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Speaker 1: Text with Technology with tech Stuff from stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at how Stuff Works

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Speaker 1: and I love to talk about the tech and today

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Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about a company called Sierra Online. It

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Speaker 1: was a game company that was a dominant player in

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Speaker 1: the PC games space in the eighties and nineties. And really,

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Speaker 1: when I say dominant player, that is serious understatement. Sierra

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Speaker 1: Online was the PC game company of that era. In nine,

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Speaker 1: just to give you a little spoiler for later in

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Speaker 1: the episode, the company was acquired for the princely sum

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Speaker 1: of one point zero six billion dollars, though that was

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Speaker 1: all in a stock swap, it wasn't for cash. If

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Speaker 1: you adjust that for inflation for today's money, that ends

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Speaker 1: up being about one point seven billion dollars. That's how

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Speaker 1: much the game company was acquired back in nineteen and

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Speaker 1: considering its origins, that's phenomenal. Now I got the chance

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Speaker 1: to speak with Sierra Online co founder Ken Williams, and

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Speaker 1: he and his wife Roberta founded Sierra Online back in

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Speaker 1: and we're gonna play the interview first and then I'll

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Speaker 1: fill in some of the gaps with the timeline for

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Speaker 1: Sierra Online and go into more detail about what was

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Speaker 1: going on with the company. But the interview is pretty interesting.

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Speaker 1: One thing I want to mention right off the bat

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Speaker 1: is the interview with Ken really drove home the fact

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Speaker 1: that there's no substitute for talking with a primary source.

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Speaker 1: Because I had researched Sierra quite a bit before I

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Speaker 1: had a conversation with Mr Williams, and as you'll hear,

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Speaker 1: I didn't even have a full understanding of things that

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Speaker 1: were going on behind the scenes. You know, you read

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Speaker 1: about these articles, these reports, you read all this information,

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Speaker 1: all this supplemental information, and then when you go to

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Speaker 1: the primary source, you find out, like now, that's not

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Speaker 1: exactly how things happened, and you realize the written record

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Speaker 1: of history appears to be different than what actually happened.

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Speaker 1: That's a valuable thing to keep in mind all the time, always,

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Speaker 1: but particularly for this episode. I don't want to spoil anything,

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Speaker 1: so let's go straight to the interview. Ken Williams, Welcome

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Speaker 1: to Tech Stuff. Thank you so much for taking time

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Speaker 1: to talk with me and my listeners. I really appreciate it.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, and I think so too. It is really

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Speaker 1: a dream come true for to get the opportunity to

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Speaker 1: speak with you, just to give you a little bit

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Speaker 1: of an idea of where I'm coming from. I was

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Speaker 1: born in so I grew up right as the era

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Speaker 1: of the micro computer morphing into the small computer was

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Speaker 1: taking place. We had an Apple to e in my home.

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Speaker 1: I was one of those folks who, largely because my

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Speaker 1: dad is also one of those folks, started playing games

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Speaker 1: early on. And obviously the Sierra Online series of games

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Speaker 1: became a huge, uh influential power in those early days

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Speaker 1: and I think definitely played a role in pushing forward

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Speaker 1: the narrative aspect of gaming in general. That was something

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Speaker 1: that you really you only saw one of two types

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Speaker 1: of games in those early days before I would I

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Speaker 1: would say before really Mystery House came out, which is

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Speaker 1: that you either got text only or you've got a

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Speaker 1: very simple arcady kind of game, but you never really

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Speaker 1: had the combination of graphics and texts, something that Sierra

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Speaker 1: really became known for in those early days. But before

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Speaker 1: I jump into that, once a little bit about your

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Speaker 1: background before you got into be eating games. Were you

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Speaker 1: were you a programmer for things like mainframe systems, and

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Speaker 1: things of that nature. Yep I was a program on

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Speaker 1: mainframe computers and well, I don't know, I was doing

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Speaker 1: software development for a lot of different companies in the

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Speaker 1: Los Angeles area and it was all focused on online applications.

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Speaker 1: In those days, people have mainframe computers in terminals scattered

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Speaker 1: around the country and I was kind of the I guess,

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Speaker 1: semi expert on dealing with that, and that that was

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Speaker 1: where the name. Initially CRE was taught online systems and

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Speaker 1: it was my consulting practice, and then the first couple

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Speaker 1: of games I think still set online systems, and then

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Speaker 1: we decided to move to the Yosemite and we named

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Speaker 1: it um CRE Online Nice. And when you were working,

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Speaker 1: from the stories that go around, and I don't know

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Speaker 1: how much of it is apocryphal versus true history, but

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Speaker 1: the story tends to be that you were, uh, you

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Speaker 1: had purchased an Apple computer, that this was one of

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Speaker 1: those early micro computers, that's what we called personal computers

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Speaker 1: before we started calling all of them personal computers, and

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Speaker 1: that you were working on a Fortrain compiler for the

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Speaker 1: Apple computer when the first the first thoughts of building

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Speaker 1: a game came up. Was that is that accurate? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's accurate. I had actually done oh, something very similar

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Speaker 1: to Fortran compilers for a company I was working for,

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Speaker 1: and the Microsoft released Visual Basic for them, I think

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Speaker 1: p rs AD and I started thinking about wouldn't it

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Speaker 1: be cool if there was a portrayin compiler on the

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Speaker 1: Apple two and computer with Microsoft, I guess. And then

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Speaker 1: ROBERTA saw a game that was on a time sharing

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Speaker 1: terminal post in the mike, the original uh, the Original Adventure,

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Speaker 1: and was playing it and it said that she got

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Speaker 1: to be fun. It's what There was a version of

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Speaker 1: it for micro computers are personal computers, and they were

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Speaker 1: about that time. She got me an Apple two for

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Speaker 1: Christmas and I started coding on the game for her

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Speaker 1: at the same time I was working on the compiler.

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Speaker 1: And when I started going door to door with computer

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Speaker 1: stores to you know, kind of peddle, not the idea

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Speaker 1: of my Coortran pilot. They were all excited about her

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Speaker 1: game and not Fortran. So so was the game of

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Speaker 1: game company. Very practical, very pragmatic approach into getting into

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Speaker 1: into games, and it really it's hard to explain to

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Speaker 1: people today how this was really a huge leap forward

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Speaker 1: to have the graphic element the images element, even though

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Speaker 1: they were static images and they were monochromatic because of

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Speaker 1: the old Apple two. Uh that adding that to the

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Speaker 1: element of a text based adventure where you're you are

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Speaker 1: put in the role of a protagonist who has to

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Speaker 1: make choices in order to navigate through a game. That

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Speaker 1: combination had not really been explored before the first game

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Speaker 1: Mystery House comes out, which was as the name implies,

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Speaker 1: that you're solving a mystery. And I imagined that that

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Speaker 1: ended up creating a bit of a stir at the

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Speaker 1: time because it was it was sort of a new idea,

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Speaker 1: but also as I understand it, uh, there was the

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Speaker 1: world was so different back then. Today, if you want

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Speaker 1: to buy a game, you tend to go with digital distribution.

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Speaker 1: You will download a game and that's it. You never

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Speaker 1: have to worry about it. In those early, early early

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Speaker 1: days of PC gaming, there were very few places where

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Speaker 1: you could actually go to buy games. It was a

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Speaker 1: very young industry, and from what I understand, the initial

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Speaker 1: approach to selling Mystery House was that you had a

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Speaker 1: full page ad in like a hobbyist magazine, and people

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Speaker 1: had to cut out a little order form and actually

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Speaker 1: fill it out and send it into you. Is that accurate? Um, well,

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Speaker 1: kind of that. Yeah, those are primitive times. There was

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Speaker 1: no Part of the problem is how do you deliver

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Speaker 1: the games. Games in those days were on audio cassette

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Speaker 1: and most of the software sold for the piano said

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Speaker 1: he was on audio cassette, and even the Apple two

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Speaker 1: originally I think games were on audio cassette. And then

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Speaker 1: they came up with the idea of a disk drive

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Speaker 1: that it only had a d K of storage and

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Speaker 1: that's less than you know, they're one low as picture,

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Speaker 1: so it you know, how to deliberate game and put

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Speaker 1: it on an ad K floppy and then get it

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Speaker 1: to the user who it's kind of a challenge and

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Speaker 1: how do you do pictures given that there's no place

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Speaker 1: to storm and even memory I think on the original

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Speaker 1: Apple two was only sixteen K and memory, so it

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Speaker 1: was it was kind of a challenge that No for marketing,

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Speaker 1: I think they were only what was the name fifteen

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Speaker 1: stores in the United States selling computers at that time,

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Speaker 1: so really selling was pretty easy. He was tapped the

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Speaker 1: stores and there was so much thirst for games that

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Speaker 1: you know, they do anything to get the games. They

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Speaker 1: because they wanted to sell the computers. You can sell

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Speaker 1: the computers without the software, and so we packaged them

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Speaker 1: up and to sell to the public. Um. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: funny that the retailers didn't complain about is going direct.

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Speaker 1: But we did run some ads and had had our

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Speaker 1: home phone at the time and people had called place

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Speaker 1: orders and then they had put them in a box

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Speaker 1: and go to the post office and shipping and at

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Speaker 1: the company. I mean, the company was gone so fast

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Speaker 1: in those days that you know that that really was

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Speaker 1: a short time stand. I think from m when we

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Speaker 1: realized the company was going to be a hit, and

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Speaker 1: quit my job and moved to Ysemity and we bought

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Speaker 1: a home there and looked there and started selling and

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Speaker 1: going back and forth to the post office to ship

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Speaker 1: to When we rented an office and hired people, it

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Speaker 1: was about a three month or four months span. I

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Speaker 1: mean it was you know, it was literally exploding and

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Speaker 1: every day, you know, sales were um way. Yet from

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Speaker 1: the fire day getting rid of our personal phone number

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Speaker 1: and all the ads happened happen pretty quick. Even the

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Speaker 1: original companies of pustry House, I think had our our

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Speaker 1: home plown for the end. Any questions call. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: those were different times. Yeah, I can't imagine anyone taking

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Speaker 1: those kind of pains today that would have been Uh, certainly,

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Speaker 1: it was certainly an interesting approach, and the fact that,

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Speaker 1: of course the industry was so small at the time.

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Speaker 1: I mean still, I'm sure you're getting calls around the

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Speaker 1: clock all the time, but at least it wasn't something

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Speaker 1: where you're talking about a game launching and then getting

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Speaker 1: a million sales right off the bed. It was in

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Speaker 1: the thousands, which at that time was amazing success, especially

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Speaker 1: when you look at the install base. There really weren't

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Speaker 1: that many personal computers out. This is in the era

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Speaker 1: where it was just emerging from that hobbyist market and

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Speaker 1: starting to get creep into into more of an average

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Speaker 1: consumer kind of household. But that was a very gradual process.

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Speaker 1: And around the same time, while you guys had your

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Speaker 1: early years over at Sierra, there was something going on

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Speaker 1: with the home video game market on the console and

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Speaker 1: where there was this glut of various types of consoles

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Speaker 1: that were on the market, and then we know that

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Speaker 1: that eventually kind of capitulated into the video game crash

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Speaker 1: that happened around three And from what I understand, there

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Speaker 1: was a similar kind of rough patch for software for

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Speaker 1: computer about a year later, and uh, and I imagined

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Speaker 1: that those early years there were some some real ups

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Speaker 1: and downs over at Sierra kind of you know, I

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Speaker 1: don't remember ever a softness in computer software. There was

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Speaker 1: you know, kind of a period of wild growth and

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Speaker 1: he sees and then the video game industry was, you know,

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Speaker 1: kind of allowed. The personal computer industry is probably going

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Speaker 1: from zero to ten raid and revenue. The video game

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Speaker 1: industry left from zero to a couple hundred millions, though

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Speaker 1: it was growing much faster, and we got interested in

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Speaker 1: the video game market and shifted a lot of development

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Speaker 1: resources over the video games just as the video game

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Speaker 1: market collapsed. And that kind of left is with no

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Speaker 1: product for personal computers and yeah, and just people focused

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Speaker 1: in the wrong place. So plus with a lot of

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Speaker 1: money to buy cartridges and fund the development of the

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Speaker 1: video games, all of which was wasted. This is the

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Speaker 1: era when people were bearing EP cartridges out in the desert.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, they caught us and we went from I

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Speaker 1: think a hundred and ten employees to twenty employees almost overnight.

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Speaker 1: And Albert and I had to borrow on our credit

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Speaker 1: cards and get a second on our home and everything

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Speaker 1: in order to pay their rent and keep us in business.

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Speaker 1: And but then we got lucky in that I showed

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Speaker 1: IBM I guess prototypes and games that we were thinking

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Speaker 1: about and um and also a work process or people

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Speaker 1: forget that we were We did an amazing work processor

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Speaker 1: at that point in time that was graphically based and

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Speaker 1: IBM was impressed and gave us some nice advanced money

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Speaker 1: towards the products. And it's time. It was a weird world,

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Speaker 1: and the IBM was worried about being broken up by

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Speaker 1: the government is monopoly. So when they would give us

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Speaker 1: development financing, they also had assigning this agreement saying that

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Speaker 1: we agreed not to sell the them exclusively. They were

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Speaker 1: they were in kind of weird mode that they said, okay,

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Speaker 1: we'll come the development. You can sell the product us,

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Speaker 1: but we also have the promences still sell at our competitors.

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Speaker 1: And we said sure, and they released their machine. The

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Speaker 1: PC JR was bombed and we put the same software

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Speaker 1: on the and the thousand from Radio Shack and it

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Speaker 1: was a big bit and so it was kind of

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Speaker 1: strange and that IBM that bringing the company back to

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Speaker 1: life in order to from software that radio shack and

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Speaker 1: asked me a lot of money. But but that was

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Speaker 1: that was good and so it wasn't really a sack

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Speaker 1: in the personal computer business. It was more of a Um,

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Speaker 1: we had shifted resources and that market collapsed and then

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Speaker 1: we had to refocus. But that we did and we

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Speaker 1: never really had another tough match after that. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: great that you were able to pivot like that. It's

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Speaker 1: a you know, it says a lot about a company

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Speaker 1: that had already experienced a great deal of success still

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Speaker 1: being nimble enough to recover after after a huge shift

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Speaker 1: in the market. There we've seen companies, many companies go

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Speaker 1: under when they were encountering similar circumstances. Uh. I assumed

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Speaker 1: that the big software piece, the big game piece that

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Speaker 1: was going to the PC junior into Tandy was the

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Speaker 1: beginning of the King's Quest franchise. Is that correct? Yep.

