Ken Williams Quotes

A temporary page of quotes from Ken Williams on the Sierra Gamers forum with links to be used for references or citations in other articles.

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Development Management

Upon being asked:

wrote:

Is there a "Ken's rules of thumb for proper development team management" ... a list of things that Ken W. would do/not do when managing a team of developers? Observing my current development environment, I would say that there are 2 key factors that are contributing to what I believe will be the demise of the project and its future: the team leader does not have the respect of the developers. (without the respect, expecting and enforcing late night and weekend work from your developers will only cause more frustrations, and although it might hit a deadline in the short term, the developers will only grow to resent you even more into the future) the type of technology that was used to solve the business problem was chosen strictly because it was cool technology and not because it addressed our business' needs. (this "cool technology" has surfaced some system limitations that we are currently not able to work around. by choosing technology that had not been proven, we are being forced to create "kludges" that only compromise the product's future)

These are just 2 of the larger problems, but there are many more subtle problems that are hurting us. Could you offer some insight into development team management? perhaps a couple of particular things you did that helped you to gain the respect of your teams?

thanks

Ken replied:

Ken Williams wrote:

Wow -- a great question. I do think that one of the major reasons that Sierra did so well was that we managed development better than our competitors. That said...

We did a terrible job. Most projects finished late and over budget. We had a bit of an excuse, in that there were lots of factors that could radically impact a project in development. For instance: A competitor comes out with something comparable (I never wanted to be "second to market" in a product category) This could result in radical redesign If it just isn't fun. This happened a lot. The game would be playable, but just "wasn't fun" - this always meant LOTS of additional work Someone had a cool idea for a new feature - that we all agreed would make the product sell a LOT better

Generally though, our problem was that our staff, like me, were all perfectionists. Everyone was always wanting to do things over and over until "it was just right". This meant redoing a particular animation dozens of times. Rewriting a routine over and over until it ran in the fewest number of milliseconds possible.

Our industry was different than most. A competitor of ours, Blizzard, always refused to establish a budget or ship date (or, so goes the rumor). They would agonize over the smallest details, and throw away major chunks of code - over and over again, for years. As crazy as this sounds, I loved them for this. When they shipped a product, it was awesome. The problem was: how do you do this in a public company? Shareholders demand ship dates and revenue projections. On the other hand, perfection takes time. I always had trouble balancing these two goals.

None of this may be relevant to your question. One good thing we had at Sierra was an amazing staff. We were in the fortunate position that the industries best talent wanted to work for us. Generally, we never shipped a product late due to incompetence. We shipped late because of wanting to ship a perfect product.

That can be different than the problems one might see at a "normal" company. Sometimes, in the normal IT world, there really are project managers who don't know what they are doing - and, who can't manage people. It happens all the time. My best advice here is to look at someones track record before hiring them. If someone ships a product over budget, late, and buggy - they will ship their next product exactly the same way. Most projects (that fail), fail before they start, through bad staffing. I can't say this strong enough. If you hire leaders who shipped their previous products late (or, quite often not at all) - you have my word that they will almost certainly do it again Avoid hiring people who always seem to fail, but have really good excuses. I don't like excuses. Great people get things done under adverse circumstances. People who claim to be good, but who have constantly failed because "the dog ate their homework" are best left to competitors.

New news on Walter Forbes

Ken Williams wrote:

I'm commented on this a few times over the years.

For those who don't know the story, here's the quick version:

• Sierra was a public company

• Walter Forbes, of CUC, joined our board around 1992. At the time, Sierra was launching its TSN online gaming network, and I wanted a board member with communications industry and subscription management experience and contacts. Walter was a friend of one of our existing board members

• Walter was a great board member, and a very creative, intelligent person. He doesn't get the credit he deserves, but he was the father of modern online shopping

• In 1996, Walter surprised me after a board meeting, by asking if Sierra could be acquired

• At the time, Sierra was not for sale. We were doing extremely well, but as a public company, we had to listen.

• CUC wanted to acquire several game industry companies and combine them into a mega-company. Companies like Lucasarts, Broderbund, Davidson (Blizzard) and others were discussed. This sounded good, because I felt there was an opportunity to create an unbeatable company with worldwide distribution.

• On the other hand, CUC was discussing having Bob Davidson, of Davidson software (an educational software company) run the consolidated company. I had major reservations about this. Bob was a 'big company' guy and very conservative. I couldn't imagine Bob managing Sierra's highly creative development organization, or marketing some of our more controversial products; such as Leisure-Suit Larry and Phantasmagoria. On the other hand, Bob had Blizzard, which were doing well, so there was some indication that it could work

• CUC was offering a price well above Sierra's current stock trading price. To an extent the decision was out of my hands. As the CEO of a public company, I had an obligation to do what shareholders wanted. That said, I felt there was a risk in the transaction that Sierra could be ruined by becoming part of a larger entity, especially one run by Bob Davidson.

