I voted for Sierra for two main reasons.

Firstly sierra made a huge variety of games, lots of different settings, styles and types. From games like Shivers to Phantasmagoria to Leisure Suit Larry to Space Quest to Kings Quest to Gabriel Knight. Just look at that variety, they had comedy adventures, serious adventures, horror adventures, "family" adventures and adult adventures. They had "point and click" and they had puzzle games. They had murder mysteries, spy thrillers etc. Compare that to Luasarts which, as much as I love them, had one main style: comedy point and click games. I'd say only Grim Fandango and The Dig truel had other elements to them that set them apart form the other 12 Lucasarts games. Sure the comedy varied a little; Sam And Max was off the wall bizarre humour while monkey island was more the game equivalent of a good sitcom. But Lucasarts never had it's Gabriel Knight, or it's Phantasmorgoria, or it's Kings Quest 6 or it's Police Quest 2, did it?

Secondly in the time sierra was around it produced many more adventures. Sure quantity doesn't matter it's quality. But they kept fans of series happy with installment after installment. And they produced just as many gems as Lucasarts in the end. Clasics like GK 3 and KQ6 rank up there with MI 1 and 2 and Grim Fandango in my book. But as well as producing as many gems, they also managed to produce many mediocre games that kept people happy. And I think thats an achievement of sierras we often overlook; they kept their diverse groups of fans happy for many years; and as one of those fans I appreciate that.

But it is sad isn't it. It's 2004, some 20 odd years since the genre was born, and we've lost the two most prolific adventure makers, sierra in 1999 and Lucasarts practically in 2000. I mourn them both equally.

No, but they had their Afterlife, their X-Wing, their Tie Fighter, their Outlaws, their Jedi Knight and their Battlehawk 1942?

Not adventures though, thats all I'm talking about. In adventure games Sierra had a broader range of game styles; they weren't all comedy like Lucasarts. Granted there were differences between the games like I mentioned. But they never had a go at doing something like Gabriel Knight for example, something thats very light on humour and more of a drama/thriller type affair. Anyway sierra made plenty of non-adventures too in it's time :D

True. But I still don't think of LucasArts as unversatile.

Well, they were very conservative with their adventure gaming titles. Unadventurous decision-makers, I should say.

I disagree. Maybe they were conservative by style (although, Dom, not ALL their adventures were comedy man!) but I wouldn't call them conservative with their titles. I mean, games like Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle were VERY original when they first came out. Very experimental stuff, especially Maniac Mansion. And the last thing I would call their games is unadventurous decision makers. Especially Fate of Atlantis, The DIG and most notably Grim Fanfango made me feel I was sucked into one hell of an adventure.

--Erwin

By unadventurous decision-makers, I meant that the people with the power to say yea or nay to a proposed project probably favored comedy adventures. Who knows what innovative concepts were proposed to the decision-makers at LucasArts, only to be rejected because they weren't comedy adventure? With Sierra, as people have pointed out, we have adventure games in every genre and style imaginable. Ken Williams was famously all for letting his creative people go with their own personal visions, with no censorship whatsoever. Surely no one would claim the same of LucasArts?

How do you know that LucasArts crushed all the "non-comedy" adventures? "Comedy" isn't a good genre for adventure games, since LEC adventures cover all sorts of categories while also being humorous. Perhaps that was just the general atmosphere at LucasArts and so that's how the games ended up.

Well, I can only be very happy about the fact most LucasArts games involve comedy, since I prefer those kind of adventure games. But that's, of course, a matter of taste. Which is something we can't argue about ;)

My favorite Sierra games are the Space Quest and Larry Series. My least favorite Sierra series are the Kings Quest series, so that should say enough. :D

--Erwin

Sierra's doing pretty well in this poll. :) LucasArts attempt at serious games have been pretty screwed up though. :)

I don't know that, of course. In fact, it's very possible no one ever did pitch serious games to them. (Other than The Dig, which is pretty realistic in tone.) Whatever the reasons, most of LucasArts's games did end up feeling very much of the same breed: light, cartoony characters in humorous escapades. As Erwin said, that's great if you like that sort of thing. I like it in small doses.

I think "comedy" is not so bad as a generic adventure game category. Not that it needs to be used, but it does give the prospective buyer a vital clue to what the game will feel like. Noir would be a completely lacking description of Sam & Max, but anthropomorphic cartoon comedy noir would fit the bill. Long-winded, most definitely, but accurate.

Perhaps comedy should be seen as a major category with several subcategories, though: pirate comedy, science fiction comedy. These LucasArts have done. I wouldn't know what to call Grim Fandango, though. "LucasArts adventure" actually describes it perfectly adequately. Any semi-experienced adventurer would know the sort of gaming experience to expect (if not the subject matter) - another indication of the homogeneity of their titles. "Sierra adventure" covers a whole lot more genres and subgenres.

