THE DEATH OF SIERRA ... Long Live Sierra !! - Letter from Ken Williams
Sean Tudor
sacking of most of the Sierra staff. Very sad days indeed. Hopefully
we may yet see the Babylon 5 game completed some time in the near
future.
---QUOTE---
February 23, 1999 - Open Letter from Sierra On-Line Founder Ken
Williams
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear former Sierra employees:
Roberta and I wish to express our deepest sympathies for the recent
loss of your jobs. Hopefully, it will not be long before you resume
work at Sierra in Seattle, or at some other company...in Oakhurst, or
elsewhere. According to tradition, I'm supposed to say something
uplifting and motivational to help everyone feel better.
Unfortunately, I have failed at this task. There is really nothing
good that can be said. This is a sad ending to Sierra's twenty-year
operating history in Oakhurst, which at one time, represented over 550
Oakhurst-based employees. This story should have had a happy ending,
but instead has had a long string of bad news concluding with the
shutdown yesterday of all of Sierra's Oakhurst-based product
development activities.
The problems began with the move of corporate to Seattle. The move to
Seattle was mandated for several reasons, primarily due to the
difficulty we were having recruiting senior management staff and
software engineers. The relocation, although it was painful for
Oakhurst, was instrumental in our tremendous growth from 1993 through
1996. I remain convinced that this relocation was the right decision
for Sierra, and that we would not have prospered without it.
I can't say the same about either the sale of The ImagiNation Network
(INN) in 1993, or the sale of Sierra itself in 1996. When Sierra
started INN in 1991, it was a decade ahead of its time. After
investing millions in INN, Sierra found that it did not have the
financial resources to support INN's continued operations. In 1993,
AT&T sought aggressively to acquire INN, promising to market the
service and grow the company. Unfortunately, AT&T lost interest in INN
and sold it to AOL, who to my great disappointment, shut INN down.
Sierra, as you know, was purchased by CUC International in 1996.
Because CUC was offering to buy the company at a price roughly 90%
higher than it was trading, the decision was out of management's
hands. At the time of the purchase, we did believe that through
consolidation with several Sierra competitors (Blizzard, Knowledge
Adventure, Davidson and others), Sierra would become a much stronger
company. We had good reason to believe that the acquisition would
cause us to grow faster, not shrink. Unfortunately, CUC elected to
transfer control of the company to Davidson, and shut down several
groups at Sierra. Later, as we all know, CUC was merged with another
company, HFS, to form the Cendant corporation, with roughly 12,000
employees. A few months after this merger it was discovered that
someone, or possibly some group of people, within the former CUC
organization had been fraudulently preparing financial statements. The
actions of this handful of people, who shall hopefully get their due,
caused the plunge in Cendant's stock price, and wiped out the net
worth of many HFS and CUC employees, including many of you, as well as
much of my own. Cendant was sued by its shareholders, CUC's former
management team was terminated and the decision was made to sell the
software business. It should surprise no one that morale suffered
through all of this anarchy, and although I have not seen Sierra's
financials for several years, my assumption is that the recent
consolidation of operations is driven by a quest for restored
profitability and stability.
If this story were written as a book, the publisher might seek to
classify it as "Fantasy", "Science Fiction" or even "Horror". It is
much too outrageous to be true. But the bad news is that these events
really did happen.
I console myself in the following way, and perhaps it will help you to
cope with what has occurred. Let's imagine that a stranger had walked
up to any of us, on the street, in 1979, and said: "Would you like to
move to one of the greatest cities on earth? While you are there, you
can play a key role in creating a company that just about everyone
will know and respect. Your grandchildren will be amazed when they
learn that you once worked there. You will be the envy of your peers,
because they will know that your team created the largest collection
of hits ever to come from one company. There will even be years when
you will have played a role in over half the products on the
industries top ten lists! You will be surrounded by incredibly
intelligent, hard working people, who will work 20+ hours per day when
it takes it to get the job done. And, you will have more fun than you
ever thought possible. There's only one catch though. This will only
last for twenty years." Even knowing it wouldn't last forever I would
have followed that stranger anywhere. I'm disappointed that it didn't
last forever, but, a 20 year ride on the greatest roller coaster on
earth beats the heck out of life in the slow lane any day. Life may
never be the same, but it also isn't over, and we all have some great
memories we shall never forget.
Good luck, and I miss you all.
Ken Williams
www.talkspot.com
ke...@worldstream.com
---ENDQUOTE---
Jimbo Barber
years ago when his business sense overrode his common sense and he started
to allow games to be published before they were finished. (Did it start
with Outpost? I don't remember.) In my mind, Sierra was one of the first
to start doing that with many different titles, and it brought Sierra down.
I will always associate the fall of Sierra with the management of Ken
Williams. The company simply got too big for him to handle.
Sean Tudor wrote in message <36d53e8e...@news.ozemail.com.au>...
>The following is a letter posted by Ken Williams concerning the recent
>sacking of most of the Sierra staff. Very sad days indeed. Hopefully
>we may yet see the Babylon 5 game completed some time in the near
>future.
>
>---QUOTE---
>
>February 23, 1999 - Open Letter from Sierra On-Line Founder Ken
>Williams
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
>
>Dear former Sierra employees:
>
>Roberta and I wish to express our deepest sympathies for the recent
>loss of your jobs. Hopefully, it will not be long before you resume
blah, blah, blah...
Greg Cisko
personally kept away from Sierra games (except Nascar Racing).
I saw the sale as a bad thing at the time regardless of what Ken
tried to hype in their newsletter/catalog/magazine.
--
Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.
cisko [AT] ix [DOT] netcom [DOT] com
Olaf
memo. Their 'utilities' are some of the most obnoxious applets ever
installed by a game publisher on a customer's desktop. Seriously, it sucks
when people lose their jobs, but fuck, that company was not very responsive
and released plenty of DOGS in its day. I find his last paragraph highly
amusing. I cant think of a single Sierra game that I would put on my top 10
list.
olaf
Sean Tudor wrote in message <36d53e8e...@news.ozemail.com.au>...
>The following is a letter posted by Ken Williams concerning the recent
>sacking of most of the Sierra staff.
>I console myself in the following way, and perhaps it will help you to
Scott Benner
: Their 'utilities' are some of the most obnoxious applets ever
: installed by a game publisher on a customer's desktop.
Agreed. In theory, its a great idea, but it's user-toxic in how it installs
itself everywhere... and you never find the update you want...
: I cant think of a single Sierra game that I would put on my top 10 list.
