim Anderson, who was a programmer back in the day
Speaker 1: who worked at m I T, said that when this
Speaker 1: game came out, quote, it's estimated that it's set the
Speaker 1: entire computer industry back two weeks because everybody just dropped
Speaker 1: what they were doing to play this game, similar to
Speaker 1: video games today. Back many a school, career, careers, whole industries.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know a lot of grown adults who
Speaker 1: stopped working when Elden Ring came out and their their
Speaker 1: whole industry probably got set back two weeks as well.
Speaker 1: Everyone's like, where's the thing that I asked you for?
Speaker 1: So after some persistence, Roberta finally agreed to come look
Speaker 1: at whatever nonsense he was a pitch into her, and
Speaker 1: she sat down and saw the text that had been
Speaker 1: written back. Quote. You are standing at the end of
Speaker 1: a road before a small brick building. Around you is
Speaker 1: a forest. A small stream flows out of the building
Speaker 1: and down a gully. These were the opening lines to
Speaker 1: the game Adventure also called Colossal Cave by Will Crowther
Speaker 1: and Don Woods. It was one of the first video
Speaker 1: games and it was all text based, no images at all.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a Choose your own adventure book.
Speaker 1: You would just type in what you wanted to do
Speaker 1: or where you want to go, Like you type in
Speaker 1: east and it would then print back. You are inside
Speaker 1: a building, a well house for a large spring. There
Speaker 1: are some keys on the ground. There is a shiny
Speaker 1: brass lamp nearby. There is food here, and you type
Speaker 1: take keys or whatever and try to find the treasure
Speaker 1: in the cave. And if you're like me, you never
Speaker 1: heard of this game until you read the book Ready
Speaker 1: Player One, maybe saw the movie right right, because I
Speaker 1: mean this was this game was groundbreaking and revolution. It's
Speaker 1: definitely a point in history that you can look at
Speaker 1: and say like this is where it all changed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolute and everything. So yeah, it was a big deal
Speaker 1: in the book. Yeah, of course, because it would, like
Speaker 1: you say, it was like the first video game, and
Speaker 1: it was all about people who obsessed with video games,
Speaker 1: so it was like a well and of course Ready
Speaker 1: Player One is the characters are based on the real life,
Speaker 1: like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and these guys who
Speaker 1: were who were literally at this time doing the same
Speaker 1: thing as as kenn of Roberta here like pulling up
Speaker 1: these computers and saying, what the hell can it do? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're having their their children's minds blown by this text game.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't long before Roberta was hooked on this game.
Speaker 1: And I know the feeling she said, quote, I couldn't
Speaker 1: stop it was compulsive. I started playing it, and I
Speaker 1: kept playing it. I had a baby at the time,
Speaker 1: Chris was eight months old. I totally ignored him. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be bothered. I didn't want to stop
Speaker 1: and make dinner. I wonder if Chris ever read this
Speaker 1: book and he was like, wow, yeah, so that's where
Speaker 1: my obsession with hugging comes from. Now. Roberta stayed up
Speaker 1: all night trying to figure out how to like get
Speaker 1: around the snake or where the stupid keys went, r
Speaker 1: various puzzles like that, And when she wasn't playing it,
Speaker 1: she'd be daydreaming about what steps she could take next.
Speaker 1: She started imagining maybe how the story would go if
Speaker 1: she had written it. Meanwhile, Ken kind of got bored
Speaker 1: with the game quickly. Roberta thought maybe that was because
Speaker 1: he didn't like the game's sarcasm and humor, which I
Speaker 1: love in these old games. I was about to say
Speaker 1: that would be the best thing about it, but only
Speaker 1: if you're a certain I think for creative types. I
Speaker 1: think for very literal people, you might be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't need all that. I want the data, I
Speaker 1: want the information. I don't need that. They don't want
Speaker 1: to play the game. Don't joke with me, don't have
Speaker 1: fun with me, want to play this game. Levy gives
Speaker 1: an example of this in the game. If you typed
Speaker 1: out something like kill dragon, the game would respond, what
Speaker 1: with your bare hands? But if you typed back yes,
Speaker 1: then the game would say, congratulations, you have just vanquished
Speaker 1: a dragon with your bare hands. Unbelievable, isn't it? Take that?
Speaker 1: And that give that dragon the old one to write
Speaker 1: And that kind of sense of humor would definitely play
Speaker 1: into Roberta's games. Later on, Roberta mapped out the game
Speaker 1: on paper, so you know, when it said go east
Speaker 1: and it would describe where you were at. Next she
Speaker 1: would draw a little circle and say, this is the
Speaker 1: room with the well, go west, this is the room
Speaker 1: with the path, you know, and she would sort of
Speaker 1: design the whole game visually when it was only giving
Speaker 1: you text, Oh my god, we did that when we
Speaker 1: play a labyrinth. I remember, like months later, I found
Speaker 1: the white board we used or the piece of paper something.
Speaker 1: It just had all these little dots on it because
Speaker 1: you're just like this room that we've tried that one over,
Speaker 1: and I was like, if you didn't know what we
Speaker 1: were doing. You look like a madman. What are you
Speaker 1: doing on this paper? But this helped her kind of
Speaker 1: visualize the game as a whole rather than just room
Speaker 1: to room. Text not helped her track her progress, and
Speaker 1: it brought a different kind of life to the game too.
Speaker 1: After a month of playing, she finally solved the Colossal
Speaker 1: Cave adventure. Then Ken's brother showed him this new, ugly
Speaker 1: beige box he'd gotten. It was a machine called the
Speaker 1: Apple Computer. Big deal, get it out of my house.
Speaker 1: And even though Ken called it quote a toy compared
Speaker 1: to the computers I had been using, a piece of junk,
Speaker 1: a primeval machine, he knew that it was going to
Speaker 1: open new doors for programmers. And Roberto was excited at
Speaker 1: the gaming possibilities of a computer with its own screen.
Speaker 1: So let's just pause right there and talk to you
Speaker 1: about computers that did not have monitors. That's what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about with this printer, you know, this teletype machine,
Speaker 1: just like, oh, you can look at it. Wow. I
Speaker 1: wonder if anybody was like, also, it's so great. I
Speaker 1: don't have to throw out all this paper every five minutes.
Speaker 1: So Ken and Roberta agreed that Christmas of nine, they
Speaker 1: would spend two thousand dollars for their own Apple two
Speaker 1: as a gift for each other. Now that prices stayed
Speaker 1: pretty much the same, the Apple computers still around two
Speaker 1: k or, which means it's crazy cheaper now because man,
Speaker 1: that would have been like seven grand back then. Ken
Speaker 1: had hired a team of five programmers to try and
Speaker 1: create a new compiler for the Apple personal computer that
Speaker 1: he could sell to engineers and technicians. And when he
Speaker 1: wasn't using it, Roberta was picking up any other adventure
Speaker 1: style games she could get her hands on and playing
Speaker 1: through them. But they were all too simple and dull.
