The Founders of Sierra On-Line Ken and Roberta Williams Join us this Month at The OCGC Meeting

Those of you who were into computers back in the early ’80s will know the names Ken and Roberta Williams without a doubt! But, if you were a teen like I was in the early ’80s and had an Apple, Commodore, TRS-80, or an Atari computer, you had to know those names and the names of their fantastic game development company Sierra On-line, known initially as On-Line Systems. Ken and Roberta are the founders of one of the most well-known game studios in the early history of the video game industry.

Ken and Roberta took computer games to a whole new level by introducing graphical adventure games with their first title, Mystery House, released in 1980 for the Apple II computer. Mystery House was designed by Roberta, programmed by Ken, and launched On-Line systems into the game industry. Text adventure games were popular at the time, so adding graphics to the mix was an instant success. In addition, Ken and Roberta were on to something by adding pictures to help create an immersive game experience like never before seen.

Sierra On-Line had many hugely successful games from the early ’80s through the late ’90s and grew to one of the leading game development companies of all time. Some of the most well-known titles include the King’s Quest series, Space Quest series, Leasure Suit Larry series, and hundreds of other popular titles enjoyed by gamers worldwide.

July 24, 1996, Ken and Roberta sold Sierra On-Line to CUC International, thus changing the face of Sierra and beginning the start of several mergers and acquisitions. There are countless websites and YouTube videos that document the rise and fall of Sierra over the years, and I highly recommend checking some of them out to see what happened to the company over the decades since. Currently, Sierra is owned by Activision, and there have been rumors of possible re-releases of some of the old popular titles.

July 24, 1996, Ken and Roberta sold Sierra On-Line to CUC International, thus changing the face of Sierra and beginning the start of several mergers and acquisitions. There are countless websites and YouTube videos that document the rise and fall of Sierra over the years, and I highly recommend checking some of them out to see what happened to the company over the decades since. Currently, Sierra is owned by Activision, and there have been rumors of possible re-releases of some of the old popular titles.

Since they departed from Sierra, Ken and Roberta have been busy roaming the oceans, writing books, and coming up with new ideas. Ken has written three books on various aspects of sailing the oceans and their adventures at sea and the history of Sierra On-Line in his latest book titled Not all Fairy Tales Have Happy Ending. In contrast, Roberta has written a dramatic account of the Great Famine and the ordeals of the Irish in mid-nineteenth century Ireland titled Farewell to Tara.

I have a personal love of Sierra since my father was hired to do some of their very early game cover artwork back in the early ’80s, and I created their first hint line BBS and later did some work in Q&A. Not to mention growing up in Oakhurst and spending a lot of time hanging out with Ken, his brother John and many of the early developers at Sierra as a teen.

We are proud to have Ken join us for the August Old Computer Geeks Club (OCGC) on 8/28/2021 to share a bit of his history with Sierra and what is next! Recently there has been some exciting news about a new game that Ken and Roberta, along with Marcus Maximus Mera, are working on with the hopes of releasing this year sometime! There is very little detail about the game they are working on, but if I know Ken and Roberta, it will be amazing. You can follow along with updates on Ken’s new site www.kensgame.com. If you would like to join us for the meeting and ask Ken some questions, please feel free to join us on Zoom at 9 AM Pacific Daylight Time on 8/28 or watch live on the VCC YouTube Channel.

Ken’s Books:

• Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line – I loved this book! It brought back so many great memories of Sierra and told me what happened in the end.
• The Great Siberian Sushi Run Kindle Edition
• Cruising Under Power – Pacific Coasts of Mexico and Central America
• Apple II computer graphics – I personally have a copy of this book! Ken and my high school computer teacher wrote it.

Roberta’s Book:

• Farewell to Tara – Excited to see that Roberta finished this, I know she worked on it for a while, can’t wait to read it.