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The End of Sierra as We Knew It, Part 1: The Acquisition

l very comfortable working in a company where you can’t touch anything. — Walter Forbes At the beginning of 1996, Sierra On-Line was still basking in the success of the previous summer’s Phantasmagoria, the best-selling game it had ever published.

According to his own testimony, he mooted various impractical schemes for priming the e-commerce pump before the technology of telecommunications finally showed signs of catching up with at least some of his aspirations circa 1979, the year that the pre-Web commercial online services The Source and CompuServe made their debut. Just as the aforementioned two men walked and talked the part of the hard-edged, no-nonsense cop in a way that profoundly impressed Ken Williams, Walter Forbes was the very picture of the suave and sophisticated financier, making monumental deals next to a crackling fire in his elegant parlor, a glass of Chianti in hand, before rushing off to Europe in his private jet to take in an opera. If that name fails to set any bells a-ringing, know that Davidson was itself the proud owner of Blizzard Entertainment, whose Warcraft 2, Diablo, and Starcraft, combined with its innovative Battle.net service for online multiplayer play, would make it the hottest brand in gaming over the course of the next few years, a veritable way of life for millions of (mostly) young men.

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