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Books: Sierra On-Line Retrospectives

Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings | Ken Williams
The Sierra Adventure: The Story of Sierra On-Line | Shawn Mills
The Art of Point-and-Click Adventure Games | Bitmap Books

My collection of PC games which still lives at my parents’ home and I can’t bring myself to get rid of them

As I’ve mentioned previously, when I think back to my childhood, two images come to mind – riding my bike around the endless suburban streets of western Sydney, and playing computer games as much as I was allowed. Name a PC game from 1983 to around 1998 and chances are I’ve played it. From Commander Keen to Command and Conquer; Castle Adventure, Descent, Prince of Persia, Scorched Earth, Eye of the Beholder, Lemmings, Supaplex, JetPack, Earthsiege, Alone in the Dark. The list goes on.

But most of all I loved Sierra games. In the 80s and early 90s, Sierra On-Line dominated the PC gaming market. I loved them so much that I had dreams of one day working there. But in the late 90s, as the company deteriorated and eventually closed down, so too my interest in gaming dwindled.

At this time, every other game seemed to be another shooter with little-to-no story nor characters with whom to interact. Funnily enough, one of the last Sierra-published-games I got into was Half Life (which I loved). But mostly all I saw was a sea of sameness and as such I switched my attention to teaching myself 3D animation, website design and coding – all of which revolved around making fan content for my favourite series Space Quest. My goal switched from playing to creating.

Two books (the first two listed above) have been released in the last few months which have given some insight into the history of Sierra On-Line – how it began, how it thrived, and how it spectacularly fell apart. I devoured both books in only a couple of sessions.

  • At 8 years of age I tried to win over girls as Larry
  • King’s Quest was always their crown
  • Police Quest keeping it gritty
  • Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist
  • Space Quest. There’s nothing like it.

The Sierra Adventure is a work of love, written by a fan with the backing of a number of other fans via Kickstarter. It chronicles the company from its early days to its unfortunate end, highlighting the key games, designers and technologies along the way. Sierra’s success was found in its designer-driven approach and its technological boundary-pushing. No great work of art is designed by committee. As a Sierra fan, you always felt like part of a club or family, and got to know the game designers in the same way you would the author of a book. In the early days you could even call the designer to talk to them directly when you got stuck.

Unfortunately this approach was also expensive. An adventure game requires, story, dialogue, and characters. A successful game would sell around 250,000 copies and require a budget of around a quarter of the expected revenue. By the mid-nineties these numbers just weren’t competitive. Shawn Mills says it best:

A cultural change occurred in the early nineties that saw computers become a staple in most homes. They were no longer just for the tech-savvy, and as more and more people began using them throughout the decade, games and software were simplified to reach a broader audience.

More importantly, the technological advancement to 3D would become one of the major downfalls of the point-and-click adventure. While fast-paced, action-oriented games increased in popularity, the more cerebral adventure genre no longer dominated the market.

Shawn Mills, The Sierra Adventure
Sierra pushed the boundaries of what was possible in a PC game by embracing new technology. Soundcards changed everything and enhanced the experience. I still listen to these regularly.

Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings – written by Sierra’s co-founder and CEO for most of the company’s life, Ken Williams – covers similar ground from the perspective of the ultimate insider. It’s far more business-oriented, which becomes fascinating when considering what led to both the successes and failures of the company.

A few highlights:

