AGDInteractive - Sierra Adventure Game Remakes Forum

I apologize if this has been asked before, but what does Roberta Williams think of AGDI and your remakes of her King's Quest games?

Has she even been public about it, or is there a possibility that she privately downloaded and enjoys the remakes you guys have done? I'm impressed by these remakes, and as I am a huge fan of Roberta's work, I'm curious to know if she feels the same way about AGDI's work.

By the way, many would think that Sierra would sue remakers for copyright infringment. But I think the sheer popularity of these games indicates that it would be in Sierra's best interests to sell a license to AGDI so it can legally use KQ characters/elements. Thus, allowing AGDI to sell remakes of her adventure games, legally. ESPECIALLY IF Roberta Williams is impressed with these remakes.

Edit: Just to say that I know Sierra doesn't exist anymore, although 3D realms still owns KQ copyrights. Roberta doesn't work for them, true, but I think she still has some sort of influence with them

supernova wrote:I apologize if this has been asked before, but what does Roberta Williams think of AGDI and your remakes of her King's Quest games?

Has she even been public about it, ...

The last I noticed on Ken William's forums was that Roberta knew about the remakes but hadn't played them. Not for lack of interest just hadn't found the time. On a similar note, I know that the AGD's have spoken to Lori and Corey Cole (creator's of the Quest for Glory series) about their remake of QFG2, and Lori has sent her blessings.

supernova wrote:Edit: Just to say that I know Sierra doesn't exist anymore, although 3D realms still owns KQ copyrights. Roberta doesn't work for them, true, but I think she still has some sort of influence with them

Sierra exists, it's still a game company and still releases games. The difference is that they no longer "create" their games like the old days, they are more the big publisher now. Also, 3D realms do NOT own the KQ copyrights, they are owned by Sierra which is in turn owned by Vivendi Universal. And no, I don't believe that Roberta has any influence with the managment of Sierra any more, after all, they sold their interest in the company many years ago now.

3D Realms is the company that makes Duke Nukem games. It's the old Apogee. Farthest thing from Sierra .

Well, VU could have learned something from 3-D when they created their first person shooter and called it MOE

I notice that VU puts the ''tm'' and ''c'' symbols only next to the QFG5 title, the others dont.

A lot of people also don't know Sierra was originally going to publish id Software's Wolfenstein 3D, before id decided to support the shareware concept and had Apogee publish it (go to http://www.idsoftware.com/ or http://www.apogee1.com/ for more info).

This is a direct quote from Ken Williams' forum at Sierragamers.com:

Both Roberta and I played portions of the Tierra games. We liked them, and felt complimented, but also a little sad. They reflect a huge amount of effort and talent, that perhaps could have been put to better use.

One sin, of which I am certainly guilty, is an over-focus on financial common sense. There is no market for the Tierra games. Sierra owns all rights to them, and is unlikely to grant permission to Tierra to sell the games.

My hope for Tierra is that they use all of their technology and talent, and do something awesome with it - that moves the industry forward, rather than re-issuing old products. It's like when I see one of the black/white movies that have been converted to a color movie. No matter what you do, it still looks old, and will never be a mainstream hit. It's a cool trick, but, the world needs new movies.

-Ken W

The full thread can be seen here:

http://www.sierragamers.com/bbs/BBSTopi ... t/4067/p/1

That's very interesting from KW. I didn't know that.

I dont know if I agree totally with Ken there, I think that remaking the KQ games was a very important thing and has brought alot of attention to KQ and adventure/fan games in general.

I disagree with Ken William's statement that the KQ remakes are a waste of time entirely. Creating the KQ remakes has given the AGDs an opportunity to hone their artistic and programming skills at very low costs (I'm not saying no cost- there is always the cost of paper, pencils and coffee, and I can't even imagine their bandwidth costs) as compared to a game that is to be sold for profit. They didn't need to worry about distributors, or marketing, or anything because they weren't going to have any serious losses or gains.

Furthermore, AGDI/Tierra was able to gain an audience through free stuff that won't mind paying for something bigger and better. As an analogy, let's look at samples at the grocery store- you try a little bit of frozen pizza, for example, just to see what the pizza company can do. You might not even have looked at the frozen pizza if it weren't for the sample lady. But you like the free bit, so you go and pay for the whole pizza. In the case of AGDI, people try the remakes and see what AGDI can do, but they would probablyhave ignored them if they had to pay. Now they have an audience confident in their skills that don't mind paying for the bigger and better original story.

Finally, AGDI has managed to attract people who would normally not take notice of a start up game company because they remade games. There is much to be said for nostalgia. I've lost track of the random people I've met who have told me about this great thing some internet people have done- remaking these games called "Kings Quest" that they played when they were kids! They haven't really played any games since then, but the nostalgia has got them enthused. When I tell them that these "internet people" are making an original game, they claim they're going to check it out.  I don't know if they'll follow up, but it's brought to their attention with no financial expenditures on the part of the creators.

This is threatening to turn into an essay. So I'm going to be quiet now.

Nice post Dragonrose.  Very well spake.

Nice to see you posting around here.

Bt