Come on, you can't tell me that the first time you played "Kings Quest", you
didn't enjoy it... or did you enter the computer scene afterwards? In the
beginning, there was Zork, and everyone loved it, but Kings Quest finally
brought the adventure genre to color graphics.. Police Quest basically
spawned all the modern SWAT games today... And the Space Quest series?
You can't compare the early games with modern ones; the technology has changed
way too much between the days of CGA and today. I'm just saying for their
time, Sierra had the some of the best games on the market.
-- Scott
ben...@rpi.edu
The men sat sipping their tea in silence. After a while, one of them
said, "Life is like a bowl of sour cream."
"Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other. "Why?"
"How should I know? What am I, a philosopher?"
Tesiae
> list.
>
> olaf
Uhm.. what about Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, the
finest adventure game ever made?
Damocles
>
>: I cant think of a single Sierra game that I would put on my top 10 list.
>
>Come on, you can't tell me that the first time you played "Kings Quest", you
>didn't enjoy it... or did you enter the computer scene afterwards? In the
>beginning, there was Zork, and everyone loved it, but Kings Quest finally
>brought the adventure genre to color graphics.. Police Quest basically
>spawned all the modern SWAT games today... And the Space Quest series?
I hated King's Quest and I hated Space Quest. Leisure Suit Larry was
okay, but the sequel was maddening.
>
--------------
'Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine.'
- Patti Smith, "Gloria"
Damocles
>> I find his last paragraph highly
>> amusing. I cant think of a single Sierra game that I would put on my top 10
>> list.
>>
>> olaf
>
>Uhm.. what about Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, the
>finest adventure game ever made?
The finest adventure game is still an adventure game. Bleh...
Mark Asher
>On 25 Feb 1999 19:30:03 GMT, Tesiae <ord...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>>> I find his last paragraph highly
>>> amusing. I cant think of a single Sierra game that I would put on my
top 10
>>> list.
>>>
>>> olaf
>>
>>Uhm.. what about Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, the
>>finest adventure game ever made?
>
>The finest adventure game is still an adventure game. Bleh...
Heh -- they did have a nice holiday season. Half-Life, Starseige: Tribes,
Return to Krondor, Mask of Eternity, Caesar 3, Red Baron 2 3D, etc.
Mark Asher
Damocles
wrote:
>>>
>>>Uhm.. what about Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, the
>>>finest adventure game ever made?
>>
>>The finest adventure game is still an adventure game. Bleh...
>
>
>Heh -- they did have a nice holiday season. Half-Life, Starseige: Tribes,
>Return to Krondor, Mask of Eternity, Caesar 3, Red Baron 2 3D, etc.
>
>Mark Asher
>
Do Dynamix and Impressions still have any separate existence under
Sierra? Red Baron comes from the Dynamix line and Caesar from
Impressions.
Don Marsh
is STILL talking about Grand Prix Legends (developed by Papyrus, but
still published by Seirra).
Mark Asher wrote:
> Heh -- they did have a nice holiday season. Half-Life, Starseige: Tribes,
> Return to Krondor, Mask of Eternity, Caesar 3, Red Baron 2 3D, etc.
>
> Mark Asher
Don Marsh
--
"mmmmmmm.....beeeerrrrr...." - Homer Simpson
Cathryn Mataga
> Unfortunately, CUC elected to
> transfer control of the company to Davidson, and shut down several
> groups at Sierra. Later, as we all know, CUC was merged with another
> company, HFS, to form the Cendant corporation, with roughly 12,000
> employees. A few months after this merger it was discovered that
> someone, or possibly some group of people, within the former CUC
> organization had been fraudulently preparing financial statements. The
> actions of this handful of people, who shall hopefully get their due,
> caused the plunge in Cendant's stock price, and wiped out the net
> worth of many HFS and CUC employees, including many of you, as well as
> much of my own. Cendant was sued by its shareholders, CUC's former
> management team was terminated and the decision was made to sell the
> software business.
So, the software business is being sold, then? But, he also says that
some employees are going to get jobs up in Seattle. Some kind of software
development continues in Seattle, then, I guess. Right? I assume they're
looking for a buyer still?
Mark Asher
>>>>Uhm.. what about Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, the
>>>>finest adventure game ever made?
>>>
>>>The finest adventure game is still an adventure game. Bleh...
>>
>>
>>Heh -- they did have a nice holiday season. Half-Life, Starseige: Tribes,
>>Return to Krondor, Mask of Eternity, Caesar 3, Red Baron 2 3D, etc.
>>
>>Mark Asher
>>
>
>Do Dynamix and Impressions still have any separate existence under
>Sierra? Red Baron comes from the Dynamix line and Caesar from
>Impressions.
Yes, they have managed to retain their autonomy, although many of the
longtime Dynamix people have left.
Look for more news tomorrow. This story is still breaking.
Mark Asher
Tron_13
sorry about a company that didn't realize "Beta-tester" and "customer" were
actually two different things.
The long list of Sierra software that has come out in a less-then-ready
state is deplorable. If Mr. Williams happens to see this mesage, he might
want to browse the "why I hate Firaxis..." thread for tips and pointers on
how to make the buying public happy.
I do see hope though - Sierra voluntarily offered a full rebate for their
Football99 to consumers who felt like they got a bad product. Hopefully,
things change there. Sierra really can't go much lower then it is right now.
Pax
Trev
LocDogg
computer games don't sell 100,000 copies that often having 1 phenominal
product isn't good enough, it takes committment.
For instance, look at id. Their games are overpriced, and really who thinks
that Heretic was all that great in its own right? But people stuck with the
company because 1) A solid product line all around 2) A committment to
excellence 3) They had the hot games for the time and milked it best
So to Sierra, so long... Adventures of The Longbow will forever live as the
first game I owned and I will always remember you by that game rather
than... oh..... SODA or ummmm OUTPOST....
Ian Firth
> I console myself in the following way, and perhaps it will help you to
> cope with what has occurred. Let's imagine that a stranger had walked
> up to any of us, on the street, in 1979, and said: "Would you like to
> move to one of the greatest cities on earth? While you are there, you
> can play a key role in creating a company that just about everyone
> will know and respect.
Respect ?
I lost all respect for Sierra 3 years ago when they started installing
stuff on my computer that I did not wish installed.
Still, a sad story, as this industry gets more and more fucked up.
Glad I still have only 2 employees.
--
Regards,
Ian Firth - ian at divsoft dot com
----------------------------------------
Diversions Software, Inc.
http://www.divsoft.com
Ben & Karen
Olaf wrote:
> Sierra has shit customer service too, I didnt see that mentioned in the
> memo.
