Sierra Entertainment

Sierra Entertainment
Once you saw this mountain, you knew you were about to play a great game.
Type: Division Founded: 1979 2014 (as a publishing label) Defunct: 2008 Founder(s): Ken Williams Roberta Williams Headquarters: Los Angeles, California, United States Parent: Vivendi Universal Games (1996-2008) Activision Blizzard (2008) Website: https://www.sierragames.com/

Sierra Entertainment, Inc. (formerly On-Line Systems and Sierra On-Line, Inc.) was a video game publisher co-founded by Roberta and Ken Williams in 1979 as On-Line Systems. Over the years, Sierra had lots of graphic adventure games for many different computers. Sierra was known for the King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Quest for Glory, Gabriel Knight and Leisure Suit Larry series. Since 1996, Sierra was acquired by CUC International to become a division of CUC Software (currently Vivendi Games).

Why They Rocked

1. They revolutionized the PC gaming market.
2. Simplistic gameplay made their adventure games easy to pick up and play.
3. The company published Valve Corporation's games, with Half-Life and, one of the best games of all time, Half-Life 2.
4. They were well-known from making good adventure games such as Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest or King's Quest.
5. They also made one of the best FMV games, The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery.
6. They are also known for publishing lots of good licensed games such as: Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds, James Cameron: Dark Angel, The X-Files: Resist or Serve, The Hobbit (2003), Scarface: The World Is Yours, Die Hard: Vendetta, Robots video game, Ice Age 2: The Meltdown video game, The Simpsons: Hit and Run, Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Conspiracy, Miami Vice (2006), The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction and Aliens vs Predator (1999), 2 and Requiem.
7. Also, some studios that belonged to that company were also making great games:
   • Papyrus Design Group was known from making games such as NASCAR Racing or Indycar Racing that revolutioned the racing genre.
   • Dynamix was known from making The Incredible Machine series and 3-D Ultra series, and not only that, they were great with making simulators such as F-14 Tomcat or Red Baron.
8. Most of their games have great graphics that still live up to their standards to this day.
9. Best of all, Activision revived them as an independent publishing label and for re-releasing some Sierra Legacy titles.
10. They gave players refunds if there was a certain game that was below quality.
11. They created one of the first online radio shows.
12. They were involved in not just creating PC games but also other PC software like cooking, typing and landscaping. But this was part to what led to their closure, they are also no strangers to consoles as they also published some console games such as: Cold Winter, Crash of the Titans, Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Conspiracy, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Crash: Mind Over Mutant, Crash: Tag Team Racing, Spyro: A Hero's Tail, Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza and Vendetta, No One Lives Forever 1 and 2 (despite the sequel being a letdown), Contract J.A.C.K, Spyro Shadow Legacy, Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds, James Cameron: Dark Angel, SWAT: Global Strike Team and Target Liberty, Aliens vs Predator: Requiem, Miami Vice (2006), The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, The X-Files: Resist or Serve and The Legend of Spyro series.
13. Very good customer service.
14. They had a program where employees can get a micron computer they can use anytime they want in exchange for taking a portion of their salary to help cover the costs. And at the time the computers they had were very powerful about 16 megs. This was done to make sure every employee was able to have a gaming computer at home.
15. Without them, we would've never have Metal Jesus Rocks (who worked at Sierra before the creation of his YouTube account).
16. Outside of just being involved in customer service employees were involved in various fun activities from starring in video games made by Sierra to even writing articles for their magazine Interactive Action.
17. They published lots of Good Spyro and Crash games in 2000s (except for Crash: Boom Bang).
18. The work environment was very creativity-oriented even when they were at their peak and had developers like Al Lowe creating games under them that would not be allowed under any other development team.

Bad Qualities

1. They published some bad games, such as Crash Boom Bang!, the DS port of Crash Mind Over Mutant and the GBA port of Crash of the titans and Fight Club: The Game
2. Nobody got paid for overtime especially during the holiday season and there was no sicktime given either.
3. The main problem during the buyover was a corporate based company buying over a company where they had no idea what the culture was and what really goes on in gaming.
4. They shipped certain games like Outpost 1 (not necessarily a bad game) earlier than expected and it was half finished on released.

Trivia

• MetaljesusRocks had a cameo in The Shivers 2 as Trip Cyclone's lead guitarist. This was due to his appearance and for his interest in metal music and he is also a guitarist in real life as well.
• Drukenmasterpaul was also the voiceover for Metal Jesus in The Shivers 2 and was also in a game of his own Phantasmagoria 2.
• Their last games to be published in 2008 were: Crash: Mind Over Mutant and The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon.
• The Sierra label was retired in 2008, when Activision merged with Vivendi Games. Some of the company's in-development games were sold to other studios:
  • F.E.A.R. was retained by its developer, Monolith Productions, which was sold to Warner Bros. in 2004.
  • Ghostbusters: The Video Game and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena were sold to Atari.
  • Police Quest/SWAT, King's Quest and Space Quest were sold to Activision Blizzard
  • Empire Earth, Evil Genius, Ground Control, Lords of Magic and Lords of the Realm were sold to Rebellion Developments
  • Brütal Legend was sold to Electronic Arts
  • WET was sold to Bethesda Softworks
  • 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand was sold to THQ
  • World in Conflict: Soviet Assault was sold to Ubisoft, who also acquired Massive Entertainment.
  • Swordfish Studios and Leisure Suit Larry were sold to Codemasters.
  • The Incredible Machine was sold to Disney.
  • StarSiege and Tribes were sold to InstantAction.
  • Red Baron was sold to Mad Otter Games after Vivendi Games was bought by Activision Blizzard, Sierra shut down in 2008 but was revived in 2014 to publish their old games as well as some indie games.

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