Colossal Cave Adventure remake from Ken & Roberta Williams

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Meh. One of Ken’s main strengths has always been finding and managing talent. If he thinks Marcus is a good fit, I trust his judgment.

 

[jfrisby]

Full stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d75H68ggfPA

 

[Darkozric]

Very low expectations for this, Roberta's involvement is questionable and this Marcus Maximus guy seems like a jack of all trades (master of none).

 

[Boleskine]

Ken Williams is racist!

https://cygnusentertainment.com/2022/01/17/zooming-up-a-new-engineer/

Zooming Up A New Engineer

Today was a rough day on the project. My problems started a few days ago when a newly hired engineer left the project. He had spun up to speed quickly and I had great plans for how to use him. But, a replacement would need to be found.

WORKING HARD TO MEET A SELF-IMPOSED DEADLINE
We are working on a tight schedule for this game. Our goal is to announce the game at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco at the end of March. Roberta and I will be there and do some press interviews, to start letting the world know about the game. We’ve been laying low lately, refusing all interview requests, in order to wait to have something that we’re willing to talk about, and show, regarding the game.

Once we announce the game, we’ll start beta testing. I still don’t know how many beta testers or how we’ll choose them, but I’m hoping to have three (or four) months just to polish up the game and make it as perfect as it can possibly be before we let the paying customers start ripping into it.

THE SEARCH FOR A REPLACEMENT
So …

I had what I thought was a clever idea; to hunt for an engineer on a site called Freelancer.com. I posted the job listing and within hours I had twenty-four proposals! That’s pretty amazing given that I was asking for a senior game developer who had experience with the Unity Engine. Those are hard to find these days.

But when I looked at the proposals, here’s where the applicants live:

Armenia(1)
Belarus(1)
Canada(1)
China(1)
India(2)
Kazakhstan(1)
Libya(1)
Macedonia(1)
Pakistan(7)
Russian Federation(2)
Serbia(1)
Ukraine(5)

In today’s connected world, it is certainly possible to work with someone in a foreign country. Currently our game is being developed by a team who are all working from home, scattered across the United States. it’s a small team of ten people, and we collaborate all day, every day, via a fancy chat program called Slack. I say “chat” which implies “text” but we mostly use a Slack feature called “huddling” to speak with each other, and to take turns sharing screens with each other. It really feels like we are all in the same building and isn’t a bad way to work. Most tech companies, because of Covid, are remote working like that now.

We do somewhat have time zone issues. I tend to work 6am to 6pm, 7 days a week. Thus, I’m around when the east coast team members sign on, as well as overlapping the west coast contingent. It’s not perfect but works, and truthfully, I look forward to the weekends when the rest of the team isn’t around so I can get some work done. That said, I’m typing this on Sunday and was up earlier than usual this morning to hit my computer early, and within minutes of signing on I was chatting with most of my teammates. The same thing happened yesterday. It isn’t that I’m charming (which I’m DEFINITELY not). But, it is that game development gets in your blood. This is hard work, but incredibly fun!

Anyway, I probably would hire someone internationally if there were no better options, but, all things being equal, I’d rather not deal with cultural, language, and time zone issues. If I could press a button and teleport my existing team into my office every day, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I do believe that people are more efficient when working in close proximity. We’re making our scattered geography work, but I can’t say it is my favorite option.

I gave up on the Freelancer website, after having paid them $29 to feature my ad. Oh well .. I then turned to Upwork.com and posted the job.

This went a little better. I was immediately flooded with responses. Once again, most were out of the country, but twelve of them were US based! So, I set up a first round of phone calls. I was confused during the calls in that people with very American names, living in American cities, had foreign accents so thick that we had trouble communicating on the phone. I’m not great at hearing (too much time spent in mainframe computer rooms early in life) and trying to understand the applicants was impossible.

So, I posted this message to everyone, requesting a Zoom call

“For our zoom call, the best is if you can have audio/video going, and have Unity on your computer, and something in Unity we can talk about and look at. If you don’t have anything .. just put in a plane and bounce a ball .. or do something interesting., I just want to be able to discuss Unity and your experience with it and get a sense of your skill level .. my hope is you can share screen and we can talk about some code you’ve written

I need someone who can hit the ground running immediately .. is there anything I can tell you prior to the meeting that can help you decide if this is something you are interested in or not?

