Someone should make an indie game about Sierra's rise and fall. It should be made with the classic Sierra engine (the late-'80s EGA one used in Space Quest 3 and others).
The player would be a game designer who joins Sierra, gets to design her own series of Quest games and faces all sorts of absurd puzzles (often in the form of trying to herd artists and programmers). Sudden death would lurk around every corner. At the end, the protagonist would try to fight the takeover by corporate criminals. You could call it "Quest Quest".
The early Sierra games with non-interrupting text input were notable for this.
I recall playing Police Quest 1 and if you didn't walk around the car to do an inspection, you'd crash and die. All in the first 5 minutes of the game. I think you could also lose really early by not attending the police briefing that morning as well.
I like the angle Lucasarts took with the genre (no dying), but the absurdity and difficulty of the Sierra games also has a place.
> gets to design her own series of Quest games and faces all sorts of absurd puzzles
Haha, that would be awesome. Leaving for work in the morning? You need to make coffee (not the decaf kind) otherwise you'll miss your stop and get fired. Don't forget your laptop and badge at home either, and you'll need to make lunch. If you bring milk you'll die because it's spoiled (you need to throw it away, and also take the garbage out - if you just throw it away, it'll smell up your apartment and you will fail your date that night).
If you let someone tailgate you, they end up stealing a bunch of stuff, including your laptop.
At that morning's standup, you have to ask george about the feature he's working on, otherwise he'll spend the day playing solitaire and won't be able to help you tomorrow on the presentation.
I always felt the absurdly easy methods of dying at the beginning of the games was useful for getting new users into the mindset of taking time to explore everywhere rather than just trying to sprint through the screens. It was early enough where you didn't lose all sorts of progress, but being forced to rewatch the intros and navigate the initial screens each time was a small enough punishment that you'd start to play the game more seriously to avoid that.
IIRC in Kings Quest III (or, the one where you start in a shack at the top of a mountain) I got down the mountain (after falling to my death a hundred times) and across some body of water only to discover I had missed picking something up in the shack that was required to continue. Of course there was no way to go back...
Well... there's this guy called Neil Cicierega who's making a game about computers in the early 1990s, will full 256 colors, palette cycling, VGA - https://twitter.com/iconarchitect10
Interesting that he feels the stories went away. I finished up Sleeping Dogs recently, and it's definitely a strong story. The Last of Us, Dragon Age, Bastion, Remember Me, Shadow of the Colossus, even the Saints Row series (as long as you don't mind it veering into Paul Verhoeven-self-satire). That's just off the top of my head.
Seriously, if you were interviewing a filmaker who proundly said, "I haven't owned a TV in 15 years, because I know it's all shit", would you take their opinion seriously?
As much as I love old-school adventures, I think this interview by Shigeru Miyamoto is an interesting counterpoint to the whole story telling attitude as well:
Miyamoto doesn’t see himself as a storyteller, and worries that the video game business is now so hung up on providing film-like experiences, with grand themes and complex storylines, that the essence of play is being lost.
In films, he explains, the director and the creator are one and the same person, dictating what happens, carving out the story’s arc. But in games, he believes the director should be the player – his job as a designer is simply to equip them with the toys to direct. As a creative philosophy it’s pretty much the opposite of auteurism – though ironically, it’s one that has made him the best-known games designer on the planet.
“These younger game creators, they want to be recognised,” he sighs. “They want to tell stories that will touch people’s hearts. And while I understand that desire, the trend worries me. It should be the experience, that is touching. What I strive for is to make the person playing the game the director. All I do is help them feel that, by playing, they’re creating something that only they could create.”
"Games" span a much broader spectrum of entertainment types than movies. At one end there's the interactive story, and personally I would include most modern FPS'es in this genre, at least as far as the single player experience goes. The story is on rails and you get to shoot a little here and drive a little there. At the other end is the pure game mechanics, the sandbox where you are the director, in the words of Miyamoto (although his own games fall somewhere in the middle IMHO). Minecraft is a good example, but even GTA belongs in this end, since the most fun is to be had just playing with the game mechanics, rather than in completing the story.
There's room for a huge amount of variety along this scale and there is a lot of room at both ends of the spectrum. Often these different game types even address totally separate target markets.
You sound like you think you're disagreeing, but you're not. The point is precisely that games can span a huge array of things, but AAA games are (almost) all trying to jam themselves into the same small "cinematic" bit of the space, basically literally at all costs. AAA games are absolutely staggeringly absurdly expensive for what gets ever closer and closer to a movie.
I do not have a current-gen console so I'll concede that I don't have direct experience, but the reviewers I trust to tell me whether a AAA game sucks or not (i.e., neither giving automatic 8/10+s because they're big advertisers nor automatically slagging things simply because they're "sellouts" or something) have all been telling the same story lately on things like Destiny and The Order: 1886, which is that the gameplay is often OK to good-ish but it's increasingly obvious that the games are so gosh-darned ambitious and expensive now that they're getting brutally cut down to even be able to ship anything, where simultaneously the story is obviously supposed to be very important because vast, vast resources are dedicated to the cut scenes, set pieces, and the "set" (another frequent complaint being "incredibly beautiful skyboxes behind a linear corridor with chest-high walls"), yet at the same time it's obvious that huge holes have been blown in the stories by cuts and once you factor out the cut scenes, the games are almost insubstantial. In the case of Destiny, perhaps still quite fun, but not very substantial.
The "previous gen" showed the trend pretty strongly and many of us thought the gaming companies would be forced to pull out of the current trends, but so far into the current gen it really does seem that AAA will literally sacrifice everything to be "cinematic". Absolutely everything, including even good cinematic storytelling, because many of these games have been so shredded in editing that if they really were a movie they'd seriously make Uwe Boll movies look coherent by comparison. Everything must be sacrificed to good-looking cut scenes. It's getting quite absurd.
"even GTA belongs in this end, since the most fun is to be had just playing with the game mechanics, rather than in completing the story."
And this is a great example of what I mean, albeit in the previous gen... here's an interesting video where someone explores the incredible tension between the fun little mechanics in GTA IV that it goes to great efforts to create, and then how much of them it sacrificed on the altar of a "cinematic story": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E32j9ufrpoE
> You sound like you think you're disagreeing, but you're not. The point is precisely that games can span a huge array of things, but AAA games are (almost) all trying to jam themselves into the same small "cinematic" bit of the space, basically literally at all costs. AAA games are absolutely staggeringly absurdly expensive for what gets ever closer and closer to a movie.
How much of that is a product of circular reasoning, though? What is a "AAA game"? Is Civ 5? Are the games in the Total War series? Is this a case where, because of perception, in order to be considered AAA a game needs to reach for the "cinematic"?
