an update on Roberta Williams - Where is she now?

[marsan]

Here is a recent interview with Roberta Williams(co-founder of Sierra On-line): http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/interviews/198/ it tells her opinions on the current state of adventure games among other things.

[Dasilva]

Its a good interview although I read it back in January.

[Melanie68]

That interview had been posted quite a while ago (http://forums.adventuregamers.com/showthread.php?t=15909&highlight=roberta+williams) (so it wasn't easily accessible without a search). :)

[cwapitm]

That was interesting to read. I wonder why she hasn't played an adventure game for 8 years.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

...a good story never dies. An adventure game is really nothing more than a good story set with engaging puzzles that fit seamlessly in with the story and the characters, and looks and sounds beautiful. I do not think there is a need to try and make it ‘multi-player’ or any of those things. It just takes a good adventure game designer (someone who knows and understands how to write a game play ‘script’ in an interactive way), with a game company that will ‘go out on a ledge’ and support that designer and give them the desired tools to create such a game, and I think that, as in the ‘olden’ days of the 80s and 90s, adventure games would be as popular as ever, if not more so.

I agree completely with this. But I want to add that this isn't enough. There needs to be a very, very high level of quality and consistency - CRAFTSMANSHIP. That and pushing forth things that we have never before experienced in games like these (story driven, puzzles intellectual challenges, deep exploration).

I think that Ken is right when he says that there is too much of the same thing and not much creativity put into today’s computer games because the game publishers and marketers are too afraid to go there, and so, are actually restricting creativity. There is no doubt in my mind that given the right designer with the proper amount of budget and support from a top game publisher, an adventure game of the highest standards would set the computer game world on fire. One day, it will happen.

It has become such a business in the past decade and has also grown shifted in the wrong way on many levels. We find today that many other developers have incorporated the essence of a damn good adventure game into their roleplaying, first person shooter, or action games. Games like Silent Hill 2, Beyond Good & Evil, ICO, Zelda, and Knights of The Old Republic have (to many of us) offered adventures far better than most 'traditional' adventure games out there. Not just in terms of story and intellectual challenges, but in QUALITY, CONSISTENCY, RICHNESS OF INTERACTIVITY, AND OVERALL DESIGN.*


* However, there ARE some good adventure games out there as well, like the Sam & Max series and some of the titles for the Nintendo DS.

[rlpw]

It has become such a business in the past decade and has also grown shifted in the wrong way on many levels. We find today that many other developers have incorporated the essence of a damn good adventure game into their roleplaying, first person shooter, or action games. Games like Silent Hill 2, Beyond Good & Evil, ICO, Zelda, and Knights of The Old Republic have (to many of us) offered adventures far better than most 'traditional' adventure games out there. Not just in terms of story and intellectual challenges, but in QUALITY, CONSISTENCY, RICHNESS OF INTERACTIVITY, AND OVERALL DESIGN.*

I just have to add an AMEN to this statement. One of the reasons I have been enjoying adventure based games and also games made by Modders more so the past couple of years as compared to the 'Latest' game is the craftsmanship and genuine (or seemingly) love they seem to feel by making a quality product they know others will enjoy.

[Christian IV]

Intrepid H and rlpw,
Yes! to what you both posted. It is the care and quality of the work that will make a game good, craftsmanship, craftsmanship, craftmanship! And a good game is MORE than just a good story....it is a whole new medium and Roberta was more than stuck IMHO in an old style motif view...for many of her games.

[GoT]

So the same things get spoken about all the time with adventure games... but WHEN will one hit the stores that will blow everyone away like Monkey Island 2 did? Will it ever happen again? Is there anyone out there remaining who can even do it?

GOT

[Bobske]

So the same things get spoken about all the time with adventure games... but WHEN will one hit the stores that will blow everyone away like Monkey Island 2 did? Will it ever happen again? Is there anyone out there remaining who can even do it?

I don't think it will ever happen... Adventure gaming in their "old traditional" form is "dead". Although very good traditional adventure games are being released and are even successful, there is not an adventure game in the near future that will blow us away.

IMHO ;) the game that will blow us away has to have a totally new adventure gaming concept...

