2 Attachment(s)
Sierra Adventure Game Icons Ken & Roberta Williams’ Home On Sale For $2.3 Million
Ken and Roberta Williams, the gaming industry icons behind the '90s powerhouse publisher and developer Sierra On-Line, have put their Oakhurst, California estate on the market. The listing is one that is sure to catch the eye of point-and-click adventure enthusiasts and gaming historians alike.
The Williamses built the home, which resides on a five-acre property on the Fresno River, in the early '80s - just as Sierra On-Line was preparing to define a genre with the first game in the popular King's Quest series, King's Quest: Quest for the Crown. Those titles, as well as seminal favorites like Al Lowe's Leisure Suit Larry games and Jane Jensen's Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (and its slightly less-appealing sequels) helped their fledgling company evolve into an AAA operation before the term was ever coined. Sierra even teamed with Valve to bring Half-Life to the market for the first time. After selling their stake in Sierra in 1996, the Williamses eventually retired to their home and a life of cruising around the world on a Nordhavn trawler. Now, that home is officially up for sale.
Laine Nooney, an Assistant Professor of Media Industries at New York University who is working on a book about Sierra's history, first called attention to the listing via Twitter. The Williams estate is listed on Real Living Real Estate with a current asking price of $2.31 million. The sprawling, 6600-foot dwelling has five bedrooms, six bathrooms, owned solar and a huge game room. Multiple RV hook-ups with water and power, a townhouse-style apartment and a western theme town can also be found on the property.
Among a small, very specific segment of gaming society, the Williams house has become the stuff of legend. Although the asking price is steep at more than $2 million, it's difficult to argue that the Williams estate isn't something of a mecca for hardcore fans of the adventure game genre that became so popular among computer and gaming enthusiasts in the '80s and '90s.
At one point, Sierra was the market-share leader in PC games. Even now, long after Sierra On-Line became Sierra Entertainment and, eventually, was absorbed by Activision, its flagship titles still have the ability to generate significant interest within the industry. In 2015, King's Quest was rebooted/re-imagined as an episodic series for all platforms by The Odd Gentlemen and Activision and was largely praised by critics.