"In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion"
Civ 5 and Total War are awesome games, but I don't think they reach the same amounts of sales and gross as the AAA titles (they might be more profitable, I don't know).
Only Minecraft cracks the list of top 10 bestsellers in 2014:
Not all AAA games do try to jam themselves in to the cinematic space.
A lot do, but then you have to think about what it means to be a AAA game. Basically, what is it that causes a game to require a huge budget?
A huge budget is generally due to a lot of assets. A lot of assets is generally very high detail models and cinematics, the tools to tell a story.
The other thing is technology, things like creating an MMORPG is technologically expensive. But look at your average MMO and note how they generally lack on the story side of things.
Gameplay on its own is pretty lean. You can't put a team of 100 designers together and get a great game in 1% of the time, but you can do something (with good direction) somewhat similar with artists. You can have one guy doing the rocks, and one guy doing the hair, and a few guys doing architectural stuff, and some people doing monsters, and they can all fit together.
With gameplay though, it's too much the essence of the game to be split across too many roles and still work well.
So you look at something like The Order: 1886, and you complain about how cut down it is because it's so expensive to make. But think about what that game is. It's a game to sell PS4s essentially. Each new generation of console gives access to great new graphics and performance. But when you have the ability to render the movement on the hairs on your characters arms, you have to hire someone to put hairs on peoples arms and make sure they act correctly in the wind.
You can certainly make games with lower detail, but then what is the point of the new generation of console? This is why I think the majority of games out there for the next gen consoles are either cross-releases with current gen consoles with some moderate performance or upscaling, or they are pretty but underwhelming.
The best stage to be creative is in the small teams of the 80s, and the more recent indie resurgence. When you employ a battalion of creative people to make your game, you absolutely need to sell it. You can't take a risk. And not only do you have to sell it, you have to sell big.
On the other hand, if you're a team of 4 people, sure you don't want to go broke, but you can afford to make something that you think might be niche. The especially cool part about that is that sometimes these teams discover something that we never knew we always wanted. Take minecraft, little hobby project that can be done only because it's a little hobby project, but ends up earning millions and being sold for billions.
And now it's on the PS4 too.
The problem isn't the game industry. It's the AAA game industry and the pressure to sell consoles with more power than people need to play a fun game. The more detailed the games are, the more expensive they are to make. The more expensive they are to make, the less risks they can take creatively.
This (and the internet) is the reason the Indie scene is pretty forefront right now.
interesting, as his games' stories are some of the best on their own merits, and then are combined with some of the most defining experiences in gaming as well.
I hear this opinion expressed a lot by people that don't play many video games anymore, and I don't agree with it either. There are a ton of modern games with really compelling narratives.
Along with the ones you mentioned, there's been Wolfenstein: The New Order, BioShock, Uncharted, Alan Wake, Heavy Rain, Red Dead Redemption, Catherine, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Enslaved, Fallout: New Vegas, Life is Strange, Mass Effect, Tomb Raider, Spec Ops: The Line, Dishonored and many more just in the last five years, all with excellent stories in a variety of genres. There have even been some recent adventure games that can hold their own against the best of the golden age, like Broken Sword 5 and Tesla Effect.
I think a lot of this perception comes from how the most popular video games present themselves: as mindless diversions. Think Call of Duty, League of Legends, Candy Crush, and so on. They can still be fun, but the story components are afterthoughts, hopelessly generic, or entirely non-existent. If you aren't participating in the market and seeking out new experiences, you don't know what's really out there.
I do miss classic adventure games, and a lot of what Al talks about does ring true to me. They were the AAA games of their era, and yet Sierra and Lucas and Revolution never put out a generic or cash-in game. Even though these games were heavily sequelized (far beyond modern standards), they retained a unique voice. It would be amazing to see a modern publisher crank out games as often as Sierra did while matching their level of quality and innovation.
>>There are a ton of modern games with really compelling narratives.
The problem isn't really the narrative, but rather the lack of a well-developed, deep setting. All of the games you listed have very good stories, but those stories make you the Center of the Universe and everything revolves around you. Even the parts of the setting that are explained give a very strong feeling that, at the end of the day, they were developed to justify and validate your goals and missions, either by hampering you or aiding you.
In direct contrast, I'd like to point to the Baldur's Gate games. They don't just have an excellent narrative. They also take place in a very strong, well-established setting. This setting successfully conveys the feeling that, while you are an important character and what you're trying to do is important, at the end of the day the world (of Faerun) is chock full of people and organizations and nations with their own agendas. The epic saga you experience is simply one strand in a massive tapestry. And in the end you don't save the world or some such nonsense. You simply conclude your own story, and life goes on.
Compare this to Mass Effect, where you literally save the entire galaxy from ultra-powerful robots who literally want to wipe out all life. Okay, fine. But the series does so little setting development that you end up caring more about destroying the bad guys than understanding and learning about the galaxy you are trying to save.
It's interesting you mention Baldur's Gate. You have to realize that its setting, the Forgotten Realms, already was a fully developed one. It already was 10 years old and was being developed and expended by multiple people. And with continuous fan feedback
Now contrast this with Mass Effect, when you have a team of (just throwing a number around) 10 people writing the story and the setting during it's 4/5 year development in secret. You can't possibly expect the same level of detail or complexity.
I thought about that, but there were other games where the developers created their own deep setting. Elder Scrolls: Morrowind for example. In the grand scheme of that game's setting, you were just some guy in a huge world that was full of interesting people and organizations. I couldn't say the same for Mass Effect 3, which had your companions, and a few people you interacted with in your quest to save the galaxy, but that's pretty much it.
Again, Morrowind is the third game. Arena is still very "iffy" setting wise. And bland. Stuff only started getting interesting (i.e. weird :) ) in Daggerfall.
And don't forget that The elder scrolls is known for it's "flexible" and uncertain lore (Who/what is really Talos?) and big retcons (Cyrodill's forests).
But I agree with what you say about Mass Effect. I just think that they are different things for different tastes.
On the Mass Effect side you have highly developed characters and character interactions and a high focus on emotional and memorable setpieces. There is a great effort to provide an emotional story, and making the player experience it in the best way possible.
On the other hand you have The Elder Scrolls, where the story and character are not so interesting (or what makes them interesting is not thrown in your face) and the story is just a pretext to make you experience the world. The world is what is important, so it's what is developed.
There is also a different purpose in the different "levels" of the game. While in ME a design goal may be "The player should fight an old friend, after discovering his betrayal", in TES may be "The player should fight a dragon near a boiling volcano using a dwarven ballista". In the first one the writer have to focus on the emotion to be conveyed by the dialog and environment, while in the second the writers just have to justify the environment (i.e. "Why is there a dwarven ballista?").
