One of the great downfalls of an acquisition or merger, in the game industry, is the loss of great franchise titles. Sierra, or Sierra Online, once stood on its own as a company with great gaming titles but later fell into the depths of Hades under many different company names.
Sierra’s last stop on the acquisition highway was Vivendi, years after much of Sierra’s steam had slowed. Now, they’re part of Activision Blizzard so we had high hopes they’d find a great use for some of the old Sierra properties long since collecting dust. Space Quest, Kings Quest, Leisure Suit Larry and especially Gabrielle Knight were some of our favorites, but times have changed.
“We are retaining only those franchises that are a strong fit with our long-term strategy including Crash Bandicoot, Ice Age and Spyro, as well as Prototype and a second game that has not yet been announced. We will not publish any other titles that previously were part of the Vivendi Games portfolio and we are currently reviewing our options regarding those titles,” says Activision Blizzard (joystiq)
This is unfortunate news, Activision Blizzard now has a large set of franchises on their hands, many of which have collected dust for years. Those dust collecting franchises could rise from the dead and reinvigorate their old fan base… or be dropped to the earth as unwanted scrapes after a big hunt with the vultures awaiting their take (sorry, too much watching of Animal Planet)
A reworked Kings Quest or Gabriel Knight could have seriously awesome potential in this time and age, imagine a dark comedy version of Gabriel Knight or a huge scaled world in King Quest using todays graphic engines. Although, these titles could also go the way Atari has gone and taken a well remembered franchise and made mud of its great name (*cough* Alone in the Dark).
Unfortunately, we’ll probably never know the distance an old franchise could go in this new world. We’ll have to pull out an old copy of our prized posessions and remember just how great they once where.
Thank you for mentioning me!
I referenced the part from episode 423 regarding Jesse Eisenberg in American Ultra where he’s paranoid/anxious until he gets his weed and how stoners can get paranoid after they’re high and think cops are coming.
My user name was supposed to have a cool “A” as 4, so it would read as “Lad”; I was using this user name before Left 4 Dead was publicly announced, and my Steam account is ]_4]), but I don’t like to tell people this for fear of hacking…
Regrading politics, I’ve seen your support for Hillary, so I do not want to discuss politics, but my main issue against Hillary is that she might be part of the New World Order; I hope she is not a member, since she will most likely be the next president…
I neglected to state my Steam account creation date, which is 4/14/2004. I have a similarly named Gmail account with L4d in it, which was created around that time, too.
Is there a way to edit these comments?