By Perrin Drumm

佩林·德鲁姆(Perrin Drumm)

YOU ARE IN THE FRONT YARD OF A LARGE ABANDONED VICTORIAN HOUSE. STONE STEPS LEAD UP TO A WIDE PORCH.

您位于一栋大型废弃维多利亚式房屋的前院。 STONE一步步领先于宽广的门廊。

— — — — — ENTER COMMAND?

— — — — —输入命令？

If you’re a computer programmer or digital designer over the age of 40, this is probably how the future began for you. Two simple sentences and a cursor, blinking like a heartbeat, waiting for your command. To anyone else, it might read more like the beginning of an odd and boring story, but the format will be familiar to all those who have ever dabbled in microcomputing. It was the same way all text-based computer games started: a bare-bones setup and an invitation to venture forth, uncover the clues, and win the game. But it wasn’t just the text, flashing on the screen of an 8-bit Apple II that shot out like a siren call from the wild — it was the graphics. They were monochrome, ridiculously rudimentary, and they blew everyone away.

如果您是40岁以上的计算机程序员或数字设计师，那么这可能就是您的未来开始的方式。 两个简单的句子和一个光标，像心跳一样闪烁，等待您的命令。 对于其他人来说，它读起来可能更像是一个无聊而无聊的故事的开头，但是这种格式对于所有涉足微计算的人来说都是熟悉的。 所有基于文本的计算机游戏都以相同的方式开始：一个简单的设置和一个邀请冒险，发现线索并赢得游戏的邀请。 但是，不仅仅是文字，还在8位Apple II屏幕上闪烁，像狂野的警笛声一样响起了，而是图形。 它们是单色的，简直简陋，它们使所有人震惊。

The year was 1980, and Roberta Williams, a shy, soft-spoken housewife with little coding or design experience to speak of, rose from obscurity and designed “Mystery House,” the first-ever computer game with graphics. It’s impossible to conceive of a computer or video game released today without any visuals, but the idea to include them had to start somewhere. And while she couldn’t have known it then, Williams’ kitchen-table hobby would become the origin of graphic design in the world of computing and technology — two industries that now dominate life as we know it.

那是1980年，罗伯塔·威廉姆斯(Roberta Williams)是一位害羞，说话柔和，几乎没有说话或设计经验的家庭主妇，从默默无闻中崛起，并设计了“ 神秘屋 ”，这是有史以来第一款带有图形的计算机游戏。 没有今天的视觉效果，不可能想象今天发布的计算机或视频游戏，但是包含它们的想法必须从某个地方开始。 虽然那时她还不知道，但威廉姆斯的餐桌爱好将成为计算机和技术世界中图形设计的起源，这两个行业如今已成为我们所知的主宰生活。

The year was 1980, and Roberta Williams, a shy, soft-spoken housewife with little coding or design experience to speak of, rose from obscurity and designed “Mystery House,” the first-ever computer game with graphics. It’s impossible to conceive of a computer or video game released today without any visuals, but the idea to include them had to start somewhere. And while she couldn’t have known it then, Williams’ kitchen-table hobby would become the origin of graphic design in the world of computing and technology — two industries that now dominate life as we know it.

那是1980年，罗伯塔·威廉姆斯(Roberta Williams)是一位害羞，说话柔和，几乎没有说话或设计经验的家庭主妇，从默默无闻中崛起，并设计了“ 神秘屋 ”，这是有史以来第一款带有图形的计算机游戏。 没有今天的视觉效果，不可能想象今天发布的计算机或视频游戏，但是包含它们的想法必须从某个地方开始。 虽然那时她还不知道，但威廉姆斯的餐桌爱好将成为计算机和技术世界中图形设计的起源，这两个行业如今已成为我们所知的主宰生活。

The Williams’ home in Simi Valley, California was equipped with far more hardware than the average ’70s household. Their very first computer was a teletype machine: a device that looked like a typewriter on steroids, and used something called an acoustic coupler to access the internet. It was essentially a portable terminal that allowed Ken remote access to the room-sized mainframe computers he worked with during the day. Like any computer worth its salt, you could use a Teletype to play games; in this case, text-based adventure games. The gameplay happened line by slowly transmitted line, and was only visualized by your imagination.

