A little Sierra history--For those who are interested.

[TheReturnofDMD]

Just as Baggins has collected a lot of info on KQ, I have over the years collected as much info as I can on the history of Sierra, and I'll give you some info I've collected for those who are interested, as it does make for an interesting story. I posted this on IA's forum, I'll repost it here.  It starts with a brief flash at the glory days of Sierra--1989 and 1990--as a prelude to the real meat of Sierra's rise and decline. I haven't gotten up to 1998 yet, though I have the history, I just need to make it concise:



Around 1989 or 1990,  after meeting with Bill Gates (and offering to sell Sierra to him unsuccessfully at this meeting), Ken Williams (Chairman, CEO, President and Founder of Sierra), Ken decided the future business model of Sierra: Sierra would be 1/3rd Educational products, 1/3rd Productivity Software, and 1/3rd Perennial Products (NASCAR, Red Baron, Caesar, Print Artist, SWAT,--Products that could in Ken's words be ''re-vamped'' each year). His goal was to eventually marginalize, and perhaps phase out 'Adventure games'--He foresaw their slow decline in popularity.

Thus Sierra began to buy companies: Dynamix (1990), Bright Star Technologies (1992), Coktel (1993). A merger with Broderbund was attempted in 1991 but failed midway; Ken also attempted to buy Id Software in March 1992 after seeing Wolfenstein 3D; That acquisition failed, though it did make for a funny story. To quote Ken on the failed id acquisition:

"I wish I had been able to persuade them to work with us. I would have pushed harder, but I have never been into violence, and really didn't want to publish violent games -- even knowing that I had a fiscal responsibility to shareholders to "do the right thing" for the company.

A funny part of the story is that I didn't realize how "casual" they were, and met them at a fancy french restaurant. I wore a coat/tie, and they showed up in totally ripped up clothing, and in flip flops. I didn't care, and would have happily swapped them clothes - but, the restaurant was freaked out. I was a good customer, so they moved us off to a private room, where we were stared in amazement by any of the restaurants other patrons who happened to see us.

It was a great evening, and one I shall never forget. They are amazing guys and deserve all the success they've had."

Sierra in 1991 consisted of 300 employees overall.

In January 1994, Sierra officially moved it's headquarters to Bellevue, Washington. This marked a major turning point for the company; Ken wanted the company to grow, and Oakhurst was becoming harder and harder to manage as the headquarters of an ever-growing corporation; it was also very hard to hire new employees in a tiny town.

To some employees, the move to Bellevue marked a change in that the entire atmosphere of the company; Instead of Sierra being a "family" of co-workers all living and working in a tiny town, it was now truly a corporation, in a big, very different city with a different culture. This was sadly the price of Sierra's growth into a powerhouse developer.

In June of 1994, a man named Michael Brochu was appointed the Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Sierra by Ken Williams (who was then CEO, President and Chairman of the Board). Brochu further steered Sierra into an acquisition focused direction--The idea came from Ken's vision of the company as detailed in 1990, but Brochu 'made it happen' and Ken has attributed a lot of Sierra's growth to Brochu. In 1995, Sierra went acquisition crazy. They bought:

Impressions Software--Known for their racing and sports products
Sublogic--Known for their flight simulation software
The Pixellite Group--Known primarily for their line of Print Artist software
Green Thumb Software--Knowing for their gardening software
Arion Software--Known for their cooking software

P.F. Collier embarked on a joint venture with Sierra to produce a multimedia encyclopedia in the same year. The adventure category's share of Sierra's sales fell to 36 percent in 1995 from 47.4 percent the previous year, education sales hovered around 14 percent. Most of the growth came in the simulation category, nearly doubling from 15.2 percent to 27.9 percent.