• Based on my concerns that Sierra would fail if run by Davidson, I declined the acquisition offer. This resulted in CUC negotiating a post-deal working relationship that would keep Sierra's development group independent of Davidson. There was a software board created, which consisted of Kirk Shelton (of CUC), Bob Davidson and myself. It was specifically agreed that Sierra's development group would NOT be managed by Davidson.

• Immediately after acquisition, it became obvious that things weren't going to work. Plenty of finger-pointing ensued. It was clear that the 'software board' was never going to meet, and that neither Davidson nor CUC had an intention of working within the framework that had been completed.

• I do not blame Bob Davidson. We have never spoken about what occurred, but there are indications that he and I were told different stories about how the software division would be managed post acquisition.

• One of my sayings is that 'A ship should only have one captain'. Bob and I were trying to co-exist within one software company, and it wasn't working. I felt betrayed by CUC, but wasn't ready for retirement, and it was too painful to watch Sierra being destroyed. I thought Sierra's best chance for survival was to end the adversarial relationship between CUC, Davidson and myself.

• I asked Walter Forbes if there was something else within the company that I could do. At the time, CUC was heavily involved in shopping by telephone. They had a membership club which provided discount merchandise that was ordered over the phone, and wanted to transform this business to online shopping. I split off a group of developers from Sierra and started running a group known as NetMarket. We had a great run of success at NetMarket, and built a great online shopping service.

• Meanwhile, Sierra was struggling. Davidson and CUC also weren't getting along, and Davidson soon resigned.

• I felt that the smart move would have been to put me in charge of the software business, and was confused when I wasn't asked. Instead CUC moved one of their corporate vice presidents, with no experience in software, into the leadership position, and I left the company completely.

• Soon after these events, CUC itself was merged with another company, and it was discovered that CUC had been 'cooking its books' dating back to several years prior to acquiring Sierra.

• CUC's stock value collapsed, and its senior officers were charged as criminals.

• Kirk Shelton was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

• Walter Forbes has been tried criminally twice, and escaped prosecution on both occasions. Both have continued to maintain their innocence.

• I am frequently asked whether I believe that Walter and Kirk are crooks. I honestly have no idea. In Sierra board meetings, and during the brief period I was on CUC's board, I never saw anything suspicious, other than their dishonorable dealings with Sierra and Davidson.

• Two juries have heard far more evidence than I had access to, and neither found enough evidence to convict Walter. So, perhaps he is innocent. I wish it were more definitive than this. A lot of people (1,000 Sierra employees) were hurt horribly by what occurred. Thousands of others who would have someday worked for Sierra will never work there. A brand name that once was amongst the finest in the world, now means little. Games that would have existed will now never be created. Thousands of lives were ruined. Those who were guilty should be hunted down and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

I hope that someday, someone will write a book about CUC. I'm as curious as everyone else to learn what happened.

CUC Vice Chairman

Ken Williams wrote:

CUC put me on the board as Vice Chairman, and also into the Office of the President, in response to my fears that Sierra would be ruined by being part of CUC. They also formed a software board, which I was to be part of, that was to make the important decisions for the software business. I wanted to know that I had the power required within the organization to give Sierra the maximum chance of surviving. I refused to support the transaction unless I thought there would be a viable software business post-transaction.

Unfortunately, they were just telling me what I wanted to hear, to get the deal done. My titles gave me no power, and I dropped almost all involvement in the software business immediately after the acquisition.

It was a very painful time.

Non-PC Ports

Ken Williams wrote:

Almost all of the games that were done for non-PCs were made by sub contract to third party companies. We never developed the inhouse capability to develop for other platforms and strictly thought of these as financial transactions. Someone would offer us some amount of money for the rights to a game on a platform (for instance, someone might say "we'll give you $150,000 for the rights to LSL on the Sega, as an advance against a dollar a unit sold"). We would cash the check and that would be about the extent of our involvement. I considered these deals non-strategic, and really didn't spend much time thinking about them. We usually had a clause that gave us the rights to inspect the games, but once again, I confess to not spending a lot of energy on those.

As to Sega CD specifically: I have zero memory of ever doing Sega versions of the games. There were some of these games that we did do at Sierra, but I can't remember any that turned out well. There were things we did very well, and things we weren't very good at. Normally, developing for non-PC platforms fell into the "we don't do that very well" category.

