I mean its a bad example, but not the only example of obtuse puzzles in games preventing forward progress in game. Dead ends and not being able to finish if messed up a previous steps were real problems. This was a bigger issue when the internet wasn't available to help out. I like adventure games, but even still they can be difficult and frustrating (although maybe I'm not great at them)
Puzzle Dependency charts in game design help this (from Ron Gilbert/ Monkey Island etc...).
> It was created by the game's producer, Steven Hill, after a puzzle designed by the game's lead designer, Jane Jensen, was cut due to budgetary reasons.
> It came as a result of a puzzle created by the game's designer, Jane Jensen, needing to be removed due to budget concerns.
Similar topic explored in videos from a friend of mine I call the "Adventure Game sommelier," because he's played so many of them and can recommend you one for precisely your needs. The first
Sierra's Thexder haunted me for years, because I couldn't understand the tinny Japanese at the start of it at all or even tell what language that was, but I remembered the sound from playing it on an Apple ][ GS as a kid despite that.
And tell me if you can hear "Siera ga ookuri suru Thexder" (Thexder presented by Sierra) there. Even now, at most I can make out Sierra and a distorted bit of Thexder, even knowing how Thexder is rendered into katakana.
I miss this style of internet humor. It used to be dominant whenever there were gaming forums and it was dominant also on Reddit even up through 2015 but I feel like it has mostly disappeared since then.
The whole "bright guy writes like he's an idiot" schtick attracted an element that wasn't going to parse sarcasm. Seanbaby's entire oeuvre assumes you went to high school with a bunch of racist assholes and hated them. It was safe for him to do that at the time because the internet was still mostly cool people.
>Did you read all of that? If not, good for you! Dumb as your television enjoying ass probably is, you're smarter than the genius adventure gamers who, in a truly inappropriate display of autism-level concentration, willingly played the birdbrained events described in that passage.
I laughed a bit too hard at this. Pure "follow my train of thought" puzzles aren't the most fun, and I think they fit best in the larger context of something like Uncharted. Just give me a skip button.
The real reason why adventure games had moon logic puzzles is because if they did not the games could be completed under 10 hours.
And adventure games did not have replay value- unlike C&C, Quake or Tomb Raider.
Jimmy Maher is really a great history writer. The way he writes is very compelling. He made a whole history of windows which I somehow read through completely[0].
I can also recommend his other site, Analog Antiquarian[1] where he writes more about the larger history. His Magellan series that's going on now is really amazing, makes you feel like you're really experiencing the epic voyage through South America and South East Asia.
Jimmy Maher has that rare mix of deep research and genuinely engaging storytelling. He somehow makes technical or historical rabbit holes feel like page-turners
It's important to remember that the deal was audited by Ernst&Young and they didn't notice the hundreds of millions missing from the balance sheet.
EY later settled in court at 300 million but never admitted any wrongdoing. So much for the reputation of the "big four" which at the time was still known as "big five".
After having read a number of school board “audits”, and read about Enron etc, and looked beyond that to other instances, it’s clear that audits are generally worthless as a rule. The auditors are shown what they are shown and not allowed to color outside the lines.
Find a discrepancy and every damn time the auditors will say “oh, that information was not provided to us”.
It’s like if you hired a judge for your own prosecution. What judge is going to find you guilty?
> Forbes first became associated with Sierra in 1991, when he agreed to join the company’s board. Ken Williams, Sierra’s co-founder and CEO, considered this a major coup...
And then:
> “Have you and Ken ever thought about selling Sierra?” <Forbes> asked her out of the blue one day in the lobby of the Paris hotel.
> “No,” Roberta answered shortly. “We’re not interested.”
> “But if you ever were, what sort of price would you be looking at?”
> “A lot,” Roberta replied, then walked away as quickly as decorum allowed.
Pretty clear which of the two was the better business person.
And from Steven Levy's Hackers, she was one of the women in the hot tub for the cover and ad for the game Softporn Adventure, published by the company that was soon renamed to Sierra On-line.
A lesson for the ages: that cultured (or not) rich person over there isn't any more intelligent or prescient than your neighbour or colleague, and most certainly no more than your partner. They just have more money.
The business side of things with sierra is certainly spectacular. But the story of the characters making the games would be so much more interesting. Where did the humor come from? What was office live? How come the games were both topsellers and also extremly silly? I remeber a space quest scene where a room full of computers was a joke on sierra offices. How did that make it into the final product?
