In 1979 husband-and-wife team Ken & Roberta Williams founded a small company that would later become known as Sierra, and which would play an enormous role in the development of some of the most beloved video games series of all time.
With Ken overseeing business operations Roberta spent the 1980s helping create adventure game classics like King’s Quest, and by the early 90’s Sierra had become a PC gaming powerhouse on the back of hits like Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry and Space Quest. But by the late 90’s—with their company sold under controversial circumstances—the pair walked away from games development, and aside from a few side projects have spent the next 20+ years away from the industry they’d played such a crucial role in establishing.
Until now. Earlier this year, it was announced that the pair—working together once more at a studio called Cygnus Entertainment, where Ken is Managing Partner and Roberta serves as Lead Creative Director (the couple are also co-owners)—were developing a modern remake of Colossal Cave Adventure.
That game, one of the most important ever made (it’s in the Hall of Fame!), was first released in 1976, and would go on to not just be a huge success in its own right, but would help inspire other titles like Zork and Adventure, as well as Sierra’s own Mystery House, which in 1980 became the world’s first ever graphical adventure game. It’s not a stretch, then, to say that Colossal Cave Adventure helped lay the groundwork for…the entire fields of narrative and adventuring video games as we know them.
Ken and Roberta’s take on the game leaves text input behind, however, opting to rebuild Colossal Cave Adventure in a 3D world, which can be played either on a regular PC or via a VR headset. You can see a trailer for the game below, which helpfully includes a little history lesson on the pair (and Colossal Cave Adventure) for anyone who needs to get up to speed:
With the game due later this year—it’s currently on schedule for a Fall release on PC, Mac and Quest 2 for VR—I got the chance recently to chat with both Roberta and Ken, not just about Colossal Cave Adventure but on their past in video games, and their thoughts on how the medium has changed in the 40 years since they first started working together.
Luke Plunkett (Kotaku): As someone who grew up playing Quest For Glory and Police Quest it’s wild I’m getting to talk to you about a new video game in 2022, how long has it been exactly since you both worked on a game together?
Ken Williams: That’s a complicated question! Depending on how you look at it, Roberta and I haven’t worked on a game together since 1979! I ran the company while she shipped all of her hits, but other than occasionally being involved in decisions that affected her products, I didn’t really work directly with her.
We’ve been working together now on the Colossal Cave project for around a year and eight months. It has been a bit of a challenge for us to work so closely together. We’re each accustomed to being the final decision maker on everything we touch. We’ve mapped out territories where I make the decisions (implementation, finance, marketing) and where she makes the decisions (game design, art). Those seem like disconnected domains, but there has been plenty of overlap and strong discussion. We’re both highly opinionated people; each convinced we are never wrong.
Roberta Williams: Well, we didn’t even start working on Mystery House until the beginning of 1980. I know it was after Christmas of ‘79, so it would have been in January, at the earliest, of 1980. Mystery House shipped in May of 1980. In fact, we always said it was May 5th, and that was our anniversary. For years we had a big wonderful company party on May 5th, for eight years at least, to commemorate the anniversary of Sierra starting as a company, with the launch date of Mystery House.
After…
Read More: Interview With Sierra On-Line Founders Ken & Roberta Williams