King's Quest PCjr copyright owners

Ken Williams wrote:

I remember that the IBM contract for the PCjr version of Kings Quest was very non-restrictive for Sierra. IBM didn't ask for any exclusivity, or ownership of anything produced. Times have changed, but at the time, IBM was in the position that Microsoft is today. Even more so. IBM was so dominant that there were lots of rumors that the courts would break them up, as had just been done to AT&T. In our agreement with IBM, they bent over backwards to make sure that the agreement was absolutely fair to Sierra. It has been nearly 30 years since I saw the agreement, but I would be very surprised if IBM has any rights at all to the code. My guess is that Vivendi, and VU Games, have 100% ownership of the code, characters, plot, trademark, copyrights, etc.

Why was there never a third Manhunter?

Upon being asked:

Justin? 10/09/03 wrote:

Why was there never a third game?

Anyone have a clue as to why there never was a third MH game? The second game in the series REALLY left you hangin'. Was the game really that unpopular? Thanks in advance. Justin

Ken replied:

Ken Williams wrote:

(re: re: Why was there never a third game?) I hope I am remembering this right... The Murrays (it was the Murrays who wrote Manhunter, wasn't it?) did the first two Manhunters, and then starting working on a game called "Ancient Art of Way". I had them planned for Manhunter 3, but when they spoke about their idea for Ancient Art of War, it sounded great - so I encouraged them to work on it.

Unfortunately, during development, Broderbund somehow got into the loop, and convinced Dave and Barry to publish War through them. One of my "rules" was to never be the "high bidder" on anything (it's a long story). They never returned to Sierra.

Here's an interesting side story:
Broderbund's initial box for Ancient Art of War had a picture of an ancient vase on the front. The vase had a lot of oriental writing on it - that no one knew what said. Oops - the writing was in chinese (or, Japanese) and to those who could read it, it was x-rated. Broderbund had to recall all the copies of the game that had been shipped to retail. -Ken W

 

Ken Williams wrote:

(re: re: Why was there never a third game?) Hmmm... the comment that there wasn't a third Manhunter because of disagreements with me over the direction of the series surprises me. It may be true, but it's the first I've heard it. I'd be curious to know what we were disagreeing on, if we were. I don't remember any disagreement. My recollection is of having tremendous respect for the Murray's, and wishing we could work with them forever. I think they left for Broderbund primarily because Broderbund offered them a materially higher royalty than Sierra for Ancient Art of War. I remember being hurt by this because I had been involved at the beginning of Art of War, and always assumed we'd publish it - but that when we started discussing contract, we were beaten out by Broderbund. Over the years I had a series of what I used to call "Kens Rules" that served me well. One of these was "I never want to win a bidding war." As soon as it became obvious that the Murray's wanted both Sierra and Broderbund to compete for the publishing rights, I walked from the deal. I loved the product, but rules are rules. I wished the Murray's success, but did not enter the bidding. Here's the issue, and another "Ken Rule" - I always believe in playing poker with my cards face up. In most deals, if there were ongoing negotiations, the deal got worse for the other side, not better. I usually lead with my best offer. Sierra's economics were no secret. I knew what percentage of revenue I could afford for product development, marketing, manufacturing, etc. I also knew what level of profits I needed. If there were a way that a product could fit Sierra's business model, and succeed, that was awesome - but, if it didn't, we were better off to pass. There were some awesome products that I always regretted passing on. I believe that if I been a bit more willing to deal, we could have continued to publish Richard Garriot's products (we published the original Ultima), we once were within inches of publishing Westwoods products (Command and Conquer) and I also believe that I could have done the deal to publish Doom. But, these are exceptions. Generally, I think we succeeded in a tough market, because we did deals that were profitable for both sides. Everyone won - authors, customers - and, Sierra. -Ken W

 

Mike Murry - April 2008. ^{Citation Required} wrote:

After encouraging discussions with Sierra, we have been developing a prototype game (featuring Day One, of Manhunter: New York) to find out if our concept (currently on paper) is actually fun to play by today's standards, while keeping the soul of the original. After ten years, we were finally making progress.

Then, last week, Sierra's pending doom was announced. The future of Sierra is unclear. Despite what happens, the momentum has started and the demo is in progress. We will complete the prototype. But the future hinges on what happens to Sierra (or whoever ends up with the rights to Manhunter) after the dust settles.

So, if there is anyone left who cares, April 2008 is the first time since 1989 that a new Manhunter is in development. Not a full game, just a proof of concept at this point. But that's better than nothing right?

I am interested in hearing any thoughts or feedback. Feel free to email me! And thank you for all the kind words on this site. It provides a lot of motivation and inspiration. When the time comes, I will be back looking for some input on what you guys think of the demo.

Have a great weekend!

Mike Murry