This sudden, massive growth quickly made Sierra a target for acquisition, and also added in layers of bureaucracy. By 1995, Ken was tired of the 'drudgery' as he put it of running a large, publicly traded company day to day--He had never enjoyed running a company and as the company grew, the job became harder, and so in October 1995 named Michael Brochu as the Chief Operating Officer and President of Sierra. Brochu was now responsible for the day-to-day management and operation of Sierra, which allowed Ken to focus on developing product; His role at Sierra shifted now more to a product advisor or R&D guy, though he was still the Chairman of the Board and CEO. As he said in early 1996:

"I'm not sure how typical I am of other CEOs...most of my time is spent looking at product. Sierra has roughly 70+ games in development at any point in time. It is a full time job to review and comment on this much product. I have successfully been able to shovel most of the drudgery of running a large company off onto others so that I can focus on product.

We have a process at Sierra where every three months Jerry Bowerman (our head of R&D) and myself try to visit every division to see every product in the company. Believe it or not, this requires a FULL MONTH on the road! We spend from 8 a.m. 'til at least 9 p.m. every night going through product. Our goals include checking to see if the product looks like it will finish on time, and on budget, but what we are really looking for is to do anything we can to support the developers as they try to build "Sierra quality" product. It isn't staying on budget that causes a hit—it's having the greatest game. Many products have been nuked during these quarterly visits....To me, everything is about being able to build awesome product. Everything else is just garbage you have to do in business. Anything that allows us to built better product, or take better care of our customers, is good...I'd much rather focus on producing an awesome game than worrying about whether or not we're showing what great art we can do—or, that we know how to program for a DVD drive."


Meanwhile, Sierra's rapid growth immediately made them a hot buy--In the summer of 1995, Sierra went on many "Good Buy" lists in investment houses. In early February 1996, Walter Forbes, CEO and founder of CUC, Inc., who had been a member of Sierra's Board of Directors since 1991, suddenly approached Ken one day after a board meeting and offered to buy Sierra; This surprised Ken, as Sierra wasn't for sale.

CUC outlined their vision for what Sierra would be like post-acquisition, and Ken flatly turned the deal down, and laid out his terms.

The next day, the heads of CUC buckled to his demands:

To quote Ken,

"1) I was to go onto CUCs board as Vice-Chairman. My understanding was that this would put me "above" Bob Davidson, even though he would run the software business day to day. My goal was to give him the independence he needed to succeed, but I thought this corporate role would allow me the visibility, and voice, to intercede if things weren't going well.
2) I was to become the third member of the "Office of the President" with CUCs two existing co-Presidents
3) A software board was going to be formed, which would have Bob Davidson, Myself, Mike Brochu (Sierra's President) and I believe Kirk Shelton of CUC (who is not in jail)
4) No major decisions were to be made (such as dropping product lines, or consolidating functions) without prior review by the software board
5) I was to stay responsible for Sierra's R&D"


CUC and Sierra entered into the sale on February 20th, 1996, and the sale closed and Sierra officially became part of CUC on July 24th 1996. In the meantime, Sierra acquired two more companies: Synergistic Software, which was known for RPG games, and Headgate, which was known for Golf games. Headgate was acquired in April 1996. Sierra at this time in 1996 had over 1,000 employeees--700 just in development, with the rest in other areas such as marketing, distribution, etc. In 1991 the company had just 300 overall.

Ken was indeed appointed a Vice Chairman of CUC, and a Member of the Office of the President in September 1996, and Michael Brochu, Sierra's President, was at the same time named a Senior Vice President of CUC Software. Brochu was also named a Senior Vice President of CUC, Inc. Brochu joined CUC's senior management group in developing new business opportunities and acquisitions. His responsibilities also included several consolidated functions within CUC's software division, including presiding as president of CUC Software's international business, budgetware and OEM relationships--But even with these expanded duties, he remained Sierra's President and thus ran Sierra day to day.

It turned out that Ken's titles meant little in actuality. Bob Davidson (CEO of Davidson & Associates, an educational software company) was placed in charge as CEO of CUC Software, which included Sierra, Davidson, Blizzard and Knowledge Adventure. Davidson and Ken had VERY different ideas over the future of the company and clashed. Davidson attempted to take Sierra's more ''risque'' products such as Leisure Suit Larry and Phantasmagoria off store shelves on moral grounds; Ken fought against it. The software board maybe met once at best. Bob and Ken wrestled over Sierra's R&D. Essentially, Ken was told all he wanted to hear by the guys at CUC during the negotiations, and none of their promises meant anything when all was said and done and the ink was dry on the deal.

