Ken and Roberta Williams are returning to the gaming industry after more than two decades. The founders of Sierra On-Line and the creators of the cult quests of the 80s and 90s are working on a new game. It will be executed in the spirit of the company’s old projects and will be released this year.
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The couple told the publication about this GamesIndustry.biz . According to Ken Williams, they refused offers to return to the industry for two decades, but now they have decided to say yes.
“Everything changed when Roberta came up with the idea of a new game, and at that time I was just studying development on Unity and met a talented 3D artist,” says Ken.
This artist turned out to be Marcus Maximus Mera, who decided to start developing games after a career as a jewelry designer. Together they are working on the game The Secret, which will be released later this year. Little is known about the project yet, but it will be “imbued with the spirit of Sierra”.
Information about the game first appeared at the end of May on the small YouTube channel Space Quest Historian. Mera personally wrote to the author and hinted that he and the Williams had been working on a new project for six months. Ken Williams personally confirmed this information to the YouTuber in a personal conversation.
Roberta and Ken Williams founded Sierra On-Line in 1979 and gained fame through the series of quests Space Quest, King’s Quest, Gabriel Knight and Leisure Suit Larry. In 1989, the company entered the stock exchange and gained a foothold in the status of one of the main computer developers of the 80s and early 90s.
In 1996, the e-commerce firm CUC International bought Sierra On-Line for $1.5 billion. Two years later, the company published the first part of Half-Life on PC and continued to work on its own projects. Everything changed after the big scandal with accusations of fraud by the founder of CUC International. Shortly after, Sierra On-Line was restructured, and Ken and Roberta Williams left the company.