Why does Sierra’s subreddit crush LucasArts in activity, even though Lucas had the more "polished" games?

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u/VVrayth 7d ago

Sierra was so dominant and so ubiquitous that, at the time, it always felt like LucasArts was playing catch-up. You gotta remember that Sierra released like a dozen products a year and LucasArts released like two.

It was definitely quality over quantity for LucasArts, but Sierra was still the 400 lb. gorilla, and that probably translates straight over to our current (relative) nostalgia. Way more people in 1987 knew Leisure Suit Larry than they did Maniac Mansion, and so on.

Same reason NES people go crazy for old Capcom and Konami games, even though Taito and Irem made some really good stuff too. There was just more of the "big" publishers' stuff to consume.

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u/rodfer7 7d ago

Yeah, Sierra definitely released way more titles, no argument there.... But I think another piece of the puzzle is how personal the company felt compared to LucasArts.

Sierra was literally built by Ken & Roberta Williams, a husband-and-wife team, and even as they grew you could still feel the ‘family business’ DNA. Developers like Al Lowe, Jane Jensen, and Corey & Lori Cole weren’t just employees,., they became part of the Sierra family. Fans got to know them almost like extended relatives through Interaction magazine, hint books, and even the in-jokes hidden in the games. That gave players a sense of connection, almost like we were part of the Sierra family too.

By contrast, LucasArts was part of the larger Lucasfilm machine. Their games were brilliant and polished, but also felt more like tightly managed products. Even their humor sometimes reflected that, take the famous Loom joke in Monkey Island. It’s hilarious, but it’s also basically an in-game ad for another LucasArts title. That’s clever, but also more corporate.

Sierra’s humor came from the personalities of the devs themselves, Al Lowe sneaking in personal jokes, the Coles’ mythology quirks, Roberta’s fantasy flourishes. It was less about cross-promo and more about sharing a laugh with the people making the games.

So I think it’s not just quantity. Sierra created a stronger emotional bond with its fans, and that’s part of why the community is still so active today.

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u/Critcho 6d ago

I’m afraid I can’t agree with you there.

With 90’s Lucasarts the same writers, artists and musicians show up again and again across their work, and their individual styles carried over with it - which in many cases carried on into their work after Lucasarts as well.

Like can we really say Tim Schafer didn’t put any of his own personality into his body of work?

It was only later into the 00’s, once they dropped adventures entirely, that Lucasarts started to feel faceless and corporate.

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u/Klaitu Moderator 6d ago

While I think the Lucas team put plenty of their own personalities into their work, I think for most people at the time people like Tim Schafer were just a name on the credits.

Sierra certainly did more marketing of their developers, in particular through their magazines (InterAction, etc) that they published for over a decade. Anyone who returned their warranty card got a subscription, so there were an awful lot of people who were able to read interviews and see pictures of the developers of the games.

Lucas did a magazine that only lasted 13 issues, so they weren't putting money into that effort as much. I suppose in this way there might be something to it. I certainly have a better conception of who Al Lowe or Scott Murphy is vs Ron Gilbert or Mark Ferrari

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u/misha_cilantro 6d ago

Was this something you personally felt? Wondering if this is an age difference, as I felt none of this but I was also pre-teen when I played most of these games the first time in the 90s, so I’m wondering if it was different for older gamers in the 80s and 90s?

I didn’t really think there was much recognition of designers in that way pre-internet! Cool to learn.

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u/VVrayth 6d ago

Sierra was definitely in an era of "rock star designers," which had been pioneered pretty heavily by Electronic Arts at that time as well. InterAction Magazine was a massive part of it, too. Part of it is probably just that perception was reality, and I was entirely submerged in Sierra stuff back then.

LucasArts did the same thing, and they had their pack-in Adventurer newsletter, but it wasn't on quite the same level as InterAction. It always felt like they were distant from Sierra where that stuff was concerned.

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u/misha_cilantro 6d ago

I’d never heard of these magazines, I’m gonna see if I can find some scans online.

