I overall like Sunglasses At Night better. It´s really only that short intro synth part that is so similar in both songs.
Phew, getting hot in here.
Oh yeah…
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Hahaha. Actually it would be something like:
“Staircase out of order”
*Walk To Staircase*
DAVE: “the sign says, ‘danger!’ Perhaps I shouldn’t.”
*Walk To Staircase*
“Dave walked up the spiral staircase, a step broke, he fell down, broke his neck and died. Perhaps He should not be so cavalier and pay attention to warning signs. GAME OVER.”
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What you have to understand is that they were not “illogical” – they made perfect sense in the designer’s head. There was no rule that said that every puzzle must be instantly recognizable or understood. It was not clear that making a puzzle for the sake of leading to a joke punchline was wrong.
The market was young and people seem to enjoy these games a lot. There was every indication that games needed to be long and difficult, and no specific patterns to guide how to do this. Everybody was blazing their own trails.
It was also not clear that games had to be a cooperation between designer and player. Many designers took the game design as a challenge against the player, to see what new situations and crazy circumstances they could put him in next, and see if he could get out of it. Plus, a considerable number of players accepted this challenge as the way of playing adventure games.
Times were different, the market was different, and dispositions and attitudes of all were different.
It’s easy to dismiss these games as aberrations of a crazy time. However, keep in mind that there are lots of people who enjoyed them, who remember them fondly, and who still play them today.
There were many games released “back in the day,” but there aren’t that many with such large followings. That should count for something.
dZ.
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I think another major difference between Sierra and LA, was that Sierra was a business that had to survive on sales of these games alone and was started from the ground up… LA already had money from Star Wars, so they were given more freedom to be arty and do what they wanted it seemed.
I think this explains a lot of the differences between the two companies…
Sierra couldn’t afford to take too long on a game or make games that wouldn’t sell, and they couldn’t really do things conceptually too out there (unless it could be marketed as a big innovation). For example, they would have never have done something like Grim Fandango, because it was so obviously hard to market… it had to be big ideas to big audiences like King’s Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Sex Quest (LSL)…
So selling hint books and stuff wasn’t just like a devious thing to annoy players, it was almost a necessity to continue being successful, they needed the money to fund the next expensive game design (which meant trying to always be at the forefront of graphics, interface, etc.), and to keep selling.
It seems like the main reason they went under finally was because they sold the company in 1996 to people who didn’t know what they were doing.
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It also might help explain why they had a comparativly worse marketing department. They put most of their focus on their movies and less on their games, perhaps.
Then again outside of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade name one successful Lucasfilm production from 1987-1997…
Yeah…seems they had problems in general.
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I more or less understand, but I need some concrete example… I don’t understand if we are talking about a puzzle that can only be solved by trying everything on everything / calling the “hint line” (since with the AGI interface you can’t even try everything on everything :)).
or we are talking about a puzzle that can be solved with some kind of logic.
Absolutely. Very well said. Sierra was a robust industry and they knew how to create successful products. The main goal was to make money. At LucasFilm Games there was more money-fueled experimentation and freedom and I think that if it wasn’t for that kind of creative freedom, we wouldn’t have got the famous Ron’s guidelines nor adventure games that were profoundly different from those published by Sierra.
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A lot of Lucas stuff was set up to keep making money off the original Star Wars and Indy trilogies in different areas, so the games division makes sense… they were then able to make their own Indy games in-house, and once they got the Star Wars license thing back they made a whole ton of Star Wars games.
So I imagine they pushed those a lot (which is easier due to the massive brand recognition), and did extra games on the side… maybe the idea was to take a few punts on new ideas and to develop the creative teams for making Indy and Star Wars games at the same time.
I think that was pretty much the idea, yes. With a buisness model like that it really is a big plus that those LA adventures became even a cult success and found their audience. The fact they became more than just obscure footnotes shows the quality of the work of the creative minds behind those games.