To be fair, not many companies will accept returns on retail purchases, within
thirty days, for any reason at all. Most companies do not accept returns on
retail purchases- or even direct purchases- at all. Sierra does.
> Their 'utilities' are some of the most obnoxious applets ever
> installed by a game publisher on a customer's desktop.
This I agree with. They need to get rid of those Sierra utilities- they are
extremely irritating.
> I find his last paragraph highly
> amusing. I cant think of a single Sierra game that I would put on my top 10
> list.
Here I disagree again. There are a number of good developers under the Sierra
label. Within the past year alone I would put Half-Life, Caesar 3, Grand Prix
Legends, and Starsiege Tribes on my top 10 list. Upcoming games that look
promising include Babylon 5, Homeworld, Gabriel Knight 3, and Pharoah.
-Ben
Grimfarrow
Tron_13 wrote:
> I feel for the people who have lost their jobs, but I really can't feel
> sorry about a company that didn't realize "Beta-tester" and "customer" were
> actually two different things.
>
> The long list of Sierra software that has come out in a less-then-ready
> state is deplorable. If Mr. Williams happens to see this mesage, he might
> want to browse the "why I hate Firaxis..." thread for tips and pointers on
> how to make the buying public happy.
Umm.....Ken Williams hasn't worked at Sierra for over 4 years.
He sold it LONG ago.
I'm surprised people STILL connect Ken Williams with the
present Sierra.
> I do see hope though - Sierra voluntarily offered a full rebate for their
> Football99 to consumers who felt like they got a bad product. Hopefully,
> things change there. Sierra really can't go much lower then it is right now.
Well, you'll be happy then to know that pretty much the whole NFL
Footbal Pro 2000 was fired. 22 out of 30, in fact. The eight are now
contemplating their move to Bellevue.
Which means that NO ONE is working
on the game now. If the upper management at Sierra wants another
NFL Footbal Pro, they'll have to hire another team to do it.
Likely? No. As the Sierra President Dave Grenewetzki said,
"we're re-evaluating Sierra's sports line". Which, frankly, will
probably mean that there won't be one.
Grimfarrow
>
> Pax
> Trev
Grimfarrow
Grimfarrow wrote:
> Tron_13 wrote:
>
> > I feel for the people who have lost their jobs, but I really can't feel
> > sorry about a company that didn't realize "Beta-tester" and "customer" were
> > actually two different things.
> >
> > The long list of Sierra software that has come out in a less-then-ready
> > state is deplorable. If Mr. Williams happens to see this mesage, he might
> > want to browse the "why I hate Firaxis..." thread for tips and pointers on
> > how to make the buying public happy.
>
> Umm.....Ken Williams hasn't worked at Sierra for over 4 years.
> He sold it LONG ago.
> I'm surprised people STILL connect Ken Williams with the
> present Sierra.
<snip>
Oooopppps! Mistake!
I actually meant "for over TWO years". It hasn't been that long! :)
Grimfarrow
Christopher Reid
>
> I hated King's Quest and I hated Space Quest. Leisure Suit Larry was
> okay, but the sequel was maddening.
Aww.. everybody loved Space Quest..
Chris Reid Wing Commander CIC
Chri...@wcnews.com http://www.wcnews.com
David Lumley
and when TF2 is realesed that also
Olaf wrote in message
<6C7436D1416724DE.17CA1E4A...@library-proxy.airnews.ne
t>...
>Sierra has shit customer service too, I didnt see that mentioned in the
>memo. Their 'utilities' are some of the most obnoxious applets ever
>installed by a game publisher on a customer's desktop. Seriously, it sucks
>when people lose their jobs, but fuck, that company was not very responsive
>and released plenty of DOGS in its day. I find his last paragraph highly
>amusing. I cant think of a single Sierra game that I would put on my top
10
>list.
>
>olaf
>
>Sean Tudor wrote in message <36d53e8e...@news.ozemail.com.au>...
>>The following is a letter posted by Ken Williams concerning the recent
>>sacking of most of the Sierra staff.
>
A Shelton
>higher than it was trading, the decision was out of management's
>hands. At the time of the purchase, we did believe that through
>consolidation with several Sierra competitors (Blizzard, Knowledge
^^^^^^^^
>Adventure, Davidson and others), Sierra would become a much stronger
>company. We had good reason to believe that the acquisition would
>cause us to grow faster, not shrink. Unfortunately, CUC elected to
What a horrible, horrible possibility...
--
Apparently I'm insane, but I'm one of the happy kinds. (dilbert)
Andrew Shelton ashe...@yallara.cs.rmit.edu.au
GCS(2.1)-d+H+sw+v-C++UL+>L+++E-N++WV--R++tv-b+D++e+fr*y?
Krud
>sacking of most of the Sierra staff. Very sad days indeed. Hopefully
>we may yet see the Babylon 5 game completed some time in the near
>future.
I wonder how many millions of dollars the Williams got for Sierra?
-Krud
joelm...@geocities.com
ashe...@cs.rmit.edu.au (A Shelton) wrote:
> o...@two.com (Sean Tudor) writes:
>
> >higher than it was trading, the decision was out of management's
> >hands. At the time of the purchase, we did believe that through
> >consolidation with several Sierra competitors (Blizzard, Knowledge
> >Adventure, Davidson and others), Sierra would become a much stronger
> >company. We had good reason to believe that the acquisition would
> >cause us to grow faster, not shrink. Unfortunately, CUC elected to
>
Possibility? It happened about a year and a half ago. Just because they
kept a seperate name doesn't mean they weren't all part of the same
company. Branding counts for something with computer games.
Joel Mathis
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Christoph Nahr
>Respect ?
>I lost all respect for Sierra 3 years ago when they started installing
>stuff on my computer that I did not wish installed.
>
>Still, a sad story, as this industry gets more and more fucked up.
>
>Glad I still have only 2 employees.
Three people working at the same company? You're behind the times,
man! You should break up your company into divisions. Call them
DivStudios and HuntPark and place one employee in each. Make sure one
is on the west coast and the other on the east coast. Even better,
put them on different continents. As for yourself, rent the most
expensive office in a city of your choice (but as far away from both
divisions as possible) and call yourself "Managing Supervising
Director-in-Chief of All Diversions Divisions."
Hey, the managers at Interplay and Sierra thought breaking up
productive companies into tiny little divisions was a great idea, and
they have taken all those management courses so they must be right!
Bill Gates is really stupid for keeping all his company in one place.
That's why Interplay is flush with money and Microsoft is dirt-poor.