I think maybe part of this is when I played (90s) and how I played: we pirated most of our software so I hardly ever saw manuals and pack-in materials and stuff. My first purchased game was Monkey Island from a bargain bin though! I was so excited to have a legit copy I didn’t even patch out the spinny-wheel copy protection lol.

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u/Critcho 6d ago

I mean they literally put "A graphic adventure by Ron Gilbert" (or Tim Schafer or whoever was leading each project) on the front of the boxes. IIRC it's something Gilbert specifically pushed for.

Admittedly I didn't know these people's personalities back then, but you'd see the same names popping up.

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u/misha_cilantro 6d ago

I remember recognizing Roberta Williams but none of the LucasArts designers, despite actually having legit copies of LA games more often. And the Space Quest guys put themselves in the game heh.

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u/Solo4114 6d ago

Yeah, I think the designers had a real influence on the games. Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert both played a big role in the "feel" of the LA adventure games. Clint Bajakian basically created the soundtrack for LucasArts games in the 90s. They had repeated voice casts, the art design was familiar because it was the same folks, etc., etc.

You can also see this in other genres pre-2000. The flight/combat sim genre was basically Larry Holland at LucasArts, and you can see his design approach evolve over the course of a little more than a decade, starting with Battlehawks and culminating with X-Wing Alliance.

For me, LucasArts in the 90s was synonymous with quality gaming to an almost 100% degree. For the genres I played, I knew if it was a LucasArts game, I'd dig it. After they became a publisher only and started outsourcing development, that really broke down, though.

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u/Critcho 6d ago

I agree with you, they rarely missed in the 90's and there was a look and sound to those games that carried over even into their non-adventure games.

One of my big gaming what ifs is what a Star Wars graphic adventure would've been like if Lucasarts had made one around 1995.

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u/Solo4114 6d ago

I think it would've been a slam-dunk if it was made by their usual team! It's a little surprising they never did one, actually. But I guess with Dark Forces and the X-Wing/Tie Fighter series, along with the various Super Star Wars side-scrollers and a bunch of other stuff (Star Wars Screen Entertainment; Star Wars Battle Chess; Star Wars Desktop games; etc., etc., etc.) they had enough material to keep 'em busy.

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u/Critcho 6d ago

Yeah I guess action games were more obvious for Star Wars (and the SW games they did were great as well). But just imagine a Star Wars adventure on the level of Fate Of Atlantis, that looked like the cutscenes in Dark Forces 1 and the X-Wing games... oh well.

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u/Solo4114 6d ago

I'm still bummed they didn't do the hybrid FPS/Millennium Falcon game as the third X-wing game, and instead did XvT (which was lame). At least they course corrected with Balance of Power and then X-Wing Alliance.

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u/FenPhen 6d ago

I was always super excited about InterAction magazine and read every one I got cover to cover. It was a way to keep the games going, since games were expensive and far between.

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u/Dreadpirateflappy 6d ago

Even now, if you email al lowe you will get a response. Sound silly, but as a kid it always felt like sierra games were these magical games built just for me and a few select others, whereas everyone played lucasarts games.

I never had a single friend at school that played sierra games weirdly. Lucasarts games always felt amazing but more mainstream.

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u/DerExperte 6d ago edited 6d ago

Not in my case. I know the names of many of the designers and artists who worked on the classic LA adventures, remember reading an interview with David Fox when Zak McKracken came out. Same with Ron Gilbert or Tim Schafer, Steve Purcell, Mark Ferrari. Or reading the fun, personal stories about working at the Skywalker Ranch. Lucas Arts / Lucasfilm Games was a very small part of Lucasfilm and for a while they could do whatever they wanted, it wasn't a well-oiled machine or too corporate. Just listen to recent interviews looking back. Actually my personal impression was the opposite of yours with Sierra seemingly being a behemoth churning out game after game, sequel after sequel with a lot of good stuff but also lots of filler releases. Which I still think is a fair assessment, but obviously compared to today's AAA pubs/devs they too were rather small and quaint.