Speaker 1: Nothing lived up to Colossal Cave. She's like, give me
Speaker 1: a game that takes a month to solve. I know
Speaker 1: that feeling too. Sometimes you play through just such a
Speaker 1: good game and then you're trying to find that experience
Speaker 1: again and it's just like this sucks. That's easy, this
Speaker 1: is boring, this is ugly, it's tough. It's like that
Speaker 1: with books too. Should read a really good book. God,
Speaker 1: all I want is that same experience, but a new
Speaker 1: book again. But playing these games, getting into these adventures,
Speaker 1: something buried deep and Roberta's mind had been reawakened. Her
Speaker 1: imagination was just jump started, and she started jotting down
Speaker 1: ideas that she had for her own story, which was
Speaker 1: like a murder mystery kind of based on the Agatha
Speaker 1: Christie novels that she read, especially the book and then
Speaker 1: there were none for the first Agatha Christie that I read. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: just like when she was playing Colossal Cave. She drew
Speaker 1: out maps and she sketched the lay out and create
Speaker 1: all these landmarks for each screen, and she wrote vivid descriptions.
Speaker 1: She fleshed out characters in her idea, and she started
Speaker 1: to develop plot twists and puzzles, and after a few
Speaker 1: weeks she had this big stack of papers that contained
Speaker 1: her whole story. And she and Kenn went out to
Speaker 1: dinner one night and she started to describe to him
Speaker 1: how this game would go this old Victorian house where
Speaker 1: you start off looking for some jewels, but then you
Speaker 1: discover a body, and then people start getting killed off
Speaker 1: one by one, their secret passages, surprise twists, betrayals, until
Speaker 1: finally you need to uncover the murderer before you become
Speaker 1: a victim yourself. Gripping, and Ken is starting to think,
Speaker 1: you know, there might really be something here. He thought, Hey,
Speaker 1: if we could sell this, like I don't know, we
Speaker 1: might be able to take a little trip, or maybe
Speaker 1: even get some new furniture for the house or something.
Speaker 1: Just little extra spending cash would be nice that week
Speaker 1: or whatever. But Ken knew that most people who owned
Speaker 1: computers weren't trying to play games. Those were usually just
Speaker 1: temporary distractions for programmers when they needed a break, or
Speaker 1: maybe something to make their computer illiterate spouses comfortable with
Speaker 1: these sticker price Yeah right, honey, I spent two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars on the computer. But don't worry. You can type
Speaker 1: your way through this coloss you can. You can talk
Speaker 1: to the teletype. Yeah yeah, Like all right, I guess
Speaker 1: that does sound like fun. But if they wanted it
Speaker 1: to really be worth something, he told her it really
Speaker 1: needed to be something unique. He told her to look
Speaker 1: for a hook, something that would stand out. And Roberta
Speaker 1: was like, you know, I actually had been thinking what
Speaker 1: if it wasn't just text? Like what if there was
Speaker 1: a picture there with it? I don't know, that sounds crazy.
Speaker 1: How do you put a picture onto a computer? Like?
Speaker 1: What am I talking about? For? I forgot I forgot
Speaker 1: what is the science fiction picture on a computers? Two?
Speaker 1: Thou one a space Odyssey. Next thing you know, they'll
Speaker 1: be putting a calculator on your phone. Righteous, who would
Speaker 1: do that? Well Ken heard this and he saw a
Speaker 1: mouse and a maze. He was thinking about his own
Speaker 1: challenge that he had set himself back the day, and
Speaker 1: he was like going against convention, figuring out an impossible problem,
Speaker 1: learning how to do something I've never even heard of before.
Speaker 1: This is kind of his whole thing. It's like his
Speaker 1: whole being right wrapped up into one project. And he
Speaker 1: told her, you know, I might as well give it
Speaker 1: a shot. So, using a new device called the Versa writer,
Speaker 1: which translated drawn images on a tablet into these very
Speaker 1: rudimentary shapes on a computer screen, they managed to put
Speaker 1: this game together, and Ken absolutely defied convention by manipulating
Speaker 1: the programming to get these images to fit on a
Speaker 1: floppy disk. History link dot com writes that the Apple
Speaker 1: two had sixty kilobytes of memory, and the five and
Speaker 1: a quarter inch floppy disks of the time could fit
Speaker 1: about kilobytes of data on them. Um Just for reference today,
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with file sizes, an hour long
Speaker 1: episode of this show, for example, compressed into an MP
Speaker 1: three file is about sixty thousand kilobytes, and you can
Speaker 1: on this disc. So we could basically record ourselves saying
Speaker 1: speculation station and like halfway through that train whistle sound,
Speaker 1: that disc would explode. That's all you would get. How
Speaker 1: many discs for one episode of Ridiculous Romance? A lot
Speaker 1: more than there are left in the world today. We
Speaker 1: should do one just as a gag and call it
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Roman, Ridicculous Romance. Oh my god, order your box
Speaker 1: set of this episode today. All this toll free, number
Speaker 1: five dollars, but it's dollars shipping and handle no for
Speaker 1: for For an easier example, one floppy disc might fit
Speaker 1: a small jpeg of like a board ape. It's like
Speaker 1: like a small jpeg. So it's very impressive that can
Speaker 1: actually manage to get this game size down to fit
Speaker 1: on this disc. And beyond the technical aspects, the game
Speaker 1: itself was revolutionary. Video game historian Lane Nooney writes, quote,
Speaker 1: many designers began with what they could code. ROBERTA. Williams
Speaker 1: began by mapping out the space within which she would
Speaker 1: string up the components of a narrative. So she's basically like,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of people are starting with, well,
Speaker 1: what can I program? I'll make a game out of that,
Speaker 1: And she's like, no, no, I'm gonna come up with
Speaker 1: the game and then you figure out how to make
Speaker 1: it how to program it, so totally different approach. They
Speaker 1: still the content rather than the capabilities of the computer.
Speaker 1: Her lack of knowledge about computers is what let her
Speaker 1: break the limits of the computer's capabilities, and Ken's skills
Speaker 1: as a programmer let him find a way to make
Speaker 1: it work. So they're the perfect team to bring something
Speaker 1: totally new to this world of gaming and even just
Speaker 1: to the world of tech. And you know, I love
Speaker 1: an expert opinion on anything, but that is so true
Speaker 1: that sometimes if you bring in a completely new, untrained eye,
Speaker 1: they will see things or think of things that you're
Speaker 1: expert training would not, simply because you're blinded by the
Speaker 1: conventions of your of your field or whatever. I mean.
