
Ken and Roberta (2011) - gwern
http://www.filfre.net/2011/10/ken-and-roberta/
======
chasingthewind
When I was in 7th grade in the late 80s I sent Sierra a letter asking for
something...perhaps a disk exchange or maybe it was just fan mail, I don't
remember. But since I wasn't used to sending letters I completely forgot to
put my return address on the letter and possibly not even on the envelope I
sent it in. I did however include the name of my junior high school and
several weeks later I was called to the principals office and told that they'd
received some mail for me. I was stunned to find a letter from Sierra with
whatever it was that I'd requested. They'd literally tracked down the address
of my junior high to avoid disappointing one of their fans. Many of my most
formative game playing experiences were with Sierra adventure games. It was
really a different time.

~~~
sowbug
I got stuck in the _Mystery House_ forest back in 1981 or 1982, and wrote a
short letter to them to get help. They wrote back a typewritten, personalized,
and hand-signed response that thanked me for buying the game, told me how to
get out (dropping things, moving forward/up, and paying attention to the exact
text in the messages), and giving me a couple extra hints for the next
challenges I'd hit.

Definitely a different time.

~~~
BuckRogers
A different time indeed, I feel like I'm the last generation to embody those
days in any way, shape or form culturally. Everything feels so foreign today,
there was a definite cultural shift around 9/11 permanently, for the worst.

To continue this chain with my own letter writing story.. I was a little
younger than you two since I was born in the very early 80s, but I sent a
letter in the very late 80s or early 90s telling whatever address was in
Interaction magazine that I was one day going to work at Sierra.

They wrote me back telling me they'd be waiting for me. Of course being a
Xennial (Oregon Trail Generation), I never made it in time. But wow, would I
love to be there today. Two moments in gaming history that I've witnessed that
were outstanding for me, 1989's Hero's Quest and the launch of the 3dfx Voodoo
4MB in '96\. It was thanks to King's Quest & Space Quest that I learned how to
type and spell at an early age. As well, a little later on when I got my hands
on them, thanks to Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry and Hero's Quest.

I was a totally ignored child, I can't say how many days & nights playing
those games, eating up bologna and Velveeta sandwiches that I made myself at a
pretty tender age, and washed down with RC Cola. Pretty terrible mental image,
I know. The isolation just made it all that much more impactful. It was the
happiness & high point of my life and honestly, still is. Sometimes I still
sit and think about the worlds that Sierra created to bring myself a bit of
happiness.

Sierra, and especially Hero's Quest / QFG will live within me for the rest of
my life and die with me as probably the most cherished memories, characters
and stories in my heart. Tolkien and the rest could never have anything on the
impact Sierra adventures had on me.

~~~
sdrothrock
Breaking the chain, I was amazed at King's Quest V and Conquests of the
Longbow when I was 8 or 9 and sent a letter out asking how they made it and
how I could learn to make something like that, never got a response.

~~~
klipt
Perhaps they wanted happy customers, but not happy competitors :-)

------
Chathamization
I've heard someone suggest that Roberta Williams being at the head of Sierra
was one of the reasons why Sierra had so many games designed by women. People
usually have trouble naming even one prominent woman game designer, but Sierra
had several - in addition to Roberta Williams, you had Jane Jensen, Lori Cole
(with her husband Corey), and Christy Marx. The first three made some of the
most famous adventure game series of all time - King's Quest, Gabriel Knight,
and Quest for Glory. Christy Marx isn't as well known, but her Conquest of
Camelot and Conquest of the Longbow games are held in pretty high regard by
those who have played them (worth noting that Roberta Williams' The Colonel's
Bequest is similarly lesser known but still highly regarded).

~~~
ballenf
> Quest for Glory

I still prefer it's original name "Hero's Quest". Is a much more fitting
title. The protagonist had not so much an interest in "glory" but was training
to become a hero in order to save the town. I'm probably biased and
sentimental.

(They had to change it due to a trademark claim. I think I still have the
infringing floppies around somewhere.)

------
pvg
Fun to read along with this recent article

[https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/a3n8ea/how-sierra-
an...](https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/a3n8ea/how-sierra-and-a-
disgraced-cop-made-the-most-reactionary-game-of-the-90s)

which portrays early '90s Ken Williams as callous tool of the Man, in contrast
to the the free-spirited hacker/entrepreneur version you get in the post's
origin story. (I don't have any strong feelings or opinions about the accuracy
of either portrayal)

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Gates certainly sounds deplorable, but it’s interesting that one of the
criticisms is:

 _”with Carey incinerating the killer—a cross-dressing man who is given about
as much humanity and depth in this story as you 'd expect”_

despite this hit piece being little more than an exercise in denying Gates
himself of any depth or humanity.

~~~
pvg
It's highly critical of Gates but that doesn't make it a 'hit piece' nor does
it deny Gates depth or humanity. It just isn't very fond of his particular
humanity.

------
haldora
If you are interested in what Ken and Roberta have been up to since 2004,
check out Ken's blog [1]. In short, they have been travelling the world on
their Nordhavn motorboats. Ken does a good job describing their travels and
issues along the way, with many technical posts. Plus there are occasional
references to Sierra.

[1] [https://www.kensblog.com/](https://www.kensblog.com/)

------
kyleashipley
I'd highly recommend reading more of that blog. He's been publishing
consistently for 7 years (!), tracking down obscure interviews and conducting
a few of his own. I spent almost 2 hours this morning digging through his full
history of Sierra.