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Speaker 1: Kings One was kind of our first animated adventure and

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Speaker 1: was huge. I mean, it's hard to believe looking back

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Speaker 1: at it now, that's pretty clucky, but um, there was

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Speaker 1: nothing else like it in the market, and um, and

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Speaker 1: and so little competition. I mean, in a world in

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Speaker 1: which there's you know, ten or twenty games released to hear,

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Speaker 1: it's easier to break through than when there's uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: two's five thousand games released to do today and you

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Speaker 1: know most of its bomb. But in those days it's

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Speaker 1: fairly easy to get a exposure. And you know, Scare

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Speaker 1: was there first, which it was kind of an extra

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Speaker 1: edge and plushily. We did a lot of a lot

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Speaker 1: of cool stuff. Yeah, King's Quest was really innovative in

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Speaker 1: the sense that it had this ability where you would

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Speaker 1: have objects within the frame of the picture that you're

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Speaker 1: in the area that you're walking around, and you could

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Speaker 1: actually walk in front of or behind different objects. That

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Speaker 1: kind of lad to describing it as a three D

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Speaker 1: sort of thing, because it wasn't just an X Y

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Speaker 1: access where your character is stuck along one plane of movement.

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Speaker 1: You actually had some depth in there, and that was

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Speaker 1: a big you know, just like adding the graphics into

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Speaker 1: text adventure. Now we have this animated adventure where you

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Speaker 1: can even walk behind different objects, and that was really

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Speaker 1: innovative at the time. And again, the focus on narrative

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Speaker 1: was something that I found really intriguing. You had all

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Speaker 1: these different puzzles and jokes and uh things that were

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Speaker 1: really challenging and caused gamers to think in different ways

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Speaker 1: in or to progress further, and it was again sort

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Speaker 1: of pushing the art form of gamemaking forward. One thing

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Speaker 1: I definitely wanted to mention so that my listeners could

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Speaker 1: get an appreciation for it is UH, doing research on

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Speaker 1: Sierra and looking at these teams that were working on

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Speaker 1: these different titles, it struck me how many women were

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Speaker 1: working on this as developers on these games, something that

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Speaker 1: was I think a lot of people think is was

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Speaker 1: unheard of really, but you had a lot of of

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Speaker 1: women heading up various franchises, whether it was King's Quest

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Speaker 1: or other ones. And UH, to me, that was a

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Speaker 1: very forward thinking approach to it was obviously you were

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Speaker 1: getting the right people for the right jobs and trying

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Speaker 1: to make sure that you continued, ah, you know, pushing

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Speaker 1: forward the the capabilities of your games and the narration

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Speaker 1: of your games. But I found that fascinating because it

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Speaker 1: wasn't It's not something I ever encounter and pretty much

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Speaker 1: any other tech company unless it was a conscious decision, uh,

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Speaker 1: in an effort to create more diversity within the workplace.

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Speaker 1: But this seemed like it was part of the culture

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Speaker 1: early early on. Yeah, I mean I don't know it

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Speaker 1: was a conscious decision. It was just looking for the

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Speaker 1: best person for the job. And yeah, I guess uh.

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Speaker 1: In non quoting roles it tends to be a lot

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Speaker 1: more evenly balanced. Quoders do tend to be male when

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Speaker 1: we have some female quoders, but certainly in the creative

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Speaker 1: and design and are everything else, it was far more balanced.

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Speaker 1: And I never tried to balance or tried for anything,

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Speaker 1: you know, it just kind of fell out the way

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Speaker 1: it fell out, and you look for the best person

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Speaker 1: for the job. So um, yeah, I can't say that

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Speaker 1: at least a explicit effort to try to do I

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Speaker 1: don't know, you coopportunity hiring anything like that. I really yeah,

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Speaker 1: I guess it was just focused on don't be good games.

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Speaker 1: So we got a lot of great games in this series.

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Speaker 1: Like the King's Quest series, is extremely influential in the

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Speaker 1: storytelling adventure game genres. You could argue the fantasy genre

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Speaker 1: as well, so much so that we've seen some really

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Speaker 1: remarkable even spoofs of King's Quest. One of the ones

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Speaker 1: I think of is from the Brothers Chap who did

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Speaker 1: Homestar Runner and did a whole Peasants Quest kind of

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Speaker 1: take off of it, and it clearly relied heavily on

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Speaker 1: this knowledge of and familiarity with King's Quest. It became

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Speaker 1: kind of a um not just King's Quest, but the

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Speaker 1: other series as well that followed in a similar kind

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Speaker 1: of vein, like like a Space Quest. It really shows

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Speaker 1: that it had a huge impact on the culture of

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Speaker 1: gaming in those early days. Were there any particular times

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Speaker 1: during those the like the eighties era of Sierra where

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Speaker 1: you just were sitting back and just kind of marveling

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Speaker 1: at the impact that your products were having on the market. Well,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I guess to answer that question I want

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Speaker 1: is yeah, every day. It was really amazing. What mean

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Speaker 1: you nowhere to being um recognized everywhere? I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: stunning that. Yeah, we were kind of kind of celebriting

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Speaker 1: c in away and just because computers are growing so

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Speaker 1: fast and we were kind of at the center of it, um,

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Speaker 1: particularly as consumers. So um, yeah, I guess we're probably

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Speaker 1: even now. What's funny is that I don't think we

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Speaker 1: realized how much so that now we're twenty years later,

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Speaker 1: you know, since we sold the company and still people

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Speaker 1: remember see here online that you're talking to me. Is amazing.

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Speaker 1: It's twenty years after we did the game, the games

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Speaker 1: have we sold the company and retired, and there's still

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Speaker 1: people that you know we existed, So it's uh kind

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Speaker 1: of astounding. It's one of the things that I think

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Speaker 1: back on in my childhood are all the different games

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Speaker 1: I played. So it's clearly a huge impact on myself,

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Speaker 1: and I know several my listeners. I mean, I've I've

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Speaker 1: had people request that I cover Sierra multiple times. So

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Speaker 1: I'm very thankful for this opportunity. Um now in I

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Speaker 1: guess no, no, please, no. I was just gonna say that.

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Speaker 1: One thing people don't, I guess relate to now is

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Speaker 1: that because there hadn't been computers before and then there

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Speaker 1: were that people weren't sure what they would do, what

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Speaker 1: they were capable of, and there was this inferrent belief

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Speaker 1: that they were educational. So parents loved buying computers for

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Speaker 1: their kids, and Seeric kind of played into that in

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Speaker 1: a way, and that because our games are using Parson

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Speaker 1: and there was on screen texts to be read, parents

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Speaker 1: had no doubt that they were educational. And I think

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Speaker 1: most parents in those days the lead computers are good

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Speaker 1: for their kids, which is a little different than today,

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Speaker 1: when a lot of the games are kindalyticum shoot them

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Speaker 1: ups and kill people at the games, and I think

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Speaker 1: parents are not quite as enthusiastic about buying games for

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Speaker 1: their kids anymore. It's kind of a different kind of

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Speaker 1: game and as different, I don't know, just a whole

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Speaker 1: different attitude any Anyway, hold on for one second. We're

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Speaker 1: just trying to get yoga video going on at PV

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Speaker 1: and I need be able to figure it out. But

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Speaker 1: one minute, I'll be back. In nine Sierra held its

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Speaker 1: initial public offering. And so you you transition from a

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Speaker 1: privately held company to a publicly traded company. How did

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Speaker 1: things change behind the scenes or was it essentially business

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Speaker 1: as usual that were there any kind of shifts in

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Speaker 1: the way you were doing things from before and after? Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, I guess the biggest thing was incredible stress

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Speaker 1: to hit numbers. The every every employee in the company

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Speaker 1: had stock options, and every employee in the company, maybe

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Speaker 1: not every employment company had stock options. I tend to

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Speaker 1: tended to getting to people that could really influence our growth,

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Speaker 1: so i'd be more of the development teams. Although we

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Speaker 1: were heavily stewed toward development. UM there were always at

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Speaker 1: all times, I'd say two thirds and more of the

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Speaker 1: staff were involved in creating product. So um, but everybody

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Speaker 1: have stock options, and people started watching the stock price

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Speaker 1: daily and the network would go up and down based

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Speaker 1: on the stock price and on the rocks. So obviously

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Speaker 1: all the mutual funds that held our stock and all

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Speaker 1: the individual people, and if fire stock went up, everybody smiled,

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Speaker 1: and if they went down, they were you know, they

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Speaker 1: were depressed. So and performance as a public company has

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Speaker 1: measured every ninety days, and a game hitting the quarter

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Speaker 1: not hitting the quarter would have a huge impact on

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Speaker 1: the top line, which would have an even bigger impact

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Speaker 1: on the bottom line. And suddenly there was an incredible

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Speaker 1: push to get a date. I get a game out

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Speaker 1: on a particular date, and um, you know, if you

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Speaker 1: look back at our numbers, there would be going along

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Speaker 1: fine until you get three weeks from me into the quarter,

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Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, you know, I would

403
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Speaker 1: have to run over the development say we've got to

404
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Speaker 1: ship this. It's got to go out the door next week,

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Speaker 1: and the team's order a bell and they would take

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Speaker 1: me for fishing and release a game and they'd say,

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Speaker 1: just in me another day, another day, and they will

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Speaker 1: be better. And you know, I didn't want to be

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Speaker 1: in that position, and they didn't want to be in

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Speaker 1: that position. But it was kind of this horrible trap

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Speaker 1: to found ourselves in where every quarter had to be

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Speaker 1: better than the prior quarter and otherwise the stock and

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Speaker 1: cut down and theoretically shouldn't be managing the company according

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Speaker 1: to the stock price, and we tried not to, but

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Speaker 1: it's not that easy. It really is oh horrible to

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Speaker 1: be a public company. UM. At least I didn't like it,

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Speaker 1: and it was stressful for me personally, and suddenly instead

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Speaker 1: of trying to change the world, we think I need

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00:26:07,480 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 1: cool things to do every day. I was backed down

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Speaker 1: and taking calls from the financial community. And there was

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Speaker 1: even one point where I just said that's it, I'm

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Speaker 1: out of here and took off for I think there's

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Speaker 1: three months for what I called is abbatical. That really

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Speaker 1: it was kind of around the world trip, just kind

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Speaker 1: of reset and kind of get my jag right, and

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Speaker 1: then dropped back in UM being public. UM. We were

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Speaker 1: actually public for one almost eight years, and then we

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Speaker 1: did we did some good stuff, but it was also

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Speaker 1: in a lot of ways kind of the worst time

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Speaker 1: in my life. Yeah, I can, I can imagine. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you you go. You go from a world where you

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Speaker 1: know you can develop a game and you can ship

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Speaker 1: it when it's ready, and the success of the game

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Speaker 1: continues to propel the company forward into a world where

435
00:27:01,840 --> 00:27:05,439
Speaker 1: if you have a release date that you have in

436
00:27:05,480 --> 00:27:08,320
Speaker 1: mind and if it's been announced at all, missing that

437
00:27:08,440 --> 00:27:11,239
Speaker 1: becomes a huge problem. I know, there's a lot of

438
00:27:11,280 --> 00:27:16,199
Speaker 1: criticism in the video game computer game world now against

439
00:27:16,280 --> 00:27:18,239
Speaker 1: companies doing one of two things, and it puts them

440
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:21,639
Speaker 1: in a terrible position. One thing number one is that

441
00:27:21,720 --> 00:27:25,400
Speaker 1: you miss your ship date and everyone goes bananas because

442
00:27:25,440 --> 00:27:28,159
Speaker 1: the game is late, and that can be reflected in

443
00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:30,479
Speaker 1: the stock price as well as just in the public

444
00:27:30,480 --> 00:27:35,440
Speaker 1: opinion among gamers, who, among many of their traits, patients

445
00:27:35,600 --> 00:27:38,480
Speaker 1: is rarely one of them. And then on the other side,

446
00:27:39,200 --> 00:27:44,320
Speaker 1: you have the the option of shipping on time, but

447
00:27:44,400 --> 00:27:48,320
Speaker 1: the game itself is either not really complete or there's

448
00:27:48,359 --> 00:27:50,399
Speaker 1: a lot of things that need to be fixed on

449
00:27:50,440 --> 00:27:55,880
Speaker 1: a zero day patch, and the the announcement is this

450
00:27:55,920 --> 00:27:58,159
Speaker 1: game is coming out and over the next couple of

451
00:27:58,200 --> 00:28:00,639
Speaker 1: months it's going to improve. So there might be some

452
00:28:00,720 --> 00:28:03,040
Speaker 1: rough spots at the beginning, but don't worry, it'll get better.

453
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:06,960
Speaker 1: And gamers don't like that either, right, they want that finished,

454
00:28:07,359 --> 00:28:10,560
Speaker 1: polished game where they feel like the thing they're buying

455
00:28:10,720 --> 00:28:13,760
Speaker 1: is a complete experience, it's not something that they have

456
00:28:13,880 --> 00:28:17,080
Speaker 1: to add on to after that purchase. So then it

457
00:28:17,119 --> 00:28:21,359
Speaker 1: puts the actual companies in a really tough position where

458
00:28:21,480 --> 00:28:25,639
Speaker 1: you can't miss your your ship date without dire consequences.

459
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:28,680
Speaker 1: But if you send out something that people perceive as

460
00:28:28,720 --> 00:28:33,760
Speaker 1: not being complete, you get lambasted. So you kind of

461
00:28:33,840 --> 00:28:36,000
Speaker 1: are in the worst of all worlds, as opposed to

462
00:28:36,080 --> 00:28:39,719
Speaker 1: going in that that privately held company route, where you

463
00:28:39,760 --> 00:28:43,520
Speaker 1: have the luxury of not necessarily announcing things like a

464
00:28:43,600 --> 00:28:46,000
Speaker 1: ship date so that you can continue to develop it

465
00:28:46,080 --> 00:28:49,240
Speaker 1: until it's ready. And of course, in your you know,

466
00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:52,760
Speaker 1: heyday of of creating games, there was no option of

467
00:28:52,840 --> 00:28:56,400
Speaker 1: patching after the fact. What you shipped was the complete game.

468
00:28:56,480 --> 00:28:59,560
Speaker 1: That was it. When I went Gold, it was set down,

469
00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 1: And so I assume that that must have I mean,

470
00:29:03,320 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 1: I can't imagine the amount of stress you're talking about

471
00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:08,920
Speaker 1: here on a on a daily basis of dealing with

472
00:29:09,000 --> 00:29:13,520
Speaker 1: this kind of shift in culture. Really, yeah, now, we

473
00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:17,240
Speaker 1: well we did actually have a I remember it's called

474
00:29:17,240 --> 00:29:20,680
Speaker 1: a BBS and there's one computer that'st in the corner

475
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:23,800
Speaker 1: and we would put patches on it that people could

476
00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:28,160
Speaker 1: download that. Most people didn't have modems early to unfold

477
00:29:28,200 --> 00:29:31,360
Speaker 1: in those days, so it was the big dial a

478
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:34,120
Speaker 1: phone number directly into that computer and it could support

479
00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:40,160
Speaker 1: some number users. And we didn't catch that. Um. Yeah,

480
00:29:40,160 --> 00:29:43,880
Speaker 1: it was kind of a flawed process. And on being development,

481
00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:49,480
Speaker 1: people don't realize that there's there's people that have analytics

482
00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:53,080
Speaker 1: skills and people that have creative skills, but they often

483
00:29:53,600 --> 00:29:58,080
Speaker 1: you know, that same person that you know I had

484
00:29:58,080 --> 00:30:04,320
Speaker 1: always think of artists is um creative and getting an

485
00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:07,560
Speaker 1: artist to be able to say, you know, I expect

486
00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:11,800
Speaker 1: twenty cells of animation out of you per day, Um,

487
00:30:11,880 --> 00:30:14,560
Speaker 1: that's just never going to happen. An artists will set

488
00:30:14,600 --> 00:30:17,960
Speaker 1: it to create and agonize over one cell of animation forever.