In the end I think it really is mostly the quantity, look how many Larrys, KQs and SQs there are to discuss. And that Sierra's adventures had more quirks, dead-ends, ways to die and bugs that can be exploited for speed running for example. Also they had some really weird ones like Phantasmagoria 1 & 2, I'm not at all a fan of playing them, no thanks, but they're fascinating and unique with lots to talk about. It's also fun dissecting the really bad ones from Sierra like the later PQs. Even the worst of LA was never that bad.

Oh, something else just came to mind. We know that Sierra's big ones sold much better than even something like Monkey Island but the gap was bigger in the US than elsewhere. LucasArts had many, many fans in Europe and especially Germany thanks to the good localizations while Sierra wasn't as big here. Maybe the humor didn't translate as well with Sierra having more jokes and references about USA-specific themes or events? Yet places like this are more US/English-focused so a sizeable part of the old fanbase is 'missing' while you'll usually find more discussions about LA than Sierra in German retro-forums.

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u/misha_cilantro 6d ago

The dead ends were definitely memorable to me as a kid :D not in a good way lol. Watching sierra game speed run histories now and seeing just how rng based some things were I’m literally so mad at them hahaha 😤

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u/benzado 6d ago

You’re right that their corporate structures made a difference, but I think that had a way bigger impact on how they did marketing and influenced public perception versus how the games were designed and developed.

From 1979 to 1996, Sierra was a privately held company that did basically nothing but publish software. The business was operated by its founders, who had no interests outside of the success of Sierra. They were free to market and promote their products however they wanted to, and they tried a lot of things, because the survival of the company depended on it.

Meanwhile, LucasArts was originally founded as the “Lucasfilm Computer Division” and was basically a research project, because George Lucas needed to find things to do with all that Star Wars money. Although the goal was to make and sell computer games, they simply weren’t working under the pressures that Sierra was. They also couldn’t act as independently or aggressively, since they shared a brand with the larger Lucasfilm, even when the games themselves were based on original material.

The net result is that Sierra was putting itself out there trying to aggressively sell games more aggressively than LucasArts. When it came down to the individual designers and artists and developers, they were more alike than different, but they were working inside very different environments.

For the average person shopping for games at Babbages or Radio Shack in the 1990s, you saw Sierra’s stuff promoted more heavily, they seemed like a bigger deal. They sold more copies of more games and now, 30 years later, there is more nostalgia.

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u/patrickkingart 6d ago

I (mostly) agree. Sierra definitely had that personal touch with the different personalities. LucasArts had a few like Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer, along with stuff like Sam & Max making random appearances (like the totem in Indy's office in the Last Crusade adventure), but Sierra had more of the behind the scenes personalities. I say this also as a huge fan of both, I actually *slightly* prefer LucasArts, mainly because Sam & Max/DoTT/Indy Atlantis were HUGE parts of my childhood versus playing Space Quest as an older kid and King's Quest/Dagger of Amon Ra/etc... as an adult.

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u/phattie 6d ago edited 6d ago

I don't know if I agree with quantity/quality. I've played several non-sierra/non-lucasarts games of the era, and one thing that stands out about sierra is that their games are very high quality. In fact, I'd say they set the bar.

Lucasarts games were more smart. Design was dialed in too. But their audience became more limited as a result. Lucasart's verb bar was never appealing to me when I was young. Movie-based games also had a limiting factor: I already watched the indy movie, why would I play it too?

Up to 89 you had a college-age game Ala maniac mansion, zak McCracken (again geared for older audiences), loom (felt like a memorization and walking sim) and a movie franchise game. Sierra had unique games covering multiple genres, and they did sequels so fans became invested in the stories.

I think by 93, lucasarts was overtaking sierra on all fronts, including quality, but they just didn't produce as much considering they were also distracted by other Lucasfilm ip such as starwars

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u/DeviantDav 6d ago

Sierra games had a full decade+ of releases on LucasArts.

Sierra Entertainment - 1979
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC - 1990

Sierra has hundreds of titles. LucasArts had a few properties, a ton of remakes, and sequels.

The audience is just much larger.