威廉姆斯在加利福尼亚州西米谷的家配备的硬件比70年代普通家庭要多得多。 他们的第一台计算机是电传打字机：一种看起来像类固醇打字机的设备，并使用一种称为声耦合器的设备访问互联网。 本质上，这是一个便携式终端，使Ken可以远程访问他白天使用的房间大小的大型机。 就像任何值得盐分的计算机一样，您可以使用Teletype来玩游戏； 在这种情况下，是基于文本的冒险游戏。 游戏过程是逐行缓慢发生的，只有您的想象力才能看到​​。

‘Everybody spent a lot of time doing nothing but solving the game. It’s estimated that it set the entire computer industry back two weeks… The true lunatics began to think about how they could do it better.’

“每个人都花了很多时间，除了解决游戏以外，什么也不做。 据估计，这使整个计算机行业倒退了两周……真正的疯子开始考虑如何做得更好。

But remember, this is the ’70s, before most home computers — of which there were very few — had screens. So instead of typing your commands (“CROSS BRIDGE,” “TAKE BOTTLE,” “THROW EGGS AT TROLL”) on a screen, you typed them onto paper like a typewriter. Those commands were then transmitted via the ’70s-version of the internet and the next step in the game was then typed back to you. It may not sound exciting today, but at the time it was enough to get anyone with access to a home terminal completely enthralled.

但请记住，这是上世纪70年代之前，大部分家用电脑-其中有极少数的 -有屏幕。 因此，您无需在屏幕上键入命令(“跨桥”，“装瓶”，“扔鸡蛋”)，就像打字机一样在纸上键入命令。 这些命令随后通过互联网的70年代版本进行传输，然后将游戏的下一步输入给您。 今天，听起来可能并不令人兴奋，但是在那时，足以让任何人都可以完全使用家庭终端了。

Tim Anderson, an early programmer responsible for the game “Zork,” recalled that when the most famous of these very early games, “Colossal Cave,” landed at MIT where he worked, “everybody spent a lot of time doing nothing but solving the game. It’s estimated that it set the entire computer industry back two weeks… The true lunatics began to think about how they could do it better.” Roberta was one of those lunatics. Only she took it one step further and decided to write her own game — but hers would have pictures.

负责“ Zork”游戏的早期程序员Tim Anderson回忆说，当这些早期游戏中最著名的游戏《 Colossal Cave 》登陆他工作的麻省理工学院时，“每个人都花了很多时间，除了解决游戏。 据估计，这使整个计算机行业倒退了两周……真正的疯子开始考虑如何做得更好。” 罗伯塔就是那些疯子之一。 只有她更进一步，并决定编写自己的游戏-但她会有照片。

“I just couldn’t stop,” she said. “It was compulsive. I started playing it and kept playing. I had a baby at the time, [who] was eight-months old; I totally ignored him. I didn’t want to be bothered. I didn’t want to stop and make dinner.”

她说：“我无法停止。” “这是强迫性的。 我开始演奏，并继续演奏。 当时我有一个婴儿，年龄是8个月大。 我完全不理他。 我不想被打扰。 我不想停下来吃晚饭。”

Williams’ husband Ken was an adept programmer, but the available technology made drawing even simple shapes a challenge. Not even his coveted new Apple II (which would have cost over $5,000 at the time, accounting for inflation) could create graphics (though it could display them), so together the Williamses used a VersaWriter, a tablet with a mechanical arm that digitized hand-drawn images. Once Roberta convinced Ken to help her (it took some doing — he was busy with a side hustle of his own, working on a Fortran compiler), she presented him with a murder mystery story comprised of more than 100 different scenes and locations, dozens more than any previous game.

威廉姆斯(Williams)的丈夫肯(Ken)是一位熟练的程序员，但是可用的技术使绘制简单的形状成为一个挑战。 甚至连他梦new以求的新Apple II(当时的通货膨胀率都超过5,000美元)也无法创建图形(尽管它可以显示它们)，所以威廉姆斯夫妇一起使用了VersaWriter，这是一种平板电脑，带有机械手，可以将数字化手绘制的图像。 罗伯塔(Roberta)说服肯(Ken)帮助她(花了一些功夫-他忙于自己的忙碌，从事Fortran编译器工作)之后，她向他介绍了一个谋杀案的神秘故事，其中涉及100多个不同的场景和位置，数十个比以前的任何游戏都多。

The plot of “Mystery House” was fairly straightforward. You begin by crossing the front porch and enter the “large, abandoned Victorian house,” which you find is not abandoned at all, but is actually occupied by seven other people who begin to die off as you explore the various rooms. You’re purportedly looking for a stash of jewels, but as you find one dead body after another, you forget the jewels and decide to figure out who the killer is — before you become their next victim.

