(09-27-2025, 10:13 AM)Josh_Mandel Wrote: Rubacava,
At the time, I was warned "Brown is the kiss of death for software boxes." Unfortunately, it was also perfect.
Josh
LOL!!!
Im still singing the intro ballad when I look at that box... "5 year college degree" part always gets me hahahah
Freddy is my top box as well along with KQ6 and SQ4
This post was last modified: 09-27-2025, 02:48 PM by Rubacava.
(09-27-2025, 04:47 AM)Greg Costikyan Wrote: I worked with Steve Meretzky, albeit not on an adventure game (at Playdom, on a cancelled "build your own Disney theme park" game) and liked that experience.
You're a lucky person! I was never so fortunate. That sounds a very fun project, I wonder what led to its cancellation.
Josh
(09-27-2025, 04:08 PM)kobold Wrote: what's your favorite piece of music from Sierra's history, and why?WOW. There have been some really remarkable ones. Erana's Peace was a huge favorite. So was the Space Quest theme, and that perennial earworm, the Leisure Suit Larry theme.
I have to be honest and say my single favorite piece is probably the Ballad of Freddy Pharkas. Some of that is simply pride of authorship, as I remember the days writing it, why various decisions were made about each line, that kinda thing. But the melody, which was Al Lowe's with Aubrey Hodge's arrangement, is just as important as the lyrics, if not moreso. For one thing, it's another of Al's earworms. He seems to have a great talent for that. But for another, it gets people singing along and remembering lines (like "Peerless, earless, and free"). I think that's an absolutely priceless thing and incredibly rare in the whole history of games to date. It involves people in the game even long after they're done playing and have uninstalled it. I love the fact that there are many covers of it on Youtube.
To be even more specific, I love the *closing* ballad best of all three ballads (demo, opening, and closing), and the MT-32 version (not the talkie version) is best of all. I was just talking about this on Facebook. When Al sang the Ballad for the CD version of the game, he used the same arrangement as the opening ballad. But Aubrey arranged the closing ballad for the floppy version differently. It added a snare drum and a march beat that gave it a whole different feel from the other two versions. It sounded so triumphant. I wish it had been used for the CD, because it just punctuates the ending so very well. People who are used to the opening ballad will probably agree with me that it gives the same melody an ENTIRELY different feel. (For those who are interested, here's the MIDI version, thank you to Alistair Gillette: http://www.sierramusiccentral.com/musics...rack52.mp3)
I hope picking my own song isn't too much of a cop-out. For what it's worth, I would probably choose the Larry theme as my favorite piece of music that I wasn't involved in, with the SQ theme being the runner-up.
This post was last modified: 09-27-2025, 04:56 PM by Josh_Mandel.
(09-27-2025, 05:04 PM)kobold Wrote: not at all a cop-out, i think it's awesome to be proud of yourself if you genuinely like it the most!!
Thank you! Yeah, I think so, too. Even if I hadn't been involved with it, if I try to look at it objectively, I still really like it.
Of course, it is nowhere near as majestic and stirring as various pieces of music throughout the Sierra catalog -- I'm thinking of the KQ and QfG series as being sources of really sweeping pieces, and the GK series for their moody (and occasionally even operatic) pieces. The Freddy ballad is comparatively extremely simplistic. But...
I've been a fan for ages, and younger me often visited your Brady Bunch-style website in the web-crawling days of yore.
Two questions:
1. You've done many voices for the games over the years. What was your favorite voice role?
2. Are there any of your post-Sierra games you feel would have been better served by being designed at the pre-"Chainsaw Monday" Sierra instead of their later homes?
Two questions:
1. You've done many voices for the games over the years. What was your favorite voice role?
2. Are there any of your post-Sierra games you feel would have been better served by being designed at the pre-"Chainsaw Monday" Sierra instead of their later homes?