In Ken's own words: ''Far more discussion went into how Sierra would be structured post acquisition than into the price. I wanted Sierra to survive for many generations to come, and would not accept a scenario that I didn't believe in. At dinner the first night after their proposal, CUC revealed their grand vision on how the business would operate. I felt that it was non-viable and rejected the proposal.

Ultimately, a structure was created that I believed in, and believed could make Sierra an even stronger company. Unfortunately, once the deal was done, I discovered I had no power to control things, and they got out of hand. I transferred out of the game division, primarily because I couldn't stomach watching my company ripped apart. No one can imagine how it felt to get calls from employees complaining about how things were running, and have to reassure them that all was well, and that they should get back to work. These were very painful times, and things weren't well... That said, the new management needed support to have any chance of succeeding. They didn't need me undermining them to their staff.''


Here is where things get foggy. Ken claims to have stepped down as CEO of Sierra the day the sale closed but worked (only for a short time) as a strategic advisor, yet as late as November 1996 in old Usenet postings he refers to himself as Sierra's CEO and still wrote for InterAction's "Inside View" article until the Summer 1997 issue. The guys at Valve (which was formed in August 1996, after the sale to CUC closed and Ken supposedly stepped down as CEO) claim to have met with him in November 1996 at Sierra's headquarters, and at this time he signed on Half Life as a Sierra product--That is true, and he recalls signing it on personally--It was one of his last acts as Sierra's CEO, as he knew Half Life would be a hit and was different than most "Doom clones." He also posted on Usenet saying clearly he was Sierra's CEO as late as November 21st 1996. His memory could be foggy on when he left Sierra as CEO. http://www.gamespot.com/features/halflife_final/part24.html

In any case, it's clear that he transfered out of the software division sometime in January 1997 and spent most of 1997 working solely for CUC as the project leader of their "Netmarket" project--as far away as directly being involved with Sierra as could be. He remained with CUC, perhaps overseeing products at Sierra until November 1997, which is when he quit CUC and Sierra completely.

In January 1997, Bob Davidson stepped down as CEO of CUC Software over his own disagreements with CUC, and was replaced by Chris McLeod, the Second Member of the Office of the President and Executive President at CUC, who had no prior experience in the video game industry, was made the new CEO of CUC Software, with Sierra's President Michael Brochu and Blizzard's President reported to him.

In April 1997, Sierra, under Brochu's leadership, made two more acquisitions: Books that Work, Inc--Another productivity company, and Berkeley Systems Inc, known for their "You Don't Know Jack!" franchise. The company continued to grow at least on the outside, and since Ken was generally out of the picture by then, we don't know how CUC was treating them. Perhaps someday Michael Brochu will tell his side of the story.

However, what is known is that CUC Software made Sierra publish products developed by CUC Software's other divisions--Something Ken did NOT want. He had hoped for Sierra and the other companies to only share sales and resources, not creative groups. In 1997 Sierra published Stay Tooned, which was developed by Funnybone (a subsidiary of Davidson & Associates), "Eat My Dust", which was developed once again by Funnybone and in October 1997 Sierra's subsidiary, Synergistic Software, produced Diablo: Hellefire, the only authorized expansion pack to Diablo as a courtesy to their sister company Blizzard, who was busy working on Diablo II.

In May, CUC announced it's intention to merge with HFS--The largest owner of hotel franchises in the US. HFS owned hotel chains such as Days Inn, Ramada Inn, Howard Johnson Hotels, and many more. The combined company would be one of the largest in America, with a monopoly on Hotel franchises, mail based subscriber memberships (CUC's Traveler's Advantage, Shopper's Advantage), and the software industry with Sierra (the market share leader in entertainment software), Davidson (the market share leader in educational software) and Blizzard. Ken Williams was still with CUC during the merger and was to be named a Vice Chairman of the combined company, but he left just before the merger closed in December 1997. The new company was named Cendant, and CUC Software became Cendant Software--just one tiny part of organization which now had over 40,000 employees.

