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Is LucasArts better remembered (by the public) than Sierra?

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Note: I'm not talking about among members of the Codex or adventure game fans. You guys, and the adventure game community at large, obviously remembers and loves Sierra's games. I'm talking about your casual gamer who is between say 25 and 45.

It just seems to me that LucasArts, as a nostalgically remembered adventure game studio, is remembered more, and more fondly to be more specific, than Sierra is. That LucasArts' IPs have a higher brand recognition among that group of people than Sierra's IPs do.

My questions are, do you agree that this is the case - That LucasArts is better remembered than Sierra? That their games have a higher level of brand recognition in today's gaming world as "retro" nostalgic games?

And the second part of this is, if this is the case, how and why did it happen? Sierra's adventure games always outsold LucasArts' - so when/where/how did the nostalgia shift from Sierra's games, which were the bigger hits, to LucasArts' games?
 

taxalot

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In France, and maybe the rest of Europe, easily and clearly for one simple reason.

Lucas Arts bothered to translate their games. When Sierra eventually did, it was too little, too late.
 

Unkillable Cat

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While many remember both, LucasArts games tend to get the bigger reaction.

The difference is most noticeable if you just slide the clock by a few years. If people gamed up to 1991 or '92 it's Sierra that's better remembered, but after that it's LucasArts.
 
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Boleskine

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LucasArts games tend to be more accessible to people discovering them in the past 10-15 years, probably due to the humor and lack of dead ends that exist in many earlier Sierra games.

Another factor might be the visibility and presence of Tim Schafer in his post-LucasArts years. Also, multiple LucasArts employees formed Telltale Games after the Sam & Max sequel was canceled in 2004. So Telltale felt like a spiritual successor to LucasArts, and they even made Sam & Max and Monkey Island games before their drop off a cliff into (not)-interactive movies.

On the other hand most of the Sierra designers, except Jane Jensen, stopped making games and basically left the industry. Vivendi and Activision all but buried the company other than releasing some half-assed collections of their main series in 2006 then later working with GOG in digital distribution.
 

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From my perspective (in the UK), Sierra games tended to be seen as pretty but vapid and unoriginal (with the odd exception like Gabriel Knight), whereas LucasArts games were deep and generally better games, both as adventures and as stories. There's no question that the latter are better thought of than the former.

I don't recall any period when Sierra was considered anything more than a follower. Early on they were the tabloid equivalent to Infocom, and then the discount LucasArts. It's interesting that from reading blogs like the Digital Antiquarian that Sierra was much more highly regarded in America than over here.
 

pippin

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LucasArts is tangentally related to Star Wars. Everything which has a relation to Star Wars is guaranteed to make more money and have more recognition.
 
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LucasArts is tangentally related to Star Wars. Everything which has a relation to Star Wars is guaranteed to make more money and have more recognition.

Brand recognition is great and all, but lucasarts Star Wars games started to appear when the company was already stabilished as a top tier game developer. The adventure games were it's primary asset, and other than indiana jones, there was never an Star Wars adventure game. Lucasarts started using star wars when making clones of other successful games, like dark forces being a doom clone, and x-wing series being wing commander look alikes. The diferential was that instead of just copying, lucasarts did improve on the original gameplay and visual presentation.

And even when "copying", they've not always used The star wars brand. Afterlife was a simcity 2000 clone, and it had nothing to do with Star Wars.

Star Wars started to take over lucasarts only later in the late 90's, when adventure games, sierra and gaming industry went full decline mode.
 

pippin

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It's not that much a thing of making SW games, but LucasArts falls under the SW umbrella. A marketing thing. They still had to look out for their reputation because of this, while Sierra ended up making very questionable business decisions.
 

pippin

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Most of the Sierra developed games worth playing were their adventures. I guess you could include the Swat games as an alternative? I loved Swat 3 back in the day.
 

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It IS interesting LucasArt's never did a Star Wars Adventure Game. Though that was probably due to marketing, in that most customers would expect a Star Wars game to be very action heavy. I wonder how such an Adventure Game would have turned out (back in the day).
 

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Here in Germany, Lucas Arts games were way more popular than Sierra games. I grew up with both as a kid, and had a preference for Lucas Arts overall, too. Just look at the high profile adventures they had - Monkey Island series, Sam and Max, Indiana Jones, Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle, they're all solid and well-remembered classics.

