Ken and Roberta Williams, the co-founders of Sierra On-Line and creators of some of the most influential adventure games ever made, join host Tammy Coron for a wide-ranging conversation recorded while the two are sailing toward the Northwest Passage aboard their boat.


Roberta designed groundbreaking games including Mystery House, the King's Quest series, Colonel's Bequest, and Phantasmagoria. Ken built the technology and business that transformed those ideas into Sierra On-Line, one of the defining game companies of the 1980s and '90s. Their latest project is a 3D reimagining of Colossal Cave—the text adventure that first inspired Roberta to make games.


The conversation explores Roberta's design process—from sketching game worlds on oversized sheets of paper before writing a single line of story to scaling that approach from the 52 rooms of Mystery House to the full-motion video production of Phantasmagoria. They discuss getting graphics onto the Apple II, why King Graham changed how Roberta thought about character, and the four years of horror research (and nightmares) that went into creating Phantasmagoria.


Ken also reflects on watching Sierra be sold to a buyer who turned out to be a fraud, on AI taking over game development, and on whether Roberta might design one more original game.


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