Interviews
Leisure Suit Larry Creator Al Lowe Weighs In On The Fate Of Sierra
September 04, 2008
Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe will get the last, albeit bittersweet, laugh. Sierra, Lowe’s former employer and once renowned publisher of groundbreaking interactive tales like Leisure Suit Larry, King’s Quest, Space Quest and (Mom’s favorite) Softporn Adventure, is once again on the chopping block.
Following the merger of parent company Vivendi Games, new owner Activision Blizzard has decided to gut the firm, since become a clearing house for ass-tastic offerings like Empire Earth and Sea Life Safari, canceling projects willy-nilly and stripping its final shreds of dignity. Amid the possible definite divestitures of high-profile releases like Ghostbusters, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand and possibly WET, Sierra has only five-odd outings including Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Ice Age, Prototype and one unrevealed project announced for actual retention. (Shit – now where will we get our fix of 3D Ultra Minigolf?!)
The time seemed opportune to ask just what the hell has been going in the house founders Ken and Robert Williams built? Here, Lowe, a company expatriate who has watched Sierra’s precipitous decline from the outside since leaving the publisher in 1998, weighs in on the label’s past, present and future. Even if, that is, just like the rest of us, he’s admittedly slightly cheesed off at the prospect of potentially being subjected to latest bastardization of his work Leisure Suit Larry Box Office Bust.
Das Gamer: Sierra’s making headlines again… and not in a good way. You’ve gone on-record saying you’d rather see the brand permanently laid to rest. Why?
Al Lowe: It’s a special memory. Therefore I hate to see the Sierra brand continue to be besmirched in the way it has been. [Owner Vivendi] has simply stuck the name on whatever box they’ve wanted. The name hasn’t meant what it did in the ‘80s and ‘90s for years now.
So what does it mean today, given that it’s been slapped on everything from Ghostbusters to Crash Bandicoot?
Al Lowe: Nothing – that’s what I mean. I would rather see it laid to rest than haphazardly applied to whatever product comes along. They’ve pissed away the value of the brand completely.
And tinkled on its grave, perhaps?
Al Lowe: Yes… although I doubt I’d have used the word “tinkled.” [Laughs]
Where did things begin to go wrong and what’s it culminated in today?
Al Lowe: Things began to go wrong when Sierra was bought by crooks CUC International – literally, recently-convicted criminals. Instead of being owned and operated by gamers, the company became run by marketers. When they hired a guy straight from Nabisco cookies to run the business, it makes you wonder: What were they thinking?
Games aren’t like widgets. And game developers are weird, and need special care and feeding: [Original owner] Ken Williams was a genius at that. He got more out of us than you can imagine. Of course, we were all young and stupid, but there was tremendous effort back then to exceed whatever was in the marketplace, take risks and try new things. That’s been wholly replaced nowadays by market research and surveys that show what sold last year.
Today the guys in charge of brands like Sierra are employees whose best hope is to keep their job. The worst thing that happens is they try something new, mess up, and get fired. So where’s the hope for them to ever take the risk to put forth new ideas?