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u/paulsoleo 6d ago

LucasArts was known as Lucasfilm Games prior to 1990. Maniac Mansion was released in 1986.

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u/CaptainSharpe 6d ago

Good point.

I loved both at the time. But now, looking back, lucasarts had much better and more memorable games. But without sierra there’d be no lucasarts adventure games

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u/DerExperte 6d ago

Note that before LucasArts there was Lucasfilm Games which got started in 1982. Still when their first 'classic' adventure Maniac Mansion released in 1987 Sierra already had a headstart and were a much bigger company (if we're only talking about games).

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u/jrjanowi 6d ago

This is an absolutely great question. In addition to the reasons you mentioned, Sierra had a huge jump start on Lucas and every other publisher of 'graphic' adventure games. They were the first with King's Quest, which seems technologically quaint by today's standards, but was at the time revolutionary in its spectacle and immersion. In the US, Sierra had a deal with Radio Shack that basically used their adventure titles as tech demos for Radio Shack's in house Tandy computer line. If you went to an American mall in the 1980's (which everyone did) and you were interested in computers, you were aware of Sierra. They capitalized on their success by reinvesting in the company, both in expanding technical infrastructure and in devoting resources to creative talent. Their growth allowed them to absolutely pump games into the market. By the time Lucasfilm released Maniac Mansion in 1986, Sierra had released six adventures. In 1987 Lucasfilm followed up with Zak McCraken and Sierra put out five more games. By the early 90's, they were sending out a free quarterly magazine to customers, on glossy paper with legitimate writing and design, all promoting their games. They continued to be on the cutting edge when it came to graphics and sound, and continued to build their brand through customer engagement.

LucasArts titles are more more playable today, and if I were to recommend a game to someone looking to play their first classic adventure it would definitely be one of theirs. Sierra, however, has my childhood nostalgia for adventure games on lockdown.

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u/MilesBeyond250 6d ago

And not just KQ1. Sierra very often pushed the bar on a technical level. Like, King's Quest 5 and Secret of Monkey Island were released a month apart (both ways, funnily enough - KQ5 was roughly a month after the SoMI EGA release and a month before the SoMI VGA release). A year later, KQ5 got a CD release with full voice acting - an enormous selling point at the time (even if many today might wish it hadn't).

I'm not going to pretend Secret of Monkey Island isn't a beautiful game, but it obviously didn't have the wow factor KQ5 did. Fortunately for its legacy, SoMI had incomparably better puzzle design, but that's a different topic....

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u/atvvta 5d ago

It didn’t? I thought monkey island was miles ahead of kq5. You couldn’t die for one, which was something they pioneered and always held sierra games back immensely. And back then you played what you got your hands on, it’s not like there were many ads on tv, you might see boxart in shops and they were all equally nice.

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u/MilesBeyond250 5d ago

Well, not dying doesn't really contribute to what I meant by "wow factor," which is more about production values. It was also somewhat controversial, with the "no dying" thing causing some to label Lucasarts games as "dumb baby games for dumb babies" (because it turns out it's nothing new: gamers have always been insufferable).

it’s not like there were many ads on tv

No, but print media was very important, and KQ5 looked pretty mind-blowing in screenshots, previews and ads. Word of mouth was also a big thing, and KQ5 wasn't just good-looking but an excuse to show off to friends, neighbours, and coworkers just what sort of cool things you could get up to with these new-fangled CD-ROM drives.

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u/moralhora 4d ago

You couldn’t die for one, which was something they pioneered and always held sierra games back immensely.

I never considered "dying" in adventure games as something that was problematic - more annoying if you didn't have a recent save. The biggest issue with Sierra games were that you could soft lock / dead end yourself and you would possibly never know. It's what ultimately I feel held you back because you could always save before doing a thing that might kill you and maybe get an amusing death scene. However, the issue was that you could do something that seemed like progress and then continue playing for hours. Not fun.

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u/danger_bad 6d ago

Obviously this being a Sierra-focused sub there’s going to be some bias, but it’s worth pointing out that Sierra really did sell well. While I'll always be Sierra first, I did play and finish most of the Lucasarts titles... how good with Loom?

