Roberta Williams facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Roberta Williams
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Roberta Williams in 2022
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| Born |
Roberta Lynn Heuer
February 16, 1953 Los Angeles, California, U.S.
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| Occupation | Video game designer, writer |
| Known for |
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| Spouse(s) |
Ken Williams
(m. 1972) |
| Children | 2 |
Roberta Lynn Williams (born February 16, 1953) is an American video game designer and writer. She helped start a famous video game company called Sierra On-Line with her husband, Ken Williams.
In 1980, Roberta created her first game, Mystery House. It was a big success and is known as the first graphic adventure game. She is also famous for making the King's Quest game series. Later, she designed Phantasmagoria in 1995, which used full motion video.
Sierra On-Line was bought by another company in 1996. Roberta left the game industry in 1999 to travel and write books. In 2021, she released her historical novel, Farewell to Tara. She later returned to game design, releasing a new version of the classic game Colossal Cave Adventure in 2023.
Many people in the video game world see Roberta Williams as one of the most important and creative designers. She helped create the graphic adventure game style and the King's Quest series. Some even call her the "Queen of adventure games." She has won major awards like the Industry Icon Award and the Pioneer Award.
Contents
Early Life and Career Beginnings
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Roberta Heuer was born in Los Angeles, California. She grew up in the countryside of Southern California. Her father worked as an agricultural inspector. As a child, Roberta was shy but had a big imagination. She loved making up fairy-tale stories for her family. She would imagine these stories like "movies" in her head.
She met her future husband, Ken Williams, when they were teenagers. They started dating and later married in 1972. Roberta worked as a computer operator and then as a computer programmer.
By 1979, Roberta and Ken had two children. Ken worked with large mainframe computers. The family wanted to move to the woods. Roberta bought an Apple II computer for their family, which was a big expense. Roberta loved playing text adventure games on it, and this sparked her interest in computers.
Designing Early Graphic Adventure Games (1979–1983)
Around 1979, Roberta Williams loved playing text adventure games like Colossal Cave Adventure. She had an idea for a new kind of video game. She was inspired by the mystery story And Then There Were None and the board game Clue.
Roberta convinced her husband Ken to help her make the game. She would create the story and pictures, and Ken would handle the computer programming. Roberta drew the pictures using her Apple II computer and a special device called a Versawriter. Ken had to write a program to use these images. He managed to fit nearly seventy pictures onto one disk.
This led to Mystery House, an adventure game with black and white graphics for the Apple II. It came out in 1980 and was sold by mail. The game quickly sold ten thousand copies. Roberta even packed the game disks herself and answered the phone to give hints to players. Ken started selling the game to computer stores. He quit his old job, hoping they could move out of the city.
Later that year, they released Wizard and the Princess. This game had better color graphics. It sold 60,000 copies, and they hired more people. Their company, On-Line Systems, started focusing only on making games. Roberta had big plans for Time Zone, a huge time-traveling game released in 1982. Around this time, Roberta's parents moved to Oakhurst, California. Roberta and Ken moved their company from Simi Valley, California to Coarsegold to be closer. They also changed their company name to Sierra On-Line.
After only two years, Sierra had almost a hundred employees and earned $10 million. Other companies started to notice their success. Jim Henson, who created the Muppets, asked Ken Williams to make a game based on his movie The Dark Crystal. Roberta was very excited about this project. She believed video games were just as important as movies. She designed much of the game, which came out in 1983. This popular game brought a lot of attention to Sierra. Roberta hoped that people would see the value of game artists, just like movie artists.
The King's Quest Breakthrough (1983–1994)
By 1983, Sierra's new investors wanted the company to make games for other systems like the Atari. But then, the video game industry had a big problem called the crash of 1983. Sierra had to make its team smaller, down to 30 employees. The Williams family even used their own home as collateral to pay their remaining staff.
Sierra had a good relationship with IBM, who was making the IBM PC. Wizard and the Princess was one of the first games for this computer. During Sierra's tough times, IBM offered to invest in the company. They wanted a game that could show off their new IBM PCjr computer. Roberta wanted to create an animated adventure game in a 3D-like world.
This led to the release of King's Quest in 1984. It was a mix of classic fairy tales that players could experience. Even though the PCjr computer wasn't very successful, King's Quest was released on many other systems and quickly became a bestseller. It was groundbreaking because players could move their character in front of, behind, or over objects on the screen. It also set a new standard for graphics in adventure games.
Roberta continued to design the King's Quest series. These games became known for their unique stories and amazing graphics. King's Quest III: To Heir is Human (1986) was a longer game and was even listed by Time magazine as one of the 50 Best Video Games of All Time.
When King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella came out in 1988, it was one of the first games to use sound cards and a mouse. It was also one of the first games to have a female main character. Some people worried this might stop boys from playing, but the game was even more successful! A survey showed that most boys didn't mind playing as a girl, and many girls loved it. This helped Roberta Williams bring more female players into computer gaming. King's Quest IV is still seen as a very important game that influenced many others.
Williams also designed other games, like the educational game Mixed-Up Mother Goose. This game sold over 500,000 copies. In 1989, she released The Colonel's Bequest, a mystery adventure game. It had better graphics and was more like an interactive mystery.
