Sierra On-Line
Sierra On-Line was a video game development and publishing company founded by Ken Williams and Roberta Williams in 1979 with the name On-Line Systems which they changed the next year. Through several innovative games and several shrewd business deals, Sierra became the world's most profitable computer game company in 1995. In 1996, the Williams's sold Sierra to CUC International and retired shortly after. Over the next few years, Sierra was broken up into smaller groups, sold and resold to various companies, and the bulk of the earlier staff was fired or retired. In 2008, the company was incorporated into Activision and officially dissolved, only to be reborn, in name only, in 2014 to cash in on their previous brands.
Contents
Personal
As a child, I adored Sierra games, especially their graphic adventure titles. However, as an adult with more refined taste in games, I find most of their games to be pretty awful, although I give them credit for pushing the bounds of graphics and sound. I became further disenfranchised with the company after reading Hackers which paints the Williams's as both clever and fun-loving, but also dishonest, miserly, and not the most competent of bosses.
Games
These are the games Sierra On-Line worked on that are important to me. For all Sierra On-Line games, see the categories for games developed or published.
Tech
Sierra On-Line created and popularized several impressive technical aspects of computer gaming. From a software side, they created the Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI), and the Sierra Creative Interpreter (SCI) game engines which were not only used in dozens of their own games, but the style of the engine became an industry standard throughout the 1980s and 90s which many other companies copied.
Sierra also popularized two sound modules for the IBM compatible PC market by directly selling the Roland MT-32 synthesizer and the Ad-Lib sound card. These two audio modules later become industry standards for the PC game industry through the 1990s.
Staff
These are people who worked at Sierra On-Line whose work I appreciate.
- Al Lowe - Creator of Leisure Suit Larry.
- Chris Iden - Co-developer of AGI and SCI.
- Jeff Stephenson - Co-developer of AGI and SCI.
- Mark Crowe - Co-designer of Space Quest.
- Roberta Williams - Creator of King's Quest.
- Scott Murphy - Co-designer of Space Quest.
Documents
Catalog - Fall 1988.
Sierra News Magazine - Spring 1990.
SierraVault's complete publication list.
An advertisement for SoftPorn featuring a young Roberta Williams.
Links