I also belive that writers in TES are given the reedom to write what they want and if it's cool it goes into the game. That's how I believe all that trippy stuff[0] got into Morrowind.
Yes, but until Morrowind, not much was established about that part of the Elder Scrolls world. It was, for all intents and purposes, an almost-blank slate and was created basically from scratch.
I agree with your characterization of the Mass Effect series. And don't get me wrong, I like all three games, and am looking forward to the fourth. I was just explaining why they fall short on the narrative front, and that the "they don't make games like they used to" complaint the grandparent mentioned is quite valid.
>> It was, for all intents and purposes, an almost-blank slate and was created basically from scratch.
In Arena, they introduced the provinces, the races, and some other bits.
In Daggerfall you are introduced to many of the important features of the setting, as you can see by the list of in-game books [0]:
- The story of Tiber Septim and the Septim dynasty,
- The Aedra, the Daedra and Oblivion
- The MAges Guild, Fighters Guild, Dark Brotherhood and The Psijic Order
- And you already have some glimpses into some bits that would be expanded later (Like the Dwarves and the Numidium)
Now, you can argue that more was added in Morrowind that in the any other game. I agree, and add that more was added in Morrowind that in all other entries together.
Sure, they are awesome, weird, and generate most of the modern discussions about TES lore. And don't forget that the Dragon Break only exists because Daggerfall has multiple endings.
About the "things aren't like they used to", I disagree. There is more text and fluff in modern games than before. Yes, in the 80's you has massive instruction manuals full of lore, and feelies, and other stuff. But the games themselves were many times lacking. Nowadays you have lot's on in-game logs and books. Almost every item has some flavour text associated.
And, IIRC, King's Quest has a framework pretty much similar to Mass Effect. You follow a linear path, with well crafted setpieces, but not much store about "other stuff". How big is the kingdom? What to they believe in? Who was the previous king? And the One before that? Were there any wars? etc..
There is a very real problem across many creative mediums these days (big budget movies in particular) that the stakes have been constantly raised to the point where there's very little room for smaller, personal stories. It's either the total destruction of life as we know it, or it doesn't get made. I think it's fatiguing for the audience, and always having enormous stakes makes it boring and pedestrian.
Most of the games that I mentioned do fall into this trap in one way or another, but there are still some exceptions. Red Dead Redemption is a good example. You aren't trying to save the world, you just one to do this one little thing and then get back to your family... except it keeps dragging on and on.
> And in the end you don't save the world or some such nonsense. You simply conclude your own story, and life goes on.
I guess I don't see those two as being at odds - I think it's entirely possible to have a well-developed and deep setting while still having a traditional "save the world" game.
For example, I don't think it's controversial to say that the Elder Scrolls series has a very deep and thoroughly developed setting, but in Skyrim you're the chosen one who stops a world-ending evil. In Dark Souls you're literally known as the "Chosen Undead", and people have spent months exploring the setting and lore of that game.
I'd even say that Mass Effect has a decently thorough lore and history if you want to look for it (the history of the Genophage or the Geth for example).
Rather, I think modern games do a great job of taking the "save the world" trope and inverting it slightly: you saved the world, but at what cost?
In Mass Effect you save the entire galaxy from robots, at the cost of forever losing the ability for FTL travel (and stranding a lot of people where they are in the galaxy). In Skyrim you can save the continent from the evil imperial invaders, but it's heavily implied that a third party wants exactly that in order to split the empire apart and invade while it's weak. Dark Souls pretty much bashes you over the head with the fact that saving the world is essentially fighting a losing battle.
> In Mass Effect you save the entire galaxy from robots, at the cost of forever losing the ability for FTL travel (and stranding a lot of people where they are in the galaxy).
There are different ways you can save the galaxy (you can also fail to do that, and the world goes on, organic life gets reset). You can just destroy the robots, along with all other artificial life forms - some of them are those for whose right to live you just fought (if you choose so). You can resolve the issue by performing what amounts to a galactic-scale rape, changing everyone without their consent. Or you can risk becoming the very force you tried to destroy, hoping that you have enough morality in yourself to not go dark yourself.
I spent something around 20 minutes just sitting there and thinking those choices through. Which one is the right thing to do?
I think they did a good job of taking the "save the world" trope and turning it into a huge moral conundrum for the player.
> Compare this to Mass Effect, where you literally save the entire galaxy from ultra-powerful robots who literally want to wipe out all life. Okay, fine. But the series does so little setting development that you end up caring more about destroying the bad guys than understanding and learning about the galaxy you are trying to save.
I disagree. First of all, you work your way to saving the galaxy through first two games. There is a lot of setting development, hidden in Codex entries, dialogues and things you overhear when you slow down for a moment and start walking around people. Especially in the first two games, the universe seems not to care much about you, or humanity at all - everybody has their own business to mind, and humanity as a race seem to be a minor and annoying nuance in the galactic community. Also, the story is quite deep in many ways, if you spend time to immerse yourself in it.
I can't relate ME to Baldur's Gate, as I haven't played the latter yet. But ME was the deepest and most complex world I have seen in a computer game so far.
BTW. Since there's ME4 coming up and the most important event of that universe has been already concluded, I wonder what the storyline be there. I don't think they can develop anything else than a "one strand in a massive tapestry" this time.
I recently played The Cave from Double Fine. It's a kind of attempt to create modern kind of classic adventure. You still have fun story, items and need to use them properly, but UX is more fun than clicking the mouse all around.
It's on my list, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I am quite excited to see what Ron Gilbert does with Thimbleweed Park, which is purposefully old school in concept.
Regardless of the value of his opinion, I tend to agree : for the vast majority of games (where it is applicable, eg sport games do not count), I have found the stories extremely weak. The same power trip story is copy pasted to many games, especially AAA ones.
It is obviously subjective but I also feel a tendency to stay away from complicated plots, Deus Ex is one of my favorite games but I have hated Human Revolution. The plot is extremely predictable from its beginning to its end, it felt like a collection of the most popular cyberpunk tropes. I loved the fact that I could not trust anyone in DE, especially in some chapters (like Hong Kong) where it is up to you to travel in the open world in order to discover who is playing you (pretty much everyone, at different levels). In HR, that feeling is entirely gone, replaced with a paper thin conspiracy.
I am not sure he is entirely right though. Great storytelling has always been difficult. It is unfair to compare the average 2015 game to Monkey Island 1+2.
There were also some mediocre stories back in Sierra days, we have just forgotten most of these and mostly remember a couple of gems.