489
00:30:18,800 --> 00:30:23,000
Speaker 1: And and it's tough to that allowed to creative people,

490
00:30:23,080 --> 00:30:30,920
Speaker 1: designers or musicians. I mean, it's managing a game, is

491
00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:37,640
Speaker 1: it's message. The coders also will be a problem in

492
00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:42,080
Speaker 1: times that you know, I I developed kind of a

493
00:30:42,200 --> 00:30:46,920
Speaker 1: system for doing it which worked well at UM. Oh

494
00:30:46,960 --> 00:30:49,560
Speaker 1: we were we were scattered. And it's one thing people

495
00:30:49,560 --> 00:30:53,120
Speaker 1: don't realize about there is that I had kind of

496
00:30:53,120 --> 00:30:56,520
Speaker 1: the core philosophy that too many developers in one place

497
00:30:57,000 --> 00:31:02,640
Speaker 1: can destroy creativity. Mentally, I would I would think, you know,

498
00:31:02,880 --> 00:31:06,120
Speaker 1: we start getting million developers in one place, it's just

499
00:31:06,280 --> 00:31:10,320
Speaker 1: too many, and it suddenly there comes a democratic machine

500
00:31:10,360 --> 00:31:15,640
Speaker 1: instead of a uncreative group. And so we were scattered too.

501
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:20,400
Speaker 1: Toward the end, I think twelve different locations, and I

502
00:31:20,440 --> 00:31:25,760
Speaker 1: would fly feature those locations and we would have a

503
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:29,480
Speaker 1: kind of a review and people would shot their game

504
00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:32,560
Speaker 1: and I did my ideas for what to do and

505
00:31:32,640 --> 00:31:36,400
Speaker 1: try to help them the kind of the metrics for um,

506
00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:39,920
Speaker 1: you know, this is your budget, this is your ship date. Um,

507
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:43,440
Speaker 1: it looks to me that you even have the money.

508
00:31:44,520 --> 00:31:49,040
Speaker 1: And I would go through team by team, and we

509
00:31:49,240 --> 00:31:54,120
Speaker 1: have many fifty games in development at any time, and

510
00:31:54,160 --> 00:31:56,640
Speaker 1: by the time I finished going to all the developments,

511
00:31:56,720 --> 00:31:58,600
Speaker 1: it was time to go back to the first than again.

512
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:01,920
Speaker 1: And that was kind of my life was, um, you know,

513
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:06,480
Speaker 1: fly to Boston, fly to San Francisco, um you knows,

514
00:32:06,560 --> 00:32:10,160
Speaker 1: and fly over to the outside development, going in the

515
00:32:10,320 --> 00:32:14,800
Speaker 1: outside of Paris, And I spent all my life on airplanes.

516
00:32:16,800 --> 00:32:18,400
Speaker 1: It was kind of fun and I got to see

517
00:32:18,440 --> 00:32:23,760
Speaker 1: the games, but really every every meeting with a game

518
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:26,400
Speaker 1: developer was kind of a battle, and that I was

519
00:32:26,480 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 1: kind of the horrible corporate guide coming in described their lives,

520
00:32:30,280 --> 00:32:35,080
Speaker 1: and that is that part was not fun. I mean

521
00:32:35,240 --> 00:32:37,040
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, I was student for them and I

522
00:32:37,080 --> 00:32:39,880
Speaker 1: loved the games and what a what a cool stuff

523
00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:44,720
Speaker 1: to happen. But there's also, I guess a business side

524
00:32:44,720 --> 00:32:48,120
Speaker 1: of things where you have the project development Patchet is

525
00:32:48,120 --> 00:32:49,920
Speaker 1: a million ducks, then you've got to deliver for a

526
00:32:49,960 --> 00:32:52,400
Speaker 1: million because you develop the free maillion. The market is

527
00:32:52,400 --> 00:32:56,840
Speaker 1: that expand its um, just use money instead of make money.

528
00:32:57,960 --> 00:33:02,240
Speaker 1: So and after after we did so with company, Um,

529
00:33:02,440 --> 00:33:05,040
Speaker 1: you know, I was horrified that the company kind of

530
00:33:05,080 --> 00:33:11,680
Speaker 1: went away, but also divided that all those people that

531
00:33:11,840 --> 00:33:15,520
Speaker 1: it's your horrible chemisy, just leave us alone be mega

532
00:33:15,600 --> 00:33:20,560
Speaker 1: hits on time and on budget without you. Um. Yeah.

533
00:33:20,600 --> 00:33:22,720
Speaker 1: I guess there's kind of a night culture sell there,

534
00:33:23,080 --> 00:33:28,479
Speaker 1: which is that you do need some business discipline produced

535
00:33:28,520 --> 00:33:31,560
Speaker 1: games or you're going to have a disaster. So in

536
00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:35,520
Speaker 1: my show, I've talked about some other game companies and

537
00:33:35,640 --> 00:33:40,240
Speaker 1: some of them have had relationships with Sierra and I'd

538
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:43,360
Speaker 1: love to hear your take on it. Uh So the

539
00:33:43,440 --> 00:33:47,640
Speaker 1: first would be ID because there was this this time

540
00:33:47,680 --> 00:33:51,640
Speaker 1: period early in the days of ID where the heads

541
00:33:51,640 --> 00:33:54,400
Speaker 1: of ID software came to Sierra. Can you tell me

542
00:33:54,440 --> 00:33:57,920
Speaker 1: a little bit about what was going on back then? Well, yeah,

543
00:33:57,960 --> 00:34:01,760
Speaker 1: I mean there's a few parts of this story. I

544
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 1: m I saw Doom and Newcam and all the games

545
00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:11,080
Speaker 1: coming along, and nobody at Sierra. You know, there's kind

546
00:34:11,120 --> 00:34:14,080
Speaker 1: of a passion you have to do a kind of

547
00:34:14,080 --> 00:34:16,279
Speaker 1: to do a kind of game, otherwise it's going to

548
00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:20,200
Speaker 1: turn out horrible. So I wanted a game like that,

549
00:34:20,920 --> 00:34:24,080
Speaker 1: but I kind of didn't kind of didn't. It was

550
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:28,080
Speaker 1: a side of me that never lived violent games and

551
00:34:28,280 --> 00:34:30,600
Speaker 1: the idea of just running through a building, shooting at

552
00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:35,279
Speaker 1: things and onund defensive. I mean, I really still to

553
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:37,440
Speaker 1: this day kind of a tribute. Some of the problems

554
00:34:37,440 --> 00:34:43,719
Speaker 1: in schools with kids, um, kids that are unbalanced, getting

555
00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:46,680
Speaker 1: out of control and shooting at other kids can come

556
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:51,279
Speaker 1: from games, well, from role playing games. They do that.

557
00:34:51,920 --> 00:34:54,279
Speaker 1: So I didn't really want to shift those games. But

558
00:34:54,320 --> 00:34:57,239
Speaker 1: I also recognized that customers wanted to buy them, and

559
00:34:57,280 --> 00:34:59,000
Speaker 1: so I was always kind of on the fence. But

560
00:34:59,200 --> 00:35:02,719
Speaker 1: then you know, when I saw Doom and stuff, I

561
00:35:02,760 --> 00:35:05,040
Speaker 1: finally kind of said, Wow, this is good enough, maybe

562
00:35:05,040 --> 00:35:10,399
Speaker 1: we should ship it. And then I talked to uh

563
00:35:11,200 --> 00:35:16,240
Speaker 1: at John Carmac and there's body guys and come visit.

564
00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:20,359
Speaker 1: And they drove out in a van and they were

565
00:35:20,360 --> 00:35:22,279
Speaker 1: living out of the dam at the time I employed it.

566
00:35:22,360 --> 00:35:27,239
Speaker 1: They had sports cars. But they came out. Man. I

567
00:35:27,239 --> 00:35:29,799
Speaker 1: set up done at the fancy restaurant to kind of

568
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:33,840
Speaker 1: um Wyne and Dinham that Sarah should be their publisher.

569
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:38,960
Speaker 1: And they showed up looking kind of stuffy and probably

570
00:35:38,960 --> 00:35:41,120
Speaker 1: would have them kicked out of the restaurant have they

571
00:35:41,160 --> 00:35:43,840
Speaker 1: not had it not done me and that I was

572
00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:48,319
Speaker 1: a regular customer. And but actually, I mean we did

573
00:35:48,360 --> 00:35:51,000
Speaker 1: see and I we had a really nice dinner, and

574
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:57,319
Speaker 1: I think came real close to publishing their product, but

575
00:35:57,320 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: they didn't think if they want to give up control

576
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:01,040
Speaker 1: and there was a side and made it didn't physically

577
00:36:01,080 --> 00:36:03,680
Speaker 1: when I published their products, I just never really came

578
00:36:03,719 --> 00:36:07,800
Speaker 1: together that um that's to death. It really was a

579
00:36:07,880 --> 00:36:11,919
Speaker 1: nice product. So and I forget what they did. I

580
00:36:11,920 --> 00:36:16,160
Speaker 1: think they published themselves, but I don't remember how they

581
00:36:16,160 --> 00:36:18,960
Speaker 1: did that. Yeah, they I mean obviously made a ton

582
00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:22,240
Speaker 1: of money and did well with it, and it really

583
00:36:23,680 --> 00:36:27,280
Speaker 1: defined a style of game to this day, it almost

584
00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:31,839
Speaker 1: dominates the industry that. Um so there there, I mean, yeah,

585
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:35,040
Speaker 1: the pioneers in a genre and really cool kind. It's

586
00:36:35,040 --> 00:36:39,359
Speaker 1: a great guys. And I missed one there that later

587
00:36:39,400 --> 00:36:44,920
Speaker 1: I made up for by publishing Half Life. But even

588
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:47,399
Speaker 1: when we published Half Life, there was a cybing made

589
00:36:47,400 --> 00:36:49,200
Speaker 1: it said, you know, this is it's going to get

590
00:36:49,200 --> 00:36:51,520
Speaker 1: because people killed. This is really a dumb thing to

591
00:36:51,600 --> 00:36:56,799
Speaker 1: be doing on computers. But but well, you know, that's

592
00:36:56,840 --> 00:36:59,960
Speaker 1: what it is. It definitely said that the ground where

593
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:03,440
Speaker 1: where the deal with Valve could go through. And obviously

594
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:08,279
Speaker 1: now Valve is is the dominant powerhouse at least in

595
00:37:08,360 --> 00:37:11,560
Speaker 1: distribution for PC games that it's been a while since

596
00:37:11,560 --> 00:37:15,320
Speaker 1: we've seen any development from them. But the distribution side

597
00:37:15,440 --> 00:37:18,200
Speaker 1: is I mean, that's if you're not buying your games

598
00:37:18,200 --> 00:37:20,600
Speaker 1: off Steam, you are in the minority at this point.

599
00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:24,400
Speaker 1: So the fact that that Sierra played such an important

600
00:37:24,480 --> 00:37:28,000
Speaker 1: role early on in Valves Life, um, you could argue

601
00:37:28,080 --> 00:37:31,040
Speaker 1: that that is a large reason why the company was

602
00:37:31,120 --> 00:37:35,040
Speaker 1: able to get a really strong foothold and move to

603
00:37:35,200 --> 00:37:38,280
Speaker 1: the success that it's at now and you mentioned also

604
00:37:39,080 --> 00:37:42,160
Speaker 1: that you know, seeing the Sierra name kind of go away,

605
00:37:42,360 --> 00:37:44,960
Speaker 1: it's sort of emerged as kind of a almost like

606
00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:49,160
Speaker 1: a boutique brand in two fourteen. Um, I I imagine

607
00:37:49,160 --> 00:37:52,640
Speaker 1: that that also, it just probably feels like there's very little,

608
00:37:52,640 --> 00:37:55,759
Speaker 1: if any connection to the Sierra that you that you

609
00:37:55,840 --> 00:37:58,879
Speaker 1: and your wife built back in the eighties. Is there

610
00:37:59,400 --> 00:38:02,719
Speaker 1: Do you feel any connection to the current Sierra name

611
00:38:02,920 --> 00:38:05,960
Speaker 1: or apart from I mean obviously your long history with it,

612
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:09,960
Speaker 1: but like the way it's it's current incarnation is now now,

613
00:38:11,040 --> 00:38:16,799
Speaker 1: either I played any attention to the game industry possibly

614
00:38:16,880 --> 00:38:19,080
Speaker 1: part of what I really doesn't like to do interviews.

615
00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:22,239
Speaker 1: It won't do them this because she doesn't want people

616
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:25,000
Speaker 1: to think she's, um, she's dumb when they say what

617
00:38:25,080 --> 00:38:26,600
Speaker 1: do you think about such and such a game? And

618
00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:28,800
Speaker 1: she has didn't that she has played the game in

619
00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:35,239
Speaker 1: twenty years. So that's UM. Yeah, now we're pretty disconnected

620
00:38:35,280 --> 00:38:38,000
Speaker 1: from we got briefly involved and the guys were doing

621
00:38:38,239 --> 00:38:42,840
Speaker 1: kind of caught gentlemen. UM tried to start up the

622
00:38:42,960 --> 00:38:48,200
Speaker 1: king Quest franchise and game series again and show there's

623
00:38:48,280 --> 00:38:52,760
Speaker 1: something they were working on. We thought it looked pretty fun, um,

624
00:38:52,840 --> 00:38:56,880
Speaker 1: but then UM, as far as I know, didn't go anywhere,

625
00:38:57,400 --> 00:38:59,920
Speaker 1: and even us we kind of got a copy in

626
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:03,799
Speaker 1: started playing at the lost inter Spring quick and um,

627
00:39:04,080 --> 00:39:05,440
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was a game or just

628
00:39:05,520 --> 00:39:09,879
Speaker 1: be our farm kind of. Um Um, I'm not sure.

629
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:12,080
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what it was. But we didn't finish playing,

630
00:39:12,080 --> 00:39:16,520
Speaker 1: and yet it looks beautiful and played really nice. So

631
00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:19,200
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's hard. It's hard to do something

632
00:39:19,239 --> 00:39:23,600
Speaker 1: that's really fun. So but I actually don't know how

633
00:39:23,600 --> 00:39:25,480
Speaker 1: I did. I mean it was I had this funny

634
00:39:25,560 --> 00:39:28,480
Speaker 1: that we know so a little about today's industry. We

635
00:39:28,640 --> 00:39:33,000
Speaker 1: just kind of gone on to other stuff them. You know,

636
00:39:33,040 --> 00:39:35,600
Speaker 1: we kind of did our second fifteen minutes of fame

637
00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:40,400
Speaker 1: as voters, and that we bought a boat and circumnavigated

638
00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:42,520
Speaker 1: and they've gone to lots of parts of the world

639
00:39:42,560 --> 00:39:47,320
Speaker 1: that um, very few people see. Um, you know, in

640
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:49,640
Speaker 1: the Bering Sea and the Turkey and all kinds of

641
00:39:49,680 --> 00:39:55,239
Speaker 1: crazy places and over four books on voting, and now

642
00:39:55,239 --> 00:39:57,160
Speaker 1: we can't go to any marina anywhere in the world.