The presence of humor does not make something a comedy, though. Quest for Glory features an enormous amount of humor, but I would still describe them as fantasy RPG adventures. It's an "about" thing: QfG is "about" fantasy, roleplaying, and adventuring to me; whereas any of the Monkey Islands aren't "about" a historical era, even though that is the setting. They're about humorous adventuring in piratey settings, hence my thinking of them as humorous, not historical adventures.

Star wars (Lucas Arts)... OK
AVP2 (Sierra)... OK
THOSE WERE THE DAYS...
BUT NONE OF THEM IS BETTER THAN UBI SOFT
MAYBE THIS ISSUE IS OLD
BUT THE TRUTH MUST BE TOLD :)

Simo Sakari Aaltonen
The first MI actually is not just a "pirate comedy"; it is also an exellent example of parody that makes fun of the whole genre. One of the rarest kinds of adventure games that actually succeeds in what it does. Making fun of pixelhunting, red herrings, hot spots, deaths, mazes, timed puzzles, IFs, Sierra.. That makes SoMI much deeper and smarter in my eyes. The other LA adventures lack this factor though..

Thats because Ron didn't create the other games.

LucasArts all the way (though somebody clicked Sierra in the poll for me ;( ).

No dead end, no death, as everybody said.
Seriously, who wants to fall from a cliff or get caught by a witch when walking the country in an adventure game.
Especially when you had floppy disks and that reloading was not that fast.

And I don't see Sierra pushing technology : the parsers were at the same level than 8-bit CPC text adventures (VERB NOUN), while Infocom, Magnetic Scrolls and Level 9 were producing magnificient parsers and crazy compression techniques... (yet I liked the possibility in SQ3 to output MIDI from the ST in an adventure game, with a good expander it was great!)
Oh.. wait.. KQ8 did push the technology :r

There were not enough LucasFilm games.
And Sierra games were a great treat between two of these :)

I think you're confusing "technology" with "software." Nobody bought a new system, or their first sound card (or a new one), or a new videocard, so they could play an Infocom, Magnetic Scrolls, or Level 9 game -- however, many people did all those things so that they could play the latest Sierra game.

Parsers didn't require better technology. (As an aside, the effort that went into developing those more powerful parsers was a waste of time, given where adventure games went -- but sound cards and graphics cards have continued to become better and more sophisticated largely owing to upward pressure from game buyers. Sierra was the first company to have an identifiable "upward pressure" effect, and it was significant.)

--Josh

As a software developer ( a professional game developer ), I can ensure you that better software *is* better technology. Throwing hardware at a problem is one thing, but using it in the best way is another.
Wasn't Doom a technologic advance?
Yet it used the same vanilla hardware than Sierra SCI1 games such as Gabriel Knight...

According to your flawed definition they sure didn't :)
But in fact they did.
Adventure gamers are story and puzzle lovers, ain't they?
When Sierra wasn't even starting developing King's Quest 1, this charming treasure hunt, Infocom was releasing Deadline, a game whose plot can compare to Colonel Bequest, going out in 1990.

I liked Sierra games, the first AGI games were really innovative.
I don't really think Sierra forced many players into transitionning hardware, going from AGI to SCI0 then SCI1.
King's Quest 5 for instance was in 1990 and it was released on Amiga too.

Interestingly 1990 is the year Wing Commander was released too, which makes me think Origin deserves the title of the guys wo made the hardware market move.

I myself left my ST for a PC when I had to to play Monkey Island 2 :)

A lot of people went out and bought better hardware so they could play Sierra games with the best possible setup, even if they would run in some form on their current hardware. Going from personal experience, the first time I ever upgraded a computer was so I could play a Sierra game.

But you're right about Wing Commander. Those games made supercomputers cry.

LucasArts all the way. When they started putting out their games on CDs with voiceactors, they got pros. Sierra hired friends and co-workers..And it showed. :S Still, the Quest For Glory Series was pretty kick-arse. :3

At the time when i was playing Maniac mansion, monkey island 1 and 2 and the dig i was thinking that "jeeez, these are far superior to that black and white game my friend has on his mac where you run around completing fairy tales.. kings quest? bah!"

but then a little later i got given a copy of space quest IV for my birthday and i loved it and even though it had been out for a while and had lots of loading time it seemed like Sierra were making better quality games.

I think my bias was based on knowledge i didnt have.

i then played the other space quests games and 1 leisure suit larry game and so now i have a bit more to base my decision on.

LucasArts baby all the way.


GoT