Not to mention, those are fun games with interesting and novel game mechanics. My memories of Sierra games more or less involve cheating because many of the puzzles were arbitrary. Oh, you gave the chicken leg to the yeti instead of the eagle? Now find a save game from 5 hours before!
There's a reason Sierra failed - player punishing adventure games fell out of fashion. I play more than a few adventure and point and click games on Steam and rarely are the puzzles Sierra-like frustrating. That formula just doesn't work and only worked because of the lack of competition in the 80s. The early 1990s brought us stuff like Doom, Civilization, Myst, etc and killed the adventure game market. Heck, The Longest Journey and its sequels, pretty much brought back the Sierra-style game and sold a lot of copies. Compare it to what Sierra was doing. TLJ is pretty much fine art compared to the schlock-fest and hammy writing of the Sierra crew.
> I realized, anyway, by the mid-'90s that people weren't looking for deeper games with deeper puzzles and thought-provoking concepts and all these things we were hoping for.
Talk about paying yourself a compliment! Are we really saying Half-Life's or Chrono-Trigger's storytelling is more shallow than the milquetoast stories of the Sierra universe? Come on.
There's also an argument here that games shouldn't be "do some work to get to the next part of the story" visual novels. There's balance between story and game. Some lean more one way than another. There's nothing wrong with either approach. I think modern gamers lean towards a more cinematic story-telling experience, which is a questionable fad. If anything, games are too story-based right now.
That said, I feel a little sorry for Al. He and his people were on top of the gaming world in the 1980s and are now deep into irrelevancy. The sad part is, if he took on a more mature attitude like, "Hey, we had a lot of fun, but the industry changed quickly and we didn't, and we got squashed," a bit like Nolan Bushnell did about Atari, I'd have some respect for him. But playing the endless blame game (gamers suck, management sucks, but the creatives are oh-so perfect) just makes him look a primadonna.
> Seriously, if you were interviewing a filmaker who proundly said, "I haven't owned a TV in 15 years, because I know it's all shit", would you take their opinion seriously?
Consider a lot of people went and saw a comic book movie done by a man who doesn't read and, it seems, hates comic books, I'm not sure that's a disqualifier of the filmmaker's opinion.
A comic book movie is still a movie, regardless of the inspiration. I would rather have someone who hates comic books make said movie than a comic book fanatic who hates movies.
Now, if he were making a comic book, it would be a problem.
I would say a comic book movie is a combination of forms with the best being made by folks who love both. Loving only one does not disqualify you from trying to combination. Just as some people make movies and hate TV. TV viewing is not a prerequisite for being a competent film maker.
I'm not sure I would agree with you there. I suspect these movies are far more movie than comic book, and that the target audience is far more moviegoer than comic book fan. If anything, I think being a big comic book fan could actually be a detriment for such a filmmaker, as they would have to resist doing things that work for comic books/comic book fans but don't really work for movies/moviegoers. But more likely, if it is a good filmmaker, whether they like comic books will have little or no impact on whether they can make a good film, even if it is based on a comic book. The mediums are just too different.
"Seriously, if you were interviewing a filmaker who proundly said, "I haven't owned a TV in 15 years, because I know it's all shit", would you take their opinion seriously?"
Of course. There are film theaters and Internet. You can count good films at the end of the year with the fingers of your hand.
Good film makers are going to spend lots of time making films, not watching them.
There is lots of great series now, but if you are a professional you just need one or two episodes to really grasp the entire collection. Writers of series always use the same proven structure that works. Once you know, it is kind of boring because all series look the same.
Al Lowe says in the article that he doesn't play games and hasn't owned a console for 15 years. And yet somehow he has an opinion of the state of games today. That's what the reference is. It's pretty obvious what rodgerd meant if you actually read the article.
> Seriously, if you were interviewing a filmaker who proundly said, "I haven't owned a TV in 15 years, because I know it's all shit", would you take their opinion seriously?
If that filmmaker were D. W. Griffith, I sure as shit would.
> Seriously, if you were interviewing a filmaker who proundly said, "I haven't owned a TV in 15 years, because I know it's all shit", would you take their opinion seriously?
>> if you were interviewing a filmaker who proundly said, "I haven't owned a TV in 15 years, because I know it's all shit", would you take their opinion seriously?
If they'd been making good films all the while, then sure. Why not? Otherwise it'd just be prejudice.
Well...the point would be that even if he's a good filmmaker, if he literally hasn't watched any TV/movies in 15 years other than his own, how would he be a reliable judge of the current crop of TV/movies?
Most games produced wash out over time into collective styles of the period they were created. After all that, a few stand out as exemplars to represent this mass of games that, in the end, aren't all that different. Sure, there are individual differences, and if you took the time to experience them you'd probably enjoy many of them in their own way. But ultimately, it's a matter of taste.
Al has been around long enough to see the trends and recognize the themes. If Alfred Hitchcock rose from the dead today and saw our current climate of remakes and benign comedies, he might enjoy them as novel. Or he might see them as knockoffs of ideas he'd seen done better a dozen different ways in his time, and for all the technical differences like format and cutting, not have a high artistic opinion of them or their methods.
Al has that sort of background and experience (although not the lasting acclaim). He's not that impressed by fps or texture sizes or other period-sensitive qualities. He may not be giving them every chance to prove themselves, but why should he? He just thinks the big industry hype doesn't match the products, and I don't disagree.
This is sort of off-topic, but I got interested in the criminal, Walter Forbes, and was wondering whether he is in prison at the moment or not, and what kind of prison.
Google searches for him directly did not yield any information. He's been convicted without leniency for 12 years, which in theory should mean he still is in prison right now. But all news is from around the day of the trial.
Is there a way to know if someone is in prison at this moment or at least recently? And perhaps in what prison?
edit: Ok that was actually easier than I thought. I read that he's in a Federal Prison. On http://www.bop.gov/inmateloc/ you can look them up. This is what I got:
Located at: Otisville FCI
Release Date: 07/21/2018
> What do you think caused the downfall of adventure games in the '90s?
I think 90's era adventure games are looked at with rose colored glasses. A lot of the time, these games were non-intuitive and won thru repetition ("try everything") rather than logic.
I'm a huge fan of old Sierra games but I still have very sad memories of having saved space quest II quite near the end, after having being kissed by the alien - and thus being unable to make few final moves :(
Between my friends and I, we have a term-of-art for whether I will enjoy a puzzle adventure game: "Does the game let me eat the pie?"
If it doesn't, I'll play it. I'm an adult now, and there are many more games on the market; I simply don't have time anymore for games that let me eat the pie.
I love that kind of gameplay. That's what draws me to many J-RPGs.
Didn't do X? Can't get Y, no matter how bad you want it.