643
00:39:57,160 --> 00:40:01,800
Speaker 1: Whose days about somebody saying Ken Williams, Um, so we

644
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:05,680
Speaker 1: were just kind of shifted gears, so you should say, well,

645
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:10,799
Speaker 1: I think that The legacy is certainly a worthy one.

646
00:40:10,960 --> 00:40:15,480
Speaker 1: It is an amazing legacy of games from multiple incredibly

647
00:40:15,520 --> 00:40:19,960
Speaker 1: successful franchises that all went on to inform later games

648
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:22,480
Speaker 1: that have games that still continue to come out. You

649
00:40:22,480 --> 00:40:25,760
Speaker 1: can see the influence that you were your games had

650
00:40:26,000 --> 00:40:28,080
Speaker 1: on those. Like the people who are developing those are

651
00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:31,439
Speaker 1: people who grew up playing the Sierra Online games. So

652
00:40:31,840 --> 00:40:37,719
Speaker 1: I think that that is continuing well. At one point

653
00:40:37,719 --> 00:40:41,239
Speaker 1: in marketing, we did a list and I wish I

654
00:40:41,320 --> 00:40:44,359
Speaker 1: had it, um some of the first that Sierra did,

655
00:40:45,320 --> 00:40:49,840
Speaker 1: and it was like two pages long, and not just fluss.

656
00:40:49,920 --> 00:40:53,160
Speaker 1: I mean there was a lot of things that we

657
00:40:53,280 --> 00:40:58,120
Speaker 1: kind of pioneered that um yeah, I mean just you know,

658
00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:03,000
Speaker 1: little things like music games and sound cards. We can

659
00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:08,680
Speaker 1: ship sound cards and we did so many around modems,

660
00:41:08,760 --> 00:41:11,319
Speaker 1: online games, and we think about this Yer network and

661
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:14,680
Speaker 1: what we did there. That's probably my most ground accomplishment

662
00:41:14,760 --> 00:41:17,160
Speaker 1: in all and that there wasn't even the Internet and

663
00:41:17,200 --> 00:41:21,319
Speaker 1: we were doing um we had we had online site simulators,

664
00:41:21,320 --> 00:41:24,120
Speaker 1: I mean not twenty four hundreds Bob modems, years before

665
00:41:24,160 --> 00:41:28,839
Speaker 1: the Internet came along. So um, I don't know, Yeah,

666
00:41:28,880 --> 00:41:31,799
Speaker 1: we we had some pretty pretty pretty amazing history at

667
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:35,400
Speaker 1: that time, they had a good team we had because

668
00:41:35,520 --> 00:41:38,960
Speaker 1: we were Sierra and because we were first anyone who

669
00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:43,640
Speaker 1: was kind of interested in doing gaming. You know, for them,

670
00:41:43,800 --> 00:41:45,960
Speaker 1: it wasn't really about the money. It was about working

671
00:41:46,000 --> 00:41:49,520
Speaker 1: for Sierra because we were you know, we were were

672
00:41:49,520 --> 00:41:52,120
Speaker 1: we were leaders at the time. It's all. We were

673
00:41:52,120 --> 00:41:55,480
Speaker 1: able to get the best engineers um that the world

674
00:41:55,520 --> 00:42:00,200
Speaker 1: had to offer, and you know, I was you know,

675
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:03,439
Speaker 1: I was there helping to leave the pack. But really

676
00:42:03,480 --> 00:42:07,400
Speaker 1: at least the reputation as Sierra and our ability to

677
00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:12,839
Speaker 1: recruit amazing people to put us where we were, which

678
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:16,200
Speaker 1: is strange too because we were located is screwball place

679
00:42:16,360 --> 00:42:21,200
Speaker 1: to put the company, And yeah, became kind of a

680
00:42:21,200 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 1: company town. I think we've had five hundred employees at

681
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:27,560
Speaker 1: the time when there were only five thousand people in

682
00:42:27,600 --> 00:42:30,040
Speaker 1: the town. And then we kind of help grew it,

683
00:42:30,160 --> 00:42:35,480
Speaker 1: moved to Seattle, left the development behind. But basically, you

684
00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:37,880
Speaker 1: are a company down and when you get to a

685
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:41,520
Speaker 1: point where you're your operation is so large that you

686
00:42:41,560 --> 00:42:45,080
Speaker 1: don't have enough places for people to live in in

687
00:42:45,160 --> 00:42:47,120
Speaker 1: the town that you're located and you have to relocate

688
00:42:47,160 --> 00:42:50,160
Speaker 1: to a different city, that's pretty remarkable. I don't think

689
00:42:50,160 --> 00:42:52,640
Speaker 1: there are a whole little companies that have that story. Ken,

690
00:42:52,800 --> 00:42:57,359
Speaker 1: I gotta thank you so much about now. I think

691
00:42:57,600 --> 00:42:59,120
Speaker 1: I think we've got a good I think we've got

692
00:42:59,120 --> 00:43:01,279
Speaker 1: a good conversation, and you can. I really appreciate it.

693
00:43:01,360 --> 00:43:07,080
Speaker 1: We you know, the the we'll do, we'll do. You

694
00:43:07,200 --> 00:43:11,200
Speaker 1: take care alright. So here's a little bit more background

695
00:43:11,239 --> 00:43:14,400
Speaker 1: on the whole story of Sierra Online's origins and evolution.

696
00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:17,600
Speaker 1: So how did it go from a husband and wife

697
00:43:17,719 --> 00:43:22,560
Speaker 1: start up operation to a billion dollar company? Well, as

698
00:43:22,680 --> 00:43:25,840
Speaker 1: Mr Williams mentioned, he had been programming computers back in

699
00:43:25,880 --> 00:43:28,600
Speaker 1: the old mainframe days, and he had been doing contract

700
00:43:28,640 --> 00:43:31,880
Speaker 1: work for a company called Informatics and was working with

701
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:35,279
Speaker 1: other programmers to try and build out a four tran compiler.

702
00:43:35,760 --> 00:43:38,640
Speaker 1: As part of his work, he brought back a teletype machine.

703
00:43:39,239 --> 00:43:43,319
Speaker 1: Teletype machines could communicate back to a mainframe computer and

704
00:43:43,360 --> 00:43:46,320
Speaker 1: you would get pronounced, And it was a pretty primitive

705
00:43:46,840 --> 00:43:51,640
Speaker 1: terminal kind of access to a a mini computer, not

706
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:54,680
Speaker 1: a micro computer that's what personal computers would become, but

707
00:43:54,760 --> 00:43:57,279
Speaker 1: a mini computer or a mainframe. So this was kind

708
00:43:57,320 --> 00:43:59,560
Speaker 1: of like having that long distance terminal. And it didn't

709
00:43:59,560 --> 00:44:03,400
Speaker 1: take long after the development of the programmable computer in general,

710
00:44:03,719 --> 00:44:06,960
Speaker 1: for people to start creating games for those machines. This

711
00:44:07,040 --> 00:44:10,399
Speaker 1: happened well before the era of the personal computer, back

712
00:44:10,440 --> 00:44:13,360
Speaker 1: when the only people who had any access to computers

713
00:44:13,520 --> 00:44:17,759
Speaker 1: typically were computer programmers. Sometimes the programmer would tackle the

714
00:44:17,840 --> 00:44:20,240
Speaker 1: challenge of making a game as a way to teach

715
00:44:20,320 --> 00:44:23,600
Speaker 1: him or herself how to program it. Just it became

716
00:44:23,680 --> 00:44:26,320
Speaker 1: kind of like an engineering challenge. How would I make

717
00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:30,440
Speaker 1: a program that could play this particular game, something simple

718
00:44:30,480 --> 00:44:33,320
Speaker 1: like Tic Tac toe or Battleship or something on those lines.

719
00:44:33,840 --> 00:44:36,320
Speaker 1: Some of those games found their way onto the computer

720
00:44:36,440 --> 00:44:39,160
Speaker 1: that Ken Williams was using for work, and he would

721
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:42,680
Speaker 1: he could access those games at home. Now. Roberto Williams

722
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:46,000
Speaker 1: was reportedly not terribly impressed with all of this until

723
00:44:46,040 --> 00:44:50,440
Speaker 1: she played a game called Colossal. Cave Adventure also just

724
00:44:50,560 --> 00:44:54,160
Speaker 1: known as Adventure, sometimes just called Cave Adventure, has several

725
00:44:54,160 --> 00:44:57,200
Speaker 1: different names, but it's a text based game and which

726
00:44:57,200 --> 00:44:59,279
Speaker 1: you play as a character exploring a cave to find

727
00:44:59,400 --> 00:45:02,400
Speaker 1: various tres pasures. Now, text based games are a type

728
00:45:02,440 --> 00:45:06,040
Speaker 1: of interactive fiction in which the player is taking control

729
00:45:06,120 --> 00:45:09,239
Speaker 1: of a protagonist. I almost said it in the red

730
00:45:09,640 --> 00:45:13,280
Speaker 1: red letter media way. The protagonist and attempts to guide

731
00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:16,600
Speaker 1: the hero through a scenario, and you use typed commands

732
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:18,960
Speaker 1: to do this. If you were to load up one

733
00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:20,759
Speaker 1: of those games today, what you would see as a

734
00:45:20,760 --> 00:45:24,400
Speaker 1: paragraph of text that would describe the immediate surroundings of

735
00:45:24,440 --> 00:45:27,319
Speaker 1: your character. You could then type in commands to either

736
00:45:27,440 --> 00:45:29,960
Speaker 1: try and get more information or take some sort of

737
00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:33,240
Speaker 1: action within that environment, or even to leave that particular

738
00:45:33,320 --> 00:45:37,160
Speaker 1: environment completely. So, for example, if the description said that

739
00:45:37,200 --> 00:45:40,359
Speaker 1: there's a threadbare rug on the floor, you might try

740
00:45:40,400 --> 00:45:43,319
Speaker 1: to examine the rug, or look under the rug, or

741
00:45:43,440 --> 00:45:46,960
Speaker 1: take the rug. You would type these commands in, so

742
00:45:47,120 --> 00:45:50,560
Speaker 1: you might say examine rug and hit enter. If the

743
00:45:50,600 --> 00:45:53,520
Speaker 1: programmer had built in a response to whatever it was

744
00:45:53,640 --> 00:45:57,160
Speaker 1: you typed in, you would get that response, so it

745
00:45:57,239 --> 00:46:00,120
Speaker 1: might say you look under the rug and there's a key.

746
00:46:00,760 --> 00:46:04,560
Speaker 1: If they did not build in some sort of response

747
00:46:04,600 --> 00:46:07,760
Speaker 1: to that, you would typically get some sort of generic message,

748
00:46:07,800 --> 00:46:10,720
Speaker 1: such as you don't see anything interesting, or I'm sorry

749
00:46:10,760 --> 00:46:14,360
Speaker 1: you can't do that. ROBERTA. Williams found the puzzles of

750
00:46:14,400 --> 00:46:17,759
Speaker 1: this interactive fiction to be really compelling, and so she

751
00:46:17,880 --> 00:46:20,400
Speaker 1: ended up playing other games along that type, although she

752
00:46:20,440 --> 00:46:22,680
Speaker 1: said none of them were quite as interesting to her

753
00:46:22,719 --> 00:46:25,000
Speaker 1: as the first one was. She played a lot of

754
00:46:25,239 --> 00:46:28,080
Speaker 1: games written by a guy named Scott Adams. This is

755
00:46:28,120 --> 00:46:31,200
Speaker 1: not the Scott Adams who is the cartoonist behind Dilbert.

756
00:46:31,600 --> 00:46:36,040
Speaker 1: He instead was a text adventurer designer. He created games

757
00:46:36,080 --> 00:46:41,399
Speaker 1: like Adventure Land, Pirate Adventure, and Voodoo Castle, which really

758
00:46:41,400 --> 00:46:44,239
Speaker 1: threw off that whole adventure motif they had going. By

759
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:47,279
Speaker 1: the winter of nineteen seventy nine, Roberta Williams had come

760
00:46:47,360 --> 00:46:51,200
Speaker 1: up with an idea for her own game, and she

761
00:46:51,680 --> 00:46:53,839
Speaker 1: just kind of thought that she could tell the same

762
00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:56,680
Speaker 1: sort of stories. Now. She didn't have the programming knowledge,

763
00:46:57,160 --> 00:47:00,279
Speaker 1: but she did have this passion for interactive story telling

764
00:47:00,320 --> 00:47:03,440
Speaker 1: that she thought that she could pursue now. According to

765
00:47:03,480 --> 00:47:08,279
Speaker 1: old interviews, Roberta's influences for developing this first game were

766
00:47:08,320 --> 00:47:12,920
Speaker 1: Agatha Christie, particularly the story Ten Little Indians, and also

767
00:47:12,960 --> 00:47:16,160
Speaker 1: the board game Clue. So her game was going to

768
00:47:16,200 --> 00:47:20,040
Speaker 1: be in the mystery genre, requiring players to unravel a

769
00:47:20,080 --> 00:47:23,520
Speaker 1: murder mystery as they played through, with multiple characters dying

770
00:47:23,800 --> 00:47:27,279
Speaker 1: as the game continued. The way she got Ken on

771
00:47:27,360 --> 00:47:31,000
Speaker 1: board because of course, Ken's doing his job as a programmer.

772
00:47:31,239 --> 00:47:34,600
Speaker 1: He wasn't immediately sold on the concept of spending more

773
00:47:34,680 --> 00:47:39,320
Speaker 1: time programming but building a game that his wife had designed. Uh.

774
00:47:39,560 --> 00:47:41,680
Speaker 1: She said that, well, maybe what we do is buy

775
00:47:41,680 --> 00:47:44,520
Speaker 1: ourselves an Apple two computer and that will be our

776
00:47:44,600 --> 00:47:47,360
Speaker 1: Christmas present to each other. This is a two thousand

777
00:47:47,360 --> 00:47:51,720
Speaker 1: dollar computer, well more than that when you start adding

778
00:47:51,719 --> 00:47:55,480
Speaker 1: in all the different components at back in nineteen seventy nine,

779
00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:59,160
Speaker 1: I mean, that's an enormous amount of money. And so

780
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:01,680
Speaker 1: they agree. You know, Ken Williams was like, I get

781
00:48:01,719 --> 00:48:05,000
Speaker 1: a computer out of this, and ROBERTA. Williams is like,

782
00:48:05,160 --> 00:48:08,839
Speaker 1: I can have the game I've thought of created and

783
00:48:08,920 --> 00:48:12,560
Speaker 1: someone could actually play it. Now, Roberta's idea actually added

784
00:48:12,640 --> 00:48:15,960
Speaker 1: in an element that was not found in other text

785
00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:19,440
Speaker 1: adventures at the time, and that was graphics. Now, these

786
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:22,040
Speaker 1: were very simple graphics. They were just simple drawings. They

787
00:48:22,080 --> 00:48:25,400
Speaker 1: were static, so there was no interactivity, there was no animation,

788
00:48:25,960 --> 00:48:28,719
Speaker 1: but they did provide something that other text games did not.

