The End of Sierra as We Knew It, Part 1: The Acquisition

Nostalgia for Sierra’s Games and Culture

• Many commenters reminisce about specific Sierra series (King’s Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, The Colonel’s Bequest, Conquests of the Longbow) as formative childhood experiences.
• Several describe learning English through text parsers and dictionaries, even developing a kind of “Sierra English” where they could read well but not pronounce words.
• Sierra’s in-game humor and fourth-wall office jokes made the company feel personal and irreverent; some wish the article focused more on the creative culture and everyday life of the developers.

Ken Williams, Business Focus, and the CUC Deal

• Multiple readers react negatively to the founder’s quoted desire for yachts, jets, and lifestyle wealth, contrasting it with the artistry of the games.
• The CUC acquisition is widely characterized as tragic; the founder is seen as overruling internal opposition, including from close collaborators.
• There is curiosity about how early employees fared; one reply notes a long stock lockup, with shares tanking after the CUC fraud was revealed.

Adventure Game Design, Puzzles, and “Who Killed the Genre”

• Discussion revisits infamous “moon logic” puzzles and dead‑end states in Sierra games, with examples of being soft‑locked by missing a tiny trigger or early item.
• Some argue this design extended playtime cheaply but frustrated players; others recall calling 1‑900 hint lines or buying strategy books.
• Comparisons are made to more player-friendly design from rival studios (no random deaths or unwinnable states) and to modern tools like puzzle dependency charts.

Did Adventure Games Have to Die?

• One camp claims point‑and‑click adventures were already dying by the late ’90s and would have struggled regardless of corporate drama.
• Others argue cause and effect are reversed: the collapse of a major adventure-game producer helped kill the genre, and genres can revive when someone modernizes them well.
• There’s debate over whether adventure games mainly sold graphical spectacle that later migrated to action games, versus offering non-violent “casual” appeal.

Broader Industry and Player-Preference Debates

• A side thread disputes whether players really want maximal realism versus “fun” abstractions; examples like Doom, Minecraft, Tetris, and NetHack are used to argue against realism as the core driver.
• Another thread uses the CUC case to criticize the reliability of big-firm audits, suggesting incentives favor clean opinions over real scrutiny.

Reception of the Article and Related Works

• Commenters praise the blogger’s deep research and engaging narrative style, citing earlier series on Windows and broader “analog” history projects.
• Reactions to the founder’s own memoir are more muted; some found it focused on corporate growth rather than the “magic” of making the games.