Ken Williams, the founder and CEO of Sierra Online is clearly an intelligent person with strong opinions or he and his wife Roberta would never have been able to turn Sierra Online into the dominant PC game developer and publisher of the 20th century. With hit series as diverse as King’s Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, Phantasmagoria and Leisure Suit Larry as well as leading the charge for sound cards, Sierra Online was powerhouse of creativity and commercial success.
It’s clear, however, from Ken Williams’ 408-page self-published book, that he has not been told “no” very often in his life, and if he has, he has not listened. This is a great and necessary trait if you are going to lead an industry for 20 years, not so much if you are writing a book. This is Williams’ only book on the subject of his much-loved company, one that met a vicious and unnecessary demise after a Wall Street takeover, and as such it is an important document of what happened.
Unlike other self-published autobiographies the book does not get bogged down in unimportant details that are only of interest to the writer, but the book does fall down where the author has chosen to intersperse chapters on non sequitur topics ranging from management philosophy to how programming code should be arranged. While a few of these are interesting, others have an extremely targeted audience, or are just so different in tone that it takes away from the rest of the book.
The only other negative, (besides the odd and sporadic use of clip-art) is that the last 15% of the book is made up of lists of games and other reference material. This is helpful to someone who does not have access to Wikipedia, but otherwise gives the reader the impression that the book is going to be much longer in substance than it is.
Which is a shame because the book, when on-topic, provides Williams’ compelling and unique view on his company, his professional life with Roberta and the other developers and artists at Sierra Online. It is certainly worth a read if you enjoyed PC gaming through the 80’s and 90’s, work in business management or are younger and want to research this period of game development.
Phil Fogg