789
00:48:29,000 --> 00:48:32,040
Speaker 1: You could get a depiction of whatever that scene was.

790
00:48:32,640 --> 00:48:36,400
Speaker 1: And the resulting title was Mystery House and it was

791
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:39,200
Speaker 1: a success. The game was ready to hit the market

792
00:48:39,239 --> 00:48:42,200
Speaker 1: in the spring of nineteen eighty. This was a big

793
00:48:42,239 --> 00:48:45,000
Speaker 1: deal in an era in which computer. Personal computers were

794
00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:47,879
Speaker 1: still a very new concept. It was. It wasn't really

795
00:48:47,880 --> 00:48:49,719
Speaker 1: that common to find a household that had one. It

796
00:48:49,760 --> 00:48:54,600
Speaker 1: was essentially hobbyists that owned these sort of machines, and

797
00:48:54,680 --> 00:48:58,600
Speaker 1: they sold it through on print ads as well as

798
00:48:58,760 --> 00:49:01,080
Speaker 1: kind of going door to door to different computer stores.

799
00:49:01,640 --> 00:49:05,520
Speaker 1: They developed other software as well, including other games, so

800
00:49:05,800 --> 00:49:07,799
Speaker 1: it wasn't just games that were looking at. In fact,

801
00:49:07,840 --> 00:49:10,280
Speaker 1: Ken Williams would use some of the tools he developed

802
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:13,719
Speaker 1: to make these games and then make them available as

803
00:49:13,760 --> 00:49:16,400
Speaker 1: commercial products. So first you're like, well, how do I

804
00:49:16,440 --> 00:49:18,400
Speaker 1: build this game? And then you would design a tool

805
00:49:18,440 --> 00:49:19,919
Speaker 1: to help you build the game, and then you think

806
00:49:20,440 --> 00:49:22,919
Speaker 1: this tool might be valuable to people on its own.

807
00:49:22,960 --> 00:49:25,920
Speaker 1: It it's not just an internal tool for us to use.

808
00:49:25,960 --> 00:49:27,640
Speaker 1: We can actually sell this as a product, and so

809
00:49:27,680 --> 00:49:30,120
Speaker 1: they started to do that as well. They also began

810
00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:33,040
Speaker 1: to sell some titles from other developers like Scott Adams,

811
00:49:33,040 --> 00:49:35,399
Speaker 1: though on a small scale, so they sort of were

812
00:49:35,400 --> 00:49:39,400
Speaker 1: acting like a publisher distributor in those days. In September

813
00:49:39,520 --> 00:49:42,600
Speaker 1: of that year, this being nineteen eighty, they relocated from

814
00:49:42,640 --> 00:49:45,799
Speaker 1: Los Angeles to Oakhurst, California, which is not far from

815
00:49:45,880 --> 00:49:49,480
Speaker 1: Yosemite National Park and during the first six months of

816
00:49:49,520 --> 00:49:52,840
Speaker 1: selling games, they they had brought in about seventy five

817
00:49:53,040 --> 00:49:56,520
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in revenue, so that's before expenses, but not

818
00:49:56,600 --> 00:49:59,520
Speaker 1: a bad start. Seventy five grand in your first six

819
00:49:59,640 --> 00:50:03,520
Speaker 1: months in a startup, uh, not just a startup, but

820
00:50:03,800 --> 00:50:07,120
Speaker 1: like a mon pas startup. That's kind of incredible. Right

821
00:50:07,160 --> 00:50:11,440
Speaker 1: around that time, they decided to rename their company Sierra Online,

822
00:50:11,760 --> 00:50:14,759
Speaker 1: named after the Sierra Mountains, which they were now right

823
00:50:14,800 --> 00:50:17,960
Speaker 1: at the foothills of UH. The company would officially become

824
00:50:18,000 --> 00:50:22,840
Speaker 1: Sierra Online, Incorporated on in September of n Their second

825
00:50:22,840 --> 00:50:27,080
Speaker 1: original title was called The Wizard and the Princess, and

826
00:50:27,120 --> 00:50:30,720
Speaker 1: this was sort of a proto King's Quest game. King's

827
00:50:30,800 --> 00:50:36,239
Speaker 1: Quest would become an enormous franchise in Sierra's history. It

828
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:39,560
Speaker 1: featured color graphics and intriguing puzzles. It sold more than

829
00:50:39,640 --> 00:50:42,440
Speaker 1: sixty thousand copies, which was again back in those days,

830
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:46,359
Speaker 1: it was a surprisingly large number of copies. Sixty thou

831
00:50:46,600 --> 00:50:51,359
Speaker 1: copies today is nothing because the the era of PC

832
00:50:51,560 --> 00:50:55,800
Speaker 1: gaming has meant that we've seen a huge boost in

833
00:50:55,840 --> 00:50:58,680
Speaker 1: the numbers of people who are playing games, and digital

834
00:50:58,719 --> 00:51:02,920
Speaker 1: delivery makes it way easier to produce and distribute games,

835
00:51:02,960 --> 00:51:05,560
Speaker 1: but back in those days, sixty thou units. That was

836
00:51:05,600 --> 00:51:09,360
Speaker 1: a lot. Other games that the small company offered in

837
00:51:09,400 --> 00:51:14,239
Speaker 1: those early years included titles like Crossfire, Jawbreaker, which was

838
00:51:14,440 --> 00:51:19,719
Speaker 1: sort of like a pac Man clone, Mission, Asteroid Lunar Leapers,

839
00:51:19,800 --> 00:51:25,560
Speaker 1: and Ulysses in the Golden Fleece. In Chuck Benton, a

840
00:51:25,640 --> 00:51:29,720
Speaker 1: programmer who decided to make a game as an exercise

841
00:51:29,760 --> 00:51:33,600
Speaker 1: and programming, created a text based adventure game titled and

842
00:51:33,640 --> 00:51:38,160
Speaker 1: I'm not making this up soft porn adventure. With a

843
00:51:38,280 --> 00:51:41,080
Speaker 1: name like that, it probably doesn't surprise you to learn

844
00:51:41,160 --> 00:51:42,759
Speaker 1: it was a game in which you control a guy

845
00:51:43,080 --> 00:51:46,840
Speaker 1: who's trying to hook up with various women. Not terribly sophisticated,

846
00:51:47,600 --> 00:51:51,560
Speaker 1: or you could argue, not terribly classy, But like other

847
00:51:51,600 --> 00:51:54,239
Speaker 1: text adventures, it meant trying to solve various puzzles in

848
00:51:54,400 --> 00:51:57,560
Speaker 1: order to achieve your goal. The game would later become

849
00:51:57,560 --> 00:52:01,080
Speaker 1: an important influence on one of Sierra's most sussiful franchises

850
00:52:01,160 --> 00:52:03,120
Speaker 1: just a few years later, and that's why I mentioned

851
00:52:03,120 --> 00:52:06,319
Speaker 1: it here, And spoiler alert, it is not the King's

852
00:52:06,400 --> 00:52:11,359
Speaker 1: Quest series that it influenced. In November two, Sierra would

853
00:52:11,360 --> 00:52:14,319
Speaker 1: announce that it would invest almost a million dollars in

854
00:52:14,400 --> 00:52:18,000
Speaker 1: sales and marketing, which marked the next step up in

855
00:52:18,080 --> 00:52:21,440
Speaker 1: becoming a big business. And games that Sierra developed and

856
00:52:21,600 --> 00:52:25,080
Speaker 1: or published in this time included a Donkey Kong clone

857
00:52:25,120 --> 00:52:29,080
Speaker 1: called Cannonball Blitz. They did a port of Frogger for

858
00:52:29,120 --> 00:52:32,839
Speaker 1: the Atari eight bit computer systems, and they published a

859
00:52:32,920 --> 00:52:37,480
Speaker 1: little game called Ultimate to the Revenge of the Enchantress. Now,

860
00:52:37,520 --> 00:52:39,480
Speaker 1: I want to take a moment to talk about some

861
00:52:39,600 --> 00:52:42,960
Speaker 1: of these. First of all, the ports became a big business.

862
00:52:43,080 --> 00:52:46,000
Speaker 1: You had arcades that were doing quite well, and you

863
00:52:46,040 --> 00:52:50,719
Speaker 1: had video game consoles that were selling uh ports of

864
00:52:50,760 --> 00:52:54,600
Speaker 1: those games, usually at around the eight bit level or less.

865
00:52:55,400 --> 00:52:58,000
Speaker 1: Then you had PCs that were starting to try and

866
00:52:58,040 --> 00:53:00,640
Speaker 1: get in on this too, but they were able to

867
00:53:01,480 --> 00:53:04,480
Speaker 1: play arcade style games quite at the level that consoles

868
00:53:04,520 --> 00:53:08,120
Speaker 1: were because consoles were a very specific, purpose built machine

869
00:53:08,480 --> 00:53:11,960
Speaker 1: and PCs were general machines, which meant they weren't necessarily

870
00:53:12,080 --> 00:53:14,680
Speaker 1: as good at doing things that consoles could do at

871
00:53:14,719 --> 00:53:17,480
Speaker 1: the time. Keeping in mind the consoles were primitive as

872
00:53:17,480 --> 00:53:19,960
Speaker 1: well in those days, but there was a big call

873
00:53:20,320 --> 00:53:24,880
Speaker 1: for doing these sort of ports. Meanwhile, Ultimate too, uh

874
00:53:24,920 --> 00:53:27,120
Speaker 1: that is got a special place in My Heart. The

875
00:53:27,200 --> 00:53:30,480
Speaker 1: Ultimate series was created by a guy named Richard Garriott,

876
00:53:31,160 --> 00:53:33,600
Speaker 1: who with his brother and his dad, created a computer

877
00:53:33,680 --> 00:53:37,040
Speaker 1: game business out of their families Garage. Richard Garriott had

878
00:53:37,080 --> 00:53:40,480
Speaker 1: become interested in computer programming while he was in high school,

879
00:53:40,840 --> 00:53:43,000
Speaker 1: and at that time he wrote games for systems that

880
00:53:43,040 --> 00:53:46,560
Speaker 1: didn't even have a computer display, so instead the computer

881
00:53:46,600 --> 00:53:52,320
Speaker 1: would print out results on tape. So you had tape

882
00:53:52,320 --> 00:53:54,160
Speaker 1: that was coming out of a printer and it would

883
00:53:54,280 --> 00:53:59,440
Speaker 1: print out a design using common computer characters, you know,

884
00:53:59,680 --> 00:54:02,600
Speaker 1: letters and numbers and symbols, that kind of thing, in

885
00:54:02,760 --> 00:54:06,320
Speaker 1: order to represent stuff like walls or characters or monsters

886
00:54:06,320 --> 00:54:09,160
Speaker 1: and other elements. In a basic sort of dungeon crawling

887
00:54:09,280 --> 00:54:12,000
Speaker 1: kind of game, every time you make a move or

888
00:54:12,040 --> 00:54:14,040
Speaker 1: take some sort of action that would change the appearance

889
00:54:14,040 --> 00:54:16,080
Speaker 1: of that environment, it would have to print out a

890
00:54:16,120 --> 00:54:20,160
Speaker 1: new representation of that space. So you know, you you

891
00:54:20,200 --> 00:54:22,839
Speaker 1: move one space to the west, and it prints out

892
00:54:22,840 --> 00:54:26,680
Speaker 1: a new version of the display so it reflects your move.

893
00:54:26,800 --> 00:54:30,239
Speaker 1: That kind of thing. Now, Gary had got a chance

894
00:54:30,239 --> 00:54:32,840
Speaker 1: to work with Apple computers in the late nineties seventies

895
00:54:32,880 --> 00:54:36,040
Speaker 1: and he created a game called a Calabeth Just for Fun,

896
00:54:36,680 --> 00:54:42,440
Speaker 1: which was a graphics Overhead display computer RPG game, one

897
00:54:42,480 --> 00:54:45,400
Speaker 1: of the first computer RPG games. He was working at

898
00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:47,400
Speaker 1: a computer store at the time, and the store owner

899
00:54:47,400 --> 00:54:50,799
Speaker 1: actually allowed him to sell copies of his game in

900
00:54:50,840 --> 00:54:54,040
Speaker 1: the store. They just made a sheet that had the

901
00:54:54,200 --> 00:54:56,440
Speaker 1: art for the game on one side, basic rules on

902
00:54:56,480 --> 00:54:58,760
Speaker 1: the back side of the sheet, and they put a

903
00:54:58,800 --> 00:55:00,799
Speaker 1: floppy disk in there, and they put in a zip

904
00:55:00,880 --> 00:55:04,080
Speaker 1: luck bag and they just tack it to the bulletin board.

905
00:55:04,400 --> 00:55:07,799
Speaker 1: He managed to sell about a dozen copies, but one

906
00:55:07,840 --> 00:55:10,120
Speaker 1: of those somehow made its way to a games publisher

907
00:55:10,120 --> 00:55:13,560
Speaker 1: called California Pacific, and that became his publisher for that

908
00:55:13,640 --> 00:55:16,200
Speaker 1: first game. They said, we want to publish a Calibeth.

909
00:55:16,440 --> 00:55:19,120
Speaker 1: Are you cool with that? And he said, tote school. Well.

910
00:55:19,800 --> 00:55:22,920
Speaker 1: His next game was Ultimate one, which also was published

911
00:55:22,920 --> 00:55:26,520
Speaker 1: by California Pacific, and after the success of Ultima one,

912
00:55:26,640 --> 00:55:29,000
Speaker 1: he began to work on the sequel, but he wanted

913
00:55:29,040 --> 00:55:33,160
Speaker 1: something special for Ultimate two. He wanted to include a

914
00:55:33,239 --> 00:55:36,840
Speaker 1: cloth map of the world, which was an expensive item

915
00:55:36,920 --> 00:55:38,920
Speaker 1: to throw in as a freebee in a game box.

