8 ms·

I wonder how much of Sierra's demise was due to CUC vs. just the change in gaming landscape. Compared to the early 90's adventure gaming is non-existent minus

by yters 6y ago

I wonder how much of Sierra's demise was due to CUC vs. just the change in gaming landscape. Compared to the early 90's adventure gaming is non-existent minus nostalgic kickstarters. Sierra may still be alive today, but it may be on the same shelf as Nancy Drew mysteries.

gryson 6y ago
By the mid- to late-1990s, Sierra's publishing output was far more diversified than just adventure games. They owned a large number of subsidiary development companies (such as Dynamix, Impression, and Papyrus) that were creating games in a wide range of genres. They also published a little-known game called Half-Life in 1998...
- yters 6y ago
  Great point. I forgot HL was originally Sierra. It seems they were able to adapt to the new market, so CUC can probably be blamed for their demise.
- microtherion 6y ago
  If not for the events in the article, we might have ended up with Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Portals.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  Half-Life came out just about when I started gaming, and was when I first really picked up on Sierra’s existence. Then right after, they were just gone. No more new games with the Sierra logo (that I saw anyway)
WorldMaker 6y ago
The cause and effect is really tough to straighten out. There's certainly an argument to be made that Sierra's demise was the final nail in adventure gaming and the genre might still be alive if Sierra themselves had survived (and/or if Roberta Williams was left with the budgets to keep making them). Sierra helped push the budgets of adventure games to the point where no one could compete with them (except maybe LucasArts, and LucasArts didn't seem interested in competing to the same costs) and then after setting that unreasonable market perspective of what a AAA adventure game "should" be, they died. Even today most of the controversy with the "nostalgic kickstarters" is that a Kickstarter can't approximate (adjusting for inflation) even a tenth of Sierra's final few adventure game budgets (much less a quarter to a half of LucasArts' last few).
- mancerayder 6y ago
  I don't know, look at what sells well: massively multiplayer games, and FPSes. As I mentioned in a previous comment, there are exceptions, but as a rule it seems if you're a game developer you're more likely to make a reaction-based shooter or real time thing, versus a subjectively-paced adventure game with point and click puzzles like Sierra or LucasArts games were. It might be gaming culture changed as consoles got big and more people got interested.
  - jnurmine 6y ago
    It would be awesome to have the old Sierra games like King's Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest, etc. re-born as first-person adventures with photorealistic graphics.
    - mancerayder 6y ago
      Sure, if they retain the think-and-click feel versus becoming reaction-based hack and slash / shooters. In that case an emphatic yes.
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      I directly disagree for both King's Quest and Space Quest. So much of the worldbuilding and aesthetic value in those games was their animated styles. King's Quest was about adventuring through fairy tales, and most of our cultural vocabulary around that has been built by Disney animated movies. I very much believe that KQVII hit nearly the epitome of the King's Quest "perfect" aesthetic with its hand drawn art (even if it went sometimes a bit too "Looney Tunes", and some of the embedded 3D effects did not age well) that evoked playing through a darker Disney or Bluth film. (That KQVIII exists right next to it as first-person and 3D stood even then as a stark contrast for why King's Quest is probably a terrible fit for first-person 3D, even if Roberta hadn't been kicked out of the project and it had tried for a better KQ storyline.) Space Quest's aesthetic similarly had a lot of "Saturday morning sci-fi cartoon" in its DNA (such as Battle of the Planets, as one example to mind). Admittedly, part of Space Quest's aesthetic was all over the map if they could find a good joke for something they'd swap aesthetics on they fly for that joke (that's a big part of SQIV after all), but the tonality of the series very much never would fit with "photorealistic graphics" at least not for more than a joke or three. (Two Guys from Andromeda's SpaceVenture went 3D for cost reasons, but still seems to have settled on cell shading/cartoon styling over "photorealistic".)
mancerayder 6y ago
Almost everything is a FPS or multiplayer... I mean all the big budget releases. Cyberpunk and Wasteland III are exceptions, as is Divinity OS and games like that. My theory is people want reaction-time games versus think-and-do games. Or maybe I'm old and don't like the reaction-based (and certainly not multiplayer) games anymore.
- nottorp 6y ago
  Stop looking at AAAs and get yourself some indies. Current Halloween sales are a good time to get 10 titles for $50 or something like that. If you look at the descriptions/reviews you're likely to like at least 2-3 out of the 10.
  - mancerayder 6y ago
    Steam has so much volume, it's tough to pick the signal from the noise.
- lgl 6y ago
  Is Cyberpunk really an exception though? Isn't it an FPS in an open-world environment just like most big budget releases? Like GTA, Watch Dogs, Tomb Raider, The Witcher, Assassins Creed, Red Dead Redemption, etc, but with a cyberpunk theme instead? All previews and gameplay bits I've seen are basically just like those games and with nothing really truly unique or new except for the cyberpunky environment. I'm hoping for maybe a fantastic one-of-a-kind story that will make it justice but with all the hype around it, if it doesn't end up becoming the best thing since sliced bread, I'm afraid it may end up being a big disappointment, although I hope I'm wrong.
  - mancerayder 6y ago
    It kind of boils down to whether a battle is reaction-based or turned-based (the 'shooter' part) for me. The idea of first-person open world is still lovely, but it doesn't mean that everything has to require adrenaline and concentration and reflexes. For example, Fallout. Then some try to retain a classic feel with a top-down like Baldur's Gate 2 and D:OS and could one day be first-person.
kelnos 6y ago
I think it's interesting that the development team wanted to turn King's Quest VIII into an RPG, despite Roberta Williams' attempts to direct them back toward the adventure genre. As much as I look back on the adventure genre with a lot of fondness, it's definitely looking back; it's a pretty tiny part of the market these days.