> I remeber a space quest scene where a room full of computers was a joke on sierra offices.
The pirates of pestulon base in space quest 3 I think. It was pretty funny. Making fun of the cubicle office which was pretty much Avant la lettre back then (i know in Europe we only really got those in the late 90s). In 2000 I still had my own office as a trainee
With a boss that goes around whipping the developers as well. As a kid this was forever etched into my mind as what a game software company looks like.
Sierra was responsible for creating two of my favorite games of all time - King's Quest VI (designed by Roberta Williams / Jane Jensen) and Conquests of the Longbow (designed by Christy Marx).
It's such a contrast then to read (what I find profoundly distasteful) quotes like this from the other side of the company. Ken Williams: "I read books about business executives who owned yachts and jets, and who hung out with beautiful models in fancy mansions. I knew that was my future and I couldn’t wait to claim it.".
It's a tragedy Ken Williams managed to overrule nearly everyone familiar with Sierra (including his wife) opposed to the acquisition by CUC.
Completely agree on both counts! I loved those two games and felt Conquests of the Longbow didn't get the recognition it deserves.
On the second point, when I read his book (https://kensbook.com/) I was disappointed to not hear about the magic of the games themselves and the creative process behind them. It became clear that his primary goal was to grow a business, he thought being a game distributor was more exciting, but then was disrupted by Steam, shareware, and online distribution.
Oh, I played many of the others, but SQ -- specifically II -- was what made me fall in love with adventure games, warts and all. I learned English (well, besides taking actual English classes anyway) by typing words in its text interface.
I remember being nine years old, sitting in front of SQ1 with my best friend, and trying to survive the escape pod early in the game. How do you avoid dying when it crashes on an alien world?
Our only hope was my neighbor who was a few years older and seemingly infinitely wise. I called him up, and patiently he spelled out the magic words to type before launching the escape pod:
“FASTEN SEAT BELT”
What do those words mean? We had no idea, but we lived on to explore another world.
A few years later I could read and write English just fine, but had no idea how anything was pronounced. Sierra English was a real thing among my generation.
The guys who created Space Quest kickstarted another sci-fi comedy adventure game... 13 years ago. It went (and is still going) poorly, and Kotaku just posted about the ordeal today:
I hope Larian gets into making sequels or remakes of all those 90’s games that people loved. Baldur’s Gate is a game my brain tries to place in the late 90’s along with the later Warcraft games but in fact it’s 00’s. Seeing them walk gaming history backward would be a treat.
Before BG3 came out I started to try to finish BG which I played but got stuck a third of the way through. I made it at least halfway, but then the betas were coming out so I just watched other people play through on YouTube. Which I suspect many people did if they even bothered exerting themselves that much.
Business was good in those days if you had an audience and could distribute your game to your customers more or less direct. Retail was very expensive, but if you were selling shareware your distribution costs were really low and you weren't giving anybody 30-50% of your take. Titles may not have sold i.e. 10 million copies back then, but you could make good money off a single game, and it was cheaper & faster to develop a game. The 'if's I just listed are pretty significant, of course.
For one example, Ultima 1 was developed by a couple people, sold for ~$40 USD, and eventually sold over 1.5m copies according to https://www.newspapers.com/article/austin-american-statesman... and other sources. So that alone probably made everyone involved in the game's development millionaires, even if the publisher took a huge cut.
To my knowledge there was a long lockout period in CUC Sierra acquisition. When Sierra employees were finally able to sell their CUC stock, it had already tanked as the massive fraud was exposed.
People don't strictly want to play games as much as they want to experience alternate realities. That's why Doom/Quake resonated. People want these simulations to be as realistic as possible.
That’s a pretty broad statement to make given that of the seven bestselling video game franchises of all time (Mario, Tetris, Call of Duty, Pokémon, GTA, Minecraft, and FIFA) only one (Call of Duty) is a realistic simulation, one (GTA) could be best described as a totally unrealistic simulation, one (FIFA) is a simulation of an actual game, and the rest are a mix of abstract fantasy and/or pure puzzles.
Im not sure I would even consider CoD realistic either unless you back to when it was primarily a single player game. It has good graphics that look like reality sure, but the guns don't handle anything like real guns would, the people don't move or operate like real people, and even the environments are cut down to impossibly small engagement areas. I would even say GTA is far more realistic than CoD.