  • Sierra made an offer to purchase id Software following the release of Wolfenstein 3D, which failed mostly due to stubbornness. Pride can be a bitch. Imagine the future which might have followed.
  • Ken Williams was adamant about games being driven by the singular vision of an individual designer – a belief I strongly agree with for any decent creative endeavour (“if you were to take the two greatest book authors in the world and have them collaborate on a book, the result would not be as strong as their producing two independent books“). When new management took over, they used numbers and spreadsheets to assign people to projects. Original game designers were placed on games for which they had no passion while others were placed in charge of their original creation with little to no understanding of the world which had been created over fifteen years.
  • Sierra (and Microsoft) benefited from IBM’s fear of government anti-trust laws. IBM wrote into their contracts that each company must make their product available elsewhere. As such, when IBM caught a cold it hit them harder and allowed Sierra to sail off with other manufacturers.
  • The concept of a game “engine” which could be repurposed for new games without having to be coded from the ground up was pioneered by Sierra’s SCI. It’s what allowed them to push out ten times more titles than their competitors. It was also amusing the see the parallels with my own experience in the VFX industry as creatives would become frustrated with updates under the hood.
  • It struck me how much the experience of working in the gaming industry at that time lines up with my own experience working in the film industry. Bill Gates is paraphrased in the book: “when you are in a business that depends entirely on having a series of hits, it’s just a matter of time until you fail“.
What other game besides Space Quest III tasks the player with rescuing its own designers from their bosses who whip them as they work

Invariably, in a company that grows the way Sierra grew, innovation gives way to emulation. Whereas Sierra’s management once strove to make it solid, profitable, and yet fun, they now strive to dominate other companies, force annual growth in the double digits, and (Like so many other companies) cut jobs mercilessly to improve the bottom line and thrill the stockholders.

Josh Mandel, echoing a sentiment true of any company

Not All Fairy Tales was written thanks to Ken being trapped indoors during the pandemic. In a similar way, my desire to explore again the possibility of creating my own game has risen with all the time I’ve had stuck indoors this year. I’ve been learning Unreal Engine and making my own digital art again and my mind has exploded with ideas of how one might tackle an adventure game in 2020. I’ll save that for another time.

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Key Albums #4: The Beach Boys with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

I-I love the colorful clothes she wears
And the way the sunlight plays upon her hair
I hear the sound of a gentle word
On the wind that lifts her perfume through the air

Hesitant as I am to include any collections or greatest hits compilations in my list of key albums, I’m willing to make an exception for The Beach Boys. Somehow, my go-to album for a group from the 1960s, who I’ve listened to my whole life, was released in 2018. And I love it so much that I rarely venture back to the older recordings.

My parents used to always have music playing in the house. It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give a child, and if I ever have a child of my own I’ll be doing the same.

My mum’s tastes were aligned along The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Cliff Richard, Buddy Holly and 70s rock. Dad was into The Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac, Van Morrison, Paul Simon, Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds (magnificent), ELO, Johnny Cash, Gregorian chants, Enya and that random whale-noise-music which oddly never set the top 40 charts on fire. Mum’s music was an education, but I didn’t come to appreciate it until I was older. But as a kid, dad’s tastes caught my ears and I latched onto them (except maybe the whale moans). The biggest of these was The Beach Boys and Paul Simon.

That first moment of Good Vibrations where Carl Wilson utters that first syllable ‘I’ could be my favourite one-second of recorded music. Somehow in that moment the whole essence of the song is captured.

On this version, it gets the foreplay it deserves.

The Royal Philharmonic version is essentially a greatest hits, but it brilliantly adds an extra layer of depth and stereo re-balancing without losing the charm of the original recording – the incredible harmonies and melodies. It also has the effect of evening out the sound so that all of the songs fit together.

I’ve long had this idea that I’d have been right at home growing up in 1960s California, much of that fed by a romanticised vision created by the music of the time – sunshine, beaches, burgers, cars, girls and love. Thankfully I can transport myself to that place at any time by slapping on this masterpiece.

Also, Good Vibrations may well be my favourite song of all time.

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From Which I Came / Silver Linings

Long days and dreaming nights
Wide eyes take in all the sights
A little wonder goes a long, long way
Learning where to go and what to say

Isolation has been a good time for reflection – some valuable, some not so great. There’s far too much time to think and it’s challenging for everyone. Personally I’ve been frustrated with being trapped in Canada – effectively on my own now – missing and wanting to be with people back home. But I’ve been focused heavily on how fortunate I am to be able to continue working, earning money, in a safe and clean environment and in good health. Many have lost their entire world and the flow-on effects in the months and years to come will be enormous.