Even though the concept is not new, IMHO, 3D is the only way to go. UAKM, GK3, Dreamfall, Broken Sword 3 did try and were pretty successful but so far I've haven't been blown away by a game since FF7...

PS1: If you guys really want to know where Roberta is, visit www.sierragamers.com. Ken is a regular poster on the Sierra Gamers forum. If I remember correctly Ken and Roberta were sailing around the world some time ago. They still spend a lot of time on their boat.

PS2: Man, I loved Deadwood Season 3!

[Intrepid Homoludens]

So the same things get spoken about all the time with adventure games... but WHEN will one hit the stores that will blow everyone away like Monkey Island 2 did? Will it ever happen again? Is there anyone out there remaining who can even do it?

I seriously don't think it'll take one measely adventure game to puncture the wall of banality for all other subsequent adventures and earn the world's attention - and money. Even if there is, say, half a dozen excellent games coming out over a period of time, that would still be considered unusual and it would need a kind of 'viral' spread of inspiration from these games to make adventure developers and publishers re-assess what can constitute these kinds of games today - the developers because they want to play around with new ideas, and the publishers because they see how commercially successful those games that 'blow everyone away' can be.

The media and we gamers have this proclivity to pressure every upcoming game that looks different and/or promises a high production quality - i.e. GK3, The Longest Journey, Still Life, Indigo Prophecy, Dreamfall, etc. - to be the 'saviour' of the adventure genre, when in reality these games ultimately owe nothing to the genre, their creators make them out of love, for games like them and for people who can appreciate them. But we hype them to an unnecessary extent because we're desperate, to the point where the small community of very vocal fans end up fighting back and forth over the validity of the game in question as respresentative of the genre.

:) I think the reality is that there will no longer be a second coming for The Adventure Game as we know it or as we remember it through romance coloured glasses. The nature of the interactive entertainment industry TODAY is to propel forward through the exploitation of advancing technology in hopes of making the most profit, and whoever chooses not to be aggressive about this propulsion will be left behind to either die in a business sense, or to stagnate in a pool of a very small yet still reasonably profitable niche market, where there is little room for the highest quality production, creativity, innovation, and experimentation. And that is what happened to adventure games more or less.

Which I find ironic, considering that out all the game types out there, the adventure possesses THE MOST FERTILE SOIL for the most extraordinary concepts and experiences possible with the use of advanced technology combined with the finest talent to create. And this, I argue, is because of the nucleus of humanism which these kinds of games tap into - our fundamental need to experience a story, to meet and bond with characters, to surmount challenges, and to discover worlds through exploration and interaction.

[MasterLoo]

....it is a whole new medium and Roberta was more than stuck IMHO in an old style motif view...for many of her games.

That may be so. But I thought Kings Quest 8 - Mask of Eternity is the best game ever made for this kind of PC. It might be the best 3d adventure game I have ever played, and even though Roberta said she didn't really like the roleplaying element in this game in retrospect, I thought it worked very well. Who else than Roberta are able write(of course not on the programming side, but she was greatly involved in how things should be done too) a game that squeezes a PC so much? Who else can make a game like that which plays smoothly on a Pentium 166 Mhz? She obviously had many qualities to make amazing games, even if she might have fallen off the wagen if they hadn't sold when they did.

I remember the old clip where they talk about Mask of Eternity, and the programmers are interviewed. The programmers goes like "That's not possible! there's no way we can do that" and Roberta goes "Sure we can. We got all these great tools". New games needs that element of creativity and ability to try something new, and even without forcing people to buy a completly new PC(compared with Oblivion for example). This is the kind of nurturing many new games are sadly undernurtured on.

I think she could have teached a lot to current game developers. Even though I never really was a big fan of Kings Quest 1-7, I really liked the idea behind the games and the story.

I also thought Phantasmagoria was a really cool game. Even though I understand a lot of the criticsm people have given against this game, this game still had a certain nerve that is missing these days.

[marshal99]

A long way from her days on the cover of the game "Softporn adventures" ,the game that pave the way for Leisure Suit Larry. :D

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0e/Softporn_Adventure_%28video_game%29.jpg