Speaker 1: You even talked about that a little with Hector Burlios,
Speaker 1: because he was like, oh, I never learned the piano,
Speaker 1: and that's what made me less traditional than all the
Speaker 1: other composers and my contemporaries. Whatever. So anyway, Roberta's game
Speaker 1: was called Mystery House, and there was no animation, no sound,
Speaker 1: owned no color that would definitely not fit on one disc.
Speaker 1: It was just black and white line drawings with the
Speaker 1: action in the text. After a few tepid offers from
Speaker 1: software companies, including Apple Kenna, Roberta decided to sell the
Speaker 1: game independently. Roberto went to the grocery store and bought
Speaker 1: a few boxes of Ziplock sandwich baggies while Ken printed
Speaker 1: out the game's title and cover art on a half
Speaker 1: sheet of paper, and they slipped the disc in a
Speaker 1: baggy with the folded piece of paper, and they paid
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars for an ad in the computer magazine
Speaker 1: Micro the six five O two journal, A gripping piece
Speaker 1: of reading. I will say I had a couple of those.
Speaker 1: They were vintaged by the time I had them, but
Speaker 1: it was pretty interesting to look at these old, like,
Speaker 1: you know, very late seventies, early eighties, little folded magazines
Speaker 1: about computers. Sure, I bet that was those of those.
Speaker 1: I mean, would be cool to again now talking about
Speaker 1: is going to change the world. And you were like
Speaker 1: laughing your ass as you dialed up a O l Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was in high school. My friends and I were
Speaker 1: building computers. We were saving up money for at eighty
Speaker 1: megabyte hard drive. Eighty what word? Did you need megabytes?
Speaker 1: Just your phone is probably like thirty two gigabytes of storage,
Speaker 1: and a gigabyte is a thousand megabytes. So my my
Speaker 1: hard drive. I was playing Warcraft two on its circ
Speaker 1: Uh you know, could you could fit thousands of those
Speaker 1: your phone? Amazing? Well, they priced this game at which
Speaker 1: you know, it's the eighties, so that's what about? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they gave their home phone number. They directed customers
Speaker 1: to make their checks out to online systems at their
Speaker 1: home address, and the release date was May five. By
Speaker 1: the end of the month, they had sold eleven thousand
Speaker 1: dollars worth of copies. By June they had made twenty dollars.
Speaker 1: In July it was thirty thou dollars. That's a hundred
Speaker 1: k today, outrageous. Can I please make that much money
Speaker 1: in a month? I mean seriously, I would take it.
Speaker 1: And for a while Ken kept his programming job full time,
Speaker 1: but before long it was clear they had their own
Speaker 1: business to run here. Roberta got to work on their
Speaker 1: next game right away, and later that same year, they
Speaker 1: released The Wizard and the Princess, which was more inspired
Speaker 1: by Tolkien's books, like it was that kind of fantasy.
Speaker 1: It was released in September and it sold more than
Speaker 1: sixty thousand copies. They moved close to Roberta's parents to
Speaker 1: a rural home near Fresno at the foot of the
Speaker 1: Sierra Nevada Mountains, and they considered their early retirement, but
Speaker 1: none of them were really willing to stop this money
Speaker 1: machine that they had develop. Roberta's father became their distribution manager.
Speaker 1: Ken's brother jumped in as their advertising manager, and on
Speaker 1: December one, they opened their first official headquarters in Oakhurst,
Speaker 1: and they changed the company's name to Sierra Online. It's
Speaker 1: probably just a lot more fun work too than whatever
Speaker 1: he was doing. Like I was thinking about early retirement
Speaker 1: when I was bored as fun every day, but now
Speaker 1: I'm making games. This is fun for real. And then
Speaker 1: just for that to come from from nowhere, like just
Speaker 1: totally unexpected, Like at the beginning of this year, we
Speaker 1: just assumed like I'll be doing this for the next
Speaker 1: thirty years, and then three months later, holy sh it,
Speaker 1: we have an incredibly booming business, right right, at our
Speaker 1: fingertips here. Very exciting, well, talk about exciting. Maybe the
Speaker 1: coolest thing that could ever happen to someone in that
Speaker 1: year happened to Roberta Williams. Her phone rang, she picked
Speaker 1: it up. See are online. This is Roberta speaking on
Speaker 1: the other end, Roberta. Hi, this is Jim Henson. I
Speaker 1: would kermit flail all over that. Poll was that kermit
Speaker 1: it was my version And you're just saw the arms
Speaker 1: that looked right and this sounded like fozzy drowning. Well, Hi,
Speaker 1: I would fozy drown all over that. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: can you imagine it's two and Jim Henson calls you
Speaker 1: forget it. If Jim Henson called me at any time,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know he's not alive, called me today,
Speaker 1: very startled. But if he was alive today and called me,
Speaker 1: I would still flip my ship. That's Jim Henson. There's
Speaker 1: not a year that Jim Henson could call where I
Speaker 1: would not be unbelievably amazed that he was calling. I
Speaker 1: would just be like a lot. I wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to be like okay, never mind, I guess no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I can speak normally. Please continue see Jim Henson had
Speaker 1: played the Sierra Games and he was a huge fan,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to create a video game out of
Speaker 1: a little movie he had coming out called The Dark
Speaker 1: Crystal Awesome. Roberta was probably like, gee, I ghost, We'll
Speaker 1: think about it. Yes, of course I want to do that.