--
Chris Nahr (cnahr@ibmnet, insert dot after ibm to reply by e-mail)
Please don't e-mail me if you post! PGP key at wwwkeys.ch.pgp.net
Olaf
then there wasnt a whole lot of games to choose from. I never played any of
the Sierra 'quest' games. I did play a Leisure suit Larry game though.
About the only adventure game of any type that I liked was Neuromancer.
That game rocked.
olaf
Scott Benner wrote in message <7b44ae$l4m$1...@newsfeeds.rpi.edu>...
>Come on, you can't tell me that the first time you played "Kings Quest",
you
>didn't enjoy it... or did you enter the computer scene afterwards? In the
>beginning, there was Zork, and everyone loved it, but Kings Quest finally
>brought the adventure genre to color graphics.. Police Quest basically
>spawned all the modern SWAT games today... And the Space Quest series?
>
Olaf
olaf
Tesiae wrote in message <36D5A4C4...@worldnet.att.net>...
>> I find his last paragraph highly
>> amusing. I cant think of a single Sierra game that I would put on my top
10
>> list.
>>
>> olaf
>
Olaf
olaf
Damocles wrote in message <36d7ac17...@news.rdc1.va.home.com>...
>On 25 Feb 1999 19:30:03 GMT, Tesiae <ord...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>>> I find his last paragraph highly
>>> amusing. I cant think of a single Sierra game that I would put on my
top 10
>>> list.
>>>
>>> olaf
>>
>>Uhm.. what about Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, the
>>finest adventure game ever made?
>
Olaf
though. The single player game was great, and the marines were badass. But
the gameplay just PLUMMETED once I got to the alien levels. I never
finished the game actually. As far as multiplayer HL goes, well, unless you
are on a LAN or are a glutton for punishment, the MP sucked. I had 128K
ISDN and the lag was as bad as modem lag on Q2.
olaf
David Lumley wrote in message
<7b4ofv$cc$1...@reader1.reader.news.ozemail.net>...
jo...@josho.com
Considering that the designer of Neuromancer, Bruce Balfour, went on to do
a great adventure game for Sierra, maybe you should've reconsidered!
--Josh
In article
<3B974D095F327B91.19D7432A...@library-proxy.airnews.net
>, "Olaf" <ol...@texas.net> wrote:
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
Christoph Nahr
>I wonder how many millions of dollars the Williams got for Sierra?
I wonder how many cents he is going to provide for his oldest
employees who made him rich and were just sacked by the new owners?
Or did they all own Sierra shares?
Karmo Talts
: a great adventure game for Sierra, maybe you should've reconsidered!
K
Robert Roseman
Olaf wrote in message ...
>Again, I hate adventure games.
>
>olaf
>
This is being cross-posted to advise and discuss the demise of Sierra, NOT
start an 'action vs. adventure' war. Crawl back under your rock, olaf!
Robert Roseman
Sean Tudor wrote in message <36d53e8e...@news.ozemail.com.au>...
>The following is a letter posted by Ken Williams concerning the recent
>sacking of most of the Sierra staff. Very sad days indeed. Hopefully
>we may yet see the Babylon 5 game completed some time in the near
>future.
>
If Ken & Roberta Williams no longer head Sierra, then, in my mind, Sierra
no longer exists!
Ken was my idol back when I was learning 6502 assembler(appleII, 'Cranston
Manor' at the time). Roberta's stories were lots of fun. I didn't know the
situation or I would not have placed that order to Sierra last week.
(KQ1-7, GK1-2)
To Ken & Roberta Williams and all the crew that was the real Sierra, THANK
YOU!!! Sierra will be missed.
Bob R
Robert Roseman
Ian Firth wrote in message ...<snip>
>
>Still, a sad story, as this industry gets more and more fucked up.
Amen.
>
>Glad I still have only 2 employees.
Want a third? I know a little 'assembler' :-)
Ditto what Chris N (tongue in cheek(?)) said! I could be your west coast
division. :-)
byte ya later,
Bob R
jo...@josho.com
Nope, Bruce designed THE DAGGER OF AMON RA (and, later, OUTPOST).
--Josh
Kevin B. O'Brien
Feb 1999 18:58:17 GMT):
>Considering that the designer of Neuromancer, Bruce Balfour, went on to do
>a great adventure game for Sierra, maybe you should've reconsidered!
Then again, he was responsible for Outpost.
--
Kevin B. O'Brien TANSTAAFL
ko...@ix.netcom.com
"There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're
talking about." -- John von Neumann
Help fight SPAM. Join CAUCE. http://www.cauce.org/
Mary Jo DiBella
>
> I feel for the people who have lost their jobs, but I really can't feel
> sorry about a company that didn't realize "Beta-tester" and "customer" were
> actually two different things.
>
The people who are suffering now aren't the ones who made the decisions
you are annoyed with. I have beta tested for several publishers (who
shall remain unnamed) but in my experience, it's not at all unusual for
senior management to force a game out the door when virtually everyone
involved is saying 'It's NOT READY!'. Then customers complain about the
poor job done by the developers and testers who had no control over the
final decision. In the end, if money gets tight, the developers lose
their jobs and the senior managers who caused the problems hang onto
their 'golden parachutes'. Sad but true...
Unfortunately, one of the publishers I tested for, who had what I'd call
*the right* attitude about this (I.E. we don't release it until it's as
clean as we can get it) has since gone under. Another one whose
attitude is 'The release date is here so out it goes' is still selling
games, often in what I'd term 'questionable' condition. What this says
about the state of the marketplace is problematical...
I don't really know the solution to this, but my guess is that very soon
we'll all be doing the majority of our gaming on consoles. This isn't
necessarily a bad thing, IMHO, and at least it forces publishers to do a
reasonable amount of testing, since you can't tell console owners to
download a patch.
I'm sad at the loss of these great gaming houses though. Sierra is
gone...who woulda thunk it...8-(
MJ
pnatta
>Another one whose attitude is 'The release date is here so out it goes'
>is still selling games, often in what I'd term 'questionable' condition.
You got that right. I beta tested a series of ancient tactical games for a
large company, and though myself and others literally begged that certain
changes/additions be made early in development, we got a lot of "nope, no
time for that" and "it's got to go out soon" baloney. So the reviews show up
in the mags, and I'll be damned!......there's the same negative points and
suggestions the testers made months beforehand. It was so frustrating it
turned me off to any more beta testing in the future.
BTW.......some of my best gaming dollars were spent on Sierra games. I
can't knock Sierra because I got a lot of gaming bang for my buck, despite a
few turkeys along the way. No game company is perfect, or ever will be.
