Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings by Ken Williams (Book)

Jason Mical, Contributing Editor

Ken Williams, the founder and former CEO of Sierra On-Line, entered the recent fray of retrospective books about Sierra’s bygone days with Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings. It’s a combination of autobiography and examination of what went right—and wrong—at Sierra from its inception until its demise after its disastrous buyout by CUC (Comp-U-Card International) in the late 1990s. Ken’s book is a fascinating look at Sierra’s culture, a lesson in capitalism (both good and bad), a profile of someone who realizes he made mistakes, and a portrait created to make its author look good.

This last point is important: Williams begins the book by describing his early career and enthusiasm for sales, and how he truly enjoys putting a positive shine on things, finding just the right thing to say to convince someone to buy something. Not All Fairy Tales may be the ultimate extension of that: Ken Williams selling us a version (not necessarily an incorrect, one mind you) of his and Sierra’s story. It’s important to understand you’re being sold a bill of goods by a master salesman. How much you buy into it is ultimately up to you.

A slice of Sierra history

Ken’s book isn’t the first published in the last few months to cover the history of Sierra On-Line (and it isn’t the last: at least one more is running a Kickstarter as of publication time). Unlike The Sierra Adventure, Shawn Mills’ wonderful dive into the production of Sierra games and employee-led history of the company, Not All Fairy Tales takes a higher-level approach to its history. Williams provides a lot of interesting insights into running Sierra from a CEO’s level, covering everything from hiring practices (looking for what he calls A and triple-A talent) to the well-oiled marketing machine.

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

Williams is a dyed in the wool capitalist, with all the positives and negatives that that description implies. He describes building a career from nearly nothing, scrapping his way through various high school odd jobs before exploring software development. He talks about hopping from company to company, always improving his prospects and learning along the way, while working on his own side hustles. Eventually he founded On-Line Systems and published his wife Roberta Williams’ adventure game, Mystery House, introducing the world to the notion of adventure games with graphics (which then became the cornerstone of Sierra On-Line’s business).

It should be noted that his story about the inception of graphic adventures—that he suggested graphics to Roberta at dinner—is almost exactly how she recounts the story in the recent documentary, High Score (Netflix). Roberta is the one who ran with the idea and insisted it become reality. This sort of shared creativity and business acumen comes through several times in the book.

Sierra logo, circa 1994

Williams also talks dismissively of attempts to unionize at Sierra and hand-waves the long hours and weekends he asked (read: forced) employees to work in order to get games out by deadline. One of the book’s appendices is a list of Sierra “firsts.” Crunch time is not on that list (and it seems unlikely they invented it), but they certainly helped make the practice common in the industry. He describes not wanting to personally be the “bad guy” and the need to hire “hatchet men” who would do the dirty work. You can’t really fault Williams for not wanting to be the bad guy, but every video game company employee who has worked crunch hours will likely give his CEO “advice” sections the side-eye.

The consummate CEO

There is a more than a little humanity in the way Williams approaches what he did and the mistakes he made at Sierra. One of the most common refrains in the books is “what if Sierra had done X instead?”—applied to, say, buying Id Software (makers of Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM), but also times he wished he’d treated people differently. He has between 25 and 40 years of distance between 2020 and the events in the book, and it’s clear he’s reflected on what happened. The ghosts of past mistakes haunt him.

Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness

Williams comes across as less of a cartoonish trope than Andrew Ryan or Elon Musk and more like Harold Hill (from The Music Man). He’s out to make money, period. He makes tough calls: there are points when you can almost hear him say “it’s nothing personal, Sonny, it’s strictly business.” However, the means of making money is creating and selling games (that he doesn’t necessarily play or even like) that bring people happiness. Several times he talks about Sierra’s marketing strategy: make the customer feel like family, as though they’ve bought in to the fairy tale.

For gamers who grew up playing Sierra games in the late 80s and early-to-mid 90s—the “golden age” of Sierra, according to its fans—that’s exactly what they experienced. Reading The Sierra News Magazine, dialing into the Sierra BBS, and buying the latest hit from your favorite developer—you felt like you belonged to something. You were happy to give Sierra your money.

The end of an era

The last third or so of the book is devoted to the merger with CUC, which ultimately led to Sierra’s downfall. To make a long story short: CUC bought Sierra, CUC didn’t fulfil their end of various agreements, CUC merged with another company, it was discovered CUC had been cooking their books, people went to prison for fraud, and Sierra was first drastically downsized and then sold on to other companies until it ceased to exist. Williams left shortly after the takeover, leaving his former company rudderless amidst the chaos.

Within this tragedy is a stunning look into the creative operations that made Sierra the company that produced some of the most highly-regarded games of its era. Williams believed creativity needed small teams working in small offices to flourish, and kept Sierra (and its various subsidiaries) relatively small and decentralized. The CEOs of the companies he purchased operated with an amazing degree of independence, which Williams believes was the key to their enormous creative output. Williams cites Papyrus, who made racing sims, as a primary example. He left them alone, they made great games, and Sierra made money.

The infamous Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards (VGA Remake)

After the CUC merger, the new company and its overlords had no idea how to operate a business with such a decentralized structure. It was, Williams believes, one of the death knells for the company even before the accounting shenanigans came to light. Sierra subsidiaries like Dynamix and the aforementioned Papyrus suddenly had to contend with corporate control from executives who didn’t understand the industry, and the result was delayed games with lackluster sales.

Happy endings

Williams’ book is an important perspective on a bygone era in video games history. It needed another editing pass, and the reader should always keep in mind that everything is coming from the perspective of a salesman who wants to take you on his journey. Parts of it wander pretty far afield (there’s a whole chapter devoted to advice on how to advance your career by working hard and taking advantage of opportunities), but on the whole, it’s a good read. The truth is, we’re highly unlikely to see another video games retrospective from a CEO of Ken Williams’ peer group anytime soon. If you want a look behind the curtain at the decisions Williams and others like him made on a daily basis—decisions that shaped the video game industry at it is today—this book offers a precious glimpse.

GwG Badge: Recommended

Interested in more accounts of the industry side of things, check out our review of Sid Meier’s Memoir!