> People want these simulations to be as realistic as possible
Have you ever played D&D? There is no graphics, it's all in your head. I've played amazing adventures many years ago that I can still visualize in my head.
> People want these simulations to be as realistic as possible.
What do you mean by that? Do you mean in the context of that era?
IME people what games to be fun because every single genre has a multitude of conceits to make the game playable and technologically feasible. The ones that eschew (most of) those conceits like ARMA and flight simulators are very niche or like Dwarf Fortress and Factorio, complexity is the point (which requires its own conceits to be feasible).
People want to ride into battle and swing swords and conquer civilizations, not manage the intricacies of military campaign logistics and foraging operations and tax collection.
> People want to ride into battle and swing swords and conquer civilizations, not manage the intricacies of military campaign logistics and foraging operations and tax collection.
I assure you that there is a niche market of folks who absolutely love the latter. My father was in the military logistics group.
People don't strictly want to play games as much as they want to experience alternate realities
That’s a very sweeping statement to make about a very large number of unrelated people. I happen to be a gamer and your statement doesn’t describe my wishes or experiences very well at all!
I’d much rather play a game of NetHack than some new ultra-realistic PS5 game. I’m not the only one who feels this way. There a ton of other people like me. People who enjoy retro games, puzzle games, point and click adventure games, RPGs, strategy games, and countless other games that aren’t focused on immersive graphics or realistic simulations.
It's not really about the content - it's a McLuhanesque phenomenon of "the medium is the message". When CD-ROM became affordable for consumers, investment into content that demonstrated the power of CD flooded in.
A few years later, the investment cycle moved on towards 3D and online. Different medium, different message. That really is all that is needed to explain the trends. Galaga remains fun and playable, but nobody is marketing Galaga as the next big thing, so it isn't making sales charts.
That must have been why PacMan was such a dismal failure. How realistic is to play a giant yellow mouth chomping on dots in a maze while being chased by ghosts
I'm sorry to disagree but I want to play games that engage my flow state: Fast, skill-based, noisy, full of acceleration and explosions. Realism has nothing to do with it.
Readit News
https://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_hair_mustache_puzzle
Puzzle Dependency charts in game design help this (from Ron Gilbert/ Monkey Island etc...).
https://grumpygamer.com/puzzle_dependency_charts/
> It was created by the game's producer, Steven Hill, after a puzzle designed by the game's lead designer, Jane Jensen, was cut due to budgetary reasons.
> It came as a result of a puzzle created by the game's designer, Jane Jensen, needing to be removed due to budget concerns.
What an incredibly classic, braindead tragedy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOPiSYUSrQ0
and the second, which is one of my favorite videos of all time (if you only watch one, I'd pick this one)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMVl5U3SlS0
I think he mentions Old Man Murray's piece in the second!
Just watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si_iveNrUPo
And tell me if you can hear "Siera ga ookuri suru Thexder" (Thexder presented by Sierra) there. Even now, at most I can make out Sierra and a distorted bit of Thexder, even knowing how Thexder is rendered into katakana.
I laughed a bit too hard at this. Pure "follow my train of thought" puzzles aren't the most fun, and I think they fit best in the larger context of something like Uncharted. Just give me a skip button.
I can also recommend his other site, Analog Antiquarian[1] where he writes more about the larger history. His Magellan series that's going on now is really amazing, makes you feel like you're really experiencing the epic voyage through South America and South East Asia.
[0] https://www.filfre.net/2018/06/doing-windows-part-1-ms-dos-a...
[1] https://analog-antiquarian.net/
EY later settled in court at 300 million but never admitted any wrongdoing. So much for the reputation of the "big four" which at the time was still known as "big five".
Find a discrepancy and every damn time the auditors will say “oh, that information was not provided to us”.
It’s like if you hired a judge for your own prosecution. What judge is going to find you guilty?
See also ratings agencies in 2008.
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/ubss-auditor-issues...
I think this says more about how worrisome UBS is than how unreliable auditing is.
And then:
> “Have you and Ken ever thought about selling Sierra?” <Forbes> asked her out of the blue one day in the lobby of the Paris hotel.
> “No,” Roberta answered shortly. “We’re not interested.”
> “But if you ever were, what sort of price would you be looking at?”
> “A lot,” Roberta replied, then walked away as quickly as decorum allowed.
Pretty clear which of the two was the better business person.
