I wonder why Ken and Roberta Williams tend to be very underrated game developers

Jerimas

Jerimas

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I think they are wonderful people. And the creativity and imagination behind the early point and click games, or text adventures i just think are very cool for its time.
You may have heard of "King's Quest series". Though the more popular fan favorite is probably "Gabriel Knight". But i legit wonder why they managed to hit the dust sadly interms of Sierra just going, poof.
Really was one of the pioneer of early days video games, i just think they should be ranked higher than just forgotten. But what do you think?
 
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wtfNeedSignUp said:
While they had a lot of great contributions, they were too early to be remembered, especially as point and click games are dead for all intent and purpose. It doesn't help they don't fall into the "Rockstar" type of game dev like John Romero or the visionary type like Hideo Kojima.
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Hideo Kojima is.... basically just inventing how to make games feel more like movies. I kinda dont think he should be rated that high in my opinion.
But i will defend "Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake 1990 MSX2" game, as a great game however.
 
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Jerimas said:
Hideo Kojima is.... basically just inventing how to make games feel more like movies. I kinda dont think he should be rated that high in my opinion.
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Everyone has seen what happened now that he's been left off the leash.

As usual, the gamer "business = bad" mindset convinced them that this is an auteur who, if freed from the shackles of capitalistic pressures, would flourish and bring humanity into a new golden age of video entertainment.
Meanwhile the reality is that guys like Kojima perpetually have their heads in the clouds, and without someone telling them to shut up and ship the product, they'll just burn money while spiraling off into absurd, autistic esoterica.

He's a very weird, dorky man who seems to desperately want to be seen as cool by western celebrities. I'd put him at maybe a 6.5/10 on the respect scale.
 
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Jerimas said:
Hideo Kojima is.... basically just inventing how to make games feel more like movies. I kinda dont think he should be rated that high in my opinion.
But i will defend "Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake 1990 MSX2" game, as a great game however.
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I didn't say that what he was, but how he was perceived.

I don't want to make the thread derail, but it kinda illustrates the point that the couple is less interesting at the angle of what people say about them.
 
Their games are loved, they are just not considered public figures as much as, well, any one of the game developers you can think of by name. Romero, Carmack, even Howard. Sierra is still well regarded but the individual developers and designers don't spend time in the limelight.
 
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wtfNeedSignUp said:
I didn't say that what he was, but how he was perceived.

I don't want to make the thread derail, but it kinda illustrates the point that the couple is less interesting at the angle of what people say about them.
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To me. If MGS1 was going to the next level of game revolutionary design, instead of cinematics, which is obviously what Kojjima wanted.
Then it would look more like this game, interms of assault and sneaking combined of what this was pushing for
(well if we imagine it had more sneaking section, but overall for its time it was very good)

Though i legit am curious to how MGS1 would have been if it was a 3DO game exlusive, if 3DO didnt crash and burn as a console.
 
I hate to say it, but people get old, and they become for lack of a better word washed up. They get surpassed by younger people and kind of forgotten. It shouldn't happen but it does.
wtfNeedSignUp said:
While they had a lot of great contributions, they were too early to be remembered, especially as point and click games are dead for all intent and purpose. It doesn't help they don't fall into the "Rockstar" type of game dev like John Romero or the visionary type like Hideo Kojima.
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You got to be flashy and have personality.
 
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Jerimas said:
You may have heard of "King's Quest series". Though the more popular fan favorite is probably "Gabriel Knight". But i legit wonder why they managed to hit the dust sadly interms of Sierra just going, poof.
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Gabriel Knight is generally attributed to Jane Jensen who wrote it than Ken and Roberta \ Sierra who produced it.
You also forgot that they pioneered "movie games" (minimal and easy gameplay, plenty of high-quality - for that time - live action cinematics) with their Phantasmagoria.
 
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I'd say it's a combination of the PC gaming market always being more niche than the console market and Sierra were pretty much exclusively a PC publisher. As well as I think of Ken & Roberta more as that, publishers. Really good ones that had an eye for creative talent and could make cool things like the King's Quest series. Although I prefer the Laura Bow games more personally, especially The Dagger of Amon-Ra.
 
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Roberta Williams.

"female game developer"
roberta.png

augment said:
like when someone calls Neil Cuckman
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Cuckman gave Ellie the same last name in their honor: Ellie Williams.
 
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They retired in the late 90s and kept a low profile. Also, I dare say there's more nostalgia for the Lucasarts adventure games. They've aged considerably better than Sierra's.
 
They had a good decade or so and saw the writing on the wall that their games were becoming outmoded. They were in the midst of the dot-com bubble and probably knew this was their best chance to get out with the most capital. Though it may not seem like it they were still pretty big deals at the time, just not as appreciated because they aren't in the industry anymore. They have probably been living very quietly and comfortably with their family and their hundreds of millions of dollars.
 
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Jerimas said:
Hideo Kojima is.... basically just inventing how to make games feel more like movies. I kinda dont think he should be rated that high in my opinion.
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He shouldn't be rated at all. He's a hack, and proof that a depressingly large proportion of gamers have objectively shit taste.
 
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they arent fondly remembered because adventure games were never really that popular. its just that there were few alternatives when they started. to quote ken boy

"“When Sierra started,” said Ken in 2006, “it was a very different world from what we live in today. Floppy disks were just being invented. The little bit of software that was being sold was shipped on audio cassette. Most products didn’t have packaging. There were no computer magazines beyond a few hand-typed newsletters. This worked in our favor. At the time I was a 25-year-old ‘kid’ with no experience running a business. In today’s competitive world, we wouldn’t have survived six months. But at the time, we could get away with horrible packaging… and giving no thought whatsoever to things like brand image. At the time, I don’t think we had much more strategy than just to have fun.”
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as alternatives grew their market share decreased, but they never lost their true fans. sierra didnt go under because their products didnt sell. it went under becuase of white collar crime fraud bs.
she and Ken sold Sierra in 1996 to Comp-U-Card (CUC) in a deal that was soon revealed to be one of the biggest cases of financial fraud in the U.S. The details of the buyout are as fascinating as they are long and complicated, but the short story is this: a Sierra board member who worked at CUC falsely inflated his company’s worth, and CUC bought Sierra for a price it couldn’t afford. After the misdealings were revealed in an audit, stock prices plunged and CUC sold off its holdings as fast as it could. “It was the Enron of the ’90s.”
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my personal two cents on adventure games is i do not like moon logic and games that let you soft lock but dont let you know until several hours after you screwed yourself so i avoid adventure games in general. however, the homestar runner guys have been putting out adventure games that do a great job of not fucking with the player and they are dirt cheap on steam. so i dont think about them because i dont care for any of their stuff
 
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N1bbaN3rd said:
He shouldn't be rated at all. He's a hack, and proof that a depressingly large proportion of gamers have objectively shit taste.
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True. But Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake 1990 game is one exception. Unless you can point to an older Stealth game, that introduced sound giving your position away (Alert mode doesnt count). Might have been (Unintentionally revolutionary) for its time, but it is worth noting as the first to do it, and radar isnt a gimmick either like it is in 3D MGS games of 1 and 2 atleast.
But obviously the guy making games into movies from PS1 era and outwards, is an invention i dont like for sure. One of the reasons why i only have Nintendo Switch and GOG.com (well i have PS2 slim as a retro console).
But i had Xbox Series X for awhile, good system but i figured later, i rather own a system that makes games is all.
 
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