King's Quest V, released in 1990, was the first game to use an icon-based menu, making it easier to play. This game won many awards and was called one of the greatest games of all time.
By the early 1990s, Sierra was a big company, earning $100 million a year. Williams also worked on King's Quest VI (1992), which was also praised as one of the best adventure games. By the mid-1990s, Roberta Williams was Sierra's most popular game designer, especially for her King's Quest series. It's still remembered as the only video game series created and kept going by a female designer.
Later Games and Leaving the Industry (1995–1999)
Roberta Williams tried something new by designing Phantasmagoria, a horror adventure game. She loved Stephen King's novels and wanted to make a truly scary video game. She believed it needed real actors, so the game was made entirely with full-motion video.
The game cost $4 million to make and involved almost two hundred people. It was for older players and was like an interactive film. It came on seven CD-ROMs. Even though some critics had mixed feelings, Phantasmagoria was a huge success, selling over a million copies in 1995. Roberta says this game is her favorite achievement.
In 1996, Sierra was sold to CUC International. Roberta was against the sale, but the deal was too good to refuse. The new owners changed how Sierra was run. Roberta took a break from games. Sierra then released The Roberta Williams Anthology, a collection of 14 of her games.
Roberta returned to game design in 1997 to work on King's Quest: Mask of Eternity. She wanted to use new 3D graphics. However, Sierra's new management wanted to add elements from other popular games, which changed the traditional King's Quest style. Roberta felt like she was losing control. There were also rumors of financial problems with CUC. Roberta and Ken decided to sell their stock in the company. Ken left in 1997, and Roberta stayed to finish Mask of Eternity.
The game came out in 1998 but was not as successful. Sierra was then sold to another company. CUC was later found guilty of financial fraud. The decline of Sierra made Roberta sad, and she left the company in 1999.
Retirement and Return
After King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, Roberta Williams took a break from the game industry. She and Ken had signed an agreement that stopped them from working in games for five years. After that time, they had moved on to other things. Roberta stayed out of the public eye and focused on writing a historical novel. She also loves to travel and sail with her husband.
In 2011, there were reports that she was helping design a social game called Odd Manor for Facebook. In 2012, other game developers tried to get the Williamses to return to the game industry. Activision, who now owned Sierra's games, asked another company to make a new King's Quest game. Roberta gave some advice but didn't work on the game herself.
In 2019, a scholarship for women in game design was named after Roberta Williams. In 2021, she published her first novel, Farewell to Tara, which is set in Ireland during the Great Famine.
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In June 2021, Roberta and Ken announced they would return to game development. They started a new studio called Cygnus Entertainment. In 2022, they announced they were making a new version of Colossal Cave Adventure, called Colossal Cave 3D Adventure. Roberta said this old game inspired her career, and she was excited to bring it to life in 3D.
Legacy and Awards
In 1995, Next Generation magazine named Roberta Williams one of the 75 most powerful people in the game industry. Computer Gaming World also ranked her as one of the most influential people in computer gaming in 1997. GameSpot put her on their list of "most influential people in computer gaming of all time" in 1999. They praised her for pushing the limits of graphic adventures and making games that appealed to many people, especially women.
In 2009, IGN included Roberta and Ken Williams on their list of top game creators. They highlighted their role in starting Sierra, which made many of the best adventure games of the 1980s and 1990s.
Roberta Williams was added to the Computer Gaming World Hall of Fame in 2011. Both Roberta and Ken received an Industry Icon Award at The Game Awards in 2014. She also won the Pioneer Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2020. This was for her important work on graphic adventure games like Mystery House and the King's Quest series.
Ken Williams has said that Roberta is a perfectionist and very smart. Ars Technica called her "one of the more iconic figures in adventure gaming." They noted she was one of the first well-known female game designers. Smithsonian magazine recognized her as a pioneer for creating the first home computer game with graphics. Many people call her the "Queen of adventure games."
Roberta Williams has also inspired characters and artwork in other games. She posed for the cover of the game Softporn Adventure. She also posed with her children as Mother Goose for the cover of Mixed-Up Mother Goose. She even has a small appearance in Leisure Suit Larry 3. The character Ellie Williams from The Last of Us video game series is named after Ken and Roberta. She also inspired the character Cameron Howe in the TV show Halt and Catch Fire. The Williams family has given a collection of their game design materials to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games.
Works
Games
- Mystery House (1980)
- Wizard and the Princess (1980)
- Mission Asteroid (1981)
- Time Zone (1982)
- The Dark Crystal (1983)
- King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown (1984)
- Mickey's Space Adventure (1984)
- King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne (1985)
- King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human (1986)
- Mixed-Up Mother Goose (1987)
- King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella (1988)
- Laura Bow: The Colonel's Bequest (1989)
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! (1990)
- King's Quest 1: Quest for the Crown (Remake) (1990)
- Mixed-Up Mother Goose Multimedia (1990)
- Laura Bow in The Dagger of Amon Ra (1992)
- King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (1992)
- King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride (1994)
- Mixed-Up Mother Goose Deluxe (1995)
- Phantasmagoria (1995)
- Shivers (1995)
- King's Quest: Mask of Eternity (1998)
- Odd Manor (2014)
- Colossal Cave - Remake (2023)
Novels
- Farewell to Tara (2021)
See also
In Spanish: Roberta Williams para niños