Speaker 1: The movie wasn't even done being filmed yet, so he
Speaker 1: sent her a script. Yeah you know that that'sn't like
Speaker 1: a glass case somewhere, and he invited her to attend
Speaker 1: the movie premiere in December of eighty two in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: The game was released in three. It was also text based,
Speaker 1: but the accompanying images were more detailed and artistic. They
Speaker 1: had a few colors mixed right, you know, real high tech,
Speaker 1: very rudimentary graphics, but still a big step up from
Speaker 1: Mystery House and Wizard in the Princess totally. But two
Speaker 1: was an equally exciting and tragic year for the will
Speaker 1: ames Is. Apple co founder Steve Wozniak was hosting a
Speaker 1: music festival in September and invited Ken and Roberta to
Speaker 1: come out cool. They dropped their kids off at a
Speaker 1: sitter and went to this probably amazing party. But while
Speaker 1: they were there, their house burned down. No one was hurt,
Speaker 1: but a lot was lost and they had to shift
Speaker 1: to working out of the office headquarters. That's a lot
Speaker 1: like Frederick Douglas in their house burned down. He lost
Speaker 1: the entire, only complete archive of the north Star Look
Speaker 1: that he wrote. Everybody take note, if you're gonna be
Speaker 1: a famous historical person, please put your ship in a
Speaker 1: fire safe box or just in case you think you
Speaker 1: might bury it underground in your backyard. Something I think
Speaker 1: about that. Steve Wozniak Party two also because of Ready
Speaker 1: Player one, the character Ogdenmorrow was kind of based on him,
Speaker 1: and I remember inside the what do they call it
Speaker 1: the Oasis, he had that DJ party or he was
Speaker 1: like the floating wizard rolling around, and I guess Steve
Speaker 1: Bosniak was a party dude. I have to say. I
Speaker 1: think that's why I'm so derisive of metaverse is because
Speaker 1: I have this idea of what it should look like,
Speaker 1: and it's that it's like a wizard and you can
Speaker 1: like levitate and dance in the mid air and all
Speaker 1: this stuff instead of like these weird tin man looking
Speaker 1: oil had people maybe one day because you know, we
Speaker 1: had to have we had to have mystery house before
Speaker 1: we could have Elden Ring. So it's true, I guess
Speaker 1: I should get in on the ground floor. Let me
Speaker 1: go ahead and get some crypto going, all right. But
Speaker 1: regardless of the fire, maybe even because of the fire,
Speaker 1: a new idea rose out of this tragedy that was
Speaker 1: gonna once again revolutionize gaming forever, one that would certainly,
Speaker 1: as I've said, change my life and set me on
Speaker 1: a course for probably where we are today. It was
Speaker 1: all about a night named Sir Graham and his king
Speaker 1: and a quest for three treasures. And we will go
Speaker 1: on that adventure right after this. Welcome back to the Quest. Okay,
Speaker 1: So IBM, big computer company of the day. We don't
Speaker 1: hear their name batting around anymore like we used to. Um,
Speaker 1: But IBM had a new computer coming out in Ish
Speaker 1: and it had a whopping two hundred and fifty six
Speaker 1: kilobytes of memory that I'm just gonna throw. I love
Speaker 1: these comparisons, they're so pointless to make. But but just
Speaker 1: for reference, the PlayStation five has sixteen gigabytes of memory
Speaker 1: or sixteen million kilobytes, so compared that to the two
Speaker 1: fifty six back in the days, We've come a long way,
Speaker 1: but tech tech advances exponentially, so it doesn't just double
Speaker 1: every year like doubles and then quadruples and then goes
Speaker 1: time sixteen. It's anyway, that's a whole other thing. It's
Speaker 1: called Moore's Law and it's fascinating, So okay, it's nine
Speaker 1: eight three. IBM reached out to Sierra Online and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you guys need to write a game that's gonna show
Speaker 1: everybody the absolute power of this beastly machine we're putting out,
Speaker 1: and they really wanted something highly replayable, but Roberta knew
Speaker 1: that her stories were mysteries, so they were kind of
Speaker 1: inherently not replayable, like once you knew, you knew. But
Speaker 1: with IBM back in the project, with a bunch of
Speaker 1: money at their bags, a bunch of new technology, the
Speaker 1: couple was able to put out something revolutionary together anyway.
Speaker 1: It was a fully animated graphic game that allowed players
Speaker 1: to move their character through a three dimensional world, absolutely
Speaker 1: unheard of at the time, and they released King's Quest.
Speaker 1: This game, of course, was a massive hit. If you
Speaker 1: haven't played it, dig it up you can find it
Speaker 1: and it's really I know, the graphics are obviously like
Speaker 1: forty oh god, forty years old, but they are very pixels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's fun and you'd literally like, you know, your
Speaker 1: little this little dude, and you use the air keys
Speaker 1: to walk up, down, left, right, you go from screen
Speaker 1: to screen, You pick up items, you use them to
Speaker 1: solve a little puzzles as you're going get your way
Speaker 1: through the story. And it's so good. It's pretty too,
Speaker 1: like the glass and all the trees and the lakes
Speaker 1: and rivers. Yeah, they all look pretty cute. Really. The
Speaker 1: artworks impressive, and um Ken talked about that at one point.
Speaker 1: He said Roberto was never really an artist, so she
Speaker 1: was really happy to be able to hire on artists
Speaker 1: once they started making these games and have some real money.
Speaker 1: And the artwork is gorgeous. I mean, if you can appreciate,
Speaker 1: you know, that kind of old computer art, they do
Speaker 1: really impressive things with it. And the music. The music
Speaker 1: is so good too. So it's just beeps in a computer,
Speaker 1: but you can hear it's like the orchestra just fills
Speaker 1: into your head, right, and it's wonderful. So this game
Speaker 1: comes out and by the end of that year, the
Speaker 1: company's total sales had hit ten million dollars, making them
Speaker 1: one of the largest independent software companies in the world.
Speaker 1: The next year, they got a call from another little
Speaker 1: startup company called Walt Disney Pictures, and they asked them
Speaker 1: to help them develop three educational computer games, and in
Speaker 1: four Sierra released Mickey's Space Adventure, which was the first
Speaker 1: video game to feature Mickey Mouse. So again, all your
Speaker 1: Kingdom Hearts players out there, it started here. That's right.
Speaker 1: You would not have Kingdom Hearts if it wasn't for
Speaker 1: Mickey's Space Adventure. So Ken was now full time managing
Speaker 1: Sierra Online. To take that old boss who said he
Speaker 1: had no talent from management. Almost wish you'd send him
Speaker 1: a floppy disk. But when he put it in, it
Speaker 1: just said like a big middle finger finger with some
Speaker 1: gorgeous music. But yeah, it was like, my company's worth
Speaker 1: ten million dollars, you dick. That's his follow up, Floppy
Speaker 1: dosk too much for one kind of sixteen floppy disk
Speaker 1: set insult. He had to put them in separately to
Speaker 1: get the whole thing. Roberto was developing games with their
Speaker 1: growing and talented staff, including Mixed Up Mother Goose and
Speaker 1: the tie in game for Disney's The Black Cauldron. Parent.