In October 1997, Michael Brochu stepped down as Sierra's President, and Cendant Software CEO Chris McLeod reacted by splitting Sierra into three business units--

Three former vice presidents of Sierra - Bill Moore, Scott Lynch, and Randy Dersham - were given the title senior vice president and put in charge of the new units.

Moore would be responsible for Sierra's Home Production line, Berkeley Systems line, and all on-line gaming products;

Lynch would look after Sierra Northwest (Bellevue), Sierra Oakhurst, and Impressions Software; Dursham was put in charge of all sports-related projects including Papyrus and Front Page Sports products.

According to the press release: " A Sierra spokesperson said there would be no layoffs as a result of the restructuring.
Brochu, who was with the company for three years, announced his departure to Sierra staffers on Friday, October 24. October 31 was his last day. Broshu moves to Seattle company Primus and assumes the position of president there.

A Sierra insider said the new structure will address an approval process that was perceived internally to be slow. In so far as CUC Software, Sierra's owner, having exerted a heavy hand in the reorg process, this person discounted any suggestion of that: "They leave us alone and let us market products as we want. Chris McLeod is very involved but he knows we're the experts."

As Ken said in an interview conducted in late 1997:

Q: What are you doing at the moment, and who is taking care of Sierra?

A: "Currently I'm taking some time off. It has been eighteen years of 12-hour work days and constant heavy pressure. I needed some time away from work. That said, all I've done since I decided to take time off is work.

Sierra is being run now by three different people; Scott Lynch, Randy Dersham and Bill Moore. Each of these guys has a third of the company....I am not running Sierra today and haven't been since the sale of the company over a year ago. CUC is a big shopping company, and I was working with them to create their Internet shipping site--www.netmarket.com. I miss running Sierra, but Scott, Randy and Bill are good people and will build solid product. I'm still involved with Sierra, but more as an advisor at product strategy meetings. I do love Sierra and creating games, but after 18 years I'm ready for a new challenge, and Sierra is in good hands."


He summed up 1997 in that same interview by saying:

''1997 was a totally confusing year. We were bought late last year by a big conglomerate, CUC International. This was the right move for Sierra and is in the best interests of our customers and employees. However, it represented a change for the organization. People don't always adjust well to change. The good news is that the change is behind us and the products in development look awesome.

At this same time, we were also wrestling with trying to reinvent the adventure game. I thought we were caught in a rut with our adventure games, and that we needed a major change in direction. I shut down all adventure game projects and asked everyone to come up with something completely different. At first, the organization was in shock, and for a while, nothing got done. Then, people started experimenting with new technologies. Kings Quest 8, Quest for Glory 5 and Gabriel Knight 3 are our first products since the major technology shift. I have absolutely no doubt that all three products will be huge hits when they release. The only way to make a major leap forward was to completely start with a blank sheet of paper and be willing to not ship any adventure games until we had a breakthrough.''

1998 was to come, and little did Ken or any other Sierra official or fan know, along with it, the massive Cendant Scandal.....

[snabbott]

There's a reason the head of the company where I work has vowed never to go public...

The end of Sierra is such a sad story.

I don't remember hearing that Ken Williams was planning on phasing out adventure games.

[kindofdoon]

Thanks for compiling this, DMD. I don't have the time to read it right now, but I will definitely do so today.

[TheReturnofDMD]

There's a reason the head of the company where I work has vowed never to go public...

The end of Sierra is such a sad story.

I don't remember hearing that Ken Williams was planning on phasing out adventure games.