The site for the game is: www.cygnusentertainment.com — although there isn’t much there. The 30 second story is: Google me – “Ken Williams sierra” .. We’re doing a 3d adventure game, similar in nature to King’s Quest .. for computers, and VR platforms. It’s a small team — 4 coders, 4 artists, a designer and a project manager. It’s a very visible project and will get a lot of attention in the media when it comes out”

You may already have guessed what happened. I scheduled all twelve interviews spread over two days, each starting on the hour.

One guy argued with me, “I prefer a test task rather than screen sharing. Let me know your thought on it.” I refused. He was my first appointment yesterday morning. He “no showed”.

My next appointment showed up and said his camera was broken and he couldn’t share video. I asked him to share his computer screen so I could take a look at some code. He disconnected the call. Two down.

My third appointment started better. But, instead of a live camera feed I was looking at a static image of a very danish looking gent who was talking with a distinctly non-danish accent. I asked to see his code and he did share his screen, but when I asked him about the code I was looking at he had absolutely no idea what it did. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but when it became clear he hadn’t written the code, and said so, he hung up.

My fourth appointment showed up in zoom explaining he was on a telephone and couldn’t show video or screen share. I said to contact me when he could and we rescheduled (he didn’t show up when the time came).

Appointment #5 was the first person I talked to who actually came through with video! It took him half an hour to get his video working, while constantly explaining it would work “any minute now”. I waited patiently, while he suggested several times that we continue without it. Once I could finally see him the image was so grainy I could barely see him. However, I could see him enough to tell he bore no similarity whatsoever to his picture on Upwork. I asked why his internet connection was so bad. He said something I couldn’t understand. His poor internet connection was a major problem. I asked him where he was at. He said, “Pakistan.” His Upwork profile claimed he was New York based. He said no problem but that in Pakistan he had a whole team of people who would help me. I said, “No thank you. And, wished him well.”

I won’t bore you with all my other meetings. They all went roughly the same way.

THAT WAS, UNTIL...
My first interview on Sunday morning was at 6am. It began with a gentleman named Cory appearing without his camera turned on. My first thought was, “Here we go again”. Cory clearly sounded American and said he was in St Louis, but didn’t have a camera on his computer. I said, “No problem. I really only care about your code. Go ahead and screen share.”

And, he did!!

Cory had a strange background, in that he came out of college as a chemist, but after working in that profession for five years he quit to become a game programmer. He had taught himself Unity and was passionate about games. He worked full time for the last year on a game and was proud to show it to me. I was impressed! The game looked great for a single-programmer effort, and when I asked him to walk me through the code I could see what he had made some smart decisions.

I “hired” him (technically speaking “contracted” him) on the spot, and shut down the dozen or so interviews I had scheduled. Yay!!!!!

After nuking all the ads I looked at my email and there was a resume that had somehow found its way to me. I’m not sure how. I thought about sending a rejection and saying the position was filled, but for some reason decided to do just one more interview. I replied to him (Kyle) and got an instant response. Kyle said he’d look forward to a Zoom call, and we did it instantly. He appeared on camera, and showed the game he was working on. It was a multiplayer game that was fairly early in development. He walked me through his code and my “takeaway” was that he was a very smart coder, and I liked his style, and personality, but I had no opening, so I wished him well.

Then, when talking to Roberta and mentioning that I had talked to someone I liked but that we were over budget, she said, “Well if you like him, we can pop the budget a little.” I didn’t hesitate. I was typing the email to Kyle within seconds of Roberta saying those magic words.

So .. I added two new engineers!

Some stories DO have happy endings after all!

PS I didn’t think to ask Kyle where he lived until the end of the call. You may have guessed the punchline to this tale — Thailand! Oh well .. I may have to wake him from time to time to keep him focused during the work day, but I’m REALLY looking forward to having both him and Cory on our team.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

I wonder how much the Williams are worth. All of the estimates online say from 1.5 million to 10 million, which seemed exceedingly low to me, but I had no idea about the fallout of the sale of Sierra. For some reason, I thought they were sold directly to Activision. I had no idea that they were bought by a billion dollar coupon company, entirely via stock shares, and then just a couple years later it turned out that the billion dollar company was fraudulently inflating its stock prices and a huge number of people who worked at Sierra ended up losing everything. Ken and Roberta sold their stock before shit truly hit the fan, but after they were already on a downward trajectory, so it's very possible that they only ended up with single digit millions after selling their company in a billion dollar deal.