Most especially so when the game warns you in obscure ways. Plays which reward the player for being investigatory.
Example : A placed readable book on the shelf warns player not to do X if they want Y far before the decision comes about. Or the player has a bad premonition or dream about it. Foreboding which has obvious intent once that player has passed the threshold of no return.
It was stated earlier in the thread, but I think there is real value to setting an atmosphere in a game which rewards the player for being cautious, but curious. For example, the pie you're talking about had no real obvious use until the mob which requires it, right? Unless inventory space becomes an issue, a cautious player would likely hold on to that pie until faced with a challenge where they've tried other avenues. The type of player which tries every item in their inventory to succeed definitely isn't the target for this mechanics.
Reminds me of the colored potion system in nethack.
When well-crafted, it's a great thing to have such irreversible decision points. The fundamental flaw with the pie is it wasn't well-crafted (both in-game and in the larger ecosystem of adventure games at the time; players were encouraged to try everything when stuck, so they might eat the pie even if it wasn't an obvious solution to the current problem. "Can't climb this cliff. Maybe eating the pie will give me wings? That magic stick gives you wings in that other game...").
I think this is completely true. The Internet personality Day9 started a show over the past year called "Mostly Walking" specifically to play point and click Adventure games, and even though they're playing the best of the genre, they are rough. Backwards puzzle logic, bizarre references, and always the fall back to brute force puzzle solving.
It's actually a series I'd recommend, as long as you have the time.
I miss the old Sierra games. I'm glad we're starting to see a revival of adventuring gaming via Kickstarter and episodic channels, although I often feel like a lot of the AAA games coming out these days lack a certain spark found in those old Sierra games. Maybe it's because I'm just older and more jaded now, but this quote spoke to me:
''' So I guess my thinking is that the big problems came when game developers lost control of their companies. The Broderbund guys were programmers and gamers and developers. Ken was. Quite a few of the other -- Activision was founded by a game player, and Accolade. A lot of other companies were founded by guys who knew games and as long as they were in charge, it seemed like things were better. But when gradually their companies hired professional management -- professional managers love spreadsheets and they loved evidence, because they didn't have gut feelings that said, "Yeah, that's a great idea! Yeah, that'll sell! People will love that! Look at that!" Instead, they would say, "Well, what are the numbers here? How do we compare this? What are your comparables?"
'''
> So I guess my thinking is that the big problems came when game developers lost control of their companies
Some willingly sold their companies to bigger ones (Garriott sold Origin to EA, and Origin's legacy was lost forever since).
> But when gradually their companies hired professional management
Yet professional is what's badly needed. Look at the Doublefine mess with Broken Age (massively over budget, massively late, massively under-delivering in every area).
Judging by your comments you weren't a backer, so here's an alternate point of view...
> Yet professional is what's badly needed. Look at the Doublefine mess with Broken Age (massively over budget, massively late, massively under-delivering in every area).
reply
As one of the Broken Age backers, I think you're overly harsh on Double Fine. Personally, I feel I've gotten more than 10 times my money's worth despite Act 2 not being finished yet.
You describe it as massively late, but is that fair? The original plan was "we'll make a flash adventure for 300k", but because of the large budget they changed that to "we'll make a cross-platform, voice acted, hand-drawn custom engine game with a longer schedule" and I'm okay with that.
I got to see the entire design and development process behind the screen, which was super neat. I saw the hard discussion on decreasing scope vs delaying the game, the discussion whether to gut Act 2 or release the first part and use those funds to create an Act 2 worth of the original scope.
I think the art, music and voice acting is gorgeous. The puzzles were a bit underwhelming, but everything I've heard is that the difficulty curve is better in Act 2. All in all, for the 15 (or was it 25?) dollar backing I feel the project was a great success, massively exceeding my expectations about what I'd get for the money.
Yeah, I backed it and I was pretty happy with what I got, too. There is a new Tim Schaefer adventure game in the world. In part because of the $15 I contributed.
I thought Broken Age was fantastic, although I missed the original announcement and picked it up normally through Steam.
I think the puzzles are only underwhelming in retrospect. I would have like the game to be longer, but the visuals and audio were really top notch. I found the story to be really superb as well.
I used to work in the animation industry. Mostly at John K's studio Spümcø. I had a ringside seat for the debacle that was "Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon". All of the things I'd heard about on the original production of Ren and Stimpy played out before my eyes. Basically I got to see what happens when the whole production is run by an obsessive perfectionist who has nobody who can say "no, we can't afford to do this".
And if you look at a ton of the animation out there, you can see the other side of this: studios run by people who only see the bottom line, who focus group the life out of everything halfway interesting and only ever deliver generic content.
But when you get enough people in management who actually care about making good work, something can start to happen. Fred Seibert, for instance - he ran the "What A Cartoon!" incubator series at Cartoon Network, "Oh yeah! Cartoons" at Nickelodeon, and now runs a Youtube channel called Frederator. Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Lab, and Adventure Time all came out of these various incubators. He's built space after space to find talented young cartoonists and give them more enough rope to hang themselves. Or to make something amazing.
You don't just need professional management. You need management who gives a fuck about making good stuff, and can negotiate with the obsessed lunatics who actually make the things when they start to get overambitious. You need management that is willing to make space to experiment and take risks with small projects.
There seem to be pockets of this in video games right now. Sony's been funding a lot of little weird things; Microsoft's had its hands in a few too. But then there are also titans like EA who buy up quirky Popcaps and turn all their gorgeous, laid-back games into IAP orgies.
That's sort of the point being made though. If you give more leeway to developers over professional management, there's a greater probability of projects going over-budget or falling behind schedule (Peter Molyneaux's games have been an example of this more than once), but there's also more opportunity for some absolutely crazy amazing stuff -- e.g. Grim Fandango would never have happened if someone had to justify it with a spreadsheet.
I think the answer is that you really need both types to make things work -- an Al Lowe or Roberta Williams or Tim Schafer with a tremendous amount of creative leeway that also serves as the "client" and a project manager tasked with keeping everyone on track and negotiating with the client over what can reasonably be accomplished given current deadlines / budget.
Also, for what it's worth, I absolutely love Broken Age. I mean, yes, it needs a Part 2, but it's very clear that a lot of love went into the design of that game. That's not so apparent in the latest Halo or Call of Duty.
> there's also more opportunity for some absolutely crazy amazing stuff -- e.g. Grim Fandango would never have happened if someone had to justify it with a spreadsheet.
I'm not saying you need only project managers to make stuff happen. I'm saying you need project managers as well as creators to make sure stuff gets delivered. We have seen how many kickstarters projects led by creators only have miserably failed or under-delivered.
