Sam Machkovech
SAN FRANCISCO – Legendary game programmer Ken Williams only took a moment to chew on my question. He and the equally famous game designer Roberta Williams had prepared themselves for the question by recounting a principle from their time at Sierra On-Line, the video game company they founded that revolutionized PC gaming in the 1980s and 1990s. .
Sierra games, they said, stood out because they were built “with blinders” from the rest of the game industry. No one worked at competitor companies; no one played competitors’ matches. And after each release of Sierra games, the individual sales record would determine the budget and scope of the lead designer’s next game.
I asked how that math works for their new out of the blue game announcement in March 2022, Colossal Cave 3D† This reinvention of the very first text adventure, the one that Roberta eventually modified into her own classic 1980 game mystery house, is about as detached from its designs in Sierra’s heyday as it can be, especially due to its shift to (optional) handheld VR adventures. Does Sierra’s basic tenet about budgets and production size still apply when a chief designer’s “last game” launched over 20 years ago?
Ken paused, then made a very different point. And he’s not necessarily blind to the game industry’s modern take on classic game makers.
“I’ve seen where Sierra alumni and others have made a comeback and played kind of a less-than-perfect game,” said Ken. ‘And we don’t want that. We’d rather throw it in the trash than do something that doesn’t…”
Here Roberta, as she did in our conversation, interrupted by saying, “It must be good.”
“It must be good,” Ken agreed.
“We are both very type A people”
Ken commented that this project is far from the time of Sierra having a megaton game sales company, and he was blunt: “For us it’s not really about the money. If the game sinks or swims, that doesn’t change our. So it’s really about, you know, honoring the legacy of the original designers.”
Before choosing a classic game to recreate, the Williamses weren’t necessarily focused on bringing back commercial game design, even as the COVID-19 pandemic left many lapsed creators and artists looking for things to do. Ken and Roberta each started the pandemic while working on their own books – his, the history of Sierra On-line; hers, a historical fiction plunge into mid-19th century Ireland – only to realize that global lockdowns hadn’t necessarily been lifted by the time they finished their projects. “We’re both very type A people,” Roberta said. “We have to deal with challenges and doing†
Ken finished his book while Roberta was packing her own book, and during that overlap period, Roberta found Ken filling their home theater screen with game programming interfaces and tutorial videos. “I finally questioned him” after seeing this trend repeat for a few days, Roberta said.
After discussing Ken’s decision to learn the Unity programming language, she gestured at Ken. “Explain your game design,” she said.
Ken paused, then said, “No.”
Rather than repeating Roberta’s brief explanation (“he wanted to keep his old programming skills fresh”), Ken said his return to programming started with educational software. “If you’re a kid now and don’t know how to program when you grow up, you’re going to be in big trouble,” Ken said. “We’re going away from factory work. So I like the idea of teaching kids to code because I’m a programmer. I think everyone should code.”
So he started working on a possible Sierra series revival dr. brain-“and [Roberta] said that was a stupid idea,’ he joked. There was a laughing back and forth:
“No I didn’t say that!”
“Well, that’s the impression you gave me!”
Ken then looked at me and said, “She was totally down.” Longing to get my eye contact back, Roberta looked at me and said, “No, I just said, ‘Is it fun?'”
