Unkillable Cat
LEST WE FORGET
- Joined
- May 13, 2009
- Messages
- 27,239
I was talking with a friend of mine regarding the first Police Quest games, and the topic of Jim Walls as a designer came up. While he followed the 'standard' Sierra On-Line Adventure Game formula at the time, he also was a strict "by-the-book" kinda guy, making the first Police Quest game much more like a simulator than an adventure game, and his other games quite frustrating, to say the least.
At the end of our talk there were two questions left that we couldn't find a proper answer to.
The first one was about how Jim Walls inserted himself into the PQ games in a very personal way, especially PQ3. Watch the intro for the game and you'll know what I mean. He's the narrator, he's telling his story to us. What we wondered about, was if there were any other developers that did a similar thing to that. Daryl Gates made cameo appearances in his PQ games, and The Two Guys From Andromeda inserted themselves into Space Quest 3, but they did so under psuedonoses and played fictional characters, therefore keeping a vital distance between themselves and the game...but what about devs and their games? Anyone know of any examples?
The second question concerns the departure of Walls from Sierra On-Line and his game design career since then. Seems to me that he was bounced around between some studious before he tried to strike out on his own, with little luck. Now he's pushing for a Kickstarter title that doesn't seem to be getting much traction. Exactly what made Walls into this kind of pariah of the gaming industry? Did he refuse to play ball, or was he deemed unviable from a financial perspective?
At the end of our talk there were two questions left that we couldn't find a proper answer to.
The first one was about how Jim Walls inserted himself into the PQ games in a very personal way, especially PQ3. Watch the intro for the game and you'll know what I mean. He's the narrator, he's telling his story to us. What we wondered about, was if there were any other developers that did a similar thing to that. Daryl Gates made cameo appearances in his PQ games, and The Two Guys From Andromeda inserted themselves into Space Quest 3, but they did so under psuedonoses and played fictional characters, therefore keeping a vital distance between themselves and the game...but what about devs and their games? Anyone know of any examples?
The second question concerns the departure of Walls from Sierra On-Line and his game design career since then. Seems to me that he was bounced around between some studious before he tried to strike out on his own, with little luck. Now he's pushing for a Kickstarter title that doesn't seem to be getting much traction. Exactly what made Walls into this kind of pariah of the gaming industry? Did he refuse to play ball, or was he deemed unviable from a financial perspective?