As a backer of many Kickstarter projects, I would much rather back a project led by a creative person than a business-oriented project manager (in other words, a producer).
A lot of Kickstarter video game projects have failed to deliver on time, but they were also extremely aggressive in terms of time and money (even if they didn't say so). You cannot make a game today for $500,000 without cutting corners (such as salaries). Even the "massive" amount of money that Broken Age raised would only cover 30 people's salaries for a year. AAA games today have hundreds of people on the payroll, with development cycles of 3-5 years.
I'm not mad that they were over-eager and more than a little naive. A lot of these projects were from people who hadn't made a game since 1998. Game designers like Tim Schafer (and Jane Jensen, Charles Cecil, Aaron Conners and Chris Jones, Al Lowe, Ron Gilbert, Lori and Corey Cole, Ragnar Tornquist and others) should be able to work on what they excel at: making (adventure) games. With some exceptions, they weren't able to do so for more than a decade. It would be nice if all of the games from these projects were released (and were good), but I don't feel any sense of outrage if it doesn't work out that way.
Imagine if creating a painting cost $1 million, and Picasso had spent the last fifteen years of his life twiddling his thumbs instead of pursuing his art. Or better yet, look at Orson Welles's late career, where he could barely get anything produced. If only someone had just handed him a blank check, how many more Citizen Kanes could have been made (or Touches of Evil for that matter)?
There's a lot of outrage when a publisher interferes with an anticipated game, by rushing it to market broken or changing the creative direction or outright canceling it. Kickstarter backers have shown themselves to not have a whole lot more patience, although at least they don't wield as much power. I presume that we've seen the end of adventure games on Kickstarter, given all the bad blood. That's too bad.
Creative endeavors are notoriously difficult to budget and plan and bring in on a deadline, and even more so when it's on the cheap -- in short, shit happens.
No. You need project managers to reduce the risk of stuff not being delivered. To do so, most of the time you have also to reduce creative opportunities. Therefore, if you're not strict to spritesheets, you get bigger chances of stuff not being delivered, but you also get bigger chances of stuff being brilliant.
The initial project was to develop an unspecified games and go along for the ride even if it crashes and burn. Compared to later kickstarters Double Fine Adventure was not very specific about what it would be...
I personally liked Act 1 (even if the puzzles were a tad simple) and I'm really looking forward to the Act 2.
Now, I personally see backing on Kickstarter as Patronage. I'm giving money to artists because I like what they've done in the past or because I think that they should do well but I'm not looking on a return of investment. For me, I'm giving money in order to support arts that I like and in the hope that more of the kind of arts that I like is produced but I fully acknowledge the risks and the fact that I'm paying a lot more as a backer than if I just waited to pick up the game on sale a few month later.
Not quite. The project was an "old-school adventure game" of a then yet to be defined idea. The $300k that was asked had been budgeted for a short, simple game that could be made by a small team in a few months.
When they got ten times as much funding, it came along with hundred times larger expectations which caused the scope to grow a hundredfold equivalently. Tim's fear to meet those expectations caused him to make the game he wanted and knew people expected instead of the one he pitched. Scope grew to include hand-painted art, professional voice overs, orchestral music score, and a much larger team for a longer time so they could make a longer, more polished game. On the first few documentary episodes their struggle to match perceived expectations with the actual budget is clear, and the wishful thinking on estimates and plans also clear in hindsight.
All this because it turns out that, after all, $3M is not a large budget for a triple-A game, specially when you remove kickstarter and amazon's processing fees, rewards costs and shipping, and the costs of the documentary. Consider a team of developers, designers, artists and animators that are needed to build such game, each costing a conservative estimate of US$100k+/year to the company, then add all external assets and services. The burn rate is big for a project on that scope.
All in all, I'm fairly happy on how it turned out so far, and looking forward to part 2. I back independent games on Kickstarter to encourage the shift on the stagnant producer-driven market and don't treat it as a pre-order. Broken Age turned out to be one of the better ones I got (Book of Unwritten Tales 2, Wasteland 2 and Shadowrun Returns were the best ones, Takedown was probably the worst, glad I skipped on Clang).
In fact, I think the documentary alone is worth the $30 I dropped in the pledge. If you haven't seen it, it's available for purchase for $10 and they started releasing episodes publicly for free recently: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIhLvue17Sd7F6pU2ByRR...
If software development or game design are things that interest you, go see it now, it's very good.
I was one of the backers, and while I got out of at the loop, wasn't there also an issue with Doublefine doing a strategy game (spacebars 9 or something) probably using Broken Age money? (not to mention they sold it on early access on Steam and then decided to just stop developing it since it wasn't profitable for them)
The game you're thinking of was Spacebase DF-9, and I don't think they did use their own funds to develop it. The initial development was funded by investors; you can find press releases bragging about how they them back early using money from people buying the incomplete game on Steam Early Access. Subsequent development was I think intended to be funded entirely by Early Access sales. The reason Double Fine gave for abandoning it was that they weren't making enough money from selling the game to pay the development costs and they didn't want to sink any of their own money in.
Basically, they shifted the risk of the game never being finished from themselves and their investors onto their customers, and their customers got shafted and ended up paying money for a game that was abandoned, unfinished, in a state that was apparently really unfun to play because there just wasn't much to do.
Well, technically they didn't abandon it, but rushed out a "completed" 1.0 a few weeks after some alpha or beta build. It's still being sold as a finished game, I believe.
I haven't played the game, so I can't judge each side merits on the controversy, but it seems to me that a major issue were people expectations of Steam's Early Access model. You are buying an unfinished game, under development, to fund it. It's not a pre-order. It's not a model Double Fine created, they just experimented with it using DF-9.
People seem to expect from this model frequent releases with shiny new content for an indefinite amount of time. The most popular early access games deliver on that, with a release date that never comes and frequent patches that don't necessarily have the goal to finish or polish the game for release but always adding new things.
Failure and the game being cancelled should be an outcome expected from this model, as well as from the Kickstarter model. A game being released that don't meet your expectations is another, and it should be factored in your decision of buying a game that's under early development.
(Full disclosure: am an angry Early Access player)
It's a bit more complicated than that. The biggest outrage doesn't stem from their half-assed "release" (which in itself feels more like an attempt to cash in on a failed project) but from their lack of transparency with regard to the project's funding.
As a consumer the funding appeared to work a bit like this: they got some initial investment to get them to a proof-of-concept demo they could put on Kickstarter; they then raised a large sum of money via crowdfunding on Kickstarter; then they put the game on Steam Early Access for some additional funding to carry the project for the last mile.