916
00:55:38,960 --> 00:55:41,799
Speaker 1: It was considered to be a premium thing and most

917
00:55:41,920 --> 00:55:45,200
Speaker 1: game publishers weren't interested in doing that. This was shortly

918
00:55:45,440 --> 00:55:47,600
Speaker 1: after the era where all the games were showing up

919
00:55:47,600 --> 00:55:50,439
Speaker 1: in just zip luck bags. So Garriott started a little

920
00:55:50,440 --> 00:55:52,880
Speaker 1: look for a new publisher and he found one in

921
00:55:52,960 --> 00:55:56,840
Speaker 1: Sierra Online. They agreed to his request to publish the

922
00:55:56,880 --> 00:56:01,440
Speaker 1: game with a cloth map that established the way that

923
00:56:01,680 --> 00:56:06,440
Speaker 1: Ultima would come out from that point forward. Coincidentally, Ultimate

924
00:56:06,480 --> 00:56:08,440
Speaker 1: two was one of the first games I ever owned

925
00:56:08,440 --> 00:56:10,920
Speaker 1: for the Apple to E, and I've been lucky enough

926
00:56:10,920 --> 00:56:13,600
Speaker 1: to chat with Richard Garriott several times, the earliest being

927
00:56:13,640 --> 00:56:16,440
Speaker 1: back when I was a teenager, and someday I'll have

928
00:56:16,480 --> 00:56:18,560
Speaker 1: to do a full episode on him and the companies

929
00:56:18,560 --> 00:56:21,960
Speaker 1: he's worked for, and not only his work in developing games,

930
00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:24,080
Speaker 1: but also the story about how he became one of

931
00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:28,160
Speaker 1: just seven citizens to ever visit the International Space Station

932
00:56:28,280 --> 00:56:33,160
Speaker 1: in orbit without becoming an actual astronaut. First, but let's

933
00:56:33,160 --> 00:56:36,760
Speaker 1: get back to Sierra. So they published Ultimate two and

934
00:56:36,880 --> 00:56:39,840
Speaker 1: that ends up getting some more success. By three the

935
00:56:39,840 --> 00:56:45,640
Speaker 1: company had achieved ten million dollars in sales. The titles

936
00:56:45,640 --> 00:56:48,840
Speaker 1: that ROBERTA. Williams was working on. We're gaining special attention

937
00:56:48,920 --> 00:56:52,080
Speaker 1: because they had a reliance upon storytelling that other games

938
00:56:52,080 --> 00:56:55,759
Speaker 1: of that era lacked. Most other games were developed just

939
00:56:55,840 --> 00:56:58,920
Speaker 1: by programmers who were really good at coding, but they

940
00:56:58,960 --> 00:57:01,440
Speaker 1: weren't necessarily the most to dept at creating a narrative.

941
00:57:01,440 --> 00:57:03,879
Speaker 1: So ROBERTA. Williams came at game development from a totally

942
00:57:03,920 --> 00:57:06,480
Speaker 1: different angle. She would conceive of the story and the

943
00:57:06,520 --> 00:57:09,560
Speaker 1: puzzles outside of the realm of coding, and the difference

944
00:57:09,680 --> 00:57:14,560
Speaker 1: was noticeable. At this time, computers relied upon several different

945
00:57:14,680 --> 00:57:17,400
Speaker 1: types of media. It all dependent on the system you

946
00:57:17,440 --> 00:57:19,880
Speaker 1: had what kind of media you would use. You know,

947
00:57:20,040 --> 00:57:23,200
Speaker 1: this was before you would log in someplace and download

948
00:57:23,240 --> 00:57:26,000
Speaker 1: a code, so you had the emergence of the floppy

949
00:57:26,040 --> 00:57:28,800
Speaker 1: disk that was starting to happen right around this time.

950
00:57:29,080 --> 00:57:32,400
Speaker 1: But you also had cassette tapes. Some computers use cassette

951
00:57:32,440 --> 00:57:35,800
Speaker 1: tapes as storage devices, and you would insert a program

952
00:57:35,840 --> 00:57:38,160
Speaker 1: with a cassette tape into a drive on your computer.

953
00:57:38,720 --> 00:57:42,040
Speaker 1: Some of them had cartridges, very similar to the classic

954
00:57:42,480 --> 00:57:46,800
Speaker 1: game consoles of the time, like the AT and cartridges

955
00:57:47,000 --> 00:57:49,600
Speaker 1: in particular were problematic for a couple of reasons. One

956
00:57:49,720 --> 00:57:52,280
Speaker 1: was that they were more expensive per unit to produce

957
00:57:52,360 --> 00:57:54,800
Speaker 1: than other types of media. But the other big one

958
00:57:54,840 --> 00:57:57,120
Speaker 1: was that once you designed a cartridge, you couldn't write

959
00:57:57,160 --> 00:58:01,040
Speaker 1: over it. It was read only memory, so the actual

960
00:58:01,200 --> 00:58:06,320
Speaker 1: coding for whatever the software is was hardwired into the cartridge,

961
00:58:06,760 --> 00:58:09,120
Speaker 1: so you were committed once you did this. It was

962
00:58:09,160 --> 00:58:12,320
Speaker 1: an expensive undertaking. Floppy disks, on the other hand, could

963
00:58:12,320 --> 00:58:15,760
Speaker 1: be erased and overwritten. So even if for some reason

964
00:58:15,840 --> 00:58:18,120
Speaker 1: you didn't need the software anymore. Let's say you buy

965
00:58:18,160 --> 00:58:20,760
Speaker 1: something and you realize all this software is terrible. I don't,

966
00:58:20,760 --> 00:58:22,720
Speaker 1: I don't, I'm never going to use this again, you

967
00:58:22,760 --> 00:58:25,439
Speaker 1: could erase the disk and overwrite it. You could still

968
00:58:25,480 --> 00:58:28,080
Speaker 1: make some use of the disk cartridges if you didn't

969
00:58:28,480 --> 00:58:31,040
Speaker 1: need that software. You just had a big piece of

970
00:58:31,080 --> 00:58:33,120
Speaker 1: plastics saying on your hands that you couldn't do anything

971
00:58:33,120 --> 00:58:37,280
Speaker 1: else with well. Sierra Online created games for the Atari

972
00:58:37,400 --> 00:58:41,400
Speaker 1: computer systems, which relied on cartridges, and then there was

973
00:58:41,480 --> 00:58:45,440
Speaker 1: a big crash that essentially brought down Atari, and Sierra

974
00:58:45,520 --> 00:58:49,720
Speaker 1: had committed to supporting Atari, so they were affected as well,

975
00:58:50,040 --> 00:58:52,120
Speaker 1: and they ended up having to downsize to about a

976
00:58:52,160 --> 00:58:55,440
Speaker 1: third of what their company size had been at that time.

977
00:58:55,480 --> 00:58:58,200
Speaker 1: According to Funding Universe, it meant going from about a

978
00:58:58,240 --> 00:59:02,400
Speaker 1: hundred twenty employees down to third d Now another failed

979
00:59:02,400 --> 00:59:04,360
Speaker 1: piece of hardware that plays a part in the history

980
00:59:04,400 --> 00:59:07,960
Speaker 1: of Sierra is the PC Junior. This was a micro

981
00:59:08,000 --> 00:59:10,120
Speaker 1: computer from IBM that was meant to be the first

982
00:59:10,360 --> 00:59:13,360
Speaker 1: home computer, and it was the first home computer front

983
00:59:13,360 --> 00:59:16,320
Speaker 1: the business giant, I should say, from IBM itself. This

984
00:59:16,440 --> 00:59:21,080
Speaker 1: posed a huge threat, potentially to other computer companies like Apple, Commodore,

985
00:59:21,120 --> 00:59:24,280
Speaker 1: and Texas Instruments. Everyone was sure that IBM was gonna

986
00:59:24,360 --> 00:59:26,720
Speaker 1: come in, throw its weight around and put everyone else

987
00:59:26,720 --> 00:59:30,320
Speaker 1: out of business and become a monopoly in the personal

988
00:59:30,320 --> 00:59:34,360
Speaker 1: computer space. IBM had really deep pockets and already dominated

989
00:59:34,360 --> 00:59:37,680
Speaker 1: the corporate computer landscape. And while the home computer was

990
00:59:37,720 --> 00:59:40,960
Speaker 1: meant to be a general consumer device, IBM had seen

991
00:59:41,120 --> 00:59:44,240
Speaker 1: some success with early personal computers, but they were aimed

992
00:59:44,240 --> 00:59:49,120
Speaker 1: more toward home business operators, not so much the general consumer.

993
00:59:49,680 --> 00:59:52,480
Speaker 1: This PC Junior was meant to be something that the

994
00:59:52,560 --> 00:59:55,200
Speaker 1: average person could go out and buy, not just someone

995
00:59:55,240 --> 01:00:01,480
Speaker 1: who was a hobbyist or home business operator. So it

996
01:00:01,560 --> 01:00:04,560
Speaker 1: was their game to lose, and they fumbled the ball

997
01:00:04,600 --> 01:00:07,840
Speaker 1: big time. The PC Junior had two models. One of

998
01:00:07,880 --> 01:00:11,360
Speaker 1: them sported sixty kilobytes of memory and the other had

999
01:00:11,360 --> 01:00:14,760
Speaker 1: a kilobytes of memory. I was designed to connect to

1000
01:00:14,760 --> 01:00:17,920
Speaker 1: a television that that's what you would use as your display,

1001
01:00:18,280 --> 01:00:21,040
Speaker 1: and you would actually have to turn the televisions volume

1002
01:00:21,160 --> 01:00:23,480
Speaker 1: up in order to hear any sounds that the computer

1003
01:00:23,560 --> 01:00:27,760
Speaker 1: was generating. IBM also sold a monitor specifically for the computer.

1004
01:00:27,920 --> 01:00:30,800
Speaker 1: They called it the PC Junior color Display. The PC

1005
01:00:30,880 --> 01:00:34,640
Speaker 1: Junior shipped with a chick lit style keyboard that used

1006
01:00:34,680 --> 01:00:38,560
Speaker 1: infrared signals to communicate with the PC Junior itself, so

1007
01:00:38,600 --> 01:00:42,480
Speaker 1: it was wireless. It had an emitter that shot infrared

1008
01:00:42,560 --> 01:00:46,400
Speaker 1: information to the computer that would then presumably pick it up.

1009
01:00:47,000 --> 01:00:49,440
Speaker 1: Used double A batteries I think four of them in

1010
01:00:49,560 --> 01:00:52,920
Speaker 1: order to operate. The physical design of the keyboard was

1011
01:00:52,960 --> 01:00:55,560
Speaker 1: one of the things that a lot of people cited

1012
01:00:55,680 --> 01:00:59,760
Speaker 1: as a negative aspect of this computer, and along with

1013
01:00:59,840 --> 01:01:03,040
Speaker 1: that came the computer's cost. It was pretty expensive and

1014
01:01:03,160 --> 01:01:06,040
Speaker 1: other limitations that it had that ended up cutting the

1015
01:01:06,160 --> 01:01:09,200
Speaker 1: PC Junior off at the knees before I could even debut.

1016
01:01:09,960 --> 01:01:13,040
Speaker 1: By the time it finally came to market, the general

1017
01:01:13,080 --> 01:01:16,200
Speaker 1: consensus was that the hardware was a big disappointment, and

1018
01:01:16,240 --> 01:01:18,880
Speaker 1: as a result, it became one of the biggest flops

1019
01:01:19,120 --> 01:01:24,320
Speaker 1: in technology. But it did create the possibility for King's Quest,

1020
01:01:25,160 --> 01:01:28,160
Speaker 1: because that was the game Sierra was developing for the

1021
01:01:28,200 --> 01:01:32,560
Speaker 1: PC Junior at the time, and while the intended hardware floundered,

1022
01:01:32,720 --> 01:01:36,520
Speaker 1: Sierra was able to port King's Quest over onto other platforms,

1023
01:01:36,560 --> 01:01:40,520
Speaker 1: and there the game found an enormous fan base. And now,

1024
01:01:40,880 --> 01:01:43,120
Speaker 1: before I jump into the last section to really talk

1025
01:01:43,160 --> 01:01:46,200
Speaker 1: about what Sierra turned into, let's take a quick break

1026
01:01:46,360 --> 01:01:58,720
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Now I had mentioned in the

1027
01:01:58,800 --> 01:02:02,000
Speaker 1: last section about King's Quest. King's Quest was another big

1028
01:02:02,120 --> 01:02:05,240
Speaker 1: leap forward for games. Instead of a text based game

1029
01:02:05,280 --> 01:02:08,720
Speaker 1: with some static images the way the previous games had

1030
01:02:08,760 --> 01:02:11,760
Speaker 1: been over at Sierra, players would actually control a figure

1031
01:02:11,760 --> 01:02:15,440
Speaker 1: who could move through an environment, and as you interacted

1032
01:02:15,480 --> 01:02:18,120
Speaker 1: with the environment, you would get animations that would accompany

1033
01:02:18,280 --> 01:02:21,080
Speaker 1: your command. So this was no longer static. It was dynamic.

1034
01:02:21,680 --> 01:02:26,440
Speaker 1: King's Quest would spawn several sequels eight if you're being technical,

1035
01:02:27,000 --> 01:02:29,600
Speaker 1: and it would serve as a model for several other

1036
01:02:29,640 --> 01:02:32,480
Speaker 1: Sierra Online games. And again, it was very much story

1037
01:02:32,560 --> 01:02:35,480
Speaker 1: driven and most of the puzzles had something to do

1038
01:02:35,600 --> 01:02:38,760
Speaker 1: with the fairy tale nature of the game. You played

1039
01:02:38,800 --> 01:02:41,000
Speaker 1: as a character named Graham, and you would go on

1040
01:02:41,040 --> 01:02:44,040
Speaker 1: a quest in order to save a kingdom and become

1041
01:02:44,080 --> 01:02:47,240
Speaker 1: the king at the end. Some of the games that

1042
01:02:47,440 --> 01:02:51,080
Speaker 1: were also based upon this same sort of engine were

1043
01:02:51,960 --> 01:02:56,280
Speaker 1: licensed properties, so they weren't original. I P from Sierra

1044
01:02:56,680 --> 01:03:00,000
Speaker 1: Sierra created a video game version of the Black Culture

1045
01:03:00,040 --> 01:03:03,960
Speaker 1: and that was modeled after the Disney adaptation of the

1046
01:03:04,000 --> 01:03:08,440
Speaker 1: classic Lloyd Alexander fantasy series. I had read the books,

1047
01:03:08,600 --> 01:03:10,800
Speaker 1: saw the cartoon, and then I even played the game.

