Telltale Games

[Sir Perceval of Daventry]

If I'm reading the above article snippet right, he didn't abandon Sierra when it was sold; he was under the impression that he was going to remain in control of it, and when that didn't happen, he then left. If he had remained in control like he thought he was going to be, Sierra may, as stated in the article, still be around today.

He also has said he quit Sierra the very day the sale closed, which means literally the day the company was sold.
There's a LOT of murkiness about that era, 1996-1997.

[snabbott]

Well, selling a company takes a while. It may be that at the beginning of the process, he thought he would still have some control and by the end of the process, he realized otherwise.

[Blackthorne]

Whatever the case, it's a shame the way Sierra went out.

I think that's the nature of the business, though.  I mean, there are very few companies that have mantained long careers like that.   And if they have, they're huge conglomerates - not small, niche companies. 

I think Ken Williams did as well as he could for as long as he could.  I do think, however, that technology outpaced him and suddenly he became more concerned with that than the games.


Bt

[Cez]

I guess that's also the problem with big conglomerates. The need to sell to keep the company afloat, and how making adventure games wasn't profitable anymore because of what BT says, the technology.

I don't know how big Sierra was in terms of people working for it, but Telltale isn't that big, for example. Telltale doesn't let technology determine their games, but they work with the technology they have --which is key to their success. Sierra, unfortunately, was too big, and had a reputation of always pushing the technology, so they had to continue doing so. 

[Sir Perceval of Daventry]

I guess that's also the problem with big conglomerates. The need to sell to keep the company afloat, and how making adventure games wasn't profitable anymore because of what BT says, the technology.

I don't know how big Sierra was in terms of people working for it, but Telltale isn't that big, for example. Telltale doesn't let technology determine their games, but they work with the technology they have --which is key to their success. Sierra, unfortunately, was too big, and had a reputation of always pushing the technology, so they had to continue doing so.  

They had a little over 1,000 employees as of '96. 700 in development. 300 in other, non development functions. They had grown rapidly throughout the early and mid 1990s--In 1991, when Sierra and Broderbund had considered merging into one company, Sierra only had 300 employees; 5 years later, 700 more.
As far as technology--They didn't really HAVE to sell to remain afloat. They were at the top of the industry at the time in terms of market share. Their main competition was considered Microsoft and EA by the press of the time, which says something. I think EA has managed to remain independent.
Unlike EA (which is basically a monolithic corporation), Sierra didn't consolidate the companies they bought into a giant conglomerate. The companies which Sierra bought retained their own corporate identity, their brand names, their own management, and even their physical locations. Basically Sierra's subsidiaries were semi-autonomous and shared with Sierra only the corporate management (at Bellevue) and the sales and marketing resources of Sierra--Even though the easier option would've been Sierra buying the companies, folding them as corporate entities and just gobbling them up into the main company. Ken did this because he wanted the companies he bought to stay as they were and keep their own unique atmosphere while simply having the power and resources of Sierra as a whole to help their games reach a bigger audience, and for Sierra in turn to reach bigger demographics and get into new, burgeoning  genres of games.

[Enchantermon]

Basically Sierra's subsidiaries were semi-autonomous and shared with Sierra only the corporate management (at Bellevue) and the sales and marketing resources of Sierra--Even though the easier option would've been Sierra buying the companies, folding them as corporate entities and just gobbling them up into the main company. Ken did this because he wanted the companies he bought to stay as they were and keep their own unique atmosphere while simply having the power and resources of Sierra as a whole to help their games reach a bigger audience, and for Sierra in turn to reach bigger demographics and get into new, burgeoning  genres of games.

Which, interestingly, is what he seemed to expect to happen when CUC bought Sierra, but it didn't quite turn out that way.

[Cez]

That's essentially the model Activision has. Studios have their own identity, but they are still part of a bigger conglomerate and decisions of game-making, etc, come from the big conglomerate. Somebody at upper management had to still approve the games/etc, I would think. Activision also manages budgets of studios in terms of what they get depending on the projects they have/sell/etc.

Also, of course they had to sell to remain afloat. They were a business. Maintaining 1000 employees need a great flow of cash. If you don't sell, you can't pay your employees/studios. By the mid-90s they started to lose ground, by 97 the consoles started to grow in strength, they started to face a lot of problems. Not sure exactly how it went, but saying they didn't have to sell is a bit of a utopia.

**And btw, I'm talking about selling copies of their games, not the sale of Sierra as a whole, which I just realize we may be talking about two different things.