Phil Natta
Dark Fiber
<Bad...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
yes. ignoring the crap posted by olaf, I'm saddened at the demise of
Sierra. They were groundbreakers and leaders for a long time. If not
for them we may have not had "3d" adventures games as early as we did,
afterall, they "created" the genre. Their apple games were also very
good, Wizard and the Princess, etc. They were lucky they got in on
the ground floor for game development (sierra, origin, ssi, etc).
like all good things, there must come an end.
i have some very fond memories of sierra games (apple // + pc).
thanks ken, roberta, the two geezers from andromeda, chris iden, jeff
stephenson, et al.
-df
Dark Fiber <ent...@ihug.com.au>
http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~entropy
Sazan Aisu Fanfiction Archive co-ordinator
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Ginza/7478/
Write ya own OS FAQ
http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~entropy/os/
Ian Firth
says...
> Three people working at the same company? You're behind the times,
> man! You should break up your company into divisions. Call them
> DivStudios and HuntPark and place one employee in each. Make sure one
> is on the west coast and the other on the east coast. Even better,
> put them on different continents. As for yourself, rent the most
> expensive office in a city of your choice (but as far away from both
> divisions as possible) and call yourself "Managing Supervising
> Director-in-Chief of All Diversions Divisions."
Thanks Chris, that was beautiful :)
Actually one of the 2 is myself, I miscounted.
Ian Firth
Bad...@worldnet.att.net says...
> Want a third? I know a little 'assembler' :-)
Can you take a completely unrelated subject with a $1.5M licensing fee,
and convert it into a PinBall game ?
Gus Smedstad
>
> The people who are suffering now aren't the ones who made the decisions
> you are annoyed with. I have beta tested for several publishers (who
> shall remain unnamed) but in my experience, it's not at all unusual for
> senior management to force a game out the door when virtually everyone
> involved is saying 'It's NOT READY!'. Then customers complain about the
> poor job done by the developers and testers who had no control over the
> final decision. In the end, if money gets tight, the developers lose
> their jobs and the senior managers who caused the problems hang onto
> their 'golden parachutes'. Sad but true...
In some cases, we quit and go to work for companies that don't do that
to our games.
- Gus
A.I. programmer and general handyman on Heroes III
A New World Computing employee
Former employee of Interplay
Terry McKelvey
Gus Smedstad wrote in message <36D84A2A...@earthlink.net>...
Let me guess, MAX2, right? I wondered why you ended up at New World
Computing and thought that disgust over the way MAX2 was pushed out the door
prematurely was responsible.
Terry McKelvey
MJ DiBella
deal, and oh by the way, IMHO M&M6 should have gotten those 'RPG of the
Year' awards that went to Baldur's Gate. I believe M&M6 lost, not because
it was a poorer game, but because it came out in the Spring and Baldur's
Gate, which came out at year end, was fresh in the reviewers' minds.
Mind you, I'm enjoying BG, and I think it's a fine game, but it has some
flaws that simply weren't there in M&M6...which was IMHO virtually
flawless. Can't wait to see the next one.
You know, I normally don't play strategy games, but a friend has literally
*ordered* me to buy Heroes 3 <grin> because she thinks I will love it. I
respect her opinion quite a lot so I believe I will do so...this week, yes?
MJ
Gus Smedstad <gus...@earthlink.net> wrote in article
Robert Roseman
MJ DiBella wrote in message
<01be633c$76b65140$6308...@mojo.rochester.rr.com>...
>
>You know, I normally don't play strategy games, but a friend has literally
>*ordered* me to buy Heroes 3 <grin> because she thinks I will love it. I
>respect her opinion quite a lot so I believe I will do so...this week,
yes?
>
Just remember to make a backup of your 'adventure' brain cells, lest you
risk corrupting them. :-)
David Lumley
of the game. I play on the internet using a 56.6k modem and i get great
results. i get a ping of about 200 and it runs as smooth as quake2
multiplayer ever did but of course it is not as good as quake1 multiplayer
speed. You are using the hl1008 patch arn't you? I also play it regularly
at LAN games and im a member of the Russian Front mod team.
Anyway seeya
Olaf wrote in message
<19B2BB2DEA484E80.3B3B1031...@library-proxy.airnews.ne
t>...
Robert Schmidt
http://members.tripod.com/~reft/gotwe.htm
We spent weeks playing this. I will always remember Sierra for this
game and the early Quests.
I played King's Quest I from bootable floppies for weeks, and finished
it a couple of times, before somebody told me how to actually *save* a
game in progress. When I learnt that, somehow some of the fun went
away... :-)
robert
Mary Jo DiBella
>
> snip
> >Another one whose attitude is 'The release date is here so out it goes'
> >is still selling games, often in what I'd term 'questionable' condition.
> snip
>
> You got that right. I beta tested a series of ancient tactical games for a
> large company, and though myself and others literally begged that certain
> changes/additions be made early in development, we got a lot of "nope, no
> time for that" and "it's got to go out soon" baloney. So the reviews show up
> in the mags, and I'll be damned!......there's the same negative points and
> suggestions the testers made months beforehand. It was so frustrating it
> turned me off to any more beta testing in the future.
And don't you love the way the reviews always ask 'Why was this missed
during beta test?' Like they really think the testers have the
slightest bit of control over what gets fixed/changed?
My experience was similar to yours. Reviewers savaged the games over
things we'd found during beta, things we'd begged the company to fix.
Once I had a developer say, in response to some of my testing reports,
'You are just too old to recognize a good game when you see it' (I am
49). The game tanked, big time, for many of the same reasons I'd
written up.
MJ
Lyle Craver
<feld...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>To be fair, not many companies will accept returns on retail purchases, within
>thirty days, for any reason at all. Most companies do not accept returns on
>retail purchases- or even direct purchases- at all. Sierra does.
Then they obviously changed their tune after my time - I
boycotted them for a long time after they refused to replace a
bad floppy (Wizard and the Princess). I didn't touch them again
till Earth Orbit Stations which was a great concept wrecked by a
dud AI - which I only got to encounter after they patched the
program 10 months after I bought it. EOS v1.0 hung the computer
consistently and repeatably - I'd love to see them try the game
again...but that's obviously never to be.
My final encounter with Sierra was with KQ5 & 6 which I bought
from a remainder bin for $5 each - couldn't get into it
particularly after they refused to run unless I took my video
back to 16 colors :)
So I'm very sorry but can't give many tears for Sierra.
