Sierra Sierra On-Line...:/

[Metro]

SQ7 would have been terrible. Most likely an action game.

 

[Archibald]

Even if they did license it to them, Activision would still be publishing it. That means they would be the ones with creative control, not TGFA.

Can't they get same deal as those Shadowrun guys? From my understanding they have complete control.

 

[Infinitron]

Gitelman and Weisman retain connections within Microsoft, while pretty much every famous Sierra designer of yore was defenestrated from the gaming industry in the late 90s and never looked back. This is the reason for many problems.

 

[SCO]

Sierra is dead OP. Let it go.

Lucasarts too, if you had any doubt. Cryo, Mindscape, Infocom, Legend Entr., whatever. Only indies and Daedelic remain.

 

[Archibald]

Gitelman and Weisman retain connections within Microsoft, while pretty much every famous Sierra designer of yore was defenestrated from the gaming industry in the late 90s and never looked back. This is the reason for many problems.

They weren't hip enough?

 

[Infinitron]

I don't know. It must have been pretty horrible there. It seems they all just kind of gave up. No attempt to go and pull an Obsidian rising out of the ashes of Black Isle. Maybe they were well and truly convinced that adventure games were dead.

 

[Redlands]

I don't know. It must have been pretty horrible there. It seems they all just kind of gave up. No attempt to go and pull an Obsidian rising out of the ashes of Black Isle. Maybe they were well and truly convinced that adventure games were dead.

If we're talking about the ex-Sierra folks, I can kind of understand. I could be wrong of course, speaking as an outsider, but I think they probably enjoyed working it there. To have a bunch of money people with no understanding of how the business come in and ride the whole company into the ground, having everyone you worked with being fired en masse, would probably have soured you. And then, of course, when they did try (like Jane Jensen did), she had to work without the good support network you had in Sierra, which ended up causing her problems during the development of Grey Matter.

 

[Blackthorne]

RE: Space Quest, Activision & The Two Guys

Exactly, even with Scott and Mark's creative input, the game would still be steered by Activisions wants and needs for the product, and they don't want or need a game like any of us would want. Or need.


Bt

 

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

If we're talking about the ex-Sierra folks, I can kind of understand. I could be wrong of course, speaking as an outsider, but I think they probably enjoyed working it there. To have a bunch of money people with no understanding of how the business come in and ride the whole company into the ground, having everyone you worked with being fired en masse, would probably have soured you. And then, of course, when they did try (like Jane Jensen did), she had to work without the good support network you had in Sierra, which ended up causing her problems during the development of Grey Matter.

This is how Scott Murphy (SQ1-4; 6) described life at Sierra:

Yeah, that day [Black Monday] sucked incredibly hard, but like I said, I'd been laid off for about a month and a half. The former workers that were my friends at Sierra were the ones who suffered the most. My only bitterness about that particular chapter was in regard to the impact that had on their lives. At that time I was doing alright. I didn't realize how much pressure I'd really been under and what a truly flaming ass pain dealing with Sierra management had become. I mean, I knew it was bad but until I was gone I really, really didn't know how much I'd gotten used to. That made my leaving, regardless of how it happened, a total blessing in disguise. I realized I'd needed to leave a long time before that. For me, it was water under the bridge a long time ago. I know that my comrades in arms have long ago moved on and are doing well but I'll never forget how roughly their lives were impacted despite the blood, sweat and tears they gave to what had become a truly ungrateful company.
The bitterness I posses is at what Sierra and Ken Williams had become as they became more and more successful, and how the Space Quest 6 abortion came about after broken promises and the just plain fucking over I got from the people I'd worked so incredibly hard for. The more successful each game became, the worse they treated us and the less they wanted to pay us. I'm not talking about us demanding more money like some sort of prima donnas. They seemed like they were actually penalizing us for being successful for them. They didn't want to pay us as much, which wasn't a lot anyway, as they had for each of the previous games. We'd done well for them despite the fact that they spent virtually no money advertising the games, especially when you look at how much they hyped the King's Quests. I'm quite proud of how we sold despite that.

On Space Quest 2, I worked fourteen months and had only TWO days off during that period, but that wasn't good enough for them. I got called in and chewed out after that one and SQ3 for taking too long to get them shipped. SQ4 showed how dark we'd become as a result. SQ's 5 and 6 were abysmal in my opinion and I've felt some guilt about 6, even though I inherited a game primarily designed by someone else based around that person's game design around a lame joke on a title of another company's game series, which was about as stupid an idea as I've ever heard of. What a nightmare that was, but that's another story for another time, like maybe after the sweet angel of death comes to take me away. And I didn't even work on SQ5, so comments on "Roger Beamish" might be a little unfair, even though I didn't know it was even being made until I accidentally saw a beta version that had been sent down from Dynamix to one of the Oakhurst producers.

Here's a little tidbit about how the parser interface went away and how management worked us. One day when we're literally halfway through SQ4, Mark and I were called into Ken's office. We were asked what we thought about using the (dumbass) point-and-click interface that they were using, in I guess it was King's Quest 5 then, and what we thought about putting it in SQ4. We said we wanted to keep the parser. Ken and Bill Davis asked us to talk about it together and then tell them what we wanted to do the next day. After the meeting, Mark and I agreed without hesitation as we walked out Ken's office door that there was absolutely no way we wanted the point-and-click. The next day when we came in, Bill Davis tracked Mark down and asked him what we'd decided. Mark told him that we'd decided to keep the parser, to which Bill instantly replied something to the effect of, "But you can't do that. Ken has already decided that you have to use the point-and-click!" Apparently they figured they had a fifty percent chance that we would make the decision and wouldn't realize that they'd already made the decision for us. That kind of mentality was another straw on the pile of last ones.

 

[Metro]

Wow, didn't know Ken was such a douche.

 

[Jaesun]

This is how Scott Murphy (SQ1-4; 6) described life at Sierra:

Do you have a source for this?

EDIT: Source here http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/interviews/234/