“神秘屋”的情节相当简单。 您首先穿过前门廊，然后进入“废弃的维多利亚式大房子”，您发现它根本没有被遗弃，但实际上却被另外七个人占据，这些人在探索各种房间时开始死亡。 据说您正在寻找藏有珠宝的东西，但是当您发现一个又一个尸体时，您会忘记珠宝，并决定弄清楚谁是杀手，然后再成为下一个受害者。

The storyline was inspired by Roberta’s beloved Agatha Christie novels and the board game Clue, while the gameplay — the use of text and language, the movement from screen to screen, the user’s ability to gather objects in an inventory, and to forge a path by solving puzzles — were all drawn from “Colossal Cave” and other predecessors like “Journey” (Softape) and “Voodoo Castle” (Adventure International; both were text adventure games played via cassette tape). Many designers at the time would begin a new game based on what they could code, but Roberta, with her limited coding ability, began by storyboarding a narrative and sketching the settings. “Her design was a visual and spatial architecture long before it was ever a technical one… a series of bubbles and lines, each bubble corresponding to a specific room in the game,” said Ken.

故事情节的灵感来自罗伯塔(Roberta)最受欢迎的阿加莎·克里斯蒂(Agatha Christie)小说和棋盘游戏《线索》(Clue)，而游戏玩法-使用文字和语言，从屏幕到屏幕的移动，用户收集清单中对象的能力以及通过解决难题的方法-均取材于“巨大洞穴”和其他前作，例如“旅程”(Softape)和“ Voodoo Castle”(冒险国际；都是通过录音带播放的文字冒险游戏)。 当时许多设计师会根据他们的编码开始制作新游戏，但是罗伯塔(Roberta)的编码能力有限，因此从情节提要和叙事设置开始。 肯说：“她的设计早在成为技术性建筑之前就已经是一种视觉和空间架构……一系列气泡和线条，每个气泡对应于游戏中的特定房间，” Ken说。

Programming computers and writing stories may seem like two obviously different skillsets today, but in the early days of microcomputing it was normal for one person to handle both the game design and the programming. Though Roberta knew her way around a computer, she certainly hadn’t mastered more than the basics of tricky early programming languages like COBOL, so her design process necessitated a division of labor that was, in its own way, quite radical. It’s this separation of game design and game programming that made it possible for her and other creative, yet less technically skilled game designers to flourish. In fact, her outsider’s perspective was to her benefit. She didn’t know enough about computers to know what they couldn’t do, and so “she continually pressed the limits of what [Ken] thought he could program.”

对计算机进行编程和编写故事似乎在当今似乎是两个明显不同的技能，但是在微计算的早期，一个人同时处理游戏设计和编程是很正常的。 尽管罗伯塔(Roberta)知道如何使用计算机，但她当然不仅仅掌握像COBOL这样的棘手的早期编程语言的基础知识，因此她的设计过程需要分工，而分工本身就非常激进。 正是游戏设计和游戏编程的分离使她和其他富有创造力但技术水平较低的游戏设计师得以蓬勃发展。 实际上，她的局外人的观点对她有利。 她对计算机知之甚少，以至于无法知道计算机无法做什么，因此“她不断逼迫[Ken]认为他可以编程的极限。”

But even Ken, who author Steve Levy described in Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, as a programmer “rising at quantum speed,” and one of the “world’s youngest, most recklessly ambitious software titans,” had his limits. The 100+ settings and pathways Roberta created for “Mystery House” were too much for a floppy disk to hold. Miraculously, he pared the game down to a slim 59kb — that’s just over one half of one-tenth of a megabyte. For comparison, the popular computer game “Minecraft” is 100mb; you can fit 1,700 “Mystery Houses” into a single unit of “MineCraft.”