by yters 6y ago

gryson 6y ago

By the mid- to late-1990s, Sierra's publishing output was far more diversified than just adventure games. They owned a large number of subsidiary development companies (such as Dynamix, Impression, and Papyrus) that were creating games in a wide range of genres. They also published a little-known game called Half-Life in 1998...

yters 6y ago
Great point. I forgot HL was originally Sierra. It seems they were able to adapt to the new market, so CUC can probably be blamed for their demise.
microtherion 6y ago
If not for the events in the article, we might have ended up with Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Portals.
Aeolun 6y ago
Half-Life came out just about when I started gaming, and was when I first really picked up on Sierra’s existence. Then right after, they were just gone. No more new games with the Sierra logo (that I saw anyway)

WorldMaker 6y ago

The cause and effect is really tough to straighten out. There's certainly an argument to be made that Sierra's demise was the final nail in adventure gaming and the genre might still be alive if Sierra themselves had survived (and/or if Roberta Williams was left with the budgets to keep making them). Sierra helped push the budgets of adventure games to the point where no one could compete with them (except maybe LucasArts, and LucasArts didn't seem interested in competing to the same costs) and then after setting that unreasonable market perspective of what a AAA adventure game "should" be, they died. Even today most of the controversy with the "nostalgic kickstarters" is that a Kickstarter can't approximate (adjusting for inflation) even a tenth of Sierra's final few adventure game budgets (much less a quarter to a half of LucasArts' last few).

mancerayder 6y ago
I don't know, look at what sells well: massively multiplayer games, and FPSes. As I mentioned in a previous comment, there are exceptions, but as a rule it seems if you're a game developer you're more likely to make a reaction-based shooter or real time thing, versus a subjectively-paced adventure game with point and click puzzles like Sierra or LucasArts games were. It might be gaming culture changed as consoles got big and more people got interested.
- jnurmine 6y ago
  It would be awesome to have the old Sierra games like King's Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest, etc. re-born as first-person adventures with photorealistic graphics.
  - mancerayder 6y ago
    Sure, if they retain the think-and-click feel versus becoming reaction-based hack and slash / shooters. In that case an emphatic yes.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    I directly disagree for both King's Quest and Space Quest. So much of the worldbuilding and aesthetic value in those games was their animated styles. King's Quest was about adventuring through fairy tales, and most of our cultural vocabulary around that has been built by Disney animated movies. I very much believe that KQVII hit nearly the epitome of the King's Quest "perfect" aesthetic with its hand drawn art (even if it went sometimes a bit too "Looney Tunes", and some of the embedded 3D effects did not age well) that evoked playing through a darker Disney or Bluth film. (That KQVIII exists right next to it as first-person and 3D stood even then as a stark contrast for why King's Quest is probably a terrible fit for first-person 3D, even if Roberta hadn't been kicked out of the project and it had tried for a better KQ storyline.) Space Quest's aesthetic similarly had a lot of "Saturday morning sci-fi cartoon" in its DNA (such as Battle of the Planets, as one example to mind). Admittedly, part of Space Quest's aesthetic was all over the map if they could find a good joke for something they'd swap aesthetics on they fly for that joke (that's a big part of SQIV after all), but the tonality of the series very much never would fit with "photorealistic graphics" at least not for more than a joke or three. (Two Guys from Andromeda's SpaceVenture went 3D for cost reasons, but still seems to have settled on cell shading/cartoon styling over "photorealistic".)

mancerayder 6y ago

Almost everything is a FPS or multiplayer... I mean all the big budget releases. Cyberpunk and Wasteland III are exceptions, as is Divinity OS and games like that. My theory is people want reaction-time games versus think-and-do games. Or maybe I'm old and don't like the reaction-based (and certainly not multiplayer) games anymore.

nottorp 6y ago
Stop looking at AAAs and get yourself some indies. Current Halloween sales are a good time to get 10 titles for $50 or something like that. If you look at the descriptions/reviews you're likely to like at least 2-3 out of the 10.
- mancerayder 6y ago
  Steam has so much volume, it's tough to pick the signal from the noise.
lgl 6y ago
Is Cyberpunk really an exception though? Isn't it an FPS in an open-world environment just like most big budget releases? Like GTA, Watch Dogs, Tomb Raider, The Witcher, Assassins Creed, Red Dead Redemption, etc, but with a cyberpunk theme instead? All previews and gameplay bits I've seen are basically just like those games and with nothing really truly unique or new except for the cyberpunky environment. I'm hoping for maybe a fantastic one-of-a-kind story that will make it justice but with all the hype around it, if it doesn't end up becoming the best thing since sliced bread, I'm afraid it may end up being a big disappointment, although I hope I'm wrong.
- mancerayder 6y ago
  It kind of boils down to whether a battle is reaction-based or turned-based (the 'shooter' part) for me. The idea of first-person open world is still lovely, but it doesn't mean that everything has to require adrenaline and concentration and reflexes. For example, Fallout. Then some try to retain a classic feel with a top-down like Baldur's Gate 2 and D:OS and could one day be first-person.

kelnos 6y ago

I think it's interesting that the development team wanted to turn King's Quest VIII into an RPG, despite Roberta Williams' attempts to direct them back toward the adventure genre. As much as I look back on the adventure genre with a lot of fondness, it's definitely looking back; it's a pretty tiny part of the market these days.