Circe: You mentioned that the works of Roberta Williams was an inspiration to you. In your mind, what about Sierra's King's Quest series stood out for you?
Britney: There were a few things that I really enjoyed about the King's Quest series. First off, I was young when I started playing the games, and I played them with my dad, so they always held a special place in my heart.
My dad passed away when I was 10, so playing the games reminded me of him, and he was my favorite person on the planet...
I also really enjoyed the aspects of exploration, meeting new people, and solving puzzles. To me, solving the puzzles is a confidence boosting experience. You wonder if you'll be able to overcome the challenge, and when you do, it feels like you've just accomplished a major goal. I love that feeling of accomplishment.
Circe: How were you able to get a meeting with Quest for Glory designer Lori Cole? Is there an official relationship between Himalaya and Sierra?
Britney: Well, most of the members on the Himalaya Team also do voluntary work over at AGD Interactive--that is really where we began our work on creating adventure titles.
We recreated two King's Quest games and are currently working on recreating Quest for Glory II. We have gotten a bit of help from Lori and Corey in the past, via email.
Most of the Himalaya team is located throughout the world, and at one point in time, many of us were in America. We visited at E3, and while we were all in California, we came up with the idea of meeting with Lori and Corey and showing them our current work on the QFGII project.
We basically called them up, and asked if we could take them to lunch. We were elated to hear that they wanted to invited us into their home, and give us the official tour of Oakhurst!!
We actually met with Corey while in Santa Monica at a Persian restaurant, then made the pilgrimage up north to meet with Lori and a Quest for Glory V programmer in the Cole's home.
Circe: That is wonderful. It is great to hear that you were treated with such open arms...
Britney: Yea, they were amazing! It was a dream come true. They even showed us all of the old design documents for the Quest for Glory games. They were just such warm and welcoming people.
Circe: How did your career progress into the making of computer games and at what age did you start to think that you may actually make a living in this biz?
Britney: The career, in a way, found me. Like all kids who had any specific talent, and who grew up playing Sierra games, of course I always thought it would be AMAZING working at Sierra. Yet, I never felt it was something that I would actually be able to do.
Ever since I could pick up a pencil, I've been drawing, and had always been interested in art and animation. My earliest dream was to work for Disney. It wasn't until I realized Disney had died, many years later, that I couldn't literally "work for Disney"!
Circe: lol
Britney: But, I've always had an interest in creative endeavors, and also an interest in entrepreneurial ventures.
By the time I got into college, I was convinced that I shouldn't rely merely on my artistic talent to get by in life. I ended up enrolling in the Biochemistry program. :)
After a few years, I ended up moving to Germany, and it wasn't until that point, that I realized that the adventure gaming division of Sierra had been shut down.
Well, I was really devastated to hear that no more classic style adventure games were being made, and that in fact, it was considered to be a DEAD GENRE!
Upon further research, I found a group of people online attempting to make a game based off of the Quest for Glory series. I applied as an artist.
I was accepted on the team, but was really disappointed to see how slowly progress was moving along, and being at the bottom of the totem pole, nobody was willing to listen to my ideas to make the development process more productive.
I made a friend on that team named Chris Warren, and we decided that we were going to leave the team for a short period of time and work on a small adventure game. We hoped by working on a game and finishing it, we would be reinspired and remotivated to continue work on the first project with the large team.
A friend of mine from college mentioned he had always loved the Sierra games as well, and was interested in making a parody of the first King's Quest game.
Chris and I thought this would be PERFECT. The game seemed to be really small to us, and very simple, since it was the first graphical adventure game created. We thought, "how hard could this really be?" We anticipated a development process of two weeks tops since the game was already laid out for us. All we had to do was recreate artwork, music, voice acting, script the entire game. Seemed simple enough.
During the development process, we noticed that my friend from college couldn't keep up with our pace. He was still working on dialogues by the time that we nearly had a complete 1 to 1 remake of the King's Quest I game.
At that point, we had a decision to make. Continue with the parody, or concentrate on what was proving to be a really awesome remake of King's Quest I! Additionally, we felt that the parody was not truly representing how we felt about the King's Quest game. We respected the series, and realized, we didn't really care to openly poke fun at it...
So, Chris and I decided to continue working on the King's Quest remake and drop the parody idea altogether. By the time we were finished, we were really happy with the results and decided to offer it online for others to enjoy as well.
It ended up becoming very popular, and most of our fans asked for us to continue making titles. For this reason, we followed the first game with King's Quest II. This game was a remake of the second King's Quest game, and THEN some. The entire plot was fleshed out and made much more intricate. We added new puzzles, new characters, an entirely new soundtrack, etc.
Circe: For FREE?
Britney: Yes, this was all for free. We LOVED these Sierra games. We wanted to help regenerate interest in the genre and prove that there were still people who WANTED THESE GAMES. We hoped by doing this, publishers may start funding more classic adventure game projects.
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