但即使是作者史蒂夫·利维(Steve Levy)在《 黑客：计算机革命的英雄》中将肯恩描述为“以量子速度崛起”的程序员，也是“世界上最年轻，最鲁re，雄心勃勃的软件巨头之一”时，他也受到了限制。 罗伯塔为“神秘屋”创建的100多种设置和途径对于软盘来说实在太大了。 奇迹般地，他将游戏缩减到了只有59kb的微小空间-刚好是兆字节的十分之一的一半。 相比之下，流行的电脑游戏“ Minecraft”为100mb； 您可以将1700个“神秘屋”放入一个“ MineCraft”单元中。

Between 1979 and 1980, the Williamses finalized their first humble game, and Roberta soon found herself at the grocery store with a shopping cart full of Ziploc bags, which, when coupled with a photocopied sheet of paper, passed for game packaging. They had just placed an ad for “Mystery House” in a scientific computing magazine and the orders were streaming in (their phone was ringing at all hours, too, since they included their home number as a help line). From the start, Roberta and Ken’s primary goal was to make money with “Mystery House,” though their original intentions were modest: They wanted to earn enough to move to a quiet home in the woods. But after selling 10,000 copies of the game, they realized they’d tapped into something much bigger. In just a few years, their little game would go on to spawn a billion-dollar gaming empire and make them household names.

1979年至1980年之间，威廉姆斯夫妇完成了他们的第一场不起眼的比赛，罗伯塔(Roberta)很快带着装满Ziploc袋的购物车来到杂货店，当它与影印纸一起被用于游戏包装时。 他们刚刚在一本科学计算杂志上刊登了一则“神秘屋”的广告，订单不断涌入(他们的电话也一直在响，因为其中包括了他们的家庭电话作为帮助热线)。 从一开始，罗伯塔(Roberta)和肯(Ken)的主要目标就是用“神秘屋”(The Mystery House)赚钱，尽管他们的初衷是微不足道的：他们想赚到足够的钱，搬到树林里一个安静的家中。 但是在卖出10,000份游戏后，他们意识到他们已经利用更大的东西了。 在短短几年内，他们的小游戏将继续产生一个十亿美元的游戏帝国，并使其家喻户晓。

Within five months they were on the road to their new home near the Yosemite mountains in California, but they didn’t exactly settle in for the simple life. Instead, they founded Sierra On-Line (download the original font) and immediately got to work on more games, always with Roberta as the writer and designer and Ken as the programmer. They followed up “Mystery House” with “Wizard and the Princess” (1980), the very first full-color game. It sold 60,000 copies and spawned the King’s Quest series, which went on to sell 7 million copies by 1997, becoming a major commercial and critical success that cemented Sierra as the era’s ultimate adventure game hitmaker, with Roberta as the reigning queen.

在不到五个月的时间内，他们正前往加利福尼亚州优胜美地山脉附近的新家中，但他们并没有完全过上简单的生活。 相反，他们创立了Sierra On-Line( 下载原始字体 )并立即开始从事更多游戏的工作，始终由Roberta担任作家和设计师，而Ken则担任程序员。 他们紧随《神秘屋》之后推出了第一款全彩游戏《巫师与公主》(1980年)。 它售出了60,000张，并催生了King's Quest系列，该系列在1997年之前售出了700万张，取得了重大商业成功并取得了关键性的成功，巩固了Sierra成为该时代最终的冒险游戏制作人的地位，而Roberta则担任王后。

‘At the time, I don’t think we had much more strategy than just to have fun.’

“当时，我认为我们没有比玩得更多的策略了。”

The Williamses hired more people, designers, coders, programmers. The company was growing fast, and Sierra was competing for talent with other prominent game publishers headquartered in sexier locations, like LucasArts, part of George Lucas’ game division in San Francisco, and Infocom just outside of Boston. Sierra, on the other hand, was located in the small town of Oakhurst, with a population just around 2,000. Hot, young tech stars rising in a burgeoning field weren’t likely to be attracted to a place that hadn’t seen much action since the Gold Rush. Ken and Roberta had to take who they could get and hope they could be trained. One early Sierra employee, Carolyn Box, was a champion gold panner, who happened to take up coding with her husband at the age of 40. “A month before the [coding] class ended, Sierra On-Line moved up here, and we basically just walked into their offices asking for a job, and they hired us,” she said. Laine Nooney, assistant professor of media industries at New York University and leading expert on the history of home computing, noted that the area’s small talent pool meant that Sierra would “literally hire anyone who could program, or pick up a phone, or tape a box.”

