Developers like Telltale helped redefine the genre and, in turn, opened the door for some more traditional point-and-clicks to come back and find success. Image used with permission by copyright holderĪdventure games have been on an upswing lately, though, in the indie gaming scene. Sierra would never again reach the heights of its 1980s and ’90s’success, and for the most part, the industry appeared to move on, preferring games that were more like Duke Nukem 3D and less like King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity. After that, its name would only be revived once in the mid-2010s for a reboot of King’s Quest. Sierra On-Line would shut down after Vivendi Games merged with Activision in 2008.
Still, a lot of that original artwork and other game materials were thrown away by Sierra as preservation was not on the mind of developers at the time. They eventually donated many old Sierra On-Line design documents and memorabilia to The Strong Museum of Play. In turn, adventure games would become significantly more niche than in Sierra’s heyday. Ken and Roberta left Sierra On-Line by the end of 1998. “I think that when we exited the business, to a certain extent, the genre started to stagnate, maybe partially because we were no longer in it and we were the premier developers of adventure games … Had we stayed in the business and not sold Sierra, who knows where we might have evolved that genre, but we weren’t, so that’s that.” Roberta can’t help but wonder if what happened to adventure games was their fault. Image used with permission by copyright holder “Back when we were originally in the business, probably 80% of the bestsellers were adventure games, and now it’s like a quarter-of-a-percent,” Ken said. Because of games like Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Super Mario 64, and more, adventure games became less relevant.
If they had stayed, Ken tells Digital Trends that Sierra might have started marketing and selling its game engine, but that’s not what happened.
Ken and Roberta Williams’ retirement changed the course of the video game industry. They’ll do so with Colossal Cave, a 3D remake of the text-based adventure game that inspired the creation of Sierra On-Line. Everything Roberta thought would happen did, but Ken and Roberta Williams made it clear in an interview with Digital Trends that they’re now back to settle unfished business. Ken and Roberta have been quiet in their retirement, with their work fading into gaming history as developers like Amy Hennig, Neil Druckmann, and Sam Barlow innovated what a video game narrative could be. Roberta and Ken Williams would sell Sierra On-Line, with the rights to their classics eventually ending up at Activision Blizzard. And then, indeed, that’s what happened.” Image used with permission by copyright holder Not that it would ever go away, but I could see it fading a little bit more into the background at the time. I could see a little bit of the writing on the wall that adventure games were going to stop being so interesting and popular, and that quick action was going to become more popular.
“I could see how excited they were by playing a game that was so different than what gaming had been up to this point. A lot of programmers and artists at Sierra at that time were all playing Duke Nukem,” Roberta recalled to Digital Trends in an interview. “I remember Duke Nukem was big when I was working on King’s Quest VIII. The culprit behind this revelation? Duke Nukem 3D.
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