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A review by nickfourtimes
Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings by Ken Williams
informative
lighthearted
sad
fast-paced
4.0
1) "I have three great loves in life: Roberta, computers and boats. That said, this is not a book about any of those things, although the first two of those are important to the story."
2) "If you want to win in life, find something to sell, and sell it. Learn to accept and even cherish rejection. [...]
The newspaper had never seen anyone like me. I was a selling machine. I loved selling, and I especially loved making money. I claimed every sales award and couldn't stop selling."
3) "Did I mention that I know how to sell?
Being a starving seventeen-year-old, our first date was not particularly amazing. We went to a local Mexican restaurant and talked for hours. A couple weeks and a handful of dates later, I informed Roberta that we were to be married. She thought I was insane or joking, but that's only because she didn't know me. That was about to change.
Her dad became my strongest ally, and saw in me a chance to rescue his errant daughter. He pushed Roberta from his end, and threw roadblocks in the way of other suitors.
It took a few dates to sell Roberta on the idea of marriage but closing a sale is what I do best."
4) "We needed to form a real corporation for her to buy part of, transfer ownership of all the games into the corporation, and then sell her some stock. With the help of lawyers she referred us to, all of that was quickly accomplished.
Unfortunately, during this process I discovered that there was already a large company that had our company name, 'On-Line Systems.' I was very proud of my background dealing with networks and knew, even at the time, that networking would someday be key to Sierra's future. I wanted to keep the 'on-line' part of the business name. Renaming the company did not require a lot of creativity. We were located near Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada mountains, near the famous landmark Half Dome. So, overnight we became Sierra On-Line, with Half Dome as our logo."
5) "Instead of just doing a revved up version of Wizard and Princess, Roberta had started a new game, to be called King's Quest. IBM was giving us upfront money, as royalty advances, to help fund the development of the game.
In hopes of bringing back some of the laid off employees, I flew to IBM and pitched them on additional games, and even a word processor! During that meeting I showed them the progress we were making on King's Quest and they were blown away."
6) "We overworked our developers, and this resulted in union organizing. This was a low point for morale around the company. I was personally devastated. From my perspective, I was doing whatever it took to provide jobs and grow the company. However, the employees felt the company was abusing them.
In fact, both sides were correct."
7) "As Sierra would rise and fall over the years there would be employees who were laid off, or just didn't make the cut. DJ, our older son, was bullied in school by the children of former Sierra employees who had a grudge against Sierra. One parent, an ex-Sierra employee, even slugged DJ. Question: What adult slugs an elementary school kid? The answer, 'Someone with a grudge against their employer.' It was a company town, with all the good and bad that goes with it."
8) "One day toward the end of 1996, I received an email. In it, Gabe Newell said he had an early build of a game ready for presentation. Sierra had no interest in publishing games that we hadn't developed internally, but given the circumstances, I took the meeting. I figured that, in the worst case, I'd get the inside scoop on how they were able to obtain rights to the Quake engine.
In November, Sierra and Valve had set a meeting, which ended up happening during a rare Washington snowstorm. I do not recall many details from the meeting itself, except that within half an hour of Valve's presentation of their game, called Half-Life, I made my pitch and offered to publish their game."
9) "Walter Forbes and his management team had lied to Sierra and were destroying the company we had spent seventeen years of our lives building. At that point, all Roberta and I wanted was to get away from CUC. I tried to put the best possible face on the disaster, but there was no denying that the merger was a total mess. That said, I remained convinced that Walter and his team were smart business people and that the software business would recover. Perhaps without the Davidsons and myself the company would shift to focusing on product and stop being sidetracked by anything to do with the former leaders.
Roberta was even more upset than I was and insisted that we sell our stock along with my resignation. We talked about selling stock over a long period of time, but there had been a stock market crash in Asia and it rattled us. We decided to just blow out our CUC stock all at once. That decision would turn out to have been a very lucky one."