Going by the various analyses posted after the cancellation/release, it seems the actual funding worked like this: they secured an initial investment to create a something they could advertise on Kickstarter; they then used the Kickstarter money to pay back the initial investment, effectively putting their balance at zero; then they released the game on Steam Early Access to fully fund the ongoing development of the game; the sales didn't work out as they expected, so they effectively ran out of money and were forced to terminate the project.
So basically from most players' point of view their balance during the Early Access phase looked like this: initial funding + Kickstarter money + Steam sales. But in effect, it actually worked out like this: Kickstarter money - initial funding + Steam sales. The crowdfunding didn't fund the game, it paid back the initial investment. Very few players were aware that Doublefine entirely relied on the monthly Early Access sales numbers to keep the project alive (and that those sales numbers weren't even remotely close to the actual money they burned through at that time).
As for the so-called "release", the game was at alpha stage before it was canned. A lot of the originally planned gameplay hadn't yet been implemented and the features that were already there often suffered from game-breaking bugs. The final update was mostly a last-ditch attempt to weed out some of the bugs and make the game appear less obviously unfinished.
Personally, I think the game is a victim of mismanagement and overconfidence. Doublefine's other games have mostly been extremely successful and well-received. They are known to pay a lot of attention to detail and generally deliver a very polished style. But they treated DF-9 the same despite it being an entirely different genre.
DF-9 was very visually polished from the early Kickstarter onward. Most of its problems are in AI and the simulation aspects of the game. It tried to be a space sim / construction / management game but instead seems to have spent a lot of resources on graphics. This is even more obvious if you compare it with successful crowdfunded games in related genres like Rimworld or Prison Architect. These games have very rudimentary graphics but the actual gameplay (i.e. AI and simulation aspects of the game) was much more powerful at a much earlier stage.
Additionally, the project seems to have been much more expensive. The Early Access sales had to pay for the regular full-time salary of each employee working on the project. This means the project had a very large fixed monthly cost the sales had to cover entirely. Solo developers can try to cut their expenses to accommodate bad sales, established employees need to be able to expect being paid a consistent salary.
DoubleFine is still considered an indie developer. But it's important to understand that it no longer operates like one. It's a business with employees and project teams. Rimworld (Ludeon Studios) is effectively developed by one guy. Prison Architect (Introversion Software) was initially developed mostly by one guy. Minecraft (Mojang) was initially developed by one guy. In each of these cases that one person wasn't an employee assigned to the project by a company that paid him a salary, it was the founder or a co-founder of the company itself. Actual employees (with fixed salaries) would only come into it fairly late into the development (I think Ludeon Studios still is a single person).
I was not aware that DF-9 had been kickstarted. In fact, I looked it up and can't find anything about that - the only games that Double Fine used kickstarter for was Broken Age and Massive Chalice.
What I seem to find is that the first two weeks of sale on Early Access sales paid for the investment [1], which may be what you are thinking about.
Anyway, I agree with your final point - in this model sales must pay for the salary of the team working on the project plus additional development costs, and that's much easier when you are a single indie developer. Double Fine seems to be too big for that.
I still maintain my position that, if you're paying to get in the alpha of a game, you should be prepared if it develops to be of a different genre of what you are expecting, if it focuses on different things, if it's cancelled, or if it's simply bad. You can get frustrated, sure, but not surprised.
I only became aware of DF-9 when it had already been on Steam for a while, so I am basing most of this on what I have heard from those who were there at the start.
The Kickstarter thing seems to be a conflation of the first two weeks on Early Access thing you mentioned and DF having done at least one Kickstarter for an unrelated project in the same timeframe.
Unless I'm very confused, there wasn't any kickstarter for Spacebase DF-9. Just the initial investment and then the early access sales. The first two weeks of the early access sales recouped the $400k investment from Indie Fund and others which makes more sense (it would have been very hard to defend them had they used kickstarter to raise money and give it back to investors).
There was a kickstarter for Massive Chalice but that's a different game.
Okay, that's a pretty reasonable point. Also given that act 1 raised 3 million or so seems like they shouldn't need to dip into sales money to pay for act 2.
That video of Ken and Roberta accepting the award - what a sweet, genuine, down to earth couple. They seem like best friends still to this day, and few things make me happier than the thought of them traveling around the ocean in their boat (http://www.kensblog.com/About_San_Souci), together.
With the exception of the takeover, a fairytale story about running a company and making your mark.
Michael Denio. A nice guy who had become disillusioned by the game industry and dropped out entirely. Such a pity. Even years after that, I had a short conversation with him by e-mail and he obviously loved his games and was very friendly and gracious to a fan (me).
Oh man! Comic was one of my very first DOS games, and still remains an inspiration to this day. I love how non-linear the environment was: even though the items had to be collected in order, you could actually peek at the later stages just by entering the doors at the start of the game.
> I'm amazed that any game makes any money at all because there's just so many.
> I guess the real truth is that one percent are hits and maybe five percent make a profit and the other 95 percent either break even or lose money. That's a tough way to make a living.
So many game developers are saying this... I wonder if there is any validity to it. Anyone run the numbers? Precious few indies are gracious enough to share their numbers but it's curious to me because the games continue to be made.
> Precious few indies are gracious enough to share their numbers but it's curious to me because the games continue to be made.
Like other forms of media content, games are not only made for financial reasons. Some people just love making games.
In fact, the rise of "Early Access" and crowdfunding seems to provide a platform for what could probably best be described as "exploratory" game development.
An indie developer released his numbers lately and it made the front page of HN. I don't recall the game and actually never even head of it, but I remembered being impressed by his revenue, especially considering how simple the game was.
>but it's curious to me because the games continue to be made.
I think the numbers are more impressive than we assume and the work, especially for an indie-quality game, can be done with a very, very small team. Only a handful of the top played games in Steam are actually AAA games. That leaves a lot of dollars available for smaller shops. 2014's success story? Goat Simulator with 1.4m copies sold. Even at its modest $9.99 pricing, that's pretty decent money for what is essentially a joke game.
My understanding is that mobile is so over-saturated that its the equivalent of gambling. I have no proof other than my limited experience in the industry, but Steam tends to be more of a meritocracy. If you make a good game in a genre people want to play, you have a decent chance of making some good money. There are people waiting and wanting those types of games. They'll forgive the lack of 3D graphics or fancy voice overs, etc if the game itself is solid. The top sellers in 2014 were almost all non-AAA titles.
With mobile, your marketing budget is more important than your game. Anyone can code a ad-driven clone of $popular_game, like your friend did. If anything, mobile is a lesson in attracting the wrong kind of developers (quick cash kiddies making clones) and a lesson in how poorly organized and run the various App stores are. Not to mention, how unsophisticated the mobile buyer is. Its grandma looking for a distraction, not the next Half-Life.
