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KickStarter The Sierra Adventure - Book Kickstarter

Blackthorne

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Hey guys - my partner over at IQ, Shawn Mills, has spent the last few years interviewing ex-Sierra employees and researching the history of the company. He's written the book, and now he's funding and publishing it via Kickstarter! The book is done - this is just to cover editing, printing and design costs. I've been lucky enough to read a lot of it as he's written it and there's a lot of cool stuff in there if you're a Sierra Fan. He launched the KS yesterday and it's already funded... so if you're interested, this is happening and you can get in on it here.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/klytos/the-sierra-adventure-the-story-of-sierra-on-line

734a4bbfb31557154d1bb9431b76f383_original.png
 

taxalot

I'm a spicy fellow.
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Codex 2013 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
I am tempted to back this, but what about shipping costs per destination ?

Also : how are you, OP ?
 

Blackthorne

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Shipping costs are per region, I believe. I don't think they're outrageous, either. I could check with Shawn.

Me? Doing okay, getting by. I'm mostly stable, though I was in the hospital for almost a week a few weeks ago. Had a GI bleed - I got five units of blood. Endoscopy and Colonoscopy showed nothing. I'm a freaking medical miracle. But stable.
 

taxalot

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I never thought they were going to be outrageous :D I was just wondering if I was supposed to back extra or I could just see to that when shipping time comes.
 

Zep Zepo

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Doesn't really have anything to do with Sierra Online (the modem service) compared to Sierra (The game company)

Sure they were related, but the Kickstarter description is somewhat deceptive...

Zep--
 

Blackthorne

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Zep - Sierra On Line WAS the name of the game company. It started out as "on-line systems" in 1980, then Sierra On-Line and then just Sierra. The On-Line part had nothing to do with any kind of online or modem service. Sierra did create TSN (The Sierra Network) in the early 1990s but that was still part of the same company that made games.
 

Zep Zepo

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Eh...maybe.

Have an example of an original boxed game using the Sierra On Line moniker? I only recall the Sierra name with the mountain logo on games I played.

And yeah, I could be confusing TSN with Sierra games.

I was a subscriber to TSN and also *P.

Zep--
 

Zep Zepo

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Yeah, just as I thought. Sierra with the mountain logo.

"On-line" only in the copyright notice, which no one pays attention to. I sure didn't, I guess.

Zep--
 

Blackthorne

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Yeah, man, it happens. But the official company name was Sierra On-Line up until like 96 when they changed it to Sierra Entertainment, I believe.
 

Gonchi

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They did actually do a couple of releases with a Sierra On-Line logo early on. Generally it showed up on back covers or disk sleeves.

You can check out scans on Mobygames.
 

MRY

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While looking for an example of Sierra On-Line, I found this, and I love it:

66824-king-s-quest-sega-master-system-front-cover.jpg


Even the hyphens are amazing.

EDIT: Here's the Sierra On-Line logo, used from 1981-1984:
Sierra_Logo_04.jpg
 
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Sierra On-Line has a special place in my mind because of The Realm Online. Predated UO, one of the first "graphical MUDs"(before they were referred to as MMORPGs)
image.png


Probably a much different reason than what most people here remember them for.
 

SausageInYourFace

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Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit. Pathfinder: Wrath
This is nice and all but shouldn't a book Kickstarter show some kind of mock-up of what the final product will look like, some example chapter and ideally even a physical prop of the final product? The current Ultima book KS did all that for instance.

As far as I can see, this one literally only has a guy saying 'I wrote a book'. I'd say this requires a lot of trust on part of the backers that the guy can actually deliver but I see its already funded. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

Boleskine

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Interesting discussion from the comments.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/klytos/the-sierra-adventure-the-story-of-sierra-on-line/comments?comment=Q29tbWVudC0yNTY1Mjg5Mw==

Note to backers:

Shawn Mills has 2 kickstarter projects that were supposed to have wrapped years ago that are still un fulfilled.

Shawn Mills and Steven Alexander are the guys who run Infamous Quests.

Their first kickstarter was for Quest for Infamy. The game was scheduled to ship in 2012 and then was digitally released in 2014. The physical box that many people pledged for still has not shipped. Steven spent most of 2016 claiming he was sending them slowly. Then he went dark. The project has not been updated since 2017.

They also launched the Order of the Thorne & Roehm to Ruin campaign. This one has an expected delivery date of 2015. Roehm to Ruin still has not been released (in any format) and Order of the Thorne was never released physically, despite many backers paying hundreds of dollars for a physical version. That campaign has had no update since 2016.

A handful of updates have appeared on their website, however they often say things like, "we are almost done" and then another year will go by.

I question the wisdom of starting yet another campaign, when Shawn hasn't even completed Roehm to Ruin.

As someone who pledged several hundred dollars in both campaigns, I can't say I'm really happy to see yet another campaign when i still have received the things I paid for years ago.
 
Last edited:

Zann

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A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
Yeah, I won't give any more money to someone from Infamous Quests, since they never shipped the physical version of Quest For Infamy nor the companion (or at least not to me), nor did they answer to the couple inquiries I sent them about it in the last two years.
Pretty much wrote the whole thing off by now.
Too bad, that book is a nice idea.
 

MRY

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My understanding is that physical editions are very expensive to fabricate and ship, that indie developers often underestimate those costs such that even at the exorbitant Kickstarter tiers, the physical editions are money-losing propositions, and when the digital version doesn't succeed, there simply isn't money/will to ship the physical versions. Couple that with Steve's horrible health woes, it's hard to be too upset about it. The question is whether Shawn should be in perpetual penance or continue to create new products that people will enjoy.
 

Zann

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A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
Yeah I know all that, but that's already a different beast than being answered "it's shipping this week or the next" in May 2017 and then "it's shipping soon" three months later, and then having the next three (polite) inquiries over two years being flat-out ignored.
If they had told me "sorry, physical editions are way more expensive than we thought, we can't afford them especially with Blackthorne's health problems" or somesuch, I would understand.
Anyway now I wrote about it once in public, so I'm done with the whole dance.

As I said, the book is a good idea & I hope it will come to fruition.
 

Blackthorne

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Hey, I'm Bt from IQ and I post here all the time - did you get in touch with me? Send me a PM here or an email - info@infamous-quests dot com and I'll try to get yours to you. I am still sending out packages when I can. Infamous Quests is really just me these days - I'm the one with all the physical stuff still sitting in my basement, and I'm the one who's tried to mail things out. No one else who worked with IQ in the past lives near me or has helped out with shipping. This was always my thing, and my bad and my fuckup. Don't let it affect Shawn.

This KS isn't an infamous quests project; it's Shawn. And he does have the book done - if you want to read some samples from it, some of it was previously published on Adventure Gamers in a series about Sierra. That series of articles and interviews led to the book. He's using a print on demand service to print AND mail the book for him, so he has shipping and everything covered.

I've read the book and it's got some great interviews with Sierra folks - some you really want to hear from, and stories you may have never heard before.

Again, don't let my fuckup with physical media deter you from this if you're a Sierra fan.
 

zeitgeist

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Since the book has already been written and thus requires no additional costs to produce, he can just upload it in .PDF format on any free online file storage site and post the link in this thread.
 

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