Most people facing hardship right now are in that situation through no fault of their own. I am fortunate mostly due to pure luck – I work in an industry willing and able to shift me home. And even the elements I might attribute somewhat to my personal wisdom or success (having skills to remain employable and savings to cover hard times, for example) have their roots in the luck of the past – where and when I was born, and the example set by my parents and their priorities.

My first win was being born in Australia. I grew up the third of four children to two working parents. I shared a bedroom with my two brothers in a fibro home in Guildford, New South Wales – Sydney suburbia. They were paying 18% interest rates on their mortgage of that home. Dad worked a lot, and I was 16 before I even realised mum was working two jobs. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I had an awareness of how challenging this would have been. We weren’t hard done-by by any stretch, but they certainly weren’t made of money, so a lot of the bells and whistles of travel and going out which I’m afforded these days weren’t available to them. But we were loved, so we always felt lucky. I had the best childhood. Santa still spoiled us at Christmas despite mum warning us at the start of every December he might not have much to give. My parents sent us to private school, not because they had money, but because education was their priority and they felt that particular school was the best choice.

1989 – six years of age, discovering the PC and computer games, which in turn led to an interest in visual effects

But it also meant I went to school with a lot of kids I couldn’t quite relate to, and some I found to be quite awful, so my later teenage years weren’t as much fun. I also developed a healthy distaste for religion. But in those years, I learnt how to entertain myself, inventing projects for myself.

And that time was where my career was born.

I was fortunate that dad worked at The University of Sydney, and that he brought his work home. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s that I realised just how big an influence he had. He worked long hours on something he loved. He could have found money elsewhere but he loved teaching at University. He also kept a regular exercise routine in the 80s before it was cool. He has passionate opinions, and making someone laugh is always the noblest goal. I’d like to think I subconsciously picked up some of these things.

There is a high chance I would not be enjoying a career in visual effects had it not been for dad’s job. Two key pieces of technology sparked my interest –

  • a PC he brought home so he could work evenings and weekends; and
  • the internet, thanks to the fact that Universities got into that world earlier than most.

The PC in particular blew my mind. Thanks to dad bringing his work home, I was able to discover PC games before most of society even knew what they were. I loved Sierra adventure games. So much so that I had dreams of one day working there. Unfortunately the company fell apart by the time I was 15 so that dream evaporated with it. It’s quite fascinating that something I was so obsessed with (games) became mostly a bore to me beyond the age of about 17.

I still listen to this frequently

We got the internet around 1993, age 10. Shortly afterward, I was reaching out to find other fans across the world. I made a fan website to catalogue absolutely everything I loved about Space Quest – learning to code JavaScript and HTML by picking apart other websites and reverse engineering them. Then, when I wanted my website to look better than the rest of them, I learnt PhotoShop and Paint Shop Pro. And once I had catalogued everything there was to know about Space Quest, I set out to make my own content.

By the time I was seventeen most school days were spent looking forward to the end of the day so I could go home and work on and learn 3D – modeling, animation, lighting – the whole thing. That way I could set about remaking the old Space Quest games from the 80s with new 3D graphics. It kept my mind busy more than school. I did very well in school but always saw a lot of it as “a thing I had to do” much like brushing my teeth. Computer graphics, PhotoShop and website design and coding excited me.

I still can’t believe I get paid to do this, even at times when it’s not so glamourous. There are valid complaints to be made in some circumstances but I find that most in my field who complain just come across as precious and entitled – just like some of those kids I went to school with. I have no time for that. They don’t know how lucky they are. This is not a “real” job.

My first job was working at a pharmacy delivering medicine to little old ladies. Then I worked checkout at Coles for about 5 years while building my own website business. It wasn’t until I got my first VFX job at 23 while doing a post-grad animation course with other like-minded friends that I felt at home and those later teenage years found meaning.

A shitty situation one year can lead to incredible things down the road.

I trust that this pandemic solitary time will find meaning.

We just don’t know what that is yet.