威廉姆斯夫妇雇用了更多的人，设计师，编码员和程序员。 该公司发展Swift，Sierra正在与总部设在性感地点的其他知名游戏发行商竞争人才，例如，LucasArts(位于旧金山的George Lucas游戏部门的一部分)和Infocom(位于波士顿郊外)。 另一方面，Sierra位于小镇奥克赫斯特(Oakhurst)，人口仅约2,000。 自淘金热以来，在新兴领域兴起的炙手可热的年轻科技明星不太可能被吸引。 肯(Ken)和罗伯塔(Roberta)必须接受他们能得到的人，并希望他们能得到培训。 Sierra的一名早期雇员Carolyn Box是一位金牌淘金者，她恰好在40岁时与她的丈夫一起从事编码工作。“在[编码]课程结束的一个月前，Sierra On-Line搬到了这里，我们基本上只是走进他们的办公室找工作，然后他们雇用了我们，”她说。 纽约大学媒体行业助理教授，家庭计算历史方面的领先专家Laine Nooney指出，该地区的人才库很小，这意味着Sierra会“从字面上雇用任何可以编程，接电话，或录音的人。框。”

“When Sierra started,” said Ken in 2006, “it was a very different world from what we live in today. Floppy disks were just being invented. The little bit of software that was being sold was shipped on audio cassette. Most products didn’t have packaging. There were no computer magazines beyond a few hand-typed newsletters. This worked in our favor. At the time I was a 25-year-old ‘kid’ with no experience running a business. In today’s competitive world, we wouldn’t have survived six months. But at the time, we could get away with horrible packaging… and giving no thought whatsoever to things like brand image. At the time, I don’t think we had much more strategy than just to have fun.”

肯(Ken)在2006年说：“塞拉(Sierra)成立之初，与我们今天所处的世界截然不同。 软盘才刚刚发明。 所出售的软件中的一小部分已装在录音带中。 大多数产品没有包装。 除了几本手工打字的通讯，没有电脑杂志。 这对我们有利。 当时我是25岁的“孩子”，没有经营业务的经验。 在当今竞争激烈的世界中，我们将无法生存六个月。 但是在那时，我们可以摆脱可怕的包装……而对品牌形象之类的东西一无所知。 当时，我认为除了娱乐之外，我们没有更多的策略。”

What emerged was a ragtag crew of energetic misfits, willing to move to the middle of nowhere for the chance to get in on the ground floor, where they could develop ideas and build brand new software with the latest tech. Many were whizzes who would go down in the annals of gaming history, and many others, like Carolyn Box, simply wouldn’t have been given a chance elsewhere — not because they weren’t talented, but because women had a harder time standing out in an industry that was becoming more male-dominated each year. Although computer science was popular with women, the LucasArts and Infocoms of the day had few women on staff, and even fewer in decision-making positions. By comparison, Sierra had a veritable army of women, including influential programmers and game designers like Jane Jensen, Christy Marx, Lorelei Shannon, and Lori Ann Cole, who said that Sierra “actively invited female designers.”

涌现出了一群精力充沛的不适应者，他们愿意走到半路，有机会进入一楼，在那里他们可以用最新技术开发思想并构建全新的软件。 许多人将成为游戏史上的佼佼者，而其他许多人，例如卡罗琳·博克斯(Carolyn Box)，根本不会在其他地方有机会-不是因为她们没有才华，而是因为女性很难脱颖而出这个行业每年都以男性为主。 尽管计算机科学在女性中很流行，但当今的LucasArts和Infocoms的女性员工很少，而决策职位的女性甚至更少。 相比之下，Sierra拥有一支名副其实的女性队伍，其中包括有影响力的程序员和游戏设计师，例如Jane Jensen，Christy Marx，Lorelei Shannon和Lori Ann Cole，他们说Sierra“积极邀请女性设计师”。

The reason Sierra makes for such a compelling case is because it ‘reveals a history that intersects labor, class, and gender — a history the game industry very much needs to understand right now.’