He proclaimed in 1996 that Adventure games were dead, and said in this 2003 interview:

''And lastly, here's another interesting little story that amazingly no one seems to know:
By the time Sierra was sold, it was mostly a non-game company. In about 1990 I made the decision to focus away from games. This came about as a result of a discussion with Bill Gates himself. It's a bit of a long story, but we had been talking about Sierra and Microsoft doing a project together when I got bold enough to ask Bill if he would ever consider buying Sierra (I had always had tremendous respect for Microsoft, and would have teamed up with them in a minute). His answer changed Sierra's future.
People at Sierra remember this meeting well, because I came back and changed the company dramatically. Bill said that he had just noted the bankruptcy of United Artists. His contention was that they were in a hit driven business, and that ultimately in a hit driven business you run into a time of no hits. Sierra lived and died with the best seller charts. Fortunately, the charts were very good to us, but Bill's contention was they had also been good to United Artists. Ultimately, you run out of hits and die. It might take a hundred years, as was the case with United Artists, but it always happens. My goal with Sierra was to create a company that would live forever. I didn't want to be a "hit machine".
I set a new goal for Sierra to exit the hit business, and reorganized the company around a new vision to be 1/3rd education, 1/3rd productivity and 1/3rd perennial products. The first two categories should be obvious, but the last needs some explaining. My goal was to find products that could be "rev'ed" each year, such as Microsoft's Flight Simulator, or Electronic Arts Madden Football. I wanted to find an array of products that could be done better each year. Flight (and other) Simulators fit this category, as did construction sets. Products like Caesar fit this definition. The Incredible Machine.
By the time the company was sold, I had about 80-90% of revenue that matched my vision. It's not clear that I would have continued in adventure games at all. My guess is that this vision won't make me popular with adventure gamers, but it was working. My focus was on building a company that would live forever. The new owners had different ideas and scrapped many products I considered key to this vision. I wish they had at least asked where I was trying to steer the company."

http://www.adventure-treff.de/artikel/interviews/ken_williams_e.php

[kindofdoon]

It's ironic that Williams' strategy to make Sierra live forever was among the reasons that Sierra died.

[Lambonius]

It just goes to show that business and art are always going to be at odds, and never the twain shall meet.  You either succeed at one or the other.  It's nearly impossible to always succeed at both.  In this case, it's sadly clear where Ken Williams' allegiance was.

[Enchantermon]

It's ironic that Williams' strategy to make Sierra live forever was among the reasons that Sierra died.

No, Sierra died because the new owners decided not to continue with Ken's vision. They pitched many of the ideas that would have been instrumental in keeping the company alive, and eventually it died.
Even if Sierra stopped making adventure games for a while, that doesn't mean they would never go back to them. Now that Lucasarts put some old adventure titles on Steam and TTG is making Sam and Max and Monkey Island games, Ken may have reconsidered and gotten some people together to work on more King's Quest, Space Quest, etc. By that time, had his vision been carried out in full and had it worked, Sierra would have been well established in areas beyond adventure gaming and would have been able to make those games without worrying about a miss bankrupting the company. He simply wanted to change from working a volatile market to working something more viable for the long-term. It's good business sense, and though I obviously cannot predict what would have happened, I think Sierra would still be alive today, and we may have even seen their old adventure properties resurface.

In any event, I certainly don't think any worse of Ken for the decisions he was making, because they were obviously working.

[TheReturnofDMD]

It's ironic that Williams' strategy to make Sierra live forever was among the reasons that Sierra died.

Wrong. Ken's vision made Sierra when it was sold the market share leader in PC gaming, and it wasn't because of adventure games. Simulation games are big sellers today; Productivity software always sells. Ken also wanted to explore MMOG's--He regretted selling TSN from when they sold it and wanted to make Online Multiplayer Games the a cornerstone of Sierra's future, and saw them as the future of the gaming industry . He was thinking about this in 1996, long before any World of Warcraft. He also intended for Sierra to get into console gaming seriously, and thought of a console system which could be used online--Similar to what we now know as XBOX Live. I mean from the interview with Ken in early 1996, he mentions that Sierra's programmers already knew in 1996 how to program DVD drives.

Look at where adventure games are today in terms of sales---If Sierra continued on with adventure games as their cornerstone products, they'd be dead anyway.

