Josh Mandel

[b]Ingmar[/b]: You’ve been an on-screen actor in Roberta Williams’s Phantasmagoria. Obviously, this game was a step into a new dimension of interactive storytelling for Sierra. How did you feel about this new mixture of movie and game at the time and what are your thoughts on the finished product?

[b]Josh[/b]: I hadn’t been much of a fan of FMV, and while I appreciated Roberta’s vision, I didn’t think the technology was there (at least, for us) to do it justice.

data-fancybox="images"
>

It was an amazing production. The construction of the soundstage, the weeks of shooting, it was just a monumental effort. Once in awhile, people would find an excuse to drive over to the studio and see what was going on. The stories that came out of there were unbelievable; people desperate to get in on it somehow, or just to hang out. A design that had to be constantly rewritten to account for limitations of the format. And, I think, for everyone involved, it was just a logistical nightmare.

And it went on and on.

The end result, I think, showed too many rough edges. For as long as the game had been in production, it ended up, for various reasons, looking and feeling hasty. It certainly accomplished one thing, though (which was by design): it let everyone know that Roberta had an imagination far beyond fairy tales.

data-fancybox="images"
>

It was a grand experiment, but I’ve come away thinking that the studio should’ve been built first, used for a smaller game or two, and then, with lessons learned, used for a big, sprawling game like Phantasmagoria. But that would’ve required a lot more foresight than most companies can afford in this industry.

[b]Ingmar[/b]: To this day, there still is a lot of talk about the rivalry between Sierra and LucasArts in the days both companies wanted to be ahead of the other and be known as the #1 adventure game company. What were your feelings about this rivalry and how did you feel about the games from LucasArts?

[b]Josh[/b]: I really didn’t detect much jealousy at all about LucasArts; if anything, we felt that they were probably the only people in the world who understood what we were doing.

data-fancybox="images"
>