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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

#91

Post by HellDunkel »

bemmu wrote: post #55
HellDunkel wrote: post #11

The business side of things with sierra is certainly spectacular. But the story of the characters making the games would be so much more interesting. Where did the humor come from? What was office live? How come the games were both topsellers and also extremly silly? I remeber a space quest scene where a room full of computers was a joke on sierra offices. How did that make it into the final product?

With a boss that goes around whipping the developers as well. As a kid this was forever etched into my mind as what a game software company looks like.

It wasnt that much off, right?

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

#92

Post by kevingadd »

Yeul wrote: post #53
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…

This is interesting was there already enough money in videogames to make people multi miljonairs in those days?

Business was good in those days if you had an audience and could distribute your game to your customers more or less direct. Retail was very expensive, but if you were selling shareware your distribution costs were really low and you weren't giving anybody 30-50% of your take. Titles may not have sold i.e. 10 million copies back then, but you could make good money off a single game, and it was cheaper & faster to develop a game. The 'if's I just listed are pretty significant, of course.

For one example, Ultima 1 was developed by a couple people, sold for ~$40 USD, and eventually sold over 1.5m copies according to https://www.newspapers.com/article/austin-american-statesman... and other sources. So that alone probably made everyone involved in the game's development millionaires, even if the publisher took a huge cut.

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

#93

Post by pasc1878 »

MegaButts wrote: post #20
Scubabear68 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After having read a number of school board “audits”, and read about Enron etc, and looked beyond that to other instances, it’s clear that audits are generally worthless as a rule. The auditors are shown what they are shown and not allowed to color outside the lines. Find a discrepancy and every damn time the auditors will say “oh, that information was not provided to us”. It’s like if you hired a judge for your own p…

Just as a counterexample (not saying this disproves the trend), UBS auditor recently said there is something wrong at the bank. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/ubss-auditor-issues... I think this says more about how worrisome UBS is than how unreliable auditing is.

In this case I would suggest that is Credit Suisse that is the problem - UBS were forced to take it over when problems were found.

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

#94

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

magicalhippo wrote: post #46
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.

I'm curious if we'll see an adventure game revival. With modern generative models, LLMs, diffusion and voice, one could imagine dynamic adventure games that are not quite the same each time, and which could support coop play so you can play with your friends. Maybe not this year but if the models improve like they have for another year or two...?

This has been a big LLM side-scene almost since they arrived. There are models optimised for D&D-style game play.

It's not my personal interest, so I'm not sure how good they are at creating believable puzzles. But they're certainly an obvious thing on the LLM scene.

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

#95

Post by mathgeek »

throwup238 wrote: post #37
TheBlight wrote: post #28

People don't strictly want to play games as much as they want to experience alternate realities. That's why Doom/Quake resonated. People want these simulations to be as realistic as possible.

> People want these simulations to be as realistic as possible. What do you mean by that? Do you mean in the context of that era? IME people what games to be fun because every single genre has a multitude of conceits to make the game playable and technologically feasible. The ones that eschew (most of) those conceits like ARMA and flight simulators are very niche or like Dwarf Fortress and Factorio, complexity is the…

> People want to ride into battle and swing swords and conquer civilizations, not manage the intricacies of military campaign logistics and foraging operations and tax collection.

I assure you that there is a niche market of folks who absolutely love the latter. My father was in the military logistics group.

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

#96

Post by wileydragonfly »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #67
acomjean wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean its a bad example, but not the only example of obtuse puzzles in games preventing forward progress in game. Dead ends and not being able to finish if messed up a previous steps were real problems. This was a bigger issue when the internet wasn't available to help out. I like adventure games, but even still they can be difficult and frustrating (although maybe I'm not great at them) Puzzle Dependency charts in…

I remember playing Space Quest IV and we got to a part where we were completely blocked. We got parents permission to call Sierra's 1-900 hint line (who knows how much that cost) to find out that the game won't process until you stand on a certain pixel in the back of the arcade. There was no reason to go there, so while we had walked around the arcade many times apparently we never stepped on that precise pixel.

I was stuck on that puzzle for years, let a friend borrow it, and he confidently announces the solution a couple days later. He swore he had uncovered it through trial and error, but I didn’t believe him. Still don’t. You weren’t running a BBS in the 90s, were you?

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

#97

Post by MegaButts »

pasc1878 wrote: post #93
MegaButts wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as a counterexample (not saying this disproves the trend), UBS auditor recently said there is something wrong at the bank. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/ubss-auditor-issues... I think this says more about how worrisome UBS is than how unreliable auditing is.

In this case I would suggest that is Credit Suisse that is the problem - UBS were forced to take it over when problems were found.

Credit Suisse no longer exists. Whatever problems Credit Suisse had, UBS now has.

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

#98

Post by pavlov »

mzs wrote: post #43
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…

I wonder how the early employees did in the deal. Did they cash-out as well?

To my knowledge there was a long lockout period in CUC Sierra acquisition. When Sierra employees were finally able to sell their CUC stock, it had already tanked as the massive fraud was exposed.

(Spoiler for Part II of this article, I guess!)

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

#99

Post by zoky »

AngryData wrote: post #48
zoky wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a pretty broad statement to make given that of the seven bestselling video game franchises of all time (Mario, Tetris, Call of Duty, Pokémon, GTA, Minecraft, and FIFA) only one (Call of Duty) is a realistic simulation, one (GTA) could be best described as a totally unrealistic simulation, one (FIFA) is a simulation of an actual game, and the rest are a mix of abstract fantasy and/or pure puzzles.

Im not sure I would even consider CoD realistic either unless you back to when it was primarily a single player game. It has good graphics that look like reality sure, but the guns don't handle anything like real guns would, the people don't move or operate like real people, and even the environments are cut down to impossibly small engagement areas. I would even say GTA is far more realistic than CoD.

Fair enough, though I’d argue that it’s difficult to get much closer to the real thing without signing a contract. As the old lie goes, “Dulce et decorum est, Pro Controller mori.”

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

#100

Post by Natsu »

srpablo wrote: post #83
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

Similar topic explored in videos from a friend of mine I call the "Adventure Game sommelier," because he's played so many of them and can recommend you one for precisely your needs. The first https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOPiSYUSrQ0 and the second, which is one of my favorite videos of all time (if you only watch one, I'd pick this one) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMVl5U3SlS0 I think he mentions Old Man Murray…

Sierra's Thexder haunted me for years, because I couldn't understand the tinny Japanese at the start of it at all or even tell what language that was, but I remembered the sound from playing it on an Apple ][ GS as a kid despite that.

Just watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si_iveNrUPo

And tell me if you can hear "Siera ga ookuri suru Thexder" (Thexder presented by Sierra) there. Even now, at most I can make out Sierra and a distorted bit of Thexder, even knowing how Thexder is rendered into katakana.

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