Jim Walls

Jim Walls is a retired police officer, who in 1971 joined the California Highway Patrol. He retired after 15 years on the force^[1] after a shooting incident that left him traumatized.^[2]

During his recovery from the shooting incident, Walls met Ken Williams, who was then a developer for Sierra On-Line. Williams asked Walls to his house for a game of racquetball, and over drinks after the game, Ken told Walls of his idea of starting an adventure game series with a police genre. Williams told Walls that all he needed was a real police officer to be involved with the design in order to maintain realism.^[3]

Following that meeting, Walls went on to become a game designer for Sierra On-Line (now Sierra Entertainment).

Walls claims "When I first sat down in front of a computer to begin the design story of the original Police Quest I had to be shown where the on/off switch was. I typed the entire story with two fingers (after all, the only skills I had at the time were chasing people down and throwing them in jail)."^[3]

Walls' best-known works were the first three Police Quest games (1987's Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel, 1988's Police Quest II: The Vengeance, and 1990's Police Quest III: The Kindred). Walls also created an espionage game called Codename: Iceman in 1989, but this sold poorly in comparison to the Police Quest titles. The games included real situations that he had lived through in his career.

The later games in the Police Quest series (Police Quest IV: Open Season, Police Quest: SWAT and Police Quest: SWAT 2) were designed by Darryl F. Gates after Walls left Sierra.

Walls also created Blue Force, another adventure game featuring a police officer, in 1993 for Tsunami Games. He is also credited on Earth & Beyond, in 2002, for Electronic Arts Inc. and Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat in 2002, for Electronic Arts, and had a cameo, as a weapons handler in a police station, in the adventure game Blade Runner in 1997, for Virgin Interactive Entertainment, Inc based on the 1982 film of the same name. Walls is sometimes credited as James Walls.

Future Plans

On February 2, 2013 Jim did a live audio podcast with Co-Founder of Guys From Andromeda LLC, Chris Pope. Jim announced live that he has plans to create a new adventure game similar to Police Quest. This will be a new IP for Jim. The announcement also included plans to use Kickstarter as the funding method for the new game.^[4]

On July 16, 2013, the new game proposal was finally annonced.^[5] Precinct is a spiritual successor to the classic Sierra franchise Police Quest. Sierra veteran Robert Lindsley has been signed on as the game's executive producer. The game will be developed by newly established studio Jim Walls Reloaded, where Lindsley also serves as the company's president.^[6] The game aspires to follow the classic Sierra adventure game formula with a "modern feel". It has a funding goal of $500,000, with a fundrasing period stretching from Jul 16, 2013 - Aug 16, 2013. However, this project was not successful and Walls cancelled the Kickstarter fundraising on August 6, 2013. Subsequently, Walls and Lindsley announced that they would instead launch an alternative fundraising campaign for Precinct, which they called "new and unique".^[7] The new crowdfunding campaign would not have the same time restrictions as Kickstarter has and the game will be launched once the funding from its backers is secured. However, this campaign was also unsuccessful and was shut down two weeks later as Lindsley explained: "We simply don't have the momentum needed to meet the requirements of this project". Nevertheless, Walls and Lindsley still remain hopeful to realise Precinct sometime in the future.^[8]

References

External links

• Jim Walls at the Internet Movie Database
• Jim Walls at MobyGames