This Vice story recounting the play-by-play of the acquisition and its fallout is facinating. Especially due to some of the low key shit talking that people like Al Lowe do in it (he compares Ken Williams to Donald Trump, lol). Plus, the missed opportunities are amazing. At one point Jeff Bezos meets with Ken Williams to try to talk him into investing in Amazon, and Williams turns him down because he wants to devote his time to an idea he had for an early version of audio only Zoom that never ended up going anywhere because the parent company that bought Sierra didn't take it seriously:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3vem8/inside-story-sierra-online-death-cuc-cendant-fraud

Anyhow, the impression of Ken Williams from the story is that he's an excited little boy, while Roberta was mostlymaking the hard decisions to run the business behind the scenes. Which kind of checks out with that blog post about his hiring the engineer.

Plus, the people from Blizzard's ideas about trying to turn Mask of Eternity into an RPG with adventure elements actually made it sound kind of cool and better than the game that was ultimately released.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I wonder how much the Williams are worth. All of the estimates online say from 1.5 million to 10 million, which seemed exceedingly low to me, but I had no idea about the fallout of the sale of Sierra. For some reason, I thought they were sold directly to Activision. I had no idea that they were bought by a billion dollar coupon company, entirely via stock shares, and then just a couple years later it turned out that the billion dollar company was fraudulently inflating its stock prices and a huge number of people who worked at Sierra ended up losing everything. Ken and Roberta sold their stock before shit truly hit the fan, but after they were already on a downward trajectory, so it's very possible that they only ended up with single digit millions after selling their company in a billion dollar deal.

This Vice story recounting the play-by-play of the acquisition and its fallout is facinating. Especially due to some of the low key shit talking that people like Al Lowe do in it (he compares Ken Williams to Donald Trump, lol). Plus, the missed opportunities are amazing. At one point Jeff Bezos meets with Ken Williams to try to talk him into investing in Amazon, and Williams turns him down because he wants to devote his time to an idea he had for an early version of audio only Zoom that never ended up going anywhere because the parent company that bought Sierra didn't take it seriously:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3vem8/inside-story-sierra-online-death-cuc-cendant-fraud

I don’t know what their liquid wealth looks like, but they definitely have a lot more than 1.5 mil in terms of assets. Ken has never been the miserly sort of rich dude. He likes to spend his money on big houses and yachts and art investments. 10 mil doesn’t seem unreasonable; that’s still more money than 99% of the population will earn in a lifetime.

 

[Boleskine]

https://cygnusentertainment.com/2022/01/29/a-peek-behind-the-scenes/

A Peek Behind The Scenes

We are now almost a year into development on the game. Each week I meet with the team to discuss where we are at and to strategize the week ahead.

At this last week’s meeting I sent out some thoughts on beta testing. Below is an excerpt from last week’s meeting agenda, only slightly edited (to remove references to what we are working on).

I’m passing it along in case any of you find this “peek backstage” somewhat interesting…

-Ken W

—————–
Let’s talk beta testing
Everyone has heard me talk about my desire to be into beta at the end of March. My suspicion is that this has some of you shaking your head, thinking, “Not possible, why try?”

Well, when I use the word “beta” there is room for interpretation. So, I’ll explain what I mean.

This discussion was triggered because Roberta and I had a conversation about my vision of ‘beta testing’ and the need for “approvals” along the way. The word “Approve” is like the phrase “Beta Test.” It needs further definition and interpretation.

To me, there are three approvals needed. Is it good enough for coding to start? Is it good enough to go to beta? And is it ready for final approval?

Something can be “Approved for beta” much sooner than something that is, “Approved for Paying Customers.”

Let’s pick a simple example. Imagine the VR (low poly) version of the first scene. I think we all agree that it is nowhere near good enough to be “Approved for Paying Customers”. To get it to that level will need many hours, and probably several days, of artist time. Arguably, right now, it isn’t even good enough to be “Approved for Beta”.

In other words, I’d like us to think in terms of three Approval levels (viewed from an artist’s perspective):

– Approved for coding — this can happen as soon as we have an ‘approved’ grey boxed scene.

– Approved for beta — this can happen as soon as we have something that looks decent and has enough of the graphics such that the level is playable.

– Approved for Paying Customers – everything is in place and is bug-free.