(09-27-2025, 09:00 PM)dmouse097 Wrote: I've been a fan for ages, and younger me often visited your Brady Bunch-style website in the web-crawling days of yore.
Two questions:
1. You've done many voices for the games over the years. What was your favorite voice role?
2. Are there any of your post-Sierra games you feel would have been better served by being designed at the pre-"Chainsaw Monday" Sierra instead of their later homes?
Thank you, dmouse! I'm especially flattered that you remember the old website, nobody ever mentions that. I didn't want to take it down, but most of the family thinks of privacy concerns these days, and I wanted to err on the side of prudence.
These are great questions, you really put some thought into these!
1. I actually really enjoyed performing in Phantasmagoria, although that appearance is uncredited on Mobygames, and probably in the game itself (it came out shortly after I left, and they were displeased with me). I did the emcee in the movie viewer in the theater, in Chapter Seven. I think. And that was live, whole body, moving around, not just voice or a portrait. So that was a lot of fun. But it was also a great honor to play Graham, kind of life-altering, really. And playing the Monolith Manager in SQ4 was also personally a very big deal. So all good memories.
2. Whoa. Okay. Hmm.
Weirdly, 3 of my post-Sierra projects were with friends from Sierra: Hero-U with Corey and Lori (I wrote all the messages for interacting with the items in the environments), SpaceVenture with Scott and Mark (I wrote the Holotube shows, commercials, song, etc), and Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded with Al Lowe. These were all Kickstarted. And I think they were each hampered to varying extent by the lack of all the advantages of Sierra's infrastructure (or something roughly equivalent). They might also have been easier in SCI, if only because of familiarity. And to go from having a company of professionals at yor fingertips, to suddenly having to be your own publisher, R&D, QA, production, marketing...it's a lot of expertise to assemble or acquire, on the fly, and on a much tighter budget than you're used to, since the money has to cover ALL those things.
Then again, maybe you're not really asking about SCI, or the tools...I don't know. There are so many dynamics at play here, when I think of games I've worked on post-Sierra, if they had been done at Sierra instead of wherever they were incubated...I guess they would probably have turned out significantly different from what they are, and I can't be sure if they would have benefitted overall or not. I do know that there have been very few times that I thought, "If only I was doing this at Sierra." The exceptions are those cases when there are particular people from Sierra I wish I could get for a given project, or when I wish the infrastructure was there to provide support.
Does that answer the question? I'm not sure.
This is something I've always been confused by- at Sierra what was the difference between the game designer and the game writer?
(09-28-2025, 06:45 AM)PrincessPearl Wrote: This is something I've always been confused by- at Sierra what was the difference between the game designer and the game writer?
Not to steal Mr. Mandel's thunder, but, as I understand it and in very broad terms, a "game designer" designs the puzzles and game mechanics and the "game writer" writes all the "you can't do that, at least not now" messages. Most game designers are also writers, so there is some overlap there.
Dear Mr. Mandel,
What are, in your opinion, the greatest sins of adventure game design (specifically puzzle types and/or game mechanics that just makes the act of playing the game absolutely excruciating), and have you ever committed any of them?
Sincerely,
That guy who keeps sending you perfumed Valentine's cards out of season
This post was last modified: 09-28-2025, 07:42 AM by Space Quest Historian.
Hiya, PrincessPearl! I'll give you a more thorough answer than you probably bargained for.
The Game Designer, at Sierra and many other places, is sort of the spiritual source for every aspect of the game. He, she, or they would generally create the game's story and backstory, the characters, the maps, and the puzzles. The Designer specifies the animation needed for every room and event, the sound needs, and all aspects of the game logic. They might define the interface, or might work with the artists and programmers to do so. The Designer would typically define, or collaborate to define, the art style and music style. Often, the Designer will also direct the game, specifying the characters' movements, expressions, actions, and motivations, maybe directing the voice actors and/or physical actors as well (FMV, motion capture, however the actors will be turned into their in-game counterparts). Casting is part of that, too, and so is all the editing.
