Sierra Entertainment

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Sierra Entertainment
Type of Company Private
Founded 1979
Headquarters Los Angeles, CA, U.S.
Key people Mark Tremblay, President
Industry Computer and video game industry
Products King's Quest
Space Quest
Leisure Suit Larry
Spyro the Dragon
Gabriel Knight
(full list in article)
Employees 510
Parent Vivendi SA
Slogan N/A
Website Sierra.com

Sierra Entertainment is a leading American computer game developer, publisher and distributor active from 1979. Sierra is comprised of internal development studios at Massive Entertainment, Swordfish Studios, Radical Entertainment and High Moon Studios, and holds its development and corporate headquarters at Los Angeles, led by Mark Tremblay and is a part of the Vivendi Games group, which is part of Vivendi SA.

Contents

[edit] History

One of the first Sierra logos (On title screen of Mystery House)
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One of the first Sierra logos (On title screen of Mystery House)

[edit] The beginning

On-Line Systems, as Sierra Entertainment was originally named, was established in 1979 by Ken and Roberta Williams in their suburban Los Angeles, California home. Inspired by a text-based game written at MIT called Adventure, the husband and wife team began to think up new ways to expand upon that basic idea.

"I don't think we thought at the time about actually starting a software company...but it did cross my mind. 'It would be fun to try and write something like that...so I wrote up a design at the proverbial kitchen table...I drew all kinds of pictures," said Roberta.

Ken Williams (right) discusses Sierra's "The Dark Crystal" (1983) computer game with partner and Muppets-creator Jim Henson
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Ken Williams (right) discusses Sierra's "The Dark Crystal" (1983) computer game with partner and Muppets-creator Jim Henson

Using a borrowed TRS-80 machine, the Williamses began to look through most of the games available at the time. Many were good, but none were able to offer more than textual descriptions of what was going on inside the game. Roberta began work on an idea for a game that would join text and pictures for the first time. It took just over a month for Ken to translate Roberta's hand-written game concept into the first graphic/text adventure, Mystery House. Available for the Apple II, it was text accompanied by a series of black and white line drawings. The Williams' second game, The Wizard and the Princess was in full color, and took full advantage of that machine's high-res capability.

Much of the distribution of Wizard was done by the Williams themselves. The home computer industry was in its infancy, so the first sales were done to individual customers and small computer hobby shops. Demand soon grew, fueled mainly by the popularity of the Apple II. Within a year, the Williams moved the company to Oakhurst, California and adopted Sierra On-Line as the name for the new business. By the end of 1981, The Wizard and the Princess had sold over sixty-thousand copies.

[edit] King's Quest: The First 3-D Animated Adventure

In 1983, IBM approached Sierra to develop a game that would showcase the new IBM PCjr. This "top secret" partnership produced the legendary King's Quest. For the first time gamers controlled an on-screen character that interacted with a color, three dimensional environment. (Note that this environment was based on a set of pre-drawn backgrounds: there was no three-dimensional aspect as it would be understood today.)

King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown is the tale of Sir Graham and his quest for three magical treasures that must be returned to the magical Kingdom of Daventry. The success of the original King's Quest (subsequently ported to other platforms) spurred them into creating numerous adventure game series based on the Quest theme.

In the years to come Sierra would remain on the forefront of groundbreaking computer game design, sometimes creating large blockbusters and other times, failed experiments. Sierra openly stated that their main rival is television and that their aim is to rescue young people from couch potato-ism.

In 1988 Sierra became a public company, selling shares under NASDAQ and became Sierra On-Line Inc.

[edit] 1990s

Starting in 1990, Sierra began acquiring other companies, including Dynamix (1990), Bright Star Technology (1992), Coktel Vision (1993) and Impressions Games (1995). Further acquisitions included Green Thumb Software (1995), subLOGIC (1995) Arion Software (1995), Papyrus Design Group (1995), Berkeley Systems (1997), Books That Work (1997), PyroTechnix (1997) and Headgate (1997). Sierra also acquired the Pixellite Group in 1995 and with that acquisition came the rights to use Print Artist, a computer publishing program which allowed users to make high quality picture prints, in 1995.

In 1991 Sierra started an online service called The Sierra Network. Pre-WWW, it was comparable to services like CompuServe or Prodigy except that its interface was completely graphical. Thematically, it was a cross between a kingdom and a theme park in which users could visit different "lands" to post on message boards, exchange emails and play games. It was years ahead of its time, as a decade later MMORPG's would be dominating computer gaming sales. The Sierra Network was renamed ImagiNation Network and sold in 1994 to AT&T, who sold it to AOL in 1996.

In 1994, Sierra moved its headquarters to Bellevue, Washington to attract more talent.

In July 1996, the company was sold to CUC International; Ken Williams stepped down as Chairman and CEO of Sierra shortly after the sale but remained with Sierra as an advisor and also with CUC as the head of its online sales division for another year before leaving the company entirely.