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There’s a really interesting interview thing with Ken Williams (who founded/ran Sierra), here –
http://www.sierragamers.com/ken-williams
(most of the good stuff starts about half-way down)…
“The actual plot isn’t as important, as the niche it fits into, and the size of the niche. And, even this is secondary to “how it looks/feels when you see it on screen”. My brother John, who ran marketing for many years at Sierra, used to say that ‘it’s all about WOW value’ - if someone says WOW when they see the screen from 10 feet away, you have them sold. This is not completely true, but it’s close. You need to have three components: a story that intriques the user (characters/plot), WOW value (snazzy graphics, cool/new technology) and an underlying game mechanic that is fun (not sure how to describe this - but, there needs to be a game - it can’t just be pretty pictures).”
“we made a lot more people happy than unhappy – but, I can’t say that our record was perfect. If I had it to do over again, I would not have shipped some products until later, and some I would have never shipped.”
This had a lot of Ken’s rules for making and selling games, very interesting also:
Too bad they scratched Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix (I assume because they had more profitable alternatives). Couldn’t they do just one more before turning? Just that one!
I don’t think there were puzzles that made no sense. There were puzzles that may not have been solvable at first sight because their “sense” depended on the solution. There are myriad puzzles that only made sense as a gag or punchline once you solve them. To the designer, having all information at hand already, it made perfect sense. Like I said, it was not clear that this was “bad design” necessarily – everybody was doing it.
To the player, on the other hand, it seemed obtuse and arbitrary.
For all the claims of some cynical and corrupt corporation making money out of hint-guides, you have to factor in that these programmers were people, with complex attitudes and motivations.
It’s too easy to say “they just added arbitrary random stuff to sell you a hint book”; but the reality is much nuanced than that. Even if that was a motivating factor, it can’t have been the only one. These were still artists and designers, not robots, and they still added plenty of fun, interesting, and entertaining bits as well.
dZ.
very interesting! But this doesn’t sound like a bad thing at all.
Only I can’t imagine a puzzle which makes no sense at all when you play, but makes sense in hindsight, after you are told the solution.
That’s an interesting reading, thanks. There are some good business suggestions, there, and some not-necessarily-good ideas, but the historic context needs to be taken into account. That “Marketing begins in R&D” is a gold rule; even today most people thing that “marketing” is “advertising”.
It’s clear that they were “thinking big” and that might be one of the main reasons why they got big as a company.
(but he forgot to mention in the presentation that the biggest channel of income were hint books and phone lines, that would have been a great business lesson 
)
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No. Read the whole story here:
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That’s what I mean. They are not just “random” senseless items or actions. They have a purpose, but it is perhaps mostly clear when completed.
This is bad in that it can be frustrating. If you never make the connection then read it in a walk-through, your reaction will be “I would never have guessed that in a million years!” Yet this does not mean it is necessarily a cynical ploy to force you to buy a hint book, with no redeeming value whatsoever.
Here’s an example. In Space Quest 6, when Roger Wilco is stuck in prison, there doesn’t seem to be a way to escape.
Next to your cell there is a food trolley with vegetables and bagels and stuff. The trolley is draped over with a table cloth, and every once in a while someone comes in a checks it. You imagine that you have to get under its cover to escape, only you can’t because they will notice the empty cell.
What you must do is pinch each individual piece of food and put them together in the shape of a person in the cell. Once you do this, you notice that it does take shape: the baguettes look like the legs, the large melon like the head, the celery stalks as arms, etc. It is clever and funny, and completely opaque to the player of the game.
I only got it because I tried grabbing everything and managed to steal all the food items. Then I tried everything on everything until two items went together when other two would not. Eventually I noticed the pattern shaping and built the person.
Now, how would that make sense to anybody at all without working randomly, is beyond me. Yet, I wouldn’t say that the puzzle is nonsense or illogical or random: clearly the programmers thought it was funny and cartoony: you put together a “dummy” out of foodstuff, then hide in the trolley and nobody notices you are missing! There was clearly a plan, even if it is not clear to the player.
It’s funny after many hours of frustration.
dZ.
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Yeah, I think most of them still apply today…
The “Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew” rule seems to unstuck a lot of Kickstarter projects that still haven’t come out…
Not that I doubt it, since I don’t have any information on the contrary; but could you share how you made that assessment or how where you got it from?
dZ.