Speaker 1: Drum writes in I On Design magazine that at its start,
Speaker 1: Sierra was quote a rag tag crew of energetic misfits,
Speaker 1: some of my favorite kinds of cruise. Definitely being in
Speaker 1: Oakland meant that they didn't have access to the best
Speaker 1: programmers in their field. Right. Why is that? Were they
Speaker 1: like in Silicon Valley? Right? Because, yeah, you know, Lucas
Speaker 1: Arts was up in San Francisco. You know, we talked
Speaker 1: about Merles County. You know, there's a bunch of other
Speaker 1: software companies are popping up at the time, and yeah,
Speaker 1: they sort of more centralized around San Francisco and the
Speaker 1: value up there. So if you wanted to be a programmer,
Speaker 1: you weren't going to move to this little town where
Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of action happening. So a lot
Speaker 1: of the best names are the quotes, best talent of
Speaker 1: the day were willing to even move out there, even
Speaker 1: if they were offered a job. Okay, So Sierra hired
Speaker 1: quote literally anyone who could program or pick up a
Speaker 1: phone or tape up a box. But of course, computer
Speaker 1: science was a male dominated industry even then, despite many
Speaker 1: women being very skilled. Weird how that happens? So wild
Speaker 1: companies like LucasArts and Infocom had few women on staff
Speaker 1: and fewer still in upper level positions. Sierra Quote had
Speaker 1: a veritable army of women, including influential programmers and game
Speaker 1: designers like Jane Jensen, Christie Marks, Lora Le Shannon, and
Speaker 1: Laurie Anne Cole. And those women are amazing the minds
Speaker 1: behind games like Gabriel Night, Quest for Glory, Phantasmagoria, all
Speaker 1: things like this, um, super cool people in their day.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it just goes to show like these women
Speaker 1: were probably more talented than some of the men who
Speaker 1: were getting hired by Lucas Arts, but they just weren't
Speaker 1: getting hired because they were women. So Sierra was like,
Speaker 1: we'll take you. Oh, look surprised because we were willing
Speaker 1: to hire these women. We have the best programmers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have amazing games, cool imagination, and buddies very motivated
Speaker 1: to do their best work. I wonder where that comes from.
Speaker 1: Se Feminism benefits everyone. Hello, Hello, Hello. So Sierra continued
Speaker 1: to expand, including eight total King's Quest games and okay,
Speaker 1: all right, sorry, just give me a second here. King's
Speaker 1: Quest two pretty straightforward story of King Graham rescuing a
Speaker 1: Princess felinists from a tower and making her his queen,
Speaker 1: like you know, very standard fairy tale kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: very cool stuff, whole magical door floating in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere. There's a dolphin. Uh, there's some great stuff
Speaker 1: in King's Quest Batman. Uh, there's a whole Batman think
Speaker 1: they pulled a lot of other stories and pop culture
Speaker 1: references into their games. Sometime Batman, where's the Batman? King's
Speaker 1: Quest crossovers in Quest too. I'm telling you well in
Speaker 1: Batman and the dc U, King's Quest three broke the
Speaker 1: storytelling mold and that shifted to a whole new time
Speaker 1: and place. And then King's Quest four, The Perils of
Speaker 1: rose Ella, shifted the protagonist to King Graham's daughter, the
Speaker 1: Princess Rosella, who set out on an adventure to save
Speaker 1: her father from the help of a powerful fairy. And
Speaker 1: this was the first major adventure game with a female heroin.
Speaker 1: And it's one of the best games ever made. Side note,
Speaker 1: it's very good and you've got to play it. And
Speaker 1: then king Quest five goes back to King Graham, and
Speaker 1: the game's kind of goofy, and it's got a lot
Speaker 1: of memes that have come out of it. There's a
Speaker 1: whole wizard Society storyline that's super dope. I think King's
Speaker 1: Quest six is one of the best fantasies ever told,
Speaker 1: with the most delightful and wonderful characters, and they throw
Speaker 1: references to classic fairy tales all the time, and it's
Speaker 1: just completely immerses you in this world. And then King's
Speaker 1: Quest seven is about the Queen and the Princess again,
Speaker 1: you get to choose between the two protagonists and it's
Speaker 1: just so good. And all I'm saying is, let me
Speaker 1: make this TV show. I'm saying, Kenna Roberta, if you're listening,
Speaker 1: call me. We're gonna we'll figure it out. We're gonna
Speaker 1: get the rights, we're gonna go to HBO, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna make the next Game of Thrones, but better. He's
Speaker 1: very serious. I am not kidding. I have got it
Speaker 1: sketched out. I know what I'm doing, and I'm ready
Speaker 1: to go. College game is its own season I've seen
Speaker 1: not even there's I'm not gonna give it all the way,
Speaker 1: but there's some overlap because you have to play with
Speaker 1: the timelines a little bit. It's gonna be very good.
Speaker 1: Just call me, Okay, I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm picturing
Speaker 1: the Charlie day me where Yarn, that's you. It is
Speaker 1: basically Quest, but it's better than that, but better so
Speaker 1: with King's Quest four. Roberta was worried about releasing a
Speaker 1: female heroin with Rosella, she thought guys would write in
Speaker 1: and say, I don't want to be a girl. I
Speaker 1: don't know what made her be worried about that. It
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like something a lot of guys that like
Speaker 1: games do, but she said it was actually never really
Speaker 1: an issue. Fan Mail poured in, largely from women who
Speaker 1: Sierra estimated to be of their audience base, and Drum
Speaker 1: shares one of these letters in her article, quote, Dear Sierra,
Speaker 1: this is a love letter, pure and simple. I do
Speaker 1: not fit the profile for adventure gamers. I'm a forty
Speaker 1: five year old woman who works for L L Bean
Speaker 1: and as a freelance writer. I love these games. I
Speaker 1: am addicted. There seems to be no known cure. I
Speaker 1: hope no one ever mines one. Please continue to create forever, Forever, yours,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Hood and wherever you are, Elizabeth, right into HBO
Speaker 1: and ask for Eli show because you know it's true,
Speaker 1: and that that addictive quality. It was the same thing
Speaker 1: Roberto was talking about, and she just couldn't step away.
Speaker 1: And I think that's you get it in books, you
Speaker 1: get it in TV. We see it a lot in
Speaker 1: TV now, where's just like I have to know what
Speaker 1: happens next. Yeah. Well, it's such a great thing about
Speaker 1: brain teasers because it literally teases your brain even when
Speaker 1: you're not playing. You're just like, oh, who do we
Speaker 1: do that? Well? And I was gonna say, and the
Speaker 1: fact that they're not just puzzles, but there's a story
Speaker 1: with them. You want to watch it unfold and you
Speaker 1: have a hard time stepping away from that. And I
Speaker 1: think that also is what a lot of success with
Speaker 1: these games owes itself too, is that kind of addictive nature.
Speaker 1: I know they exploit that in games now, like literally
Speaker 1: they have psychologists working for game companies saying, how do
Speaker 1: we get people not be able to put it down? So,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to stay on the romance topic here,
Speaker 1: not get too suction at the detailed video game history
Speaker 1: of it all. Roberta and Ken were just one of
Speaker 1: the ultimate power couples in the gaming industry and the
Speaker 1: tech world. So they came out with this controversial game, Phantasmagoria,
Speaker 1: and it made twelve million dollars. It was continuing to
Speaker 1: push the envelope as they did. It was the first
Speaker 1: game to include live action video. Obviously this was a
Speaker 1: CD ROM game, but it was literally grainy video footage
Speaker 1: of this woman. You know, you would tell her where
Speaker 1: to walk, and they just filmed her turning in every
Speaker 1: direction you showed. You showed me some and they do
Speaker 1: look a little weird because I mean you have to
Speaker 1: animate her body, and it's very weird, like old, very
Speaker 1: kind of um not spotty, but jumpy. I guess CD
Speaker 1: I um, but I was just thinking about the acting
Speaker 1: gig for this person. Okay, now close the car door
Speaker 1: and turn your entire body at the same time, and
Speaker 1: then just stand there with your hands by your side
Speaker 1: while they make a decision. Okay, now walk forward. You know,
Speaker 1: just a weird job, very weird stuff. It's a little
Speaker 1: uncanny on Canny Valley. I gets not really, but it
Speaker 1: just looks weird, like like that's not what I want.