------------------------------------
To reply to me remove 1 from address
Thomas Diederich
Lyle Craver schrieb in Nachricht <36db7fd6.303439218@news>...
>On Thu, 25 Feb 1999 22:58:28 -0600, Ben & Karen
><feld...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>Then they obviously changed their tune after my time - I
>boycotted them for a long time after they refused to replace a
>bad floppy (Wizard and the Princess).
it. I called Sierra Germany whether they could send me the older DOS version
instead if I send them my original CD. Not only did they do this (sending
the DOS CD+Add-On-Disk), but they sent me the whole DOS game in its original
package, including the maps, manuals etc., all this in only 1 week. Wow,
that I do call customer support.
Regards, Thomas
Gus Smedstad
> Let me guess, MAX2, right? I wondered why you ended up at New World
> Computing and thought that disgust over the way MAX2 was pushed out the door
> prematurely was responsible.
Got it in one. I'm happier working on turn-based games, anyway.
- Gus
Gus Smedstad
>
> I'm glad you found a home at a good company. I respect New World a great
> deal, and oh by the way, IMHO M&M6 should have gotten those 'RPG of the
> Year' awards that went to Baldur's Gate. I believe M&M6 lost, not because
> it was a poorer game, but because it came out in the Spring and Baldur's
> Gate, which came out at year end, was fresh in the reviewers' minds.
I haven't played Baldur's Gate yet, so I can't honestly compared the
two. I played M&M 6 to death. Even started it over after finishing,
with an all sorcerer / druid party, but didn't finish with the second
group.
> Mind you, I'm enjoying BG, and I think it's a fine game, but it has some
> flaws that simply weren't there in M&M6...which was IMHO virtually
> flawless. Can't wait to see the next one.
Heroes III should be pretty much the same way. We mastered it with no
known bugs (which was quite a nice change of pace for me).
> You know, I normally don't play strategy games, but a friend has literally
> *ordered* me to buy Heroes 3 <grin> because she thinks I will love it. I
> respect her opinion quite a lot so I believe I will do so...this week, yes?
Yes, it should be in stores today or tomorrow, I understand. If you're
an RPG fan, you may enjoy it. The Heroes games have always had a strong
RPG flavor to them, and Heroes 3 has even more elements (i.e. simple
Fed-Ex quests, bios of the individual heroes) of that nature.
If you're not all that fond of strategy games, you may find that you
enjoy user maps quite a bit. A surprising (to me) number of user maps
for Heroes II have no strategy at all to them - they're strictly
story-driven.
- Gus
AI programmer and general handyman on Heroes III
New World Computing
Opinions expressed are my own, yadda yadda.
Damocles
<gus...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Mind you, I'm enjoying BG, and I think it's a fine game, but it has some
>> flaws that simply weren't there in M&M6...which was IMHO virtually
>> flawless. Can't wait to see the next one.
>
>Heroes III should be pretty much the same way. We mastered it with no
>known bugs (which was quite a nice change of pace for me).
>
>> You know, I normally don't play strategy games, but a friend has literally
>> *ordered* me to buy Heroes 3 <grin> because she thinks I will love it. I
>> respect her opinion quite a lot so I believe I will do so...this week, yes?
>
>Yes, it should be in stores today or tomorrow, I understand. If you're
>an RPG fan, you may enjoy it. The Heroes games have always had a strong
>RPG flavor to them, and Heroes 3 has even more elements (i.e. simple
>Fed-Ex quests, bios of the individual heroes) of that nature.
>
>If you're not all that fond of strategy games, you may find that you
>enjoy user maps quite a bit. A surprising (to me) number of user maps
>for Heroes II have no strategy at all to them - they're strictly
>story-driven.
>
> - Gus
> AI programmer and general handyman on Heroes III
> New World Computing
> Opinions expressed are my own, yadda yadda.
Hi Gus. I thought you'd want to know that your post finally pushed me
off the fence and convinced me to go out and buy the game when it gets
here. It sounds like there's enough of a difference in basic gameplay
to get, especially since I enjoyed HOMM 2 a lot anyway.
--------------
'Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine.'
- Patti Smith, "Gloria"
Weasel
wrote:
>>To Ken & Roberta Williams and all the crew that was the real Sierra, THANK
>>YOU!!! Sierra will be missed.
Hmm........indeed a sad day. I have many fond memories of the earlier
Sierra games, ( King's Quest, Quest for Glory, Robin Hood, etc ) and
many of them still take up hard drive space my system even today.
>yes. ignoring the crap posted by olaf, I'm saddened at the demise of
>Sierra.
Agreed.
> They were groundbreakers and leaders for a long time. If not
>for them we may have not had "3d" adventures games as early as we did,
>afterall, they "created" the genre.
Most who have been around for a good long while would agree
there......
> Their apple games were also very
>good, Wizard and the Princess, etc.
Don't know. Never got into the Apple platform. Never will.
I like having an unlimited selection of games at any given point,
instead of being 6 months to a year or more, ( if even ported at all )
behind virtually every advance in the industry.
> They were lucky they got in on
>the ground floor for game development (sierra, origin, ssi, etc).
No luck about it. I think they worked very hard to make it
happen.........
>like all good things, there must come an end.
Damn......although in thier recent state I was not impressed.
>i have some very fond memories of sierra games (apple // + pc).
Myself as well......
Evad Yenomit
Weasel wrote in message <7bk6f9$j7r$2...@news-2.news.gte.net>...
>> They were groundbreakers and leaders for a long time. If not
>>for them we may have not had "3d" adventures games as early as we did,
>>afterall, they "created" the genre.
>
>Most who have been around for a good long while would agree
>there......
>
>> Their apple games were also very
>>good, Wizard and the Princess, etc.
>
>Don't know. Never got into the Apple platform. Never will.
>I like having an unlimited selection of games at any given point,
heh. Obviously, you haven't been around that long yourself :)
I believe he's talking about Apple II, not Macintosh. There was a time when
the
PC was nothing, that Apple and Commodore were the mainstay.
Dave
Humongous Entertainment
Chris Kennedy
> from a remainder bin for $5 each - couldn't get into it
> particularly after they refused to run unless I took my video
> back to 16 colors :)
>
> So I'm very sorry but can't give many tears for Sierra.
The box didn't have "EGA" printed on it, did it? :-)
- Chris
Chris Kennedy
> I believe he's talking about Apple II, not Macintosh. There was a time when
> the
> PC was nothing, that Apple and Commodore were the mainstay.