Bob Davidson was left in charge of Sierra after Williams left, but soon, Davidson too would leave CUC. Davidson had been given control of Sierra's sales, manufacturing and distribution departments and had shut down some of Sierra's creative groups, which led to initial disagreements between him, Ken Williams and CUC that played a part in Williams' eventual retirement. In April 1997, Sierra announced that the original facilities in Oakhurst would be reduced by half, causing 90 people employed in Sierra's operations departments (which included disk duplication and replacements) to be laid off.

In May 1997, CUC announced its plans to merge with HFS Incorporated which would form Cendant Corporation. After the merger was finalized in December 1997, Sierra became a part of Cendant Software, and business went on as usual...for a while. In April 1998, Cendant disclosed that CUC had falsified its books over the past decade, inflating its purported worth before the merger by over US$500 million. The president of CUC, Kirk Shelton, was subsequently convicted of 14 counts of fraud and related charges, sentenced to 10 years in prison, and fined US$3.27 billion; and the criminal trial of the CEO of CUC, Walter Forbes, is still underway as of October, 2005. Forbes had been on Sierra's board of directors and had suggested the CUC purchase in the first place.

Following disclosure of the fraud, Cendant's stock price dropped from $39 to $20, resulting in a loss of about $14 billion of its market capitalization in a single day.

Meanwhile, Sierra's management changed, and David Grenewetski, a talented businessman with a solid record with previous software companies, became Sierra's CEO. However, his name would come to be reviled among Sierra's fans for his bad business decisions which severely hurt the company in years to come.

After this shock, Sierra and the rest of Cendant Software which included Davidson & Associates and Knowledge Adventure, were sold again to French publisher Havas in November 1998, who in turn were soon acquired by French water conglomerate Vivendi later the same month.

In 1998, the company was reorganized into five distinct groups:

  1. Sierra Attractions--This division would develop such series as "Hoyle", "You Don't Know Jack" and others.
  2. Sierra Home--This division would publish consumer friendly home improvement programs such as "Print Artist", "Hallmark Card Studios", "MasterCook series", etc.
  3. Sierra Sports--This division would function to publish sports entertainment series developed by Papyrus Design Group and other studios.
  4. Sierra Studios--This division developed the "big" games such as "King's Quest" and also would be used to publish Sierra's games. The division's main offices were in Bellevue and development groups at Impressions Software and PyroTechnix. It would also be the publisher of independent developers.
  5. Dynamix, a Sierra Company--The same company which was purchased in 1990 specialized in developing 3D combat simulation games such as "Red Baron", "Starsiege" and "Pro Pilot", flight simulator game series.

Sierra's location in Oakhurst was renamed Yosemite Entertainment in 1998.

On February 22, 1999, a decision within Sierra under the leadership of David Grenewetski resulted in the shutdown of many Sierra development studios. Most shocking was the closing of Yosemite Entertainment. This day would later come to be known by Sierra fans as "Black Monday," or "Chainsaw Monday". The shutdown came with Sierra's announcement of a major reorganization of the company. Other development groups within Sierra such as PyroTechnix, Books That Work Inc., and Synergistic were shut down that day. About 250 were laid off due to these changes.

Another reorganization of divisions within Sierra came in 1999, this time to "Core Games" (Sierra Studios), Sierra Sports (Sierra Attractions), and Casual Entertainment (Sierra Home). 105 more employees were laid off as a result. Around this time, Sierra also changed from being a major developer of computer games to being a major publisher of games (for independent companies).

[edit] 2000s

Sierra Entertainment continued to publish successful interactive entertainment products, and hits such as Half-Life 2 and Empire Earth only cemented Sierra’s history as a consistently successful company. With over 700 employees, Sierra, though only a shadow of its former glory, was still a major player in the gaming industry.

On August 14, 2001, Sierra On-Line announced the final closure of their Dynamix development studio, resulting in 97 people losing their jobs. The cuts at this development group were viewed by many as being the final nail in the coffin for the Sierra of the past.

Dynamix had developed a lot of memorable titles for Sierra but had been in financial trouble for many years, and in the touchy business climate after the Cendant scandal which had reduced the profitability of its software unit, there was no place for unprofitable development studios anymore, even if they were popular among fans.

A further 148 people at the main offices in Bellevue lost their jobs on August 15, and many of those people were employed in Sierra’s marketing, administrative, and legal divisions. Those functions, along with Sierra’s customer service and technical support divisions, would now be handled by Vivendi Publishing employees at their offices in Los Angeles.

With all these cuts, Sierra was moving further and further away from being a strong, independent organization to becoming just a brand name of Vivendi Universal. These layoffs left Sierra with 330 people at Bellevue, and about 175 others spread out across other locations.

On February 19, 2002, Sierra On-Line officially announced the change of their name to Sierra Entertainment, Inc. They claimed the new name would "Reflect the company's commitment to developing a broad range of entertainment products, including games for both the PC and next-generation consoles." (Quote from official press release.)