Writing is a huge part of the design (usually). The majority of the time with adventures like Sierra's, the Designer is also handling that writing. That includes any dialogue and narration, which itself can encompass object and environment descriptions, and all responses to any player input at all. It may well include writing a tutorial, if the game has one; demo(s), the in-box documentation, even the install screen text. It might even involve writing the hintbook, the box copy, ads, PR materials...it's all depends on how the company is set up, and how much the Designer wants to tackle.
Sometimes the Designer will wear other hats at the same time. Maybe the Designer knows how to program, or create artwork, or compose and arrange music and/or sound effects. If they have the skills, they will often add these jobs to their already-considerable task lists.
But unless you're a one-person operation, you're not doing everything yourself. And some Designers work with other writers to do all that dialogue, narration, feedback, and so on, because there is so much writing involved in most games. The writer/writers usually focus solely on the writing, and are not making decisions about the overall plot, the puzzles, the music, the art, and all the related aspects the Designer handles.
Even with a team to work with, writing is sometimes a task the Designer wants to do all by him/her/themself. But there can be any number of reasons that the Designer can't do, or doesn't want to do, some (or even most!) of the writing, and then they get a game writer. Sometimes Designers are simply acknowledging their own limitations or preferences, such as, "I hate writing dialogue" or "I just don't have a desire to write descriptions for all the items visible in the background."
Think of the Designer as a generalist, while the writer(s), artist(s), programmer(s), composer(s), and others are specialists.
I probably made all this a lot more long-winded than it needed to be, but hey, I'm being paid by the word.
Josh
The Game Designer, at Sierra and many other places, is sort of the spiritual source for every aspect of the game. He, she, or they would generally create the game's story and backstory, the characters, the maps, and the puzzles. The Designer specifies the animation needed for every room and event, the sound needs, and all aspects of the game logic. They might define the interface, or might work with the artists and programmers to do so. The Designer would typically define, or collaborate to define, the art style and music style. Often, the Designer will also direct the game, specifying the characters' movements, expressions, actions, and motivations, maybe directing the voice actors and/or physical actors as well (FMV, motion capture, however the actors will be turned into their in-game counterparts). Casting is part of that, too, and so is all the editing.
Writing is a huge part of the design (usually). The majority of the time with adventures like Sierra's, the Designer is also handling that writing. That includes any dialogue and narration, which itself can encompass object and environment descriptions, and all responses to any player input at all. It may well include writing a tutorial, if the game has one; demo(s), the in-box documentation, even the install screen text. It might even involve writing the hintbook, the box copy, ads, PR materials...it's all depends on how the company is set up, and how much the Designer wants to tackle.
Sometimes the Designer will wear other hats at the same time. Maybe the Designer knows how to program, or create artwork, or compose and arrange music and/or sound effects. If they have the skills, they will often add these jobs to their already-considerable task lists.
But unless you're a one-person operation, you're not doing everything yourself. And some Designers work with other writers to do all that dialogue, narration, feedback, and so on, because there is so much writing involved in most games. The writer/writers usually focus solely on the writing, and are not making decisions about the overall plot, the puzzles, the music, the art, and all the related aspects the Designer handles.
Even with a team to work with, writing is sometimes a task the Designer wants to do all by him/her/themself. But there can be any number of reasons that the Designer can't do, or doesn't want to do, some (or even most!) of the writing, and then they get a game writer. Sometimes Designers are simply acknowledging their own limitations or preferences, such as, "I hate writing dialogue" or "I just don't have a desire to write descriptions for all the items visible in the background."
Think of the Designer as a generalist, while the writer(s), artist(s), programmer(s), composer(s), and others are specialists.
I probably made all this a lot more long-winded than it needed to be, but hey, I'm being paid by the word.
Josh
This post was last modified: 09-28-2025, 08:17 AM by Josh_Mandel.