That middle Approval is the one that is mushy and relates to the definition of the word “Beta.”

There are multiple flavors of beta testing, and there are different groups of potential beta testers.

Limited Release Beta Testing – release to a small carefully selected group a version of the game, along with specific instructions as to what we want tested.

Wide Release Beta Testing –essentially the entire game needs to be in place.

Here’s the way I see it playing out:
In April, May, June and July we will do a series of Limited Release Beta Tests. We will have specific goals for each of these and the beta testers will be hand-picked.

The schedule that follows is entirely made up, but representative of what our beta testing schedule might look like:

April 1 Beta (Computer) – 5 to 10 beta testers – Pick some friends and watch them play through the first couple of regions, just to see if they can figure out the user interface based on the directions provided. My thought is that this testing could be done at a table at some local place with one of us watching — Starbucks or perhaps at one of our houses and invite beta testers who live in the area? Alternately, it could be done by asking testers to screenshare while playing the game while it runs on our computer.

April 7 beta (Quest 2) – 5 to 10 beta testers – Pick some friends and watch them play through the first couple of regions, just to see if they can figure out the user interface based on the directions provided. My thought is that this testing could be done at a booth at some local point with one of us watching — Starbucks or perhaps one of our houses and invite beta testers who live in the area?

April 30th Beta (Computer and VR) – 20 beta testers – Rerun the testing above and see if the beta testers get farther and if the previously identified issues have been solved.

May 15th Beta (Computer and VR) – 20 beta testers – This might be the first time we have the beta testers “play” parts of the game without us watching. That said, the release is probably only a portion of the game and will be accompanied by a walkthrough and specific documentation saying what to — and what not to — try.

June 1st Beta (Computer and VR) – 30 beta testers – The first fully playable game! It still won’t have everything in it, but this would be the first version of the game that could – theoretically, at least using the walkthrough (and a series of saved games that we provide) — be played end to end. This may be the first version that has professional voice acting and even perhaps sound effects and/or music.

July 1st Beta (Computer and VR) – 100 beta testers – The first time we let the game out to a wider audience. We include a walkthrough, and tons of information about what is, and what isn’t, in the beta test. We also include saved games so that as people crash, they can get going again.

July 15th (Computer and VR) – 250 beta testers – This is the “Approved for Paying Customers” beta. The first time we send out an actual release candidate with everything there!

August 1st (Computer and VR) – Submission to the approval process at *****, and possible release to the public of the computer version.

Bottom line: We will start with a small face-to-face group, with a tiny piece of the game, and graduate to a large group with all the game, but do so in a tightly controlled, carefully paced, manner.

Wait!!!! There’s another kind of testing we need to talk about
Roberta is the person charged with the most important kind of testing there is. Customers will forgive a game that crashes. They will forgive confusion, bugs, bad graphics, just about anything. But there is one thing they will never forgive.

I call it: A lack of fun and a well-thought-out game.

We are competing for our player’s time with other games, movies, music, books, going to the park, taking a walk, and many other things. We have to be more fun than any of those other things, or they WILL do those other things. That’s human nature. Pretty graphics, beautiful music, amazing sound effects, challenging puzzles, fast execution times, etc., cannot save us. Ultimately when we mush everything together, it has to be more fun than anything else the player could be doing, or why would they want to play our game?

Roberta’s job is to make sure the game is fun and the design is tight. She has at least one hand tied behind her back, because [***DELETED***].

She will not be able to start serious play testing for herself until the whole game is playable throughout. Even then, play testing is meaningless until all the puzzles and “look/use” messages are in, as well as any significant background objects. (And it should be noted that Roberta was the best QA person and beta-tester that Sierra had – she’s very thorough and somewhat of a perfectionist — and finds ‘everything’!)

Within reason, she CAN play test a scene that does not have final graphics. If a room is supposed to have a green tree, and instead has a pink cube representing the tree, Roberta most likely can test the room. As long as someone tells her, “Ignore the pink cube. That’s really a green tree that we are still working on,” she can test the room and see if the messaging about the tree feels right. In other words, as long as everything is mostly there, even if graphically there is work to be done, she can start testing. At a minimum, to really get a sense of the game, she does need at least placeholders for all graphics, sound effects, speech, and music. The coding for the game should be as near to complete as possible. Once again, it is ok to have a door that doesn’t open, as long as someone tells her, “There is a door here that is still being worked on and is not animated yet.” It’s better if the door is there, or at least some cube that represents the door, but really, for Roberta to provide meaningful feedback on playtesting, all of the game messages and puzzles must be in place.