Some interesting nuggets:

\- Al Lowe basically invented beta testing at Sierra for Leisure Suit Larry.
He wrote a program to capture user inputs that didn't work onto the floppy
disk, which the beta testers then sent back to Sierra. They then updated the
graphics, text, or parser to account for these confusing areas.

\- Ken Williams was quite a visionary on several things, including the rise of
IBM compatibles, MS-DOS, and the early internet / social networks.

\- Lori Cole's vision for Quest for Glory, using a cardinal direction, a
season, and an element as inspiration, was really fascinating to reflect on.
(I have a soft spot for Quest for Glory IV's Eastern European mythology, which
was very rare in the pre-Witcher days.)

\- There was a failed merger between Sierra and Broderbund (Carmen Sandiego,
Print Shop, Prince of Persia) in the early 90s that could well have changed
the face of the industry.

Overall, was way better than the average internet rabbit hole!

------
lolive
My native tongue is french. I was very bad at english at school (my teachers
were awfully bad too). I had never met anyone not speaking french (that was
inconceivable for me at that time of my life). And then "King's Quest 3". I
spent weeks and months struggling to end the game. And to understand the
texts, too! My french-english dictionary became my dearest book. And after
that experience, I highly praised foreign-language skills. (I could buy/read
the RPG books directly in English, idem for fantasy literature such as LotR).
Learning how Ken and Roberta started their business (and eventually changed my
life) is a really nice moment. Thanks!...

------
michaelmior
I spent many many hours playing Sierra games as a kid. Really high quality
gameplay that in some ways is hard to come by in modern games.

~~~
hoodwink
Favorite? Mine was King's Quest IV.

~~~
city41
King's Quest III and IV are my favorite in the KQ series. But overall I'd
probably say the first Quest For Glory. It was such a great melding of Sierra
adventure and RPG.

~~~
bhj
Couldn't agree more! I got into QFG1 at the time of Sierra's VGA point-and-
click remake, and what a lasting impression.

The artwork, music, sense of humor, and character building - including being
able to import your character and keep building your skill points through each
successive game in the series - made it really special. Truly the golden years
of graphical RPGs, IMO.

------
carimura
I attribute most of my adulthood problem solving skills to figuring out how to
get Larry laid.

------
acd
Thanks for all the good games from Sierra Online!

I learned a foreign language English by playing text based adventure games
such as those from Sierra! Got the English basics from school, but it was by
playing text adventure games that my English got much better. In order to play
the text based games in English I had to use a Swedish to English dictionary
to understand the words. Remember Sierra games such as Police Quest, Kings
quest, Magnetic scrolls, Lucas art games.

Links to Police quest [http://www.sierragamers.com/Police-
Quest-1](http://www.sierragamers.com/Police-Quest-1)
[http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/police-quest-in-pursuit-
of...](http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/police-quest-in-pursuit-of-the-death-
angel)

------
amorphid
Gotta love those Space Quest games! You haven't really lived until you've
played Astro Chicken in a space diner.

~~~
chris_wot
SQIII was the greatest of all the games they made.

~~~
tdumitrescu
SQIII was great, but IV really was the peak of the series for me. The time
travel to future installments (you went to Space Quest 12 I think?) was really
well done, and it had a slightly more serious edge that all the others in the
series lacked. I remember years later trying to play the cartoonish SQVI and
thinking they'd turned it into a terrible caricature of itself, which is a
mighty feat.

~~~
danieldk
_The time travel to future installments (you went to Space Quest 12 I think?)
was really well done,_

And traveling back to Space Quest 1 with EGA graphics.

There is also this scene where you have to free up memory on some machine by
throwing applications in the thrash can (erm toilet) [1]. The first time I
made the mistake to trash the SQIV icon, which throws you right back to DOS.
Of course, I hadn't saved for a while.

[1] [http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/space-quest-iv-roger-
wilco...](http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/space-quest-iv-roger-wilco-and-
the-time-rippers/screenshots/gameShotId,773368/)

------
nodesocket
Sierra had a game called Police Quest that I played religiously. Ahead of its
time. It was also edgy with sex, language, and violence.

~~~
SeanBoocock
Ahead of its time would be one way to describe it. I highly recommend this
essay [https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/a3n8ea/how-sierra-
an...](https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/a3n8ea/how-sierra-and-a-
disgraced-cop-made-the-most-reactionary-game-of-the-90s) on the development
and politics of Police Quest 4.

~~~
nodesocket
Just found a walkthrough of Police Quest IV. What a blast from the past!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BR1u-qT3J4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BR1u-qT3J4)

------
mancerayder
It's not just Sierra I miss, it's RPG games that aren't mostly first-person
shooters and smashers.

Maybe people of our generation will have their needs met with a new popular
genre of games 'discovered' by a later generation? Maybe many of these games
exist but I'm naively missing them since I'm not following the releases?

~~~
duwease
There's absolutely a glut of throwback adventure games on Steam nowadays. Take
a look!

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ddingus
Good read. Such a fun era! Glad I was there to enjoy some of it.

------
mgkimsal
IIRC the book "Hackers" by Steven Levy has a decent amount of background
story/info on the Williams'.

EDIT: oh... duh - there's a link to the Levy book in the blog post!

------
rapfaria
Funny that just today I was searching for old D&D campaign settings and found
that Birthright had a game called Birthright: The Gorgon's Alliance,
distributed by Sierra.

Ah, the nostalgia.

------
jungletime
Nice throwback WordPress theme. Every website is so flat now, and sometimes
much uglier than before (cbc.ca comes to mind)