Speaker 1: I wanted all animated or nothing animated. It's a weird combo.
Speaker 1: This game was also very controversial because it had like
Speaker 1: a rape scene in it and a lot of really
Speaker 1: bad violence. Um. I never played it all the way through,
Speaker 1: but yeah, at this murder and all kinds of stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: but it did sell a lot, sure, and Drum points
Speaker 1: out in her article that these games were not just
Speaker 1: ROBERTA and Ken like. We need to remember that these
Speaker 1: games took teams and teams of people, and the stresses
Speaker 1: of creating games was incredibly difficult. She writes that quote. Generally,
Speaker 1: many employees recount their time at Skara as some of
Speaker 1: the most fun they've had in their careers, but they
Speaker 1: also report being under tummendous, debilitating stress, and some people
Speaker 1: couldn't even talk about their experiences later on because it
Speaker 1: was just too much to think about. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: kind of still a thing. So that's a bigger thing,
Speaker 1: I think today than ever you hear about deadlines being pushed,
Speaker 1: especially the way game releases now are like movie releases,
Speaker 1: Like they set a date and they give you a
Speaker 1: trailer months beforehand, and they're like get ready, alight. Saying
Speaker 1: about Cyberpunk seventy seven whatever that is that they came
Speaker 1: out probably too early, and immediately people were like, oh it.
Speaker 1: JOSEPHS glitch and it looks weird and it's not cool
Speaker 1: and whatever, and I think it's fine now, but again,
Speaker 1: it was like you you had to sort of really
Speaker 1: piss off your whole buyer base first, and it's an
Speaker 1: apologize later, like a better version. And that's the thing.
Speaker 1: It's a mix of corporate overpromising and trying to sell
Speaker 1: things that don't exist, that that they don't know will exist,
Speaker 1: and a mix of consumers being assholes and like just
Speaker 1: freaking out because something wasn't exactly what I thought it
Speaker 1: was gonna be. It's like those people who tried to
Speaker 1: sue that movie because Anna to Armis was in the
Speaker 1: trailer but her scenes got cut and they went and
Speaker 1: saw the movie and sued for false advertising. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: shut up. If you only went to that movie because
Speaker 1: you saw Anna to Armis for two seconds in the trailer,
Speaker 1: then you deserve to lose your sixteen bucks or whatever.
Speaker 1: Like watch the movie, right, and then just go watch
Speaker 1: Knives Out. You'll see a bunch of her great So
Speaker 1: by the fall of Sierra Online had five hundred and
Speaker 1: forty employees and fifty million dollars in sales and was
Speaker 1: still growing. Ken Williams said in a later interview that
Speaker 1: between n and NIX their revenue tripled, So yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot more than this uh little trip or some new
Speaker 1: furniture that they had originally made their goal. And then
Speaker 1: on February Walter Forbes said that his company see You
Speaker 1: see International or Internet, I wanted to buy Sierra Online
Speaker 1: for one point five billion dollars. Holy sh it in
Speaker 1: the nineties to billions of dollars, like unthinkable money. It's
Speaker 1: in the sane price. It was totally unexpected. But Ken said,
Speaker 1: quote as CEO, I had a fiscal duty to shareholders
Speaker 1: to take the deal. So Forbes had this big idea,
Speaker 1: He's going to bring together all these big old companies,
Speaker 1: including Lucas Arts, broder Bund, Davidson and Associates, which owned
Speaker 1: Blizzard Entertainment and also Sierra Online. He was basically going
Speaker 1: to like create a big game Monopoly Umbrella broder Bund.
Speaker 1: Broder Bund, by the way, the company that made Missed,
Speaker 1: also an incredible games. Well, of course the Lucas Arts
Speaker 1: deal fell through. Of course it did by Lucas Arts
Speaker 1: unless you're Disney, and even then you wait for pretty
Speaker 1: years to do it. For George to get tired. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: remember our Marcia and George Lucas episode. And I had
Speaker 1: a bit of a control problem when he was younger,
Speaker 1: And yeah, he was not interested. And Sierra's software development
Speaker 1: got very little focus and attention. Bob Davidson became CEO
Speaker 1: for the whole publishing body, and he had like a stiff, dated,
Speaker 1: conservative management style that really clashed with Ken's bold, brash innovation.
Speaker 1: So Sierra became more of a publishing platform than a
Speaker 1: development studio. And not for nothing, they did publish the
Speaker 1: Valve game Half Life, which is awesome. Okay, I've heard
Speaker 1: that one. People love half games out there. It's a
Speaker 1: great game. I mean, Half Life to one of the
Speaker 1: best games of all time. But half Life is great.
Speaker 1: Isn't there a big joke about Half Life Freeze coming
Speaker 1: out any day now? Half Life to half Life three
Speaker 1: will come out as soon as cars fly, as soon
Speaker 1: as pigs fly, all these things, that's when we'll see
Speaker 1: Half Life three. Um. Anyway, Ken left the company in
Speaker 1: and Roberta stayed with Sierra until when King's Quest eight,
Speaker 1: the final game, Mask of Eternity, came out. Just like
Speaker 1: a first person game, they were trying. They're always trying
Speaker 1: something new, and this was like a first person action game.
Speaker 1: It's pretty fun. It's not as replayable as the others
Speaker 1: um But soon after that, a massive accounting fraud at
Speaker 1: COUC was uncovered and Walter Forbes was later convicted of
Speaker 1: three charges of fraud by the SEC. So yes, that
Speaker 1: whole purchase thing probably a big scam like that was
Speaker 1: just a bunch of moving money around, somebody just trying
Speaker 1: to scan their way into more money, Totally fraudulent. The
Speaker 1: company ended up selling its computer entertainment division and Sierra
Speaker 1: was massively cut back. About two d and fifty people
Speaker 1: lost their jobs. And then over the next couple of
Speaker 1: decades a bunch of mergers and acquisitions happened, and it
Speaker 1: just kept getting smaller and smaller and doing less and less.
Speaker 1: Sierra is still a round today, and in fact, they
Speaker 1: kind of had a little a little bit of a boost.