Sierra also had their good games, and I enjoyed King's Quest 6 a lot back then, and also enjoyed Larry 6 (mostly due to the hilarious death scenes), but I preferred the interface of Lucas Arts games and always felt like Lucas Arts had better production values, for some reason. Space Quest series and many others passed me by back then as they just weren't as popular as LA games over here.

Nowadays that I played most Sierra games I missed back in the 90s, I still say that LA had a more consistent quality in their games, and some of the mainline Sierra games (King's Quest, I'm looking at you) have a puzzle design that is just unfair and reliant on pixel hunting and getting you stuck for not picking up an item that is 2 pixels in size 2 hours ago, lol guess you gotta restart.
 

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Here in Germany, Lucas Arts games were way more popular than Sierra games. I grew up with both as a kid, and had a preference for Lucas Arts overall, too. Just look at the high profile adventures they had - Monkey Island series, Sam and Max, Indiana Jones, Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle, they're all solid and well-remembered classics.

Sierra also had their good games, and I enjoyed King's Quest 6 a lot back then, and also enjoyed Larry 6 (mostly due to the hilarious death scenes), but I preferred the interface of Lucas Arts games and always felt like Lucas Arts had better production values, for some reason. Space Quest series and many others passed me by back then as they just weren't as popular as LA games over here.

Nowadays that I played most Sierra games I missed back in the 90s, I still say that LA had a more consistent quality in their games, and some of the mainline Sierra games (King's Quest, I'm looking at you) have a puzzle design that is just unfair and reliant on pixel hunting and getting you stuck for not picking up an item that is 2 pixels in size 2 hours ago, lol guess you gotta restart.
Everytime i tried to play the series, that kind of bullshit put me off everytime.

There is a line (albeit blurry) between hardcore and just plainly shitty game design
 

zwanzig_zwoelf

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I wonder how such an Adventure Game would have turned out (back in the day).
63a52b240fad4e4186a7d9be8fb94c77.gif


There was one. :smug:
 
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Here in Germany, Lucas Arts games were way more popular than Sierra games. I grew up with both as a kid, and had a preference for Lucas Arts overall, too. Just look at the high profile adventures they had - Monkey Island series, Sam and Max, Indiana Jones, Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle, they're all solid and well-remembered classics.

Sierra also had their good games, and I enjoyed King's Quest 6 a lot back then, and also enjoyed Larry 6 (mostly due to the hilarious death scenes), but I preferred the interface of Lucas Arts games and always felt like Lucas Arts had better production values, for some reason. Space Quest series and many others passed me by back then as they just weren't as popular as LA games over here.

Nowadays that I played most Sierra games I missed back in the 90s, I still say that LA had a more consistent quality in their games, and some of the mainline Sierra games (King's Quest, I'm looking at you) have a puzzle design that is just unfair and reliant on pixel hunting and getting you stuck for not picking up an item that is 2 pixels in size 2 hours ago, lol guess you gotta restart.

To be fair, even other Sierra designers mocked KQ's insanely hard puzzles. There's a very sarcastic line in SQ6 to that very effect - about picking up a 1 or 2 pixel item, "Who would design a puzzle like that?"
 

Zarniwoop

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(((The Public))) are complete dumbfucks that don't remember either. They couldn't give half a shit apart from "zomg itz an adversture let contribulte lololllloloolllol"
 

SCO

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Accessibility poseurs. Sierra 'illogicalness' was greatly exaggerated over the years from articles of wannabe experts or journalists, especially since lucasarts main games weren't exactly free from that sort of thing. Monkey wrench puzzle anyone.

Granted King's quest was full of that sort of thing, but you need to consider that before the internet a game like this was supposed to last weeks to months of playing on-off (if you were particularly dim like me), up to and including replays because you fucked yourself over and had to reconsider the sequence of events. Of course this sort of thing can be done much better than sierra did it, but they were trying to continue a proud text adventure tradition from infocom on their clumsy way. Besides, the other series besides early larry are better about it.

There are other secondary effects too. For example, if the sierra example didn't exist, i doubt a game like KGB would get made by cryo, and that would be sad. I feel that many european adventure companies current and dead owe more to sierra than lucasarts.

I don't like comparing dead companies philosophies and trying to declare one approach unequivocally superior. For one thing it's bull, and for another, it's depressing to compare the AAA of the genre back then to it today.
 
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