I miss Sierra games because it was clear they were made by auteurs. Whether Al Lowe, Roberta Williams, or Jane Jensen it was clear the game came from a singular voice.
All my favorite games nowadays embody this and are mostly indies from a small team like Fez, Braid, and Gone Home.
With more money spent on the big games and more people Required for AAA projects as technology leads to increased production costs , I think they'll always be a niche for auteurs on low budget games. In fact since it is easier to distribute, we see more nowadays. Maybe one day we'll see AAA titles directed with an auteur voice, but if Hollywood is any indication that isn't likely. That's the big loss.
I was inspired by Braid, Fez and Limbo to create a puzzle platformer myself because I really enjoyed playing such games and there aren't many challenging games of that type around. I started developing about 5 months ago, learned how to draw pixel graphics in the process, and will have a free playable demo (about 2hrs of gameplay) out in a couple of days. If you're interested, watch my twitter profile and/or blog, where I'll announce when it's ready.
Sierra made my favorite game of all time. I'm sad such a creative team was destroyed by maliciousness and greed.
Quest for Glory V - Dragon Fire
I've been a gamer all my life, and I'd still recommend this game as equal to anything out there today. (http://www.gog.com/game/quest_for_glory)
It was action-packed, subtle, had deep quests, an engaging storyline, and a wacky sense of humor. Each puzzle could be solved differently by the different character types. For example, in one quest you had to assault a mercenary fortress under cover of darkness.
As a thief you could sneak behind every guard and blackjack them one by one, then use your grappling hook to climb up the garbage shoot into the fortress proper. A skilled set of sneakery, and you could take the entire base out without the alarm being raised.
The wizard would go in fireballs blazing, but had a lot of cool spells to use when dueling the fortress's wizard. All combat was real time - you're ability to deflect enemy spells, block attacks (as a fighter), or chuck a stream of daggers was all reliant on your fast-twitch skills.
And the humor – in one quest arc you had to repair a cable car to get to science island, pass a ridiculous multiple choice quiz:
2. What is the goal of the True Scientist?
a) To get tenure at a major university and be set for life.
b) To impress babes with your towering intellect.
c) To plot to take over the world!
d) All of the above.
And then, to gain the scientist's acceptance, you had to construct the perfect pizza out of ingredients scavenged in the field (how's that for crafting?). You needed access to their lab so you could get their pterodactyl skeleton, coat it with wax and pegasus feathers, and launch yourself out overseas to fly to Hydra Island.
And that was one quest.
It was also one of the few cross platform games of its time.
I'm fully aware of the rosy colored glow of nostalgia but in this case... man, they don't make 'em like they used to.
QfG V was such a let down for me, easily my least favorite of the Quest for Glory games. It was particularly disappointing because QfG IV was so incredible (although it had the worst of their many awful combat engines).
However, I'm still glad they made it, and I wish they were up to QfG XV by now. Or at least that they had been able to truly finish the storyline with part 6. I hope that Hero-U is able to measure up in some respects.
I remember I was incredibly excited about the release; it was some years after QFG IV, right? But I didn't feel it was quite as good as I or (especially) II. Still, even the weaker III and IV had such intellectual variety and even wonderful emotional range...Humor to pathos, and everywhere in between.
I loved the QFG series. I recall that multiplayer was supposed to be in QFG 5, but looking at the wikipedia article it looks like that was cut. I'm sure that the multiplayer feature was responsible for some amount of delay there.
I really don't like how someone in the article is saying that new games have no stories, but sierra, their team were these great storytellers had all kinds of funny in them. When I was a kid in the 80s, yeah kings quest and space quest had lighter moments, but they weren't all that funny. As an adult I definitely don't think they are this hilarious rose-colored gem that has never again met competition in the modern age. They were quite the pain in the ass too. I think these games desperately need a remake to make the more fun. They worked for the time because they had no competition, I mean you could argue that having to repeat a large portion of the game was annoying but you didn't have reference to other games that made it easier. When the puzzle is how to word a sentence to match the game word syntax, it's not really a game to me. Sierra did a lot of great things first, but it's silly to think they were these geniuses of fun and story.
> "We were storytellers. We were kinda thrown by the wayside. The innovations that adventure games made over the course of their lifespan were absorbed into the other genre of games. You have inventory. You have object manipulation. You have puzzles. You have all these things that adventure games that are now a standard part of most games. So the adventure-game part was kinda absorbed. But what they didn't do is grab the stories. We told stories."
I could not have put it as well as this. But this.
"I'm gonna stage a hostile takeover of your company and I'm gonna offer 50 percent more than the going price of the stock. If you fight me, every stockholder in the country will file a lawsuit against you for not accepting this wonderful offer from me."
"Ok, I will fight you. By company bylaws, you have choice of weapons. Meet me Monday at dawn."
I had no idea what happened to Sierra... turns out what happened to it is basically the prelude to Terry Pratchett's Going postal.
As far as I know, he's into comedy and model trains. I learned about the model train thing when I ran into him at a model train event at the Evergreen State Fairgrounds a few years ago.
"...that people weren't looking for deeper games with deeper puzzles and thought-provoking concepts and all these things we were hoping for."
Some of us were. Frankly, I don't remember really enjoying any games since the demise of Sierra. Certainty, I haven't finished anything since long before that.
I'd check first with Activision/Blizzard, then check the names of other Dynamix franchises to see if anyone, anywhere has ever made a sequel to any of them, and see if they got anything else along with that deal.
Most times I never even got a reply... looks like I have to continue with reverse engineering :(
By the way if you want you can still play it on Win7 x64 (!), although without joystick support so you will need a numpad for controlling your herc. I haven't found out yet why exactly it is broken but I guess that "something" deep deep in the engine can't parse what Windows API returns to it...
And if you've lost your disc, I put up some ISOs onto a google docs site that you'll easily find with google ;)
That might be the only way to do it, then. Blatantly violate the copyright, publish your service-of-process address, and wait to see who sends the takedown notice.
I wonder if that could be considered a form of adverse possession for intellectual property.
But I still have my install discs. Dusty, but still there.
related to this, I was the engine architect and programmer of a Leisure Suit Larry game homage named The Adventures of Khaki Pants Pete. it was an iOS app done to indirectly promote the Klondike Bar.
bonus: I also worked for Cendant! later era, back when they bought Cheaptickets and Orbitz
The player would be a game designer who joins Sierra, gets to design her own series of Quest games and faces all sorts of absurd puzzles (often in the form of trying to herd artists and programmers). Sudden death would lurk around every corner. At the end, the protagonist would try to fight the takeover by corporate criminals. You could call it "Quest Quest".