Roberta Williams To Be Honored With GDC Pioneer Award
Any fan of PC gaming history knows who Roberta Williams is. As one of the co-founders of Sierra On-Line, she and her husband Ken revolutionized the industry with their innovative (and frustratingly obtuse) adventure titles. Now she’s picking up another award for her contributions, the GDC Pioneer Award. The story goes that Roberta was stuck at home when Ken brought in a computer from work. Back then, in the primitive days, computer adventure games were told entirely with text. Frustrated with this, Roberta set out to make the kind of games she wanted to play, and in 1980 she and Ken self-published Mystery House, Sierra’s first title and the venture that snowballed into beloved projects like the King’s Quest series. “It’s hard to truly measure the impact of Roberta Williams’ landmark titles; they not only pushed the technological envelope at the time, but they helped establish video games as a legitimate storytelling medium, and one that could appeal to men and women alike,” says Katie Stern, general manager of GDC.