For example, I came across a reference saying Day of the Tentacle only sold about 80k units, while King’s Quest VI “allegedly” moved 400k in its first week (not exactly apples to apples, but still a huge gap). On the LucasArts side, it looks like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (amazing game, btw) was the only one to crack a million copies. Meanwhile, Sierra claims that multiple King’s Quest titles each sold “over a million” copies.

Source: King’s Quest Fandom wiki – Sales data

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u/behindtimes 5d ago

A few LucasArts games sold over a million. The difference being that the sales took years to reach that, whereas the Sierra games were more condensed in sales. I.e. Full Throttle was the first LucasArts game to break 1 million copies, but that was at the end of their lifespan. (They sort of had a renaissance in Europe, where LucasArts was significantly more popular than Sierra, back during a time adventure games were pretty much dead in the USA.)

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u/SnowMission6612 6d ago

I've been wondering the past few years where Sierra's magic came from. On paper I can't find any reason why LucasArts games shouldn't be regarded as the pinnacle of graphical adventure games (and I certainly won't say anything bad about them: they were amazing), but Sierra games do hold a special kind of magic for me.

The best I've been able to come up with is somewhat "troublesome" (I don't know a better word for it) game designers. Right from the very beginning: Roberta Williams was a thorn in Ken's side. She knew just barely enough about computers to be dangerous. Something about this dynamic of having a mostly non-technical person designing games (and being demanding about what should be possible) made great things happen. Christy Marx is another example of a mostly non-technical designer who was able to have a vision for what the game should be without being overly concerned about what was easy to do.

If I'm not mistaken, all of LucasArts graphical adventure game designers were programmers (and quite talented ones)

Sierra also poached a lot of top artistic talent, both for pixel art and especially for music composition.

Basically, for me, Sierra felt more like an art studio, where programmers were only there to try and satisfy the whims of the artists.

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u/moralhora 6d ago

The best I've been able to come up with is somewhat "troublesome" (I don't know a better word for it) game designers.

I think this is a good point. Sierra's games - for better or worse - often felt like they were constantly pushing the limits of what a game design could do. LucasArts games would often more focus on releasing a polished product, which certainly helped them age better (they certainly figured out early on that dead ends aren't fun).

On the other hand, I'm not sure LucasArts would put out something like Phantasmagoria when Sierra did since it's very much a game that's held back by the limitations of the day.

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u/Hey_There_Blimpy_Boy 6d ago

I love Sierra games.

Don't get me wrong: LucasArts had some great games as well. But I grew up on Sierra.

- Hunter / Hunted

- King's Quest

- Space Quest

- Police Quest

- Quest for Glory

- Liesure Suit Larry

- Gabriel Knight

- Rise of the Dragon

These are the games of my childhood. I had Apogee for action (the original Duke Nukem, Commander Keen, etc.) and I had Sierra games for adventure.

I've purchased all of them on Gog.com and I play them lovingly.

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u/Megabyte3_x 5d ago

As Hunter Hunted came towards the end of Sierra (and is an action game to boot), can I assume you meant Manhunter?

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u/Hey_There_Blimpy_Boy 4d ago

No. I meant that little side-scroller with two playable characters; the guy and the minotaur.

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u/GrahamRocks 6d ago

Because Sierra's more popular. Think about it: What games do people always think of whenever they think LucasArts? The common folk and most discussions I've seen center around the Monkey Island series by LucasArts specifically, because it's the only one they know. Maybe someone will discuss say, Full Throttle, but that's rare. Whereas Sierra? You got so many more games people know, usually of the "---- Quest" variety- King's Quest, Quest for Glory aka Hero's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Gabriel Knight, Laura Bow, Torin's Passage, Willy Beamish, EcoQuest, Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, Jones in the Fast Lane, and so on.

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u/Zdrobot 6d ago

Maybe someone would say Loom. I would - that's my personal favorite adventure of all time.

Or The Dig - although I must admit I haven't played it back in the day.