>
> Dave
> Humongous Entertainment
And thank goodness that didn't last long! (Sorry about this string of harsh
messages)
- Chris
Robert Roseman
>Sierra games, ( King's Quest, Quest for Glory, Robin Hood, etc ) and
>many of them still take up hard drive space my system even today.
>
>
>Don't know. Never got into the Apple platform. Never will.
>I like having an unlimited selection of games at any given point,
>behind virtually every advance in the industry.
>
>
A little side note here:
I just bought the 'Kings Quest Collection' and was happily surprised to
find that it came with some of the Apple II games.
It has:
Kings Quest 1 (original (July'83) and new (Sep'90 VGA,some mouse support)
Kings Quest 2-7 ('85-'94)
History and Information files
King's Questions trivia game
Nick's Picks (two board/card games)
4 Apple games (an Apple IIe/c emulator included):
Mystery House
Mission:Asteroid
Wizard and the Princess
Time Zone
2 Laura Bow adventures:
The Colonel's Bequest
The Dagger of Amon Ra
1 kids game:
Mixed-Up Mother Goose
Plus you get a two game bonus pack. (order by April 30, 1999)
(adventure pack is 'Lighthouse' and 'Antara')
That's 20 games + Info/History for $30. Break that down to the '$ per hour'
figure and you've got a very good deal. I don't like the idea that it came
from Cendant Software (I didn't know about Sierra demise at the time I
ordered), but still a good deal in my book. If you are missing some of
these games in your collection, this might 'make your day'. And, No, I
don't work for anybody.
My lady and I are playing KQ1 and having a ball. It has some sound/music
(KQ1new, the book explains why the 'modernization' was abandoned). It
reminds me of playing 'Cranston Manor' when I was a kid (30 something).
Sorry for the long off-topic post,
Bob 'soon to be King Graham' R
Ben & Karen
> Weasel wrote in message <7bk6f9$j7r$2...@news-2.news.gte.net>...
>
> >Don't know. Never got into the Apple platform. Never will.
> >I like having an unlimited selection of games at any given point,
> >instead of being 6 months to a year or more, ( if even ported at all )
> >behind virtually every advance in the industry.
It was not always the way it is now. Apple used to be one of the Big Guys- in
the day of the Apple II, it *was* the system with all the games (though it did
share the spotlight with the C64). IBM missed the boat initially on the home
computer craze, and it took them a number of years of playing catch-up before
they dominated the scene. I played a lot of the "classic" games on an Apple
(Wizardry, the Infocom games, Autoduel, Wasteland, et al).
-Ben
Courageous
> the day of the Apple II, it *was* the system with all the games (though it did
> share the spotlight with the C64). IBM missed the boat initially on the home
> computer craze, and it took them a number of years of playing catch-up before
> they dominated the scene. I played a lot of the "classic" games on an Apple
> (Wizardry, the Infocom games, Autoduel, Wasteland, et al).
This was one of Apple's biggest mistakes: the virtual
abandonment of the game industry. No matter what people
say about why they buy home computers, they really use
them to play games.
C/
Ben & Karen
Courageous wrote:
> This was one of Apple's biggest mistakes: the virtual
> abandonment of the game industry. No matter what people
> say about why they buy home computers, they really use
> them to play games.
How very true.
They also made a mistake in hanging on to their closed architecture ideal. PCs
outstripped them in both innovative hardware and low cost pretty quickly.
-Ben
George W. Bayles
>
> Courageous wrote:
>
> > This was one of Apple's biggest mistakes: the virtual
> > abandonment of the game industry. No matter what people
> > say about why they buy home computers, they really use
> > them to play games.
>
> How very true.
>
> They also made a mistake in hanging on to their closed architecture
True - that was a serious mistake.
> ... PCs outstripped them in both innovative hardware and low cost
> pretty quickly.
>
That depends on how you define "quickly" - It took IBM and
Microsoft several years to deliver things the Mac users had all
along. The real reason the IBM PC succeeded was simple -
three letters: IBM
That, and Lotus 123 got it accepted as a business tool when the
Apple and all other PCs were still viewed as toys.
> -Ben
Johnny Rhyne
Damocles <phae...@yahoo.com> wrote in article
<36d6ab90...@news.rdc1.va.home.com>...
> On 25 Feb 1999 18:21:02 GMT, ben...@rpi.edu (Scott Benner) wrote:
>
>
> >
> >: I cant think of a single Sierra game that I would put on my top 10
list.
> >
> >Come on, you can't tell me that the first time you played "Kings Quest",
you
> >didn't enjoy it... or did you enter the computer scene afterwards? In
the
> >beginning, there was Zork, and everyone loved it, but Kings Quest
finally
> >brought the adventure genre to color graphics.. Police Quest basically
> >spawned all the modern SWAT games today... And the Space Quest series?
>
> I hated King's Quest and I hated Space Quest. Leisure Suit Larry was
> okay, but the sequel was maddening.
What about the Quest for Glory or Gaberial Knight series?
Johnny Rhyne
Damocles <phae...@yahoo.com> wrote in article
<36d7ac17...@news.rdc1.va.home.com>...
> On 25 Feb 1999 19:30:03 GMT, Tesiae <ord...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> >> I find his last paragraph highly
> >> amusing. I cant think of a single Sierra game that I would put on my
top 10
> >> list.
> >>
> >> olaf
> >
> >Uhm.. what about Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, the
> >finest adventure game ever made?
>
> The finest adventure game is still an adventure game. Bleh...
>
And this is a bad thing?
Johnny Rhyne
Olaf <ol...@texas.net> wrote in article
<E130BF63780D8B89.F933BDEA...@library-proxy.airnews.ne
t>...
> Again, I hate adventure games.
Well, Good for you. Just keep in Mind that this thread is crossposted to
an Adventure group.
> olaf
>
> Tesiae wrote in message <36D5A4C4...@worldnet.att.net>...
Kirk Macdonald
>
> Olaf <ol...@texas.net> wrote in article
> <E130BF63780D8B89.F933BDEA...@library-proxy.airnews.ne
> t>...
> > Again, I hate adventure games.
>
> Well, Good for you. Just keep in Mind that this thread is crossposted to
> an Adventure group.
Ouch! Heaven forbid that someone should post a personal opinion!
> > olaf
> >
> > Tesiae wrote in message <36D5A4C4...@worldnet.att.net>...
> > >> I find his last paragraph highly
> > >> amusing. I cant think of a single Sierra game that I would put on my
> top 10 list.
> > >>
> > >> olaf
> > >
> > >Uhm.. what about Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, the
> > >finest adventure game ever made?
