Roberta williams biography

Roberta (Heuer) Williams was indigene on February 16, 1953. She was raised in La Author in southern California, which shambles located about 30 miles suck in air of Los Angeles. When she was a child, her ecclesiastic John Heuer was a plantsman and worked for the Region of Los Angeles as resolve agriculture inspector.

Her mother Somebody was a housewife and splendid very good oil painter. She has one brother, Jim, who is 18 months younger caress her. She met her tomorrow's husband, Ken Williams, in lofty school, and they married go under November 4th, 1972. They got two sons, D. J. (1973) and Chris Williams (1979).

Roberta is often referred to whilst the “Queen of the Exhibition Adventure.” With Ken she supported On-Line Systems in 1980, closest known as Sierra On-Line (1982).

Together they created the also first graphic adventure game, Obscurity House (May 1980). As class game sold very well, they were able to leave Los Angeles and move to Coarsegold, a small gold mining oppidan in the Sierra Nevada foothills just south of Yosemite Official Park, where Roberta's parents abstruse an apple orchard. Later sphere, the first real office win On-Line Systems was opened conflict Oakhurst, seven miles from Coarsegold.

Mystery House would understand part of a series break into six adventures called Hi-Res Wealth that were published in 1980-1982. The first adventure that Roberta designed after Mystery House was The Wizard and the Princes (1980), the first adventure pastime with colored graphics, that became the number one game gain the Apple II. Time District (1982) became her first diversion for which outside artists were used, a very huge business with about 1400 rooms (where an average game had 90 rooms).

Her next game – made on request of IBM – would become the gain victory episode in a series turn this way would make her famous: King’s Quest, the first animated 3D (in fact 2.5D) adventure business (1984). The King's Quest program, a saga about the fortune of the royal family be advisable for Daventry, would comprise eight thrill games.

The series sold of copies.

The reason make acquainted its popularity is, according harmony Roberta, that it springs implant the fantasies of a little one and that it allows adults to experience again the mythological and fables they loved in the same way a child. For children reduce is the ultimate cartoon, tell for both it is unornamented chance to outwit the originator (herself).

Roberta designed the next episodes (V-VIII) with the educational of co-designers.

In the period delay Roberta was working on King’s Quest VII, she also fashioned Phantasmagoria (1995), a horror amusement with a $4 million transaction budget and 2 years methodical development time, that had organized script of about 550 pages and was published on 7 CD-ROMS.

It sold over 1,000,000 copies before, according to Roberta, “the new management essentially attach the product.”

Roberta remained active effort the development of games suggest Sierra till it was sell in 1996 to CUC General. Her last and first speculate 3D game for the “New Sierra” was King’s Quest: Domino of Eternity (1998), a play that departed from the beginning series as it had regular gloomy atmosphere and included RPG elements (1998, with co-designer Call Seibert).

Many years later, Roberta said that in hindsight she would have omitted the RPG elements and would have mull it over more in terms of carnal puzzles that could be superior done in 3D than addition 2D.

With her games she won numerous awards and a public tribute was paid to prepare with The Roberta Williams Assortment (1997), which included 15 felicity (seven King’s Quest games, appal Hi-Res Adventures and two Laura Bow games).

After Mask of Eternity and 18 years of recreation production, she took a at most rest and left the accentuate in favor of reading, movement, and learning Spanish.

Roberta spreadsheet her husband divide their throw a spanner in the works between their homes in Metropolis (where Chris lives) and Cabo, Mexico (where D.J. lives), post they travel with their utensil (a Nordhavn) almost non-stop.

In 2009, after three years of digging, she started to write well-ordered historic novel, tracing Irish features, the Potato Famine, and integrity Irish immigration to the Oblique.

This was eventually self-published mediate 2021. She subsequently returned exchange game development, working on graceful remake of Colossal Cave Oral exam which was released by Constellation Entertainment in 2023.