alt Hacker NewsA Brief History of Sierra Online (2017)
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My favorite game company ever. Seeing the original King's Quest running on a Tandy 1000 was a huge, huge moment for me as a little kid.
The first Gabriel Knight was my favorite Sierra game, but there are lots of great ones. The Colonel's Bequest, Quest for Glory II, Conquests of the Longbow...
Growing up in the nineties Sierra was everywhere and I played a lot of their games. Still, whenever I hear of them the first thing I think of is Half-Life. Which is especially funny considering how the lawsuit between Valve and Sierra/Vivendi contributed to the end of Sierra.
For anyone interested it's detailed from Valve's point of view in the Half-Life 2 documentary:
With respect to the "online" part of Sierra Online, I particularly remember "The Realm" [0] as ~1996 beta.
> In June 2000, Havas was merged with other companies into Vivendi Universal, which unfortunately led to more restructuring and lay-offs.
This makes a bit more sense - I think I remember Gunman Chronicles having Havas listed as the publisher which always confused me as I was sure it was Sierra or Vivendi on the box.
Interesting, the article does not mention they were the publisher for Impressions Games, known for their fantastic city builder series including Caesar and Pharaoh.
>Ahh! Life-giving water! Nectar of the Gods!
kings quest 5 was so good.
Leisure Suit Larry asked various trivia questions on startup in an attempt to verify that you were an adult. Really helped hone ten-year-old me’s research skills.
It's fascinating to me that they had a presence in Oakhurst for such a long time (up until the late 90s). I met a couple of people who worked there - one who had a side gig selling homemade salsa at flea markets and building custom PCs. It would have been an awesome job back in the day.
Games in this style have had a recent-ish revival with titles like A Tale of Two Kingdoms and Heroine's Quest. A Tale of Two Kingdoms is what King's Quest V would have been, had it been made in the modern-ish day.
Anything by Wadjet Eye Games is pretty choice as well.
There was a period where there just weren't any good adventure games getting made, but now there are nostalgic pixel-art style titles galore and many of them choose the IMO solid path of focusing on writing quality over realistic polish.