My goal is that she can start playtesting the game around the same time that we start our beta testing. I’d like to think that by mid-April or the beginning of May there will be something that needs plenty of graphic and sound work but is a fully playable game.

Once Roberta starts playing the game, she will start sending out bug reports, and you will be shocked by how many bug reports she generates. Not all of the bugs will be “bugs” in the classic sense. If she sees something that needs a message, she will add it. If she sees some graphics that she doesn’t like, she will mention it. If she wants graphics added, she will have them added. If something in a room seems distracting to the player, she will nuke it. Her job is to be the eyes and ears of the player. It will take months to work our way through Roberta’s lists. We will be frustrated and tired of seeing bugs/changes, but you need to keep in mind that this is the most important testing that will occur, and that Roberta will see things that you or I might not, or that we might not care about. She will solicit feedback from all of us, and from the beta testers, but will ultimately go with her gut. She will accept some advice and will ignore other advice. Expect it and just recognize that is how she works. It will be worth all the pain when the game is done.

Let’s talk about “BUZZ”
We have to be very careful in beta testing. We live in a world which is dominated by social media. Especially in the early days, the game that beta testers will see will not be representative of what will ultimately be released to the public. We can ask the beta testers to not discuss the game publicly but, realistically, they will. They will want to tell their friends they are beta testing the new game from Roberta Williams, and the first question they will be asked is, “How is it?” If they respond by saying, “I think it will be ok, but it needs a lot of work,” we will be dead in the water. We need super positive things said about us. I would not pay for a game that is mediocre — and if I wouldn’t do it, I sure wouldn’t ask others to do so. We need our beta testers telling their friends how great the game is. We need to generate excitement wherever we can.

Factually speaking, the early releases will not be great, so how do we guarantee that beta testers say only great things? I’m not sure it can be done, but to the extent it can be, it will be by making sure that we under-promise and over-deliver. The beta testers need to be carefully chosen and carefully prepared. We need to tell them what they will be getting, set their expectations (maybe low), and then exceed their expectations. We also have to make sure they understand what we allow them to say publicly, what we want them to say publicly, and what we do not want them to say publicly. I don’t want to ask anyone to lie on our behalf, but the truth is that they’ll be seeing something which is NOT the game we’ll actually be releasing. They’ll be helping us look for things that we have no way of testing without their help. We need the beta testers. We are too close to the product and beta testers will be seeing the game with fresh eyes. They have different speed computers, different graphics cards, different pre-conceived notions on how a game should be played, different brands of mice, different keyboards, different amounts of memory, etc. We want their feedback, and we do want them to share their experience on social media, so we get some buzz going, but we need to ensure they rave about how awesome the game will be when released. I have no doubt they will if we help them understand the beta process correctly.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

The only Ken & Roberta Williams game I ever completed was Police Quest 3. It was great and serves the distinction of being the very first PC game I ever bought for my old Tandy 286 with integrated audio and VGA. Roberta Williams played the central character's wife sick in the hospital bed in a coma throughout the game until the ending where she opens up her eyes as she holds the rose the hero gave her. It was cornier than the corniest undigested corn, but at least not as shitty. It was the first time I saw digitized art/portraits in a PC game. Prior to that the only digitized portraits I saw on my PC were jpgs of BJ porn that took a half hour to download off one of my local BBSs and had the resolution of ASCII art. Best of luck to Ken & Roberta in the new game. They'll have some fierce competition in this day and age, and most gamers & twitch streamers will be like, "Ken and Roberta Who?! Oh, shit! Look at those cool new CoD screenshots!"

 

[mediocrepoet]

Ken and Roberta Williams? I guess their money boat sank?

Anyway, they must be what now? Like 80?
I'm not really interested in this at all. I liked a number of Sierra titles, but Ken was more of a businessman and Roberta was designing the shit I wasn't into like King's Quest and Phantasmagoria. I can't imagine their oldy moldy out of touch comeback will be any better.

 

[almondblight]

I'm not really interested in this at all. I liked a number of Sierra titles, but Ken was more of a businessman and Roberta was

Maybe they should start managing the projects of the other Sierra vets.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Ken and Roberta Williams? I guess their money boat sank?

