Vivendi games sierra entertainment

Activision announced in that they may sell the Sierra brand. Template:Unreferenced section. Dissatisfied with the adventure games that existed at the time, she realized modern computers could display graphics and had the potential to do more than presenting text descriptions on the screen.

Template:Expand section. Roberta began to write a script for an adventure game. Three weeks later she presented to Ken the script of a computer game called Mystery House , an idea she had developed during the previous days.

Roberta managed to talk Ken into helping her develop the game in the evenings after work. Roberta worked on the text and the graphics and told Ken how to put it all together to make it the game she wanted. They worked on it for about three months and on May 5, , Mystery House was ready for shipment. Mystery House was an instant hit. The graphics, although consisting only of crude line drawings, monochrome and motionless, were something previously unseen in a computer adventure game.

Mystery House was the first computer adventure game to have graphics. IBM would fund the entire development of the game, pay royalties for it and advertise for the game. Ken and Roberta accepted and started on the project. Roberta created a story featuring classic fairy-tale elements. Her game concept included animated color graphics, a pseudo 3D-perspective where the main character was visible on the screen, a more competent text parser that would understand advanced commands from the player and music playing in the background through the PCjr sound hardware.

For the game, a complete development system, called Adventure Game Interpreter was developed. In the summer of , King's Quest was released to much acclaim. After a simple demonstration to Ken, he allowed them to start working on the full game.

The game, released in October , was an instant success and would spawn many sequels in the following years. Al Lowe , who had been working at Sierra On-Line for many years, was asked by Ken Williams to write a modern version of Chuck Benton 's Softporn Adventure from , the only pure text adventure that the company had ever released. A long series of Leisure Suit Larry games would follow in the coming years and become the second best selling game series of Sierra On-Line after King's Quest.

In , Sierra released King's Quest V , the first Sierra On-Line game ever to sell more than , copies and was the highest selling game of all time for the next five years. In Gabriel Knight: Sins of the father was released. Generally considered to be a staple of the point and click adventure genre, Gabriel Knight and its sequels were critically acclaimed in the main stream press at the time.

Sierra had grown enormously since its first years along with their facility. New buildings were needed to hold new resources needed to continue making games. A decision was made to move the headquarters north, to Bellevue, Washington. Sierra's original location in Oakhurst continued as an internal development studio for the company and was renamed Yosemite Entertainment in The company was now made up of five separate, and largely autonomous development divisions: Sierra Publishing, Sierra Northwest, Dynamix , Bright Star Technologies and Coktel Vision , with each group working separately on product development but sharing manufacturing, distribution and sales resources.

This joint venture created a new company called Sierra Venture. On March 3, , Vivendi Universal announced they would be dropping the Universal part of their name The same day, the company opened a mobile games division known as Vivendi Universal Games Mobile.

In December , American publisher Activision announced a proposed merger deal with Vivendi Games that would create a new holding company named Activision Blizzard. The deal was approved by Activision shareholders on July 8, , and the merger was finalized on July 10, creating Activision Blizzard while dissolving Vivendi Games. Bruce Hack, who served as chief executive officer of Vivendi Games, became vice chairman and chief corporate officer of the new company.

Many of Vivendi Games properties were later dropped by Activision, citing that they would not make for a good fit for the company long term strategy. Gingo Wiki Explore. Geo G. Rules Recent blog posts Featured Articles Forum.

The name survives as a brand of Vivendi Universal and last owned by Activision Blizzard. The Sierra label would not continue, Sierra's website was redirected to Activision's website. Sierra started modestly as On-Line Systems in , with founders Ken and Roberta Williams programming games and managing the company from their own home.

Their first game was Mystery House , the world's first graphic adventure game. The success of that game subsequently ported to other platforms set forth one of the most popular series Sierra has ever created, and spurred them into creating numerous adventure game series based on the Quest theme. In the years to come Sierra would remain on the forefront of groundbreaking computer game design , sometimes creating large blockbusters and other times, failed experiments. Sierra also acquired the rights to use Print Artist , a computer publishing program which allowed users to make high quality picture prints, in In Sierra started an online service called The Sierra Network.

Pre- WWW , it was comparable to services like CompuServe or Prodigy except that its interface was completely graphical. Thematically, it was a cross between a kingdom and a theme park in which users could visit different "lands" to post on message boards , exchange emails and play games.

In , Sierra moved its headquarters to Bellevue, Washington to attract more talent.