2004 came with a few short strokes due to Sierra's parent company Vivendi’s financial troubles: Impressions Games and the Papyrus Design Group were shut down in the spring, and about 50 people lost their jobs in those cuts; 180 Sierra-related positions were eliminated at Vivendi’s Los Angeles offices; and finally in June of 2004, VU Games laid off Sierra’s final employees at Bellevue, which cost 111 people their jobs and shifted Sierra’s work to other VU Games divisions. The Bellevue facilities were shutdown in August. In total, about 350 people lost their jobs.

After those cuts, which brought mixed emotions to many of Sierra's fans, Vivendi announced that the Sierra brand name and logotype would still be used on Vivendi Games products.

However in 2006, Sierra was rebuilt with a new management team headed by Mark Tremblay. Sierra currently employs over 500 people across 4 locations and is set to release many multi-platform products over the next few years.

Sierra and its development studios continue to be very successful with games such as SWAT 4, and Spyro the Dragon.

[edit] Trivia

  • An independent group known as AGD Interactive have remade two of Sierra's classic adventure games from the 1980s.
  • Another group, Hero6 was originally formed as a direct result to the cancellation of the Quest for Glory series of games. Hero6 is acknowledged as being the first fan-based game group.
  • In the late 1990s, many Sierra games made for Windows had a rather serious bug. If one were to uninstall a game, the uninstaller would delete an important DLL needed for Windows to work properly. [citation needed]

[edit] Sierra's breakthroughs

[edit] Sierra Development Studios

[edit] Brands

[edit] Defunct Sierra Development Groups

[edit] Developers whose games Sierra has published

[edit] Sierra's games

[edit] Adventure games

  • Police Quest series
    1. Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel (1987, improved version in 1991)
    2. Police Quest II: The Vengeance (1988)
    3. Police Quest III: The Kindred (1990)
    4. Police Quest IV: Open Season (1993)
    5. Police Quest: SWAT (1995, not an adventure game)
    6. Police Quest: SWAT 2 (1998, real time strategy game)
  • Manhunter series
    1. Manhunter: New York (1988)
    2. Manhunter 2: San Francisco (1989)
  • EcoQuest series
    1. EcoQuest: The Search for Cetus (1991)
    2. EcoQuest 2: Lost Secret of the Rainforest (1993)
  • Gabriel Knight series
    1. Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (1993)
    2. Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within (1995)
    3. Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned (1999)
  • Phantasmagoria series
    1. Phantasmagoria (1995)
    2. Phantasmagoria II: A Puzzle of Flesh (1996)

[edit] Other notable games

  • 3-D Ultra Pinball series
    1. 3-D Ultra Pinball (1996)
    2. 3-D Ultra Pinball: Creep Night (1996)
    3. 3-D Ultra Pinball: The Lost Continent (1998)
    4. 3-D Ultra Pinball: Thrill Ride (2000)
  • Dr. Brain series
    1. Castle of Dr. Brain (1991)
    2. Island of Dr. Brain (1992)
    3. The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain (1995)
    4. The Time Warp of Dr. Brain (1996)
    5. Dr. Brain Thinking Games: Puzzle Madness (1998)
  • The Incredible Machine series (developed by Dynamix)
    1. The Incredible Machine (1992)
    2. The Even More Incredible Machine (1993)
    3. Sid & Al's Incredible Toons (1993)
    4. The Incredible Machine 2 (1994)
    5. The Incredible Toon Machine (1994)
    6. The Incredible Machine 3.0 (1995)
    7. Return of the Incredible Machine: Contraptions (2000)
    8. The Incredible Machine: Even More Contraptions (2001)
  • Field & Stream series
    1. Field & Stream: Trophy Bass 3D
    2. Field & Stream: Trophy Bass 4
    3. Field & Stream: Trophy Buck 'n Bass 2
    4. Field & Stream: Trophy Hunting 4
    5. Field & Stream: Trophy Hunting 5

[edit] References

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Company related

[edit] Sierra game-related pages

  • Vintage Sierra - an archive of Sierra On-Line's software catalog. It has been designed as a resource for collectors and a showcase for some of the best software titles ever produced.
  • Evryware - official site of Evryware, the design team which created the Manhunter series and Sierra Championship Boxing
  • AGD Interactive - a group dedicated to remaking and updating Sierra's classic Adventure Games from the 80's and 90's
  • Online Sierra - game-related history.
  • Quest Studios - containing MIDI music (and some MP3/OGG soundtracks too) recorded from Sierra games, as well as other Sierra-related materials
  • Sierra Music Central - containing MP3/OGG soundtracks recorded from Sierra games
  • Sierra Entertainment - analysis and critique.
  • Sierra Game Patches - patches for the classic games so that they work on modern operating systems. Use with DOSBox for best results.
  • Entry at The Dot Eaters on the early history of Sierra and profiles of its major early games
  • Adventureland's Coverage of Sierra - This site tries to list all adventure games (interactive fiction) produced over the years.

[edit] Other Sierra-related sites

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