No, they've just been sailing their yacht around the world completely unaware of the state of the industry. Ken only just recently found out that the "indie" market is a thing and that non-mainstream non-AAA titles are once again viable to bring to market.

I also believe he's strictly acting in a project management capacity and leaving all design to Roberta and this Marcus guy.

 

[Viata]

We’re doing a 3d adventure game, similar in nature to King’s Quest .. for computers, and VR platforms

It's going to be shit. They are also going to use Unity, another indication of it going to be shit.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

We’re doing a 3d adventure game, similar in nature to King’s Quest .. for computers, and VR platforms

It's going to be shit. They are also going to use Unity, another indication of it going to be shit.

I mean, to be honest, as much as I love some of the games she has made, I don't think Roberta has ever been a particularly talented designer. She was undeniably innovative and integral to Sierra's success, but KQ1 and especially KQ2 are pretty shit games when viewed with the benefit of the knowledge of what the medium/genre would achieve in subsequent decades. I love KQVI to death, but by most accounts that was at the very least half Jensen's baby. KQV is okay, and probably Roberta's best solo effort, but I don't find it as good as, say, QFG1, 2, or 4 (probably on par with 3 though).

I do agree that choosing Unity for a project like this is a bit of headscratcher and a slightly worrying sign though. First the 2 Guys from Andromeda, then the Coles, and now the Williams; what is with ex-Sierra peoples' extreme aversion to AGS? Dualnames MRY Victor Pflug Blackthorne Any insight on this? Is AGS secretly horrible to work with?

 

[mediocrepoet]

Just watched one of those videos about the Ken Williams live stream, he's looking a lot like a cross between the undead spirit of a 900 year old DOS era game dev and Wilford Brimley these days.

Anyway, I wish them the best, but yeesh.

Re: Ken Williams managing other ex-Sierra projects: Didn't the Coles feel some bad blood towards Ken around the Sierra closure? I thought I'd read something like that in an interview years ago, but I couldn't find it in a quick search so I'm not sure if I'm just misremembering something or maybe general comments about problems with management after the Williams had departed.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Just watched one of those videos about the Ken Williams live stream, he's looking a lot like a cross between the undead spirit of a 900 year old DOS era game dev and Wilford Brimley these days.

Anyway, I wish them the best, but yeesh.

Re: Ken Williams managing other ex-Sierra projects: Didn't the Coles feel some bad blood towards Ken around the Sierra closure? I thought I'd read something like that in an interview years ago, but I couldn't find it in a quick search so I'm not sure if I'm just misremembering something or maybe general comments about problems with management after the Williams had departed.

Most ex-Sierra people tend to be fairly circumspect about it (I actually don't recall the Coles ever commenting on this), but it seems pretty clear that Ken was not well-liked by the rank-and-file at Sierra (especially towards the end of his tenure) and that Roberta was generally resented for perceived nepotism. A charitable interpretation of this would be that Ken was disliked because he was a "the buck stops here" moneyman/manager who necessarily kept the creatives on a tight leash. The uncharitable interpretation would be that he was a Bobby Kotick-style sociopath motivated only by the bottom-line. I'm inclined to think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

 

[MRY]

I do agree that choosing Unity for a project like this is a bit of headscratcher and a slightly worrying sign though. First the 2 Guys from Andromeda, then the Coles, and now the Williams; what is with ex-Sierra peoples' extreme aversion to AGS? Dualnames MRY Victor Pflug Blackthorne Any insight on this? Is AGS secretly horrible to work with?

I'm sure part of it is that AGS projects amateurism, which is repellant to people who were formerly at the peak of the professional field. But there are also less psychological explanations. AGS is great software for making very traditional point-and-click adventures for the Windows platform, as befits a ship of Theseus that was originally a DOS-based software for making very traditional point-and-click adventures. But even within that heartland, it has a variety of defects. Some of those are under the hood -- like how its default save system breaks saves when you update the game in most meaningful ways. Some of them are more in-your-face, such as the relatively mediocre pathfinding and scaling, and the way they interact to behave mischievously in rooms with lots of scaling and/or curvature (i.e., every background ever made by Victor Pflug). Some are more a development issue, a function of a development environment that reduces barriers to entry but in the long run are annoying, such as the way it's surprisingly difficult to test and adjust cutscenes or the irritatingly difficult way string are handled. Overall, I'd analogize it to RPG Maker engines, great for entry-level users, has some great titles associated with it, a very supportive community, but much harder once you start pushing beyond its core function.