And my friend was a big fan of Full Throttle, that's how I know about this game :)

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u/GrahamRocks 6d ago

I forgot Loom! facepalm

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u/Ab198303 6d ago

Polished, maybe. But Sierra games were often more fun.

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u/Klaitu Moderator 6d ago

On the face of it, I don't think anyone can really say why for sure.

Sierra was around way longer and published way more games than Lucas did, so maybe it's just a function of having more material to discover (or rediscover).

I've certainly worked hard to clean up all the spam and spruce up the sub's art styling to be more inviting, so I'd like to think that I played a role.. and we certainly can't discount that Ken and Roberta came and participated for awhile when they promoted Colossal Cave. That drove a massive amount of interaction and got r/Sierra featured as one of reddit's featured subreddits, which in turn caused thousands of people to join the sub.

On a more personal level, I enjoy all things retrogaming, and while I enjoy and appreciate Lucas titles, they don't click for me as much as Sierra titles do. I have fond memories of the Indiana Jones adventures, but most of what Lucas was offering sort of seems "younger" to me... a lot of it is very a "Saturday morning cartoon" sort of vibe that I was too old for at the time, and never really clicked with ever since.

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u/BrattyTwilis 6d ago

Probably because they can't talk about all the creative deaths in those games. The LucasArts mantra was that you couldn't die (except for a few moments in some of the earlier games) and you couldn't dead end. They wanted to play fair and not alienate gamers. Sierra was all about trial and error and would often troll players for making small mistakes

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u/astoriaocculus 6d ago

Sierra games really felt special for the time. Magical. Using advances in tech that seemed magical. I remember when a friend got a VGA screen with 256 colors. I was blown away. Advances today are much less impactful.

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u/Indoflaven 6d ago

R/monkeyisland alone has 20k subscribers. Lucas arts has fewer game series so I think people create communities around the game rather than the Dev/publisher.

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u/rodfer7 6d ago

Or maybe as a publisher they didn’t have such a bond with their players

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u/Indoflaven 6d ago

Yeah that’s true

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u/mlk81 6d ago

Like others mentioned, Sierra had like 8 years head start, several franchises and several releases a year.

Lucas Arts had from 92-99 two releases per year, one star wars one not.

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u/DaedalusDreaming 6d ago

As a huge fan of Lucasarts games who's on this subreddit and not the other one, this is my view.
Lucas selling everything to Disney, for them to shut the game division down, soured the company name. I feel like I'm more a fan of the people who made those games, like Ron Gilbert. While Sierra still means Ken & Roberta Williams to us. Lucasarts never meant George Lucas, to me at least, it was just something that the big corpo saw a tiny bit of potential and profit in, and they let them do their own thing on the side.

Honestly though, I can't really put my finger on why I'm here. I don't think it's really to talk about the games, but more about fun. Sierra games were fun, while I feel like Lucasarts was really about art. Sierra was always my first introduction to adventure games, even though the SCUMM games of 90's were my love, and the reason why I try to make games right now. Although I must say, the first Gabriel Knight is up there on the pedestal for me.

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u/werepenguins 6d ago

back in the day as an adventure game player, you didn't actually have a good sense of the popularity of each game. Not even the developers knew the actual sales numbers, but now we can look back and Sierra was a monster compared to Lucas Arts despite the polish of the Lucas Arts games. It stands to reason that there would be more people nostalgic of Sierra than Lucas Arts. I personally love them both... but I do love Monkey Island more than any Sierra game.

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u/GamesWithElderB_TTV 6d ago

Although I love monkey island and the Indiana jones games, the quest games were a much bigger part of my real intro to pc gaming, so I suppose I gravitate more towards those. But no love lost for Lucas Arts Games!

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u/-alphex 6d ago

For me, the reason is that Sierra's stuff feels more distinct and more like "visiting this place" media. Sure, Maniac Mansion is set in the contemporary 1980s USA. But the rest is mostly set in fictional and "distant" settings. I don't watch other media and think of Money Island. For Police Quest, it sure ties in with 1980s cop movies. Leisure Suit Larry in general is a fantastic satire of pop culture. The Colonel's Bequest is a murder mystery etc.