1048
01:03:11,200 --> 01:03:13,960
Speaker 1: They also created a game adaptation of The Dark Crystal,

1049
01:03:14,240 --> 01:03:16,160
Speaker 1: which is a fantasy film that was made by Jim

1050
01:03:16,240 --> 01:03:18,920
Speaker 1: Henson Pictures. If you've not seen it, I recommend checking

1051
01:03:18,920 --> 01:03:23,760
Speaker 1: it out. It is really an interesting original fantasy story

1052
01:03:23,800 --> 01:03:27,000
Speaker 1: and has some pretty creepy characters in it too. In

1053
01:03:27,120 --> 01:03:30,920
Speaker 1: nine six, after a couple more King's Quest sequels had

1054
01:03:30,960 --> 01:03:33,920
Speaker 1: boosted more sales over at Sierra, the company developed and

1055
01:03:33,920 --> 01:03:37,439
Speaker 1: published the first Space Quest game, and this is where

1056
01:03:37,440 --> 01:03:40,200
Speaker 1: you start seeing the word quest become very important in

1057
01:03:40,320 --> 01:03:44,640
Speaker 1: various Sierra franchises. Uh This one was called Space Quest

1058
01:03:44,800 --> 01:03:47,920
Speaker 1: the Sorry in Encounter, and he used a game engine

1059
01:03:47,960 --> 01:03:51,400
Speaker 1: identical to that of King's Quest, but had a science

1060
01:03:51,480 --> 01:03:55,439
Speaker 1: fiction theme and was much more lighthearted and comical than

1061
01:03:55,560 --> 01:03:58,960
Speaker 1: King's Quest tended to be. The game's creators were Scott

1062
01:03:59,040 --> 01:04:02,120
Speaker 1: Murphy and Mark Crow. They became known as the guys

1063
01:04:02,200 --> 01:04:06,800
Speaker 1: from Andromeda. They they wanted to make a game that

1064
01:04:06,920 --> 01:04:10,000
Speaker 1: was a little more silly and goofy than what Sierra

1065
01:04:10,160 --> 01:04:13,040
Speaker 1: was really focusing on. They said that the the tone

1066
01:04:13,200 --> 01:04:15,600
Speaker 1: of the games was a little too serious and dower

1067
01:04:15,800 --> 01:04:19,120
Speaker 1: for their tastes. Space Quest put the player in control

1068
01:04:19,160 --> 01:04:22,240
Speaker 1: of what amounts to be a space janitor who must

1069
01:04:22,280 --> 01:04:25,880
Speaker 1: defeat an aggressive alien force, and the game, like King's Quest,

1070
01:04:26,000 --> 01:04:30,240
Speaker 1: was a big success and spawned several series, uh several sequels,

1071
01:04:30,240 --> 01:04:35,040
Speaker 1: I should say within a series in Sarah Online. Gave

1072
01:04:35,080 --> 01:04:39,080
Speaker 1: Al Low, another game developer, a guy who was coming

1073
01:04:39,120 --> 01:04:42,000
Speaker 1: up with various stories for games in Sierra. They gave

1074
01:04:42,040 --> 01:04:45,400
Speaker 1: him the go ahead to adapt that soft porn adventure

1075
01:04:45,440 --> 01:04:48,200
Speaker 1: game I mentioned earlier that came from the early eighties

1076
01:04:48,520 --> 01:04:50,800
Speaker 1: into a game more in line with the style of

1077
01:04:50,920 --> 01:04:53,520
Speaker 1: King's Quest and Space Quest, something that was a graphical

1078
01:04:53,840 --> 01:04:56,200
Speaker 1: adventure where you control the character that could move around

1079
01:04:56,800 --> 01:05:00,280
Speaker 1: an environment and not just a text based game. And

1080
01:05:00,360 --> 01:05:03,800
Speaker 1: that's when leisure Suit Larry was born. The first title

1081
01:05:03,840 --> 01:05:06,080
Speaker 1: in the game was leisure Suit Larry in the Land

1082
01:05:06,120 --> 01:05:08,920
Speaker 1: of the Lounge Lizards, and not only was it a

1083
01:05:08,960 --> 01:05:11,840
Speaker 1: big hit, it was also one of the most pirated

1084
01:05:11,920 --> 01:05:16,560
Speaker 1: games of that era. Legend says that Sierra actually sold

1085
01:05:16,600 --> 01:05:19,800
Speaker 1: more copies of the hint book for leisure Suit Larry

1086
01:05:19,800 --> 01:05:22,680
Speaker 1: in the Land of Lounge Lizards then they sold copies

1087
01:05:22,800 --> 01:05:25,800
Speaker 1: of the game itself, suggesting that a whole bunch of

1088
01:05:25,800 --> 01:05:28,440
Speaker 1: people got their hands on that game without paying Sierra

1089
01:05:28,440 --> 01:05:31,240
Speaker 1: any money. Also, this was a time when you couldn't

1090
01:05:31,280 --> 01:05:34,240
Speaker 1: just casually look up hints to a game online. There

1091
01:05:34,280 --> 01:05:37,640
Speaker 1: was no worldwide web to go to, so you either

1092
01:05:37,760 --> 01:05:39,720
Speaker 1: would talk to other people who had the game and

1093
01:05:39,760 --> 01:05:42,360
Speaker 1: had figured something out, or you went out and bought

1094
01:05:42,400 --> 01:05:45,960
Speaker 1: a hint book, or you called some sort of phone

1095
01:05:46,040 --> 01:05:48,520
Speaker 1: number that would charge you by the minute to hear

1096
01:05:48,640 --> 01:05:53,120
Speaker 1: hints about how to solve puzzles in the game. Sierra

1097
01:05:53,160 --> 01:05:57,560
Speaker 1: continued to grow, they added more developers, they published more games.

1098
01:05:58,120 --> 01:06:01,400
Speaker 1: To go through all of them would be austing and pointless.

1099
01:06:01,480 --> 01:06:04,320
Speaker 1: There are hundreds of titles that came out over the

1100
01:06:04,400 --> 01:06:07,600
Speaker 1: years from Sierra, but there were some other big series

1101
01:06:07,640 --> 01:06:10,920
Speaker 1: that were important during the history of the company. One

1102
01:06:10,960 --> 01:06:14,240
Speaker 1: of those was a game called Police Quest, and it

1103
01:06:14,400 --> 01:06:17,520
Speaker 1: actually had a former police officer as the lead for

1104
01:06:17,640 --> 01:06:21,120
Speaker 1: the game. Series. That was Jim Walls, and he had

1105
01:06:21,120 --> 01:06:24,120
Speaker 1: no programming background, but he oversaw development of the game

1106
01:06:24,400 --> 01:06:28,439
Speaker 1: and incorporated actual police procedure and tactics into the game

1107
01:06:28,440 --> 01:06:31,680
Speaker 1: mechanics and the game design. So not only is it

1108
01:06:31,760 --> 01:06:34,200
Speaker 1: a game where you're playing a law enforcement officer, you

1109
01:06:34,200 --> 01:06:37,360
Speaker 1: actually have to follow specific protocols in order to advance

1110
01:06:37,360 --> 01:06:40,800
Speaker 1: in the game properly. This also spawned a series of games,

1111
01:06:40,800 --> 01:06:43,760
Speaker 1: although Jim Walls would leave after the third entry I

1112
01:06:43,840 --> 01:06:46,520
Speaker 1: Believe into the series, and a different police officer became

1113
01:06:46,800 --> 01:06:50,480
Speaker 1: the lead developer for the other games, which eventually evolved

1114
01:06:50,480 --> 01:06:54,280
Speaker 1: into a series called Swat. Sierra also developed a game

1115
01:06:54,320 --> 01:06:57,800
Speaker 1: called Heroes Quest, but due to a trademark issue, another

1116
01:06:58,240 --> 01:07:02,760
Speaker 1: company had claim over Heroes Quest. They would rename the

1117
01:07:02,840 --> 01:07:06,680
Speaker 1: future entries into that series the Quest for Glory that

1118
01:07:06,760 --> 01:07:09,640
Speaker 1: started with the second game in that series. And it

1119
01:07:09,640 --> 01:07:12,320
Speaker 1: was around that time that Ken Williams was meeting with

1120
01:07:12,360 --> 01:07:16,160
Speaker 1: folks from a little company called ID Software to talk

1121
01:07:16,200 --> 01:07:19,960
Speaker 1: about their games that they had in mind. Now those

1122
01:07:20,000 --> 01:07:24,560
Speaker 1: conversations ended up going nowhere. Ken Williams decided against pursuing

1123
01:07:25,560 --> 01:07:30,240
Speaker 1: being a publisher for ID Software games, and eventually he

1124
01:07:30,240 --> 01:07:33,920
Speaker 1: would come to regret that decision because it became incredibly

1125
01:07:33,960 --> 01:07:38,400
Speaker 1: successful and Sierra could have been in on that, but

1126
01:07:39,000 --> 01:07:42,240
Speaker 1: Ken Williams didn't really feel strongly that this was a

1127
01:07:42,280 --> 01:07:44,800
Speaker 1: good fit at the time, and you heard him say

1128
01:07:44,840 --> 01:07:47,840
Speaker 1: that over in the interview. But it did also plant

1129
01:07:47,880 --> 01:07:51,080
Speaker 1: the seed in Sierra to consider Valve a little more

1130
01:07:51,120 --> 01:07:54,280
Speaker 1: carefully when they came to the company in the late nineties.

1131
01:07:54,720 --> 01:07:56,920
Speaker 1: So you got a bunch of franchises that are all

1132
01:07:56,960 --> 01:07:59,840
Speaker 1: doing well over at Sierra, boosted by a lot of

1133
01:08:00,000 --> 01:08:03,640
Speaker 1: on off titles as well. In nine nine, Sierra would

1134
01:08:03,680 --> 01:08:07,880
Speaker 1: launch the Sierra Network later known as the Imagination Network,

1135
01:08:08,480 --> 01:08:11,320
Speaker 1: making it the first games only network. And this is

1136
01:08:11,400 --> 01:08:14,560
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine. It's still before the Worldwide Web. This

1137
01:08:14,640 --> 01:08:16,960
Speaker 1: is the old Bolton board system days. You would use

1138
01:08:16,960 --> 01:08:19,960
Speaker 1: a modem to call into a computer that would log

1139
01:08:20,000 --> 01:08:23,960
Speaker 1: you into this network. Uh so, very forward thinking, not

1140
01:08:24,120 --> 01:08:26,679
Speaker 1: something that a lot of game companies had really thought about,

1141
01:08:26,800 --> 01:08:29,240
Speaker 1: and it was a bit ahead of its time. It

1142
01:08:29,680 --> 01:08:32,800
Speaker 1: required a huge investment up front, like a million dollars,

1143
01:08:33,400 --> 01:08:35,519
Speaker 1: and it took some time to catch on and never

1144
01:08:35,560 --> 01:08:41,000
Speaker 1: really became profitable in Sierra reached an agreement with Prodigy

1145
01:08:41,280 --> 01:08:45,439
Speaker 1: and online service provider. Back before we had internet service providers,

1146
01:08:45,439 --> 01:08:49,280
Speaker 1: we had online service providers and prodily agreed to carry

1147
01:08:49,520 --> 01:08:53,840
Speaker 1: the network. The Imagination Network also formed a partnership with

1148
01:08:54,000 --> 01:08:58,200
Speaker 1: ah an outlet called seu C International. They had a

1149
01:08:58,240 --> 01:09:01,519
Speaker 1: service called Shoppers Advantage that allowed for online shopping, So

1150
01:09:01,560 --> 01:09:05,719
Speaker 1: you had this collection of services that were packaged together.

1151
01:09:06,280 --> 01:09:09,240
Speaker 1: The venture was never really profitable, as the cost of

1152
01:09:09,280 --> 01:09:12,240
Speaker 1: operating the service was parading much the same as what

1153
01:09:12,320 --> 01:09:15,320
Speaker 1: it brought in through revenue, and eventually Sierra would sell

1154
01:09:15,360 --> 01:09:18,200
Speaker 1: off its network to A T and T in return

1155
01:09:18,280 --> 01:09:20,120
Speaker 1: for the promise that A T and T would pay

1156
01:09:20,200 --> 01:09:24,559
Speaker 1: royalties to Sierra for any of the software that it used. Also,

1157
01:09:24,600 --> 01:09:28,120
Speaker 1: back in nine Sierra went public. It changed from a

1158
01:09:28,160 --> 01:09:31,840
Speaker 1: privately owned corporation to a publicly traded one. But you

1159
01:09:31,920 --> 01:09:34,559
Speaker 1: heard from Mr Williams what that was like. The nature

1160
01:09:34,560 --> 01:09:37,240
Speaker 1: of the work changed dramatically, the nature of the business,

1161
01:09:37,280 --> 01:09:39,720
Speaker 1: the culture changed, and suddenly there were a lot of

1162
01:09:39,720 --> 01:09:43,200
Speaker 1: other considerations Williams had to make while operating his company.

1163
01:09:43,840 --> 01:09:48,360
Speaker 1: Now Sierra had also made some acquisitions during this time,

1164
01:09:48,600 --> 01:09:52,360
Speaker 1: growing as a business by purchasing smaller companies that did

1165
01:09:52,439 --> 01:09:55,799
Speaker 1: lots of different stuff, not just games, but including companies

1166
01:09:55,840 --> 01:09:59,559
Speaker 1: like Dynamics, which was known for making flight simulators, a

1167
01:09:59,600 --> 01:10:03,280
Speaker 1: company all the Impressions Software, which specialized in strategy games.

1168
01:10:03,479 --> 01:10:08,040
Speaker 1: They also bought Papyrus Design Group and sub Logic. These

1169
01:10:08,040 --> 01:10:12,080
Speaker 1: were other companies that made things like sports games, racing games,

1170
01:10:12,080 --> 01:10:15,280
Speaker 1: other strategy games. It was all meant to round out

1171
01:10:15,360 --> 01:10:18,280
Speaker 1: the sort of games that Sierra could make without having

1172
01:10:18,360 --> 01:10:22,200
Speaker 1: to higher on new developers and create new divisions within

1173
01:10:22,240 --> 01:10:25,240
Speaker 1: the company itself. It's was seen as easier to buy

1174
01:10:25,280 --> 01:10:28,800
Speaker 1: an existing organization that already specialized in that, and they

1175
01:10:28,840 --> 01:10:32,760
Speaker 1: just added to the Sierra family. Now, well, Sierra had

1176
01:10:32,800 --> 01:10:36,160
Speaker 1: sold software outside of games for a while, you know

1177
01:10:36,240 --> 01:10:39,320
Speaker 1: it made money by selling those tools that Kim Williams

1178
01:10:39,360 --> 01:10:43,280
Speaker 1: had developed. It really began to pick up speed in

1179
01:10:43,320 --> 01:10:45,960
Speaker 1: this business in the mid nineties. They began to sell

1180
01:10:45,960 --> 01:10:50,000
Speaker 1: productivity software and recipes software and all sorts of stuff

1181
01:10:50,280 --> 01:10:53,600
Speaker 1: that wasn't at all connected to gaming, which might be

1182
01:10:53,640 --> 01:10:56,040
Speaker 1: a surprise to you if you only know Sierra from

1183
01:10:56,120 --> 01:10:59,160
Speaker 1: the game titles that it's sold. They also produced a

1184
01:10:59,200 --> 01:11:02,760
Speaker 1: lot of educational software, became a big money maker for them.

1185
01:11:02,800 --> 01:11:06,479
Speaker 1: The company created a type of software internally called Sierra

1186
01:11:06,560 --> 01:11:10,519
Speaker 1: Creative Interpreter. This would allow artists and musicians to create

1187
01:11:10,600 --> 01:11:14,959
Speaker 1: content for games without having to learn complicated coding languages themselves.

