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Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings

The Rise and Fall of Sierra On-Line

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Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings

Auteur(s): Ken Williams
Narrateur(s): Josh Horowitz
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Sierra On-Line was one of the very first computer game companies and at one time dominated the industry. The author, Ken Williams, founded Sierra On-Line with his wife Roberta who went on to create many of the company's best-selling games.

Sierra grew from just Ken and Roberta to over 1,000 employees and a fan base that still exists today, despite the fact that the company was torn apart by criminal activities, scandal, and corruption that resulted in jail sentences and the collapse of Sierra. This is the behind-the-scenes story of the rise and fall, as it could only be told by the ultimate insider.

©2020 Ken Williams (P)2020 Ken Williams Affaires Professionnels et universitaires Programmation et développement de logiciels Développement de logiciels Technologie Jeu Logiciel Programmation
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Loved hearing the story of Sierra's founding and growth. I can satisfy my nostalgia for the games by replaying them, but it's fascinating to hear the business story and Ken's thinking along the way. Useful for any business leader who remembers Sierra fondly.

Fascinating tale of the business side of Sierra

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I grew up on Sierra games, they played a major role in my life until they were no more. This book was just like one of their adventures, it took me away to another place and time and I loved every minute. I've always wondered what exactly happened the this amazing company and this book answers every question I could of had. Congrats to Ken and his team on this amazing piece of work! Thank you!

After all these years...

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Very interesting story, a real rollercoaster. It's fascinating to hear the accomplishments made during this pioneering time in personal computers and the Internet. I enjoyed Ken's narration during the prologue and wish he did the whole thing. The narrator used was fine but bland and had a somewhat discordant accent after hearing Ken. Overall an excellent book and hard to "put down." Highly recommended.

Very interesting

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This was an interesting look behind the rise and fall of Sierra Online. Ken shares many interesting anecdotes on his time as co-founder. By his own admittance, there's less on the game development side and more on running the overall company. Some of his opinions are...problematic, like his defense of hiring Daryl Gates. And learning Sierra crunched its employees was disappointing to hear.

One major criticism is the lazy citation work. More often than not, Williams would cite Wikipedia. This is lazy because Wikipedia would have cited the original source for their information and Williams should gave used that, instead. Sometimes, the book felt like he was just regurgitating Wikipedia pages.

Still, the narrator for this was fantastic and it was rarely boring or a chore to read (except some of the programming jargon that went over my head).

Great, if flawed, memoir.

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Are you a longtime Sierra fan? Did you grow up playing King's Quest, Space Quest, Gabriel Knight? imagine if you could hear the story of how those games came to be. Well this is not it.

This is the sad story of how one man didn't want to write a book about a company whose products he doesn't seem to understand or like, and how his poor management decisions led to its demise.

The Ted talk would have been interesting, but this is not. Chapter after chapter of meetings, IPOs, business advice and 'amusing' anecdotes, interspersed with his multiple Wikipedia citations, and barely a mention of any products, literally Space Quest gets a single sentence. Police Quest is mostly a complaint about Daryl Gates and modern woke culture, and Leisure Suit Larry is "not sexist at all".

Fine, but what about the designers? What about Al Lowe, Jane Jensen, the Two Guys from Andromeda? Ken Williams spends a full chapter complaining about Outpost, continually throwing Bruce Balfour under the bus, but that is pretty much the only time he talks about a designer. From there he slides into how to say no and the need for layoffs and hatchet men.

I honestly don't know who this book is for. Ken himself says it is the product of Covid isolation and keeps reminding us that Roberta Williams should have written it instead. I wish she had too.

TLDR: Imagine a Steven Spielberg book that barely mentioned Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, or Hook, but went on for chapter after chapter about negotiating screening time with theatres. This is that book but for Computer games.

Should have been a Ted Talk

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I'm sure the story was amazing. The narrator just put me off so much, I couldn't continue. Personal preferences I suppose.

I couldn't get passed the narrator

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