Speaker 1: Their website was revamped a few years back, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of got more of its original independent spirit now,
Speaker 1: I guess in some capacity, but it's just a fraction
Speaker 1: of a fraction of a fraction of the scale that
Speaker 1: it once was. They do even have a new King's
Speaker 1: Quest game out now, which I haven't played yet, but um,
Speaker 1: but it's just much smaller everything about it. Ken said
Speaker 1: in an interview with Wired that his logic in selling
Speaker 1: was right, but it was quote the absolute worst thing
Speaker 1: that could have happened. He said, with the information he
Speaker 1: at the time, it was definitely the right decision, but quote,
Speaker 1: I think of it as like someone crossing an intersection.
Speaker 1: When someone runs a red light, it was impossible to
Speaker 1: know that the guy coming at you wasn't going to stop. Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: you did all the right things, so you can't say
Speaker 1: I should have done it differently. Right, but if they
Speaker 1: had kept the company and not sold, it might still
Speaker 1: be one of the biggest names in gaming today. Well,
Speaker 1: was no telling if they had focused on if they
Speaker 1: had let them focus on game development. I think that
Speaker 1: was really the main thing that happened was it was
Speaker 1: like they weren't interested in the kind of games they
Speaker 1: wanted to do, So why did you buy him? They
Speaker 1: just wants a brand. Yeah, if you're like, that's what
Speaker 1: makes you so much money, But don't do that thing anymore.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know the fine details, and I'm
Speaker 1: no businessman, but you definitely see that sometimes where some
Speaker 1: of these high level execs are just like all that
Speaker 1: matters is the brand. People will buy whatever I staple
Speaker 1: to the brand, and then you get, you know, fantastic
Speaker 1: peasts and nobody goes to see it just because it,
Speaker 1: says Harry Potter on it does not mean everybody's going
Speaker 1: to go out. Still got to make a good movie. Now.
Speaker 1: Ken has a book out called Not All Fairy Tales
Speaker 1: Have Happy Endings, and he talks about maybe one day
Speaker 1: having a real documentary made about the story of Sierra.
Speaker 1: He said, quote, the story doesn't have a happy ending,
Speaker 1: but neither did Titanic, and that movie was a success.
Speaker 1: People like a good shipwreck, and Sierra certainly was one.
Speaker 1: At least you got a sense of humor, right right.
Speaker 1: But Ken and Roberta they're doing just fine today. I mean,
Speaker 1: they did sell Sierra for over a billion dollars. In fact,
Speaker 1: if they burned through that, they really had to try.
Speaker 1: And Ken's got a blog about their sailing adventures around
Speaker 1: the world. They've been seeing all kinds of different ports
Speaker 1: and countries. Sounds really nice. And during the pandemic, just
Speaker 1: like everybody else, they were kind of locked down and
Speaker 1: just had their own minds to sit with for a while,
Speaker 1: and they got to thinking and then out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: Just last month in March, they announced that they were
Speaker 1: coming back and they were putting together a brand new game.
Speaker 1: For this they were going back to their roots and
Speaker 1: what their plan is is to recreate the text based
Speaker 1: game that started it all for them, Colossal Cave Adventure.
Speaker 1: So they reached out to the game's original creators for
Speaker 1: their blessing and they've started building a three D graphics
Speaker 1: based version of the game, including a VR version that's cool,
Speaker 1: which they said they were kind of against at first.
Speaker 1: The company Unity that's publishing it, wanted them to do
Speaker 1: a VR version. They were like, that's a lot, but
Speaker 1: they're doing it. They're going for it because that's what
Speaker 1: they do. They figure it out. Kim Williams like Batman, Like,
Speaker 1: you give him a problem and what he does he
Speaker 1: figures it out. So, you know, if the VR version
Speaker 1: comes out, hopefully we get a chance to kill the
Speaker 1: dragon with our bare hands in real life. You can
Speaker 1: really see it happen. You can actually give the dragon
Speaker 1: the old one too. Yeah. But in an interview, Ken
Speaker 1: realized this project was quickly getting bigger than they anticipated
Speaker 1: when they jumped in. He said, quote, I got blindsided
Speaker 1: by the fact that it's a humongous, complex, deep game.
Speaker 1: And I always told people I would never do anything
Speaker 1: where I had employees. Again, maybe he wasn't cut overmanagement,
Speaker 1: just had enough. It's like I did that. I'm done.
Speaker 1: I'm living on a boat now. This is great. I mean, true,
Speaker 1: that does sound pretty amazing, just sail around the world.
Speaker 1: But it's taken them back to their early days where
Speaker 1: Roberta is obsessing over the adventure details and Ken is
Speaker 1: learning how to make things happen in new programming languages
Speaker 1: and breaking down barriers. So it's like they're both of
Speaker 1: their great skills coming back working back together on something
Speaker 1: new and exciting, pretty cool. Maybe they feel really young,
Speaker 1: or maybe they feel really old. It's probably both at
Speaker 1: the same time, but I don't know. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: tough to sell classic games and independent games, you know,
Speaker 1: in a landscape where there is stuff like it again
Speaker 1: elden Ring taking up the spotlight. Um, but you know
Speaker 1: they said that don't really care about the money. Ken
Speaker 1: says quote if the game sinks or swims, it ain't
Speaker 1: gonna change our Life at all. So it's really about
Speaker 1: honoring the original designers legacy. And they've seen other designers
Speaker 1: kind of make a comeback and make less than perfect games,
Speaker 1: and Ken says, we don't want to do that. We'd
Speaker 1: rather throw it in the garbage than do something that
Speaker 1: ain't good. Roberta said, yes, it has to be good,
Speaker 1: which is a great place to come from because again,
Speaker 1: so many people set out and they're like, here's an idea. Uh,
Speaker 1: if it doesn't work, here it is anyway, and they're like,
Speaker 1: come on, we're gonna try it. If it doesn't work,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to give you garbage another ten years
Speaker 1: on something good like Half Life three. But I'm thinking
Speaker 1: now about how like, you know, it takes years, years
Speaker 1: and years and years and thousands and thousands of people
Speaker 1: to put together these big video games that dominate the
Speaker 1: market today. And I'm going back to you know, Mystery
Speaker 1: House had come out in May and Roberta had their
Speaker 1: next game out by September, The Wizard and the Princess, right,
Speaker 1: and it was just her and him. Um, so it's
Speaker 1: definitely a lot has changed. But that's kind of amazing too.
Speaker 1: I Mean that's true of movies. You know, I mean,
Speaker 1: not not quite that scale, but back in the forties
Speaker 1: or something thirties, even what was a movie crew like
Speaker 1: twenty people total total, and now like ten of them
Speaker 1: are getting paid. And I watched the Marvel credits and
Speaker 1: it takes it takes three years just to watch the credits.