1188
01:11:14,960 --> 01:11:17,519
Speaker 1: So it was meant to streamline that process, and in

1189
01:11:18,680 --> 01:11:23,559
Speaker 1: the company released an enormous multi media game. It spread

1190
01:11:23,560 --> 01:11:27,920
Speaker 1: across seven compact discs. So you've got to also remember

1191
01:11:28,560 --> 01:11:32,280
Speaker 1: Sierra existed in a time that went from cartridges and

1192
01:11:32,320 --> 01:11:35,560
Speaker 1: cassettes to floppy disks, and then from floppy disks to

1193
01:11:35,720 --> 01:11:39,439
Speaker 1: compact discs. And at this point they had done a

1194
01:11:39,439 --> 01:11:43,320
Speaker 1: few compact disc based games that included multimedia in it,

1195
01:11:43,400 --> 01:11:46,960
Speaker 1: like full motion video, full music, full sound effects, that

1196
01:11:47,040 --> 01:11:50,799
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So by they were able to release

1197
01:11:50,880 --> 01:11:54,280
Speaker 1: their most ambitious game in this realm, and it was

1198
01:11:54,360 --> 01:11:58,360
Speaker 1: called Phantasmagoria. It featured live actors I think there were

1199
01:11:58,560 --> 01:12:02,760
Speaker 1: twenty five for an actors in the actual game, three

1200
01:12:02,760 --> 01:12:06,320
Speaker 1: dimensional backgrounds the characters could move around, also took advantage

1201
01:12:06,320 --> 01:12:09,080
Speaker 1: of the latest in PC hardware. This was a point

1202
01:12:09,200 --> 01:12:12,240
Speaker 1: and click adventure game and it was also a labor

1203
01:12:12,280 --> 01:12:14,960
Speaker 1: of love for ROBERTA. Williams herself. The game was a

1204
01:12:14,960 --> 01:12:18,960
Speaker 1: commercial success, but it received some mixed reviews from critics

1205
01:12:18,960 --> 01:12:23,400
Speaker 1: at the time. It also had experienced numerous delays before

1206
01:12:23,400 --> 01:12:26,200
Speaker 1: it finally came out around the same time the company

1207
01:12:26,240 --> 01:12:29,720
Speaker 1: was on on the verge of becoming a true behemoth

1208
01:12:29,920 --> 01:12:32,639
Speaker 1: in the software industry. I'm talking about on the same

1209
01:12:32,720 --> 01:12:37,400
Speaker 1: level as Microsoft. Microsoft of course a big software company,

1210
01:12:37,439 --> 01:12:40,760
Speaker 1: but Sierra was almost neck and neck with them. And

1211
01:12:40,800 --> 01:12:43,400
Speaker 1: it was around that time that See You See International,

1212
01:12:43,479 --> 01:12:46,800
Speaker 1: the company that made that shopping service I had talked

1213
01:12:46,800 --> 01:12:49,360
Speaker 1: about a second ago, decided to make a move to

1214
01:12:49,439 --> 01:12:53,320
Speaker 1: acquire Sierra. Ultimately, they struck a deal for more than

1215
01:12:53,360 --> 01:12:55,759
Speaker 1: a billion dollars in stocks. That's the one I mentioned

1216
01:12:55,800 --> 01:12:58,040
Speaker 1: at the top of the show. Sierra would end up

1217
01:12:58,120 --> 01:13:00,479
Speaker 1: joining a few other companies that were on under the

1218
01:13:00,560 --> 01:13:04,360
Speaker 1: youth the umbrella that seu C owned. They created a

1219
01:13:04,439 --> 01:13:09,080
Speaker 1: brand called Sendant Software. One of those other companies that

1220
01:13:09,160 --> 01:13:13,040
Speaker 1: Sierra joined was one called Blizzard Entertainment. I'll probably have

1221
01:13:13,080 --> 01:13:15,240
Speaker 1: to do an episode on Blizzard sometime in the future.

1222
01:13:15,680 --> 01:13:18,479
Speaker 1: And Ken and ROBERTA. Williams stayed on with the company

1223
01:13:18,520 --> 01:13:21,680
Speaker 1: after that acquisition until a year had passed, and in

1224
01:13:21,720 --> 01:13:27,160
Speaker 1: November they retired from Sierra. Ken Williams at that point

1225
01:13:27,160 --> 01:13:30,760
Speaker 1: had become pretty disenchanted with the way the company had

1226
01:13:30,800 --> 01:13:35,320
Speaker 1: been going. He really was having issues. Ever since they

1227
01:13:35,320 --> 01:13:38,320
Speaker 1: had gone public. They had stuck around to provide some

1228
01:13:38,439 --> 01:13:40,760
Speaker 1: leadership during the transition, but they wanted to move on

1229
01:13:40,800 --> 01:13:42,920
Speaker 1: with their lives and since then they've done a lot

1230
01:13:42,960 --> 01:13:45,200
Speaker 1: of stuff that has nothing to do with software, mostly

1231
01:13:45,240 --> 01:13:48,320
Speaker 1: sailing around the world. Now back at Sierra. Under the

1232
01:13:48,360 --> 01:13:51,960
Speaker 1: Scendant Corporation that was formed after c UC merged with

1233
01:13:52,040 --> 01:13:56,920
Speaker 1: another company called h F S Incorporated, the company that

1234
01:13:57,080 --> 01:14:00,360
Speaker 1: was Sierra split into four major divisions, so now you

1235
01:14:00,439 --> 01:14:04,320
Speaker 1: had kind of four sub brands under the brand of Sierra.

1236
01:14:04,400 --> 01:14:07,919
Speaker 1: There was Sierra Sports, which obviously was all the sporting titles,

1237
01:14:08,120 --> 01:14:12,480
Speaker 1: Sierra Home which was all the non game software titles,

1238
01:14:13,120 --> 01:14:16,600
Speaker 1: Sierra Attractions, which was casual games stuff like poker, that

1239
01:14:16,680 --> 01:14:19,479
Speaker 1: kind of thing, and Sierra Studios, which were all the

1240
01:14:19,520 --> 01:14:23,280
Speaker 1: big name games that people were expecting from Sierra. They

1241
01:14:23,320 --> 01:14:25,960
Speaker 1: published some games and expansions that are pretty well known

1242
01:14:26,120 --> 01:14:30,520
Speaker 1: around that time, such as Diablo Hellfire. They didn't develop Diablo,

1243
01:14:30,640 --> 01:14:34,360
Speaker 1: but they did publish an expansion pack for Diablo, and

1244
01:14:34,400 --> 01:14:38,000
Speaker 1: they also published Valves game Half Life. This was sort

1245
01:14:38,040 --> 01:14:41,679
Speaker 1: of a response to that passing up of ID earlier.

1246
01:14:42,400 --> 01:14:46,280
Speaker 1: Uh In there was a big scandal at SEU see

1247
01:14:46,439 --> 01:14:50,200
Speaker 1: that parent company, and it involved an accounting fraud case

1248
01:14:50,320 --> 01:14:53,599
Speaker 1: and so as part of the fallout of this, CUC

1249
01:14:53,840 --> 01:14:57,080
Speaker 1: decided that they wanted to divest divest themselves of some

1250
01:14:57,120 --> 01:15:00,639
Speaker 1: of their assets, including Sierra. So there was another company,

1251
01:15:00,640 --> 01:15:04,400
Speaker 1: a French company called Havas s A, which purchased Sierra

1252
01:15:04,439 --> 01:15:07,040
Speaker 1: at that time. I also mentioned that around this point

1253
01:15:07,040 --> 01:15:11,120
Speaker 1: Sierra began to transition from developing and publishing games to

1254
01:15:11,320 --> 01:15:15,000
Speaker 1: mainly just publishing them. A lot of the development houses

1255
01:15:15,080 --> 01:15:19,479
Speaker 1: got shut down in the company underwent a reorganization and

1256
01:15:19,560 --> 01:15:24,160
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty positions were eliminated as a result. Layoffs

1257
01:15:24,160 --> 01:15:27,760
Speaker 1: included longtime employees like Scott Murphy, that co creator of

1258
01:15:27,800 --> 01:15:30,719
Speaker 1: Space Quest and Al Low, the guy behind the leisure

1259
01:15:30,760 --> 01:15:33,679
Speaker 1: suit Larry series. He got laid off at this time too.

1260
01:15:34,400 --> 01:15:38,240
Speaker 1: Not long after that, the company held another reorganization, so

1261
01:15:38,280 --> 01:15:40,720
Speaker 1: they had just gotten rid of two hundred and fifty positions.

1262
01:15:40,800 --> 01:15:43,799
Speaker 1: After the second reord they got rid of another hundred

1263
01:15:43,800 --> 01:15:47,599
Speaker 1: positions and in two thousand Havas Esa became part of

1264
01:15:47,720 --> 01:15:53,080
Speaker 1: Vivendi Universal and in two thousand two Sierra Online was

1265
01:15:53,240 --> 01:15:59,679
Speaker 1: renamed as Sierra Entertainment. Now Sierra continued to be used

1266
01:15:59,800 --> 01:16:02,360
Speaker 1: law actually as a brand name for a publisher for

1267
01:16:02,400 --> 01:16:05,280
Speaker 1: the next several years, so between two thousand two and

1268
01:16:05,320 --> 01:16:09,960
Speaker 1: two thousand eight, Sierra published games, but it was almost

1269
01:16:10,000 --> 01:16:13,559
Speaker 1: like the name of Atari, where the name Sierra had

1270
01:16:13,760 --> 01:16:17,559
Speaker 1: very little connective tissue to the company that had existed

1271
01:16:17,560 --> 01:16:19,800
Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties. It was almost more like

1272
01:16:19,960 --> 01:16:23,240
Speaker 1: just a brand name um that could be slapped onto

1273
01:16:23,280 --> 01:16:27,919
Speaker 1: any game that was being developed under Vivindy for whatever purposes.

1274
01:16:27,960 --> 01:16:31,000
Speaker 1: It might have been a budgeting thing, saying this division

1275
01:16:31,040 --> 01:16:33,479
Speaker 1: needs to publish this game. In two thousand and eight,

1276
01:16:33,880 --> 01:16:38,560
Speaker 1: the Vindi Games merged with Activision to create Activision Blizzard,

1277
01:16:39,120 --> 01:16:43,040
Speaker 1: and Sierra was transferred over to Activision as a result

1278
01:16:43,080 --> 01:16:47,240
Speaker 1: of this merger, and the brand would remain dormant. It

1279
01:16:47,520 --> 01:16:51,000
Speaker 1: kind of disappeared. It still technically existed. There was a

1280
01:16:51,040 --> 01:16:54,400
Speaker 1: point where it sounded like Activision was looking to sell

1281
01:16:54,520 --> 01:16:57,880
Speaker 1: off Sierra, and for a while it just seemed like

1282
01:16:57,880 --> 01:17:00,000
Speaker 1: Sierra was gonna just gonna be a thing of the past,

1283
01:17:00,080 --> 01:17:01,800
Speaker 1: us that it was no longer going to be a

1284
01:17:01,880 --> 01:17:05,880
Speaker 1: relevant term. And then in two thousand and fourteen, seemingly

1285
01:17:05,960 --> 01:17:10,360
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, the Sierra website was updated and said

1286
01:17:10,439 --> 01:17:13,879
Speaker 1: that there would soon be some interesting news about Sierra,

1287
01:17:13,960 --> 01:17:16,439
Speaker 1: including new games coming out, and if you go to

1288
01:17:16,479 --> 01:17:19,360
Speaker 1: that web page now you'll see you can download the

1289
01:17:19,360 --> 01:17:22,719
Speaker 1: original King's Quest if you like. And there's also promise

1290
01:17:22,920 --> 01:17:26,920
Speaker 1: of things to come. So the Sierra story is not

1291
01:17:27,040 --> 01:17:31,600
Speaker 1: necessarily over. We may see a renaissance of Sierra Online

1292
01:17:31,640 --> 01:17:35,639
Speaker 1: Sierra Entertainment, so we'll keep our eyes out for that,

1293
01:17:36,200 --> 01:17:39,760
Speaker 1: but for now the story is at an end. Uh.

1294
01:17:39,920 --> 01:17:44,280
Speaker 1: It was a dramatic rise in popularity, and we could

1295
01:17:44,360 --> 01:17:47,920
Speaker 1: probably do full episodes about some of these games and

1296
01:17:47,960 --> 01:17:51,360
Speaker 1: their impact on the gaming industry and how they developed

1297
01:17:51,360 --> 01:17:56,599
Speaker 1: over time. But obviously, if we want to be more succinct,

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01:17:57,120 --> 01:17:59,439
Speaker 1: then we need to draw this episode to a close

1299
01:17:59,840 --> 01:18:01,719
Speaker 1: and maybe in the future I'll cover some of these

1300
01:18:01,720 --> 01:18:05,000
Speaker 1: in more detail and more depth. If you guys have

1301
01:18:05,120 --> 01:18:08,400
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics I should cover on tech stuff, whether

1302
01:18:08,479 --> 01:18:12,760
Speaker 1: it's a company or a personality or specific technology. Maybe

1303
01:18:12,800 --> 01:18:16,639
Speaker 1: you're sitting there thinking, I just want to know really

1304
01:18:16,680 --> 01:18:19,240
Speaker 1: where telescopes came from and how they work and all

1305
01:18:19,280 --> 01:18:22,040
Speaker 1: their varieties. You should let me know, and it doesn't

1306
01:18:22,040 --> 01:18:24,400
Speaker 1: have to be telescopes, could literally be any kind of technology.

1307
01:18:24,479 --> 01:18:26,800
Speaker 1: Just send me a message. You can write to me.

1308
01:18:26,960 --> 01:18:30,880
Speaker 1: My email addresses tech stuff at how Stuff works dot com,

1309
01:18:31,000 --> 01:18:33,719
Speaker 1: or you can drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook.

1310
01:18:33,760 --> 01:18:36,519
Speaker 1: The handle there is tech stuff hs W. We also

1311
01:18:36,560 --> 01:18:40,080
Speaker 1: have an Instagram account at tech stuff hs W. You

1312
01:18:40,080 --> 01:18:42,800
Speaker 1: can see all sorts of interesting stuff that Crystal is

1313
01:18:42,840 --> 01:18:46,320
Speaker 1: posting over there. And remember, you can watch us live

1314
01:18:46,439 --> 01:18:49,360
Speaker 1: at twitch dot tv slash tech stuff. I record on

1315
01:18:49,360 --> 01:18:52,240
Speaker 1: Wednesdays and Fridays, and there's a chat room and everything.

1316
01:18:52,280 --> 01:18:54,360
Speaker 1: You can be part of the crowd, chatting with me

1317
01:18:54,680 --> 01:18:57,040
Speaker 1: and distracting me as I try and tell you interesting

1318
01:18:57,080 --> 01:19:02,280
Speaker 1: facts about technology, and I'll I'll do you again really soon.

1319
01:19:07,320 --> 01:19:09,720
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics is

1320
01:19:09,760 --> 01:19:20,800
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com.