Most adventure game enthusiasts are quite familiar with the name "Roberta Williams". She is a legend in the gaming industry, and was the only woman featured in PC Gamer's Game God exclusive amongst a sea of middle-aged male developers.

In 1980, Roberta and her husband Ken moved to a quiet little town in the mountains of California and launched the gaming company known as Sierra. Packaging each game in ziplock bags with the aid of Roberta's mom, this husband and wife duo had managed to grow Sierra into a company with over 1,000 employees by 1996. Roberta Williams is currently taking a breather from the gaming industry to think about what lies in her future.

Q: What drew you to the gaming industry, and how did you get started?

A: I started in 1980 when I designed my first game, Mystery House. I did not program computers, but my husband did. Between him and I, we worked on the game together and then put an ad in a computer magazine of the time (Micro Magazine) to see if anyone would buy it. (It was an adventure game with black and white pictures for the Apple II computer.) Well, people did buy it, in fact, they bought it well enough to be able to start a company - Sierra On-Line.

I was inspired to design my first game because I had played a text-only adventure game called Colossal Cave and loved it. And - I had also played a couple of Scott Adams' text-only adventure games from a now-defunct company called Adventure International. I had loved the category of adventure game, and thought that I could do it - albeit with my own ideas and embellishments. I tried it…and, obviously, I was successful with it!