Almost agree with this (except for Sam & Max Hit the Road!).
--
Kirk "Gimme Danger!" Macdonald
Reply to : hag...@NOCHEESEgte.net - Remove NOCHEESE from my address to
reply
These are my own opinions and do not reflect those of The Boeing Co.
Tecknomage
>
>
> Damocles <phae...@yahoo.com> wrote in article
> <36d6ab90...@news.rdc1.va.home.com>...
> > On 25 Feb 1999 18:21:02 GMT, ben...@rpi.edu (Scott Benner) wrote:
> >
> >
> > >
> > >: I cant think of a single Sierra game that I would put on my top 10
> list.
> > >
> > >Come on, you can't tell me that the first time you played "Kings Quest",
> you
> > >didn't enjoy it... or did you enter the computer scene afterwards? In
> the
> > >beginning, there was Zork, and everyone loved it, but Kings Quest
> finally
> > >brought the adventure genre to color graphics.. Police Quest basically
> > >spawned all the modern SWAT games today... And the Space Quest series?
> >
> > I hated King's Quest and I hated Space Quest. Leisure Suit Larry was
> > okay, but the sequel was maddening.
>
> What about the Quest for Glory or Gaberial Knight series?
>
I *loved* Sierra adventure games like the ones mentioned above.
Did you notice the past tense? Now if you want to play sierra games
you had better have huge disk space available. I have done
programming in the past and IMHO Sierra's software engineers are just
getting lazy in writing tight programs because they think it's ok to
dump huge numbers of files on the hard drive just to save the effort
of making the program run directly from the CD efficiently. After
all, all potential Sierra game users have mucho gigabytes of disk
space available *for games*, don't they?
With today's CD speeds you should be able to run a game from the CD
with only the game engine and its support files (configuration and
data), and save-game files on the hard drive.
I have stopped buying Sierra games even when I have the required hard
drive space.
==== Tecknomage ====
"The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition to be
born in moments of revelation. None of us knows the shape of that
future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always
born in pain." G'Kar, Z'ha'dum
Tecknomage
<kirk.a.m...@NOSPAMboeing.com> wrote:
> Johnny Rhyne wrote:
> >
> > Olaf <ol...@texas.net> wrote in article
> > <E130BF63780D8B89.F933BDEA...@library-proxy.airnews.ne
> > t>...
> > > Again, I hate adventure games.
> >
> > Well, Good for you. Just keep in Mind that this thread is crossposted to
> > an Adventure group.
>
> Ouch! Heaven forbid that someone should post a personal opinion!
Being a little hard?
Rhyne is just reminding you that this post went to a newsgroup dealing
with adventure games (comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure). If you really
"hate adventure games," why are you reading/posting here?
Of course, it could be that your news reader doesn't allow you to
*not* cross post replies.
==== Tecknomage ====
Whiners! Some people would complain if
you hung them with a new rope.
John M Clancy
Gus Smedstad wrote in message <36DC28D7...@earthlink.net>...
>> Mind you, I'm enjoying BG, and I think it's a fine game, but it has some
>> flaws that simply weren't there in M&M6...which was IMHO virtually
>> flawless. Can't wait to see the next one.
>
>Heroes III should be pretty much the same way. We mastered it with no
>known bugs (which was quite a nice change of pace for me).
>
>
> AI programmer and general handyman on Heroes III
> New World Computing
> Opinions expressed are my own, yadda yadda.
And it shows.
Thank you !
It is so nice to see a company with integrity
and pride in their work. Well done.
After games like Descent to Undemountain, Daggerfall
Fallout 2, etc etc Homm3 comes as a breath of fresh air.
William Harris
>> ... PCs outstripped them in both innovative hardware and low cost
>> pretty quickly.
>>
>
>That depends on how you define "quickly" - It took IBM and
>Microsoft several years to deliver things the Mac users had all
>along. The real reason the IBM PC succeeded was simple -
>three letters: IBM
You forget the initial long, long lag in IBM gaming software - that horrible
pastelle CGA display it was saddled with kept PC games in the second tier of
software releases until VGA became widely adapted. About the only games from
that period I can remember are the Infocom games, and Ultima III. Once VGA
finally reached reasonable mass, most companies switched primary development
on the PC.
One thing that killed the early Mac in games was the monochrome display. It
worked fine for games like Balance of Power, but even that horrible CGA
display offered -some- color. As bad as Ultima III was in CGA, did they ever
attempt to port it to the Macintosh?
--
William Harris wil...@carsinfo.com
Check out the NAGS spam filter. http://www.nags.org
Weasel
<nordic...@spamfilter.com> wrote:
>>Don't know. Never got into the Apple platform. Never will.
>>I like having an unlimited selection of games at any given point,
>
>heh. Obviously, you haven't been around that long yourself :)
You have no clue how *very* wrong you are. Iv'e been an active gamer
for well over 16 years.......( And no, that doesn't mean that I'm 16.
I'm 30 years old. )
> I believe he's talking about Apple II, not Macintosh.
He is, and they are one and the same. Made by the same company. Then
AND now. Get a clue, Dave.......
> There was a time when
>the
>PC was nothing, that Apple and Commodore were the mainstay.
I know. I had an Amiga 500 back then. Only got rid of it less than a
year ago.....
>Dave
>Humongous Entertainment
Hope your'e not that ignorant about your job.........
Duane Manuel
<geo...@cajunbro.com> wrote:
>Ben & Karen wrote:
>>
>> Courageous wrote:
>>
>> > This was one of Apple's biggest mistakes: the virtual
>> > abandonment of the game industry. No matter what people
>> > say about why they buy home computers, they really use
>> > them to play games.
>>
>> How very true.
>>
>> They also made a mistake in hanging on to their closed architecture
>> ideal. ...
>
>True - that was a serious mistake.
>
>> ... PCs outstripped them in both innovative hardware and low cost
>> pretty quickly.
>>
>
>That depends on how you define "quickly" - It took IBM and
>Microsoft several years to deliver things the Mac users had all
>along. The real reason the IBM PC succeeded was simple -
>three letters: IBM
>
>That, and Lotus 123 got it accepted as a business tool when the
>Apple and all other PCs were still viewed as toys.
Comparing Apple with IBM financially, how well has IBM faired. More
PCs are sold than Apples, but Intel and Microsoft make money out of
that, but I don't know if IBM does, except out of their IBM Brand PCs.
While Apple keeps all the money from every sale.
Duane
EMAIL: dmanuel(ANTI-SPAM)@ozemail.com.au
WEB: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~dmanuel