Speaker 1: And they're all over the world. There's a whole there's
Speaker 1: a London team, Plano team, and Norway to write anything.
Speaker 1: And here we had, we had people on the moon
Speaker 1: working on this movie. Like why why they do it?
Speaker 1: It seems overly complicated, but it was really interesting to
Speaker 1: me to learn how much gaming had to do with
Speaker 1: making computers for personal use. Yeah, I hadn't really considered
Speaker 1: that before. I thought it was I guess if I
Speaker 1: hadn't even thought about it. But if you had pressed
Speaker 1: me on it, I would have been like, I guess
Speaker 1: it just got to a point where people were like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to type on a typewriter. See if
Speaker 1: you can make a word process and I'll use that instead.
Speaker 1: Like I would have thought it was more about still
Speaker 1: business reasons, you know what I mean, for work reasons.
Speaker 1: But it's really interesting to think that actually this is
Speaker 1: this is what people might use a computer for put
Speaker 1: it in their house and actually want one, want to
Speaker 1: spend the money. These companies like Apple and IBM and
Speaker 1: stuff were like, I'm gonna put a computer in every home,
Speaker 1: which was an outrageous idea in the seventies because computers
Speaker 1: were huge, you know, they were mainframes of like you
Speaker 1: had punched cards with holes in them, and you stuck
Speaker 1: them in a slot and then you punch holes in
Speaker 1: another card in a certain pattern, and like just I
Speaker 1: can't even wrap my head around that. But this idea
Speaker 1: of like, well, how do we sell a game to everyone, Well,
Speaker 1: it's got to have someone for everyone in the house, right,
Speaker 1: everybody's got to have a reason to want it. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: you know, you're not just going to sell it to
Speaker 1: the program or dad his family is going to be
Speaker 1: pissed that he dropped two thousand dollars on this unk
Speaker 1: junk that just sits on the corner. And you've got
Speaker 1: things like Atari coming out, you know. So they people
Speaker 1: were already into the idea of digital gaming um and
Speaker 1: computers were like, let's tap into that market. There's a
Speaker 1: there's a thirst for it, and things like King's Quest, Uh,
Speaker 1: everybody wanted that ship because it's so good because you're
Speaker 1: getting everything at once. You're getting a book and a
Speaker 1: movie and a game, and a brain teaser and and
Speaker 1: and a form of expression to some degree too, and education.
Speaker 1: Right like I said, I mean, Mom sat me down,
Speaker 1: was like, let's try and play this game. What do
Speaker 1: you do? And you sure, you move around with the
Speaker 1: air keys and stuff like like an atari game. But
Speaker 1: think about it. What do you want to say to
Speaker 1: the game. What do you want the game to do?
Speaker 1: You tell it. I want the guy to open the door.
Speaker 1: I want the guy to climb the tree. I want
Speaker 1: the guy to fight the dragon um and you kind
Speaker 1: of had to work your way through these puzzles and
Speaker 1: then you're getting these storybook fairy tales at the same time.
Speaker 1: So good. They are super fun. I'm very glad we
Speaker 1: spent part of our pandemic yeah them so that I
Speaker 1: could learn what we what with all the fuss was about.
Speaker 1: We had downtime obviously in and we downloaded all the
Speaker 1: old files and got like a doss emulator and started
Speaker 1: playing through the whole King's Quest series. We never got
Speaker 1: to play seven. We have to figure that out because
Speaker 1: it wasn't working on and then we tried Space Quest
Speaker 1: or something, but it had like a glitch where we
Speaker 1: couldn't get out of a hallway or something, so we
Speaker 1: ended up not doing it. But Space Quest is also awesome.
Speaker 1: It's a bit funnier than King's Quest. It's like a
Speaker 1: lot of it's a you know, you're like a space
Speaker 1: janitor who ends up having to say of the universe.
Speaker 1: So it's real goofy and sarcastic and stuff, and it's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. But yeah, they were. It was
Speaker 1: fun to revisit those because they do look I mean,
Speaker 1: there's just nothing like that anymore, right that the games
Speaker 1: simply don't look like that. They just don't and they
Speaker 1: don't really operate that way either, So it was it
Speaker 1: was a nice little revisiting, I guess of childhood. And
Speaker 1: the artwork in the old King's Quest games is so beautiful.
Speaker 1: It was like little paintings. Yeah, it's like Thomas Kincaid
Speaker 1: a little bit. It's a very pastoral, you know, and
Speaker 1: just pretty nature or whatever. But they are really pretty.
Speaker 1: Every like, uh, geriatric millennial and gen X are out
Speaker 1: there who played these games is nodding along with us
Speaker 1: right now, and everyone else is like, what the fuck
Speaker 1: are you guys talking about? Well, those of you are
Speaker 1: saying that, just go look it up, go find out,
Speaker 1: check it out. It's a good time. Yeah, it really is. Um.
Speaker 1: But I hope that the story is still really interesting
Speaker 1: to you. I mean, I just think these are such
Speaker 1: cool people who just took their kind of disparate skills
Speaker 1: and found a way to make them work together, um,
Speaker 1: as a couple. And that's that's really something impressive to me.
Speaker 1: So many creative couples are very similarly minded. I mean,
Speaker 1: even you and I have that to a degree where
Speaker 1: we sort of like are good at similar things. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's so cool to see like the the kenn
Speaker 1: of Robertas or the Susan and Robert Downey's people like
Speaker 1: that who come together with completely different skills and that
Speaker 1: marriage create something new altogether. I love those stories. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope you all were inspired by this story. I
Speaker 1: hope you love Kenna Roberta as much as we do.
Speaker 1: Kenna Roberta. I hope you're listening, and I hope you
Speaker 1: loved this story too. I'm sure it's of a loose
Speaker 1: interpretation of your amazing lives, um, but thank you for
Speaker 1: this incredible body of work you've given us, and yeah,
Speaker 1: call me. We're gonna track down HBO. We're gonna make
Speaker 1: this work. We're gonna change that. We're gonna change a
Speaker 1: whole new medium, We're gonna change a whole other industry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we get on board. Let's do it. Let's do this
Speaker 1: and make up billion dollars. It'll go viral. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: Please let us know what you thought. We'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can email us at ridic Romance
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com right or we're on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 1: I'm at Dynamite Boom and I'm at Oh Great, It's
Speaker 1: Eli and the show is at Riddick Romance. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in again today and always, and
Speaker 1: we look forward to seeing you the next one. Love
Speaker 1: you by so long. Friends, it's time to go. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to our show. Tell your friends, neighbor's uncles
Speaker 1: and dance to listen to a show. Ridiculous Roll Dance
Speaker 1: m