10) "This book is full of my opinions. I absolutely guarantee you that some of my opinions in this book are bad ideas. The problem is that I don't know which ones."
2) "If you want to win in life, find something to sell, and sell it. Learn to accept and even cherish rejection. [...]
The newspaper had never seen anyone like me. I was a selling machine. I loved selling, and I especially loved making money. I claimed every sales award and couldn't stop selling."
3) "Did I mention that I know how to sell?
Being a starving seventeen-year-old, our first date was not particularly amazing. We went to a local Mexican restaurant and talked for hours. A couple weeks and a handful of dates later, I informed Roberta that we were to be married. She thought I was insane or joking, but that's only because she didn't know me. That was about to change.
Her dad became my strongest ally, and saw in me a chance to rescue his errant daughter. He pushed Roberta from his end, and threw roadblocks in the way of other suitors.
It took a few dates to sell Roberta on the idea of marriage but closing a sale is what I do best."
4) "We needed to form a real corporation for her to buy part of, transfer ownership of all the games into the corporation, and then sell her some stock. With the help of lawyers she referred us to, all of that was quickly accomplished.
Unfortunately, during this process I discovered that there was already a large company that had our company name, 'On-Line Systems.' I was very proud of my background dealing with networks and knew, even at the time, that networking would someday be key to Sierra's future. I wanted to keep the 'on-line' part of the business name. Renaming the company did not require a lot of creativity. We were located near Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada mountains, near the famous landmark Half Dome. So, overnight we became Sierra On-Line, with Half Dome as our logo."
5) "Instead of just doing a revved up version of Wizard and Princess, Roberta had started a new game, to be called King's Quest. IBM was giving us upfront money, as royalty advances, to help fund the development of the game.
In hopes of bringing back some of the laid off employees, I flew to IBM and pitched them on additional games, and even a word processor! During that meeting I showed them the progress we were making on King's Quest and they were blown away."
6) "We overworked our developers, and this resulted in union organizing. This was a low point for morale around the company. I was personally devastated. From my perspective, I was doing whatever it took to provide jobs and grow the company. However, the employees felt the company was abusing them.
In fact, both sides were correct."
7) "As Sierra would rise and fall over the years there would be employees who were laid off, or just didn't make the cut. DJ, our older son, was bullied in school by the children of former Sierra employees who had a grudge against Sierra. One parent, an ex-Sierra employee, even slugged DJ. Question: What adult slugs an elementary school kid? The answer, 'Someone with a grudge against their employer.' It was a company town, with all the good and bad that goes with it."
8) "One day toward the end of 1996, I received an email. In it, Gabe Newell said he had an early build of a game ready for presentation. Sierra had no interest in publishing games that we hadn't developed internally, but given the circumstances, I took the meeting. I figured that, in the worst case, I'd get the inside scoop on how they were able to obtain rights to the Quake engine.
In November, Sierra and Valve had set a meeting, which ended up happening during a rare Washington snowstorm. I do not recall many details from the meeting itself, except that within half an hour of Valve's presentation of their game, called Half-Life, I made my pitch and offered to publish their game."
9) "Walter Forbes and his management team had lied to Sierra and were destroying the company we had spent seventeen years of our lives building. At that point, all Roberta and I wanted was to get away from CUC. I tried to put the best possible face on the disaster, but there was no denying that the merger was a total mess. That said, I remained convinced that Walter and his team were smart business people and that the software business would recover. Perhaps without the Davidsons and myself the company would shift to focusing on product and stop being sidetracked by anything to do with the former leaders.
Roberta was even more upset than I was and insisted that we sell our stock along with my resignation. We talked about selling stock over a long period of time, but there had been a stock market crash in Asia and it rattled us. We decided to just blow out our CUC stock all at once. That decision would turn out to have been a very lucky one."
10) "This book is full of my opinions. I absolutely guarantee you that some of my opinions in this book are bad ideas. The problem is that I don't know which ones."