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softporn_Adventure
Interesting to read the link to the Leisure Suit Larry game.
Edit: common homophone issue
The pirates of pestulon base in space quest 3 I think. It was pretty funny. Making fun of the cubicle office which was pretty much Avant la lettre back then (i know in Europe we only really got those in the late 90s). In 2000 I still had my own office as a trainee
It's such a contrast then to read (what I find profoundly distasteful) quotes like this from the other side of the company. Ken Williams: "I read books about business executives who owned yachts and jets, and who hung out with beautiful models in fancy mansions. I knew that was my future and I couldn’t wait to claim it.".
It's a tragedy Ken Williams managed to overrule nearly everyone familiar with Sierra (including his wife) opposed to the acquisition by CUC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUC_International
On the second point, when I read his book (https://kensbook.com/) I was disappointed to not hear about the magic of the games themselves and the creative process behind them. It became clear that his primary goal was to grow a business, he thought being a game distributor was more exciting, but then was disrupted by Steam, shareware, and online distribution.
I can’t play a game like Luigi’s Mansion without feeling like that was one of the inspirations.
Oh, I played many of the others, but SQ -- specifically II -- was what made me fall in love with adventure games, warts and all. I learned English (well, besides taking actual English classes anyway) by typing words in its text interface.
I remember being nine years old, sitting in front of SQ1 with my best friend, and trying to survive the escape pod early in the game. How do you avoid dying when it crashes on an alien world?
Our only hope was my neighbor who was a few years older and seemingly infinitely wise. I called him up, and patiently he spelled out the magic words to type before launching the escape pod:
“FASTEN SEAT BELT”
What do those words mean? We had no idea, but we lived on to explore another world.
A few years later I could read and write English just fine, but had no idea how anything was pronounced. Sierra English was a real thing among my generation.
https://kotaku.com/spaceventure-space-quest-kickstarter-stea...
I backed the project, but at one of the lowest levels, so I'm not really mad. It's just kind of sad.
Before BG3 came out I started to try to finish BG which I played but got stuck a third of the way through. I made it at least halfway, but then the betas were coming out so I just watched other people play through on YouTube. Which I suspect many people did if they even bothered exerting themselves that much.
What other games have good playthroughs?
They just released Colossal Cave a few years ago.
Nothing good lasts forever, that's just how it is.
For one example, Ultima 1 was developed by a couple people, sold for ~$40 USD, and eventually sold over 1.5m copies according to https://www.newspapers.com/article/austin-american-statesman... and other sources. So that alone probably made everyone involved in the game's development millionaires, even if the publisher took a huge cut.
(Spoiler for Part II of this article, I guess!)
Doom/Quake is about as realistic as Escape From Tarkov is easy-going, light hearted, non-at-all-sweaty fun.
> People don't strictly want to play games as much as they want [an] experience
this would ^ probably be more accurate version of your statement. it's not always about realism.
Have you ever played D&D? There is no graphics, it's all in your head. I've played amazing adventures many years ago that I can still visualize in my head.
What do you mean by that? Do you mean in the context of that era?
IME people what games to be fun because every single genre has a multitude of conceits to make the game playable and technologically feasible. The ones that eschew (most of) those conceits like ARMA and flight simulators are very niche or like Dwarf Fortress and Factorio, complexity is the point (which requires its own conceits to be feasible).
People want to ride into battle and swing swords and conquer civilizations, not manage the intricacies of military campaign logistics and foraging operations and tax collection.
I assure you that there is a niche market of folks who absolutely love the latter. My father was in the military logistics group.
That’s a very sweeping statement to make about a very large number of unrelated people. I happen to be a gamer and your statement doesn’t describe my wishes or experiences very well at all!
I’d much rather play a game of NetHack than some new ultra-realistic PS5 game. I’m not the only one who feels this way. There a ton of other people like me. People who enjoy retro games, puzzle games, point and click adventure games, RPGs, strategy games, and countless other games that aren’t focused on immersive graphics or realistic simulations.
Been playing on and off for 20 years and have only managed a single ascension in that time!
A few years later, the investment cycle moved on towards 3D and online. Different medium, different message. That really is all that is needed to explain the trends. Galaga remains fun and playable, but nobody is marketing Galaga as the next big thing, so it isn't making sales charts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuTkgi7scKo
Isn't this what is leading AAA game studios to financial ruin these days? Incrementally improved realism has become unaffordable.