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Ken and Roberta Williams are co-founders of Sierra Online, a King’s Quest , space exploration and in pursuit of glory . Their latest project,
, is a definition of the genre
Giant Cave Adventure ) by Will Crowther and Don Woods.
“It was a great game and I would love to bring it back into the world,” Roberta said in episode 523 of
Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “We want people to see that old games like this can be brought back and brought back in a beautiful way — in a fun way — for today’s audience.”
The game features modern graphics and sound, and even supports virtual reality devices like the Quest 2, but is otherwise unchanged from the original text adventure. “We’re trying to stay super faithful to the original,” Ken said. “If you’re doing history, you don’t want to change it. The old game has been around for 50 years. It’s probably still played by more people every year than a lot of indie games. It’s a great, solid, well-designed game games.”
Since selling Sierra in 1996, Ken and Roberta have spent most of their time traveling the world, a lifestyle often not suited to running a game studio on their own. But Ken said modern communications technology allowed them to work in giant holes
Ken and Roberta formed a team of nearly 30 artists and programmers The team, most of whom are not even in the original Colossal Cave was born in 1976 when released. “None of them knew the huge cave Yes, we have to educate them,” Roberta said. “And I have to say that when we worked with them on this game, in every way — the programmers, the animators, the artists — they’ve come to have a lot of respect for the game, and I’ve been told many times,” I didn’t expect this game to be so good, so interesting, so deep and complex. I said, ‘Yeah, yeah. It’s a really good design. They’ve started to have so much respect for this game, it’s a very Good sign.”
Listen to
full interview with Ken and Roberta Williams on episode 523 Geek Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.
Roberta Williams on Black Ding:
[Disney executives] walked into the room and they basically sat down and said, “We decided to change a lot of your game because it didn’t fit our script. There were so many places for players to go around Wandering around and nothing happens and you realize it’s a movie, right? You have to follow the script for the movie.” …I walked into Ken’s office and I said, “I’m not going to be with them Doing this game together because they just took my game and they changed everything and went back to — basically it’s almost like the script for the movie, so what’s the point?” I just said, “I’ve It’s done. I’m not going to do it.” He called them into his office, and he basically said, “She’s not going to do it unless you leave her alone and let her do it her way. This thing” – they have to believe me. And then they went back to the conference room and they said, “Okay, you can do whatever you want.” And I did.
Ken Williams on success:
There are a lot of people like me who were born with parents who couldn’t send them to a good school and that was Couldn’t afford to go to college because they had to drop out and get married early, but somehow I managed to get from the bottom to the top, and really just through hard work. I don’t claim to be any kind of genius. I’m just a good old boy who works very hard. Even in this game, I got up before the East Coast guys and I got up after the West Coast guys. I don’t fart very often. I really work hard. And I think almost anyone who is really willing to dig in and work hard can be successful. So does Roberta. We are all highly focused, hard-working people.
Ken Williams on Sierra Online:
I want to create a company that my grandkids know and that still exists for generations. All decisions at Sierra are based on the long term, not the short term, which is why we do so well. But when we sold it, suddenly everyone looked at it and said, “It’s inefficient to have a business in Portland, a business in Seattle, a business in Paris, and programmers in Boston. Why? Why don’t we just fire all these people, merge into one place, stop developing our own software, and just release software like everyone else?” That’s all over.
Roberta Williams
I hired a professional genealogist in Ireland, then I hired one in New York, and I hired one in Iowa – where these three [my ancestors] were – I got a lot of information. I just kept getting more and more information and was doing a lot of my own research and I just loved doing it until I accumulated three huge, thick notebooks full of papers and research and I said to myself, “You know, I should write a book.” Because the story is actually interesting. …I want to write it as a historical novel and turn this true story into an interesting read. I don’t want to just write to my family. I think readers of it as historical fiction might really like the way it is, even if it’s not their own family.
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