It was an abandonment of all of Ken's policies, visions and product strategy which killed Sierra. When the company was sold, it had over 1,000 employees and once again, was the market share leader in PC gaming--The Blizzard of it's time. Every time he tried to jump in after he tried to give advice to the new heads, he was rebuffed.

[kindofdoon]

If that is indeed correct, as I'm sure it is, then I must have misunderstood.

I was under the impression that Williams' vision of withdrawing from adventure games towards "perennial" games (as he called them) was adopted by the company and caused its downfall.

[Baggins]

Well, ya the last games the company ever made after during his last few months there, and after he left were random assorted first person shooters, action games, productivity suites, RPGs, a few strategy games, simulators, and sports games. They had pretty much phased out all the adventures.

What did many of them have in common? They weren't exactly innovative and were following the coattails of other companies games. They were fairly derivitive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sierra_Entertainment_video_games

I think it was in one one of the later issues of Interaction magazine Ken Williams comments that perhaps he had waited to long to get on the band wagon of the first person shooter games, and Half-Life was too little too late.

Another bit of trivia was that apparently Phantasmagoria II was released too early. It cut into the sells of the first game which was the better of the two, and was still was still selling strong. Phantasmagoria II hurt the sells of the first game and it didn't do well either. I forget where this was mentioned though.

Sierra had a couple of MMOs in there day too. Shadows of Yserbius/Fate of Twinion (later released as a single player game), and the Realm Online.

[TheReturnofDMD]

Well, ya the last games the company ever made after during his last few months there, and after he left were random assorted first person shooters, action games, productivity suites, RPGs, a few strategy games, simulators, and sports games. They had pretty much phased out all the adventures.

What did many of them have in common? They weren't exactly innovative and were following the coattails of other companies games. They were fairly derivitive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sierra_Entertainment_video_games

I think it was in one one of the later issues of Interaction magazine Ken Williams comments that perhaps he had waited to long to get on the band wagon of the first person shooter games, and Half-Life was too little too late.

Another bit of trivia was that apparently Phantasmagoria II was released too early. It cut into the sells of the first game which was the better of the two, and was still was still selling strong. Phantasmagoria II hurt the sells of the first game and it didn't do well either. I forget where this was mentioned though.

Sierra had a couple of MMOs in there day too. Shadows of Yserbius/Fate of Twinion (later released as a single player game), and the Realm Online.

Not so. In 1996 (his last year at Sierra), the company put out Rama, Urban Runner, Phantasmagoria II, Lighthouse, had put Shivers II in development as well as Quest for Glory V (Ken put it into development around 1995 or 1996 due to fan outcries for a new QFG),  Leisure Suit Larry 7 was released, and Ken in November or December 1996 said his goal was to have Space Quest 7 out in the Spring of 1998---All Adventure games. The previous year you had Torin's Passage, Space Quest VI, Phantasmagoria, Gabriel Knight II, etc.

FrontPage Sports, if you look back at old press release and industry magazines, Sierra's line of sports products, was a major leader in the sports field until 1997/1998--Their Frontpage Sports Football line was literally the Madden of it's era--It was a leading product which inspired others.

Same with Red Baron, that is today a pretty much classic product.

In the main areas that the company WAS innovative--Interactive Movies, and MMOs--The later management showed little interest in nurturing those areas. Ken had worked very closely in developing the Realm Online and it was released on December 31st 1996. He has said consistently that selling the Sierra Network in 1994 was a bad idea.

As for Half Life: Ken has said he passed on action and First Person Shooters for a long time out of his own personal distaste for action games; Very few action games were produced by Sierra before 1996. He allowed the action games that were released to be released because of an obligation to Sierra's shareholders, and he also genuinely liked Half Life; He felt it was more than just a ''Doom Clone'', and he also felt he could one up id Software (whom he had failed to buy).

Half Life went on to become a pretty big hit, was innovative, and the arrangement that Ken made with Valve was that Sierra had the legal rights and ownership of Half Life--which meant that Sierra would forever own Half Life and thus de facto own Valve; After he left, later management gave back the ownership of Half Life to Valve, which in the long run was a bad move.

