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The End of Sierra as We Knew It, Part 1: The Acquisition

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Re: The End of Sierra as We Knew It, Part 1: The Acquisition

#21

Post by pavlov »

the_af wrote: post #9
vunderba wrote: post #2

Sierra was responsible for creating two of my favorite games of all time - King's Quest VI (designed by Roberta Williams / Jane Jensen) and Conquests of the Longbow (designed by Christy Marx). It's such a contrast then to read (what I find profoundly distasteful) quotes like this from the other side of the company. Ken Williams: "I read books about business executives who owned yachts and jets, and who hung out with…

It was Space Quest for me. Oh, I played many of the others, but SQ -- specifically II -- was what made me fall in love with adventure games, warts and all. I learned English (well, besides taking actual English classes anyway) by typing words in its text interface.

I also learned English mostly by Space Quest.

I remember being nine years old, sitting in front of SQ1 with my best friend, and trying to survive the escape pod early in the game. How do you avoid dying when it crashes on an alien world?

Our only hope was my neighbor who was a few years older and seemingly infinitely wise. I called him up, and patiently he spelled out the magic words to type before launching the escape pod:

“FASTEN SEAT BELT”

What do those words mean? We had no idea, but we lived on to explore another world.

A few years later I could read and write English just fine, but had no idea how anything was pronounced. Sierra English was a real thing among my generation.

Re: The End of Sierra as We Knew It, Part 1: The Acquisition

#23

Post by KerrAvon »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #15
havblue wrote: post #12

Aren't we primarily talking about adventure games here? That is, games that nobody played after the nineties?If they weren't acquired they certainly would have modernized, of course. I can't help but think they were in deep trouble even without the failed merger.

It's pretty easy to say "Oh yes, genre _____ died, therefore it was doomed to die" rather than evaluating whether it died because it failed to meaningfully evolve. I remember in the early aughts people deemed the beat-em-up genre "dead" because there were a high-profile string of early attempts that failed to successfully translate the game experience from 2D to 3D. Fighting Force and The Bouncer were two big example…

This is Tekken erasure.

Re: The End of Sierra as We Knew It, Part 1: The Acquisition

#24

Post by havblue »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #15
havblue wrote: post #12

Aren't we primarily talking about adventure games here? That is, games that nobody played after the nineties?If they weren't acquired they certainly would have modernized, of course. I can't help but think they were in deep trouble even without the failed merger.

It's pretty easy to say "Oh yes, genre _____ died, therefore it was doomed to die" rather than evaluating whether it died because it failed to meaningfully evolve. I remember in the early aughts people deemed the beat-em-up genre "dead" because there were a high-profile string of early attempts that failed to successfully translate the game experience from 2D to 3D. Fighting Force and The Bouncer were two big example…

Well. Yeah, if they made great decisions like Capcom did, the adventure genre may have been more prominent to this day. I mean, Capcom even developed the Ace Attorney games which are themselves visual novels/adventure games.

If you look back at my post though I acknowledged that they would have attempted to modernize had the merger not occurred. And I never said they were doomed, I said they were in deep trouble regardless. So I'm not sure what people are arguing with me about here other than semantics.

Re: The End of Sierra as We Knew It, Part 1: The Acquisition

#25

Post by KerrAvon »

sys32768 wrote: post #10

Old Man Murray wrote a great peace in 2000 about who killed adventure games, the answer to which I won't spoil since it's an easy read: https://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html

Important context that's come to light since then

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_hair_mustache_puzzle

Re: The End of Sierra as We Knew It, Part 1: The Acquisition

#26

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

KerrAvon wrote: post #23
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty easy to say "Oh yes, genre _____ died, therefore it was doomed to die" rather than evaluating whether it died because it failed to meaningfully evolve. I remember in the early aughts people deemed the beat-em-up genre "dead" because there were a high-profile string of early attempts that failed to successfully translate the game experience from 2D to 3D. Fighting Force and The Bouncer were two big example…

This is Tekken erasure.

Not sure I understand your comment. Tekken was a fighting game, not a beat-em-up? Unless we're counting Tekken Force Mode from Tekken 3.

Fighting games made the 2D->3D jump just fine, although they kinda exist in parallel now, since some developers really like flexing their sprite chops in 2D fighters.

Re: The End of Sierra as We Knew It, Part 1: The Acquisition

#27

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

mrob wrote: post #19
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty easy to say "Oh yes, genre _____ died, therefore it was doomed to die" rather than evaluating whether it died because it failed to meaningfully evolve. I remember in the early aughts people deemed the beat-em-up genre "dead" because there were a high-profile string of early attempts that failed to successfully translate the game experience from 2D to 3D. Fighting Force and The Bouncer were two big example…

I think adventure games were doomed because their success depended on hardware restrictions limiting the competition. The main selling point of adventure games was graphical spectacle. Adventure games had better graphics than any other genre because the lack of action meant they could show the most impressive static images. For the bulk of the audience, puzzles were secondary to this, serving mostly to ration out the…

Not sure I entirely agree. Myst had mass market appeal because it was one of the first crossover/"casual" games that didn't require the player to immediately start killing things within a few seconds of starting up the game. I could let my mother play Myst--I don't think I could let her play Half-Life. For one thing, if trying to show her Minecraft taught me anything, it's that the paradigm of separated Looking vs Moving (i.e. WASD+Mouse) control is one too many things to juggle for your average non-gamer.

Re: The End of Sierra as We Knew It, Part 1: The Acquisition

#29

Post by imiric »

havblue wrote: post #12

Aren't we primarily talking about adventure games here? That is, games that nobody played after the nineties?If they weren't acquired they certainly would have modernized, of course. I can't help but think they were in deep trouble even without the failed merger.

Adventure games didn't go anywhere. They're still popular with fans of the genre (Telltale, David Cage, etc.), and adventure elements are now part of other genres like Action-Adventure, RPGs, etc.
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