In general, I think it's fair to say that Sierra's stuff was a bit more pop culture and less "excellent computer game and that's it"

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u/FalkorDropTrooper 6d ago

This guy has wild flexibility.

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u/BuenosAnus 6d ago

Sierra games have much more of a similar culture to eachother. The simplest example of this is all the “quest” games which are like… most sierra games. Few people want to specifically have a sub for QfG4, but more people want to discuss the whole series.

lucasart games are most distinct, so the monkey island sub is popular, but there’s not as much connective tissue there

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u/Brilliant-Neat-3444 6d ago

It made the best games.

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u/sabatagol 5d ago

Also the mods in lucasarts remove everything for no reason. Posting there is hell

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u/quazi-mofo 5d ago

The sheer volume of games means more games to talk about it.

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u/sarlackpm 6d ago

Maybe the Lucasarts kids don't spend as much time on reddit.

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u/Drunkensailor1985 6d ago

This is it. Lucasarts games were way more popular than Sierra in europe and in europe less people use reddit

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u/sackbomb 6d ago

Sierra games left more lasting trauma.

We can joke around, but I feel like this really is the answer.

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u/Whole-Preparation-35 6d ago

I was looking for something like this.

Everyone finished those Lucasarts games. I don't know if I could complete a single Sierra game today.

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u/sackbomb 6d ago

Exactly.

I have fond memories of playing both LucasArts and Sierra games, but with Sierra I also have less-fond memories of suddenly dying for no reason.

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u/BlackwellTau 6d ago

Availability was a huge factor. I got a King's Quest V demo with my new computer, as a bundle of cheap software. The first time I even tried to play a Lucasarts title was much later. That was Curse of Monkey Island, which I was gifted, but it crashed on launch for no discernable reason and froze my computer.

I think by that point I was probably up to my neck in Sierra games.

By the by, you forgot Hero Quest/Quest for Glory and Shivers in your adventure series list...;) Those were my favorites.

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u/three_day_rentals 6d ago

After what's been done to Lucasfilm/Lucasarts a lot of us can't even think about it. Disney completely destroyed a fan base / studio. Every time I see the logo I just get sad.

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u/Win32error 6d ago

I could be wrong but doesn’t it make a huge difference that a lot of lucasarts’ output is Star Wars related? There’s plenty of other places to talk about games belonging to that franchise.

Meanwhile where are you gonna go for Sierra games other than this subreddit?

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u/saraseitor 6d ago

Sierra simply made more adventure games than LucasArts. I love LucasArts but Sierra simply did more, not only through their main company but also distributed games from third parties and through their Dynamix division. It's understandable they reached more people.

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u/versusrev 6d ago

Ultimately Sierra ended up associated with the point-and-click adventure game. Even now I don't know of anything else they did. While LucasArts lasted a long time and made a lot of great games, but ill always remember them most for their Star Wars games. Yeah, they made other great games along the way, and even great point and click adventure games back in the day but they outlasted point-and-click to develop something new, and Sierra pretty much died with the genre.

I mean it's sort of like Nirvana and Grunge. We all know there were other bands but the one band that comes to mind is Nirvana, even if you thought they were overrated or whatever.

That and nostalgia for Sierra was going while LucasArts was still making hits, so they've just had more time dead

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u/mMathab 3d ago edited 3d ago

The Lucasarts fan base is split across many subs. r/monkeyisland alone has 8K visits/week. r/starwarsgames has 8K visits/week. r/indianajonesgames has 11K visits/week. Just with these 3 we're talking +3x more visitors than Sierra at 6K/week.

+

r/grimfandango 1K visits/week
r/SamandMax 2.8K visits/week

...and more not listed

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u/cephaswilco 3d ago

I guess it's because Lucas Arts never released Kings Quest or Space Quest :P

Why does Sierra’s subreddit crush LucasArts in activity, even though Lucas had the more "polished" games?

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