[Baggins]

I didn't say each of those games were sold poorly, nor did I mean that every single game they made were "derivitive". Especially not half-life, or Red Baron, etc.

Urban Runner, eh, that game sucked... No idea how well it did back in the day though. I played it back then but felt I wasted my money...

Rama and Lighthouse while fairly decent were more or less Myst rippoffs, and Myst series was more popular as far I understand. I don't how successful Rama and Lighthouse were however.

I still need to find the quote for Phantasmagoria II and Ken saying he regreted making it so soon after the first game's release (since it interferred with the original game's sells). I think its something he said in the Sierra Gamers forums.

Interactive movies in general were losing power in the industry... I don't think if they continued to make those they would have sold as well as the 3-d stuff that was coming out. The problem was they were very expensive to make, and if they didn't sell well enough, they hurt the companies that made them.

I'm trying to find that quote where Ken said he waited too long to get into the industry on a certain genre, and may have missed his oppertunity. It may not have had to do with 3-d games. I'm not sure what he was referring to at the moment.

[TheReturnofDMD]

I didn't say each of those games were sold poorly, nor did I mean that every single game they made were "derivitive". Especially not half-life, or Red Baron, etc.

Urban Runner, eh, that game sucked... No idea how well it did back in the day though. I played it back then but felt I wasted my money...

Rama and Lighthouse while fairly decent were more or less Myst rippoffs, and Myst series was more popular as far I understand. I don't how successful Rama and Lighthouse were however.

I still need to find the quote for Phantasmagoria II and Ken saying he regreted making it so soon after the first game's release (since it interferred with the original game's sells). I think its something he said in the Sierra Gamers forums.

Interactive movies in general were losing power in the industry... I don't think if they continued to make those they would have sold as well as the 3-d stuff that was coming out. The problem was they were very expensive to make, and if they didn't sell well enough, they hurt the companies that made them.

I'm trying to find that quote where Ken said he waited too long to get into the industry on a certain genre, and may have missed his oppertunity. It may not have had to do with 3-d games. I'm not sure what he was referring to at the moment.

Ken actually spoke about Urban Runner on Usenet in 1996, saying how he felt it wasn't a "Sierra Quality" product and that's why he decided to sell it at a very budget price; He was dicussing something along the lines of how midway he realized it wasn't going to be as good as the idea was but he didn't want to can it.

Myst was a MEGA hit; It was the highest selling game of all time until I think the Sims, so from around 1993 to 2000. They were 'Myst-style' games, but I think they did pretty on their own. No games of that era, whether by Sierra or anyone else, topped Myst in sales until the Sims came along.

As for Phantas II: I remember him saying something about it too, that he felt it wasn't as good as the first one, and he wanted Roberta to do Phantasmagoria II but she wanted to do Mask of Eternity and so Lorelei Shannon did Phantas II. He didn't exactly blame her for it's lower sales, but did say it was a different style with a different storyline and that may have had something to do with it's lower sales (compared to Phantasmagoria which was Sierra's best selling game ever and had sold over a million--pretty big number for 1995).

That is true. There's a '96 interview with an online gamer site called GameSlice, from around December 1996, where Ken says that Phantasmagoria II was going to be their last interactive movie for some time and that they were just going to focus on 'games'--Interactive movies being too much to produce with (except for Phantas) little revenue to match the money spent. I think he said he wanted to look at them again when the costs of producing them were lower, and I know these days he has said Phantasmagoria was the future of interactive storytelling or adventure games--It's still one of his favorite Sierra products along with LSL.

You may be thinking of his '96 AdventureGamers interview. He says he felt the Doom trend had seemed to begun to burn itself out and that Sierra had waited too long to 'get on the bandwagon'--Not an exact quote but the essence of it; He seems from his words kind of cynical about it and about being the CEO in general.
For example at the end of the interview, they ask him what they can expect from him in the next five years and he says: "More of the same..."

This was before Valve emailed him with a game called Half Life, though.

[snabbott]

I thought Rama was pretty interesting. I read all of the books after playing it.