Unity is enterprise bloatware, but its basic premises (relatively easy platform portability, huge asset store, fairly asset agnostic, strings are handled in a way that's easy to translate, relative seamlessness between dev and runtime, giant contractor community) are probably really appealing to these types. It's true that the engine isn't purpose-built for adventures (though I think there are now libraries for it), but it's simultaneously more "professional" and more turnkey; you can just throw money at it and populate your game, in a way that you can't with AGS. There is literally one great AGS programmer: Dualnames. Plenty of other folks can make AGS games, but even here, "plenty of other folks" means, like, ten people? 20? And while the community is very friendly, it's basically more like an internet fandom community than a trade organization or professional association. If you're Ken Williams and want 50 resumes to chose among, AGS isn't really the thing you want.

[QUICK EDIT]

To be clear, though, I don't think their decision to use Unity is a good one. I've always said that what the Coles should've done is hire Blackthorne (or Himalaya) to run the Hero-U project and make it in AGS. It probably would've made $500k at least, been beautiful and classic, and furnished an engine and team for follow-on games. Same with the Space Quest game. Instead, what they've ended up with looks kind of "contemporary mediocre" rather than "nostalgically charming," the teams were not crazy adventure game fanatics, and figuring out how the hell to make an adventure in Unity delayed production by years.

 

[Dexter]

I do agree that choosing Unity for a project like this is a bit of headscratcher and a slightly worrying sign though. First the 2 Guys from Andromeda, then the Coles, and now the Williams; what is with ex-Sierra peoples' extreme aversion to AGS? Any insight on this? Is AGS secretly horrible to work with?

They're making a 3D Adventure game, not a Pixel Point & Click. This already excludes the use of "AGS" since it isn't a 3D engine.

They're also making a VR version, which I'm personally most curious about and looking forward to and got some chick on porting duty:
https://cygnusentertainment.com/2021/07/05/oculus-version-now-in-development/
https://cygnusentertainment.com/2021/09/11/roberta-experimenting-with-vr/

I also stumbled upon this, apparently Ken used the quarantine to write and publish a 400 page book about all things SIERRA in 2020, I ordered a copy: https://kensbook.com/

 

[Darkozric]

I've always said that what the Coles should've done is hire Blackthorne (or Himalaya) to run the Hero-U project and make it in Unity.

You're not in a position to give advises to the Coles, you are an overrated nothing and only turds take you seriously after your strangeland fiasco.

 

[Neuromancer]

I also believe he's strictly acting in a project management capacity and leaving all design to Roberta and this Marcus guy.

I think, he said in a former interview, that Roberta isn't really working on the game.
They talked about the game and she gave (and probably still gives) him some advice - but that's about it.

 

[Viata]

strangeland fiasco

What fiasco, mate?

 

[Grauken]

strangeland fiasco

What fiasco, mate?

He didn't like the game

 

[Blackthorne]

AGS is much better now that it has been in the past, as far as availability for porting to other systems besides PC - but it definitely doesn't handle higher resolutions or 3D dev well, and I assume they're making this game using 3D models. That's pretty much a standard these days. I actually was offered a position on this game, but it was basically grunt work so I passed. I know that Roberta IS a full time dev on this project now, though.

 

[Neuromancer]

What things would you have to do for Ken?

 

[Aeschylus]

Color me skeptical on this one. Ken Williams is a manager, not a designer, and Roberta was -- although visionary and a hugely important figure in video game history -- ultimately one of the less talented game designers employed by Sierra. I mean, I'll still check it out if it's ever finished, but I will withhold any serious degree of optimism.

 

[Blackthorne]

What things would you have to do for Ken?

Me? I didn't want to get specific about it, because it may give insight into their project that isn't publicly known yet. I didn't sign an NDA or anything but I'd like to extend professional courtesy., I only had a small discussion with a programmer on the project. It's all speculation, honestly, based on what I was asked anyway. I'll let them reveal the details at GDC next month.

Personally, I stand in the skeptical department a bit, but only because I've been involved with my own projects and privvy to others. 10 years ago, I would have been excited but I've often found there is a great disconnect between older developers and what they think they should do vs. what their audience would want.