Sierra之所以提出如此有说服力的案例，是因为它“揭示了与劳工，阶级和性别 相交 的历史-游戏业现在非常需要理解的历史。”

At the same time, Roberta was beginning to push her storylines in new directions with strong female characters. In “King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella” (1988), the title character usurps the series’ traditional male lead, Sir Graham, to become the first female protagonist in a graphic adventure. It was a bold move, and she wasn’t sure she would pull it off. “It hadn’t been done in our industry to have a girl heroine,” said Roberta. “I worried about it while I was designing the game. I wondered if it was going to be accepted. I thought there would be some controversy, that maybe guys would write in and say, ‘I don’t want to be a girl,”… but it hasn’t really been an issue.” The game was an instant hit, selling 100,000 copies in the first two weeks. Fan mail poured in, most of it from women, whom Sierra estimated made up to 40% of its players.

与此同时，罗伯塔(Roberta)开始用坚强的女性角色将故事情节推向新的方向。 在“国王的探索IV：罗莎拉的危险”(1988年)中，标题人物篡改了该系列的传统男主角格拉汉姆爵士，成为了图形冒险中的第一位女性主角。 这是一个大胆的举动，她不确定是否会成功。 罗伯塔说：“在我们的行业中，还没有女主人公吗？” “在设计游戏时，我为此感到担心。 我想知道它是否会被接受。 我以为会有争议，也许男人会写信说：“我不想成为女孩。”……但这并不是真正的问题。” 这款游戏一炮走红，前两周售出100,000张。 粉丝邮件大量涌入，其中大部分是女性玩家，Sierra估计女性玩家占40％。

Dear Sierra,

亲爱的塞拉，

This is a love letter, pure and simple… I do not fit the typical profile for adventure gamers. I am a 45-year-old woman, who works for L.L. Bean as a telephone order representative part of the year and travels with her husband the rest of the time… I write (freelance) when I travel, using my home computer primarily for word processing. I love adventure games. Like Roberta Williams, I have always been an ardent reader. I enjoy Shakespeare and Agatha Christie equally well… I am addicted. There seems to be no known cure. I hope no one ever finds one. Please continue to create forever… Thanks for everything, especially giving me an opportunity to say how much I love you.

这是一封简朴而简单的情书……我不适合冒险游戏玩家的典型个人简介。 我今年45岁，在LL Bean担任电话订购代表，并在剩下的时间里和丈夫一起旅行。我旅行时写(兼职)，主要使用家用计算机字处理。 我喜欢冒险游戏。 像罗伯塔·威廉姆斯一样，我一直是热情的读者。 我同样喜欢莎士比亚和阿加莎·克里斯蒂。。。我上瘾了。 似乎没有已知的治疗方法。 我希望没人能找到一个。 请继续永远创造……感谢一切，尤其是给我一个机会说我有多爱你。

Forever yours,Elizabeth Hood

伊丽莎白·胡德(Elizabeth Hood)

Encouraged by the reaction from fans like Hood, Roberta made “The Colonel’s Bequest” (1989) starring Laura Bow, a determined student of journalism and a fan of detective stories. In “King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride” (1994), players have the option of not one but two female leads, Princess Rosella and her mother, Queen Valanice. This isn’t to say there weren’t any women in other games; on the contrary, there were lots of hyper-sexualized damsels in distress and “chainmail-bikini babes,” as one woman designer called them. In the popular “Leisure Suit Larry” series (published from 1987–2009), the female characters easily outweigh the male characters, which would be fine if the entire point of the game isn’t to have sex with as many of them as possible.

罗伯塔受到胡德(Hood)等影迷的React的鼓舞，制作了《上校的遗赠》(The Colonel's Bequest)(1989)，由坚定的新闻专业学生和侦探小说迷劳拉·鲍(Laura Bow)主演。 在“国王的任务VII：无王子新娘”(1994年)中，玩家可以选择由女主角Rosella和她的母亲Valanice女王一个而不是两个。 这并不是说在其他比赛中没有女性。 相反，正如一名女设计师称呼的那样，遇险和“链甲比基尼美女”中有许多性欲过高的少女。 在颇受欢迎的“休闲套装拉里”系列(1987年至2009年发行)中，女性角色很容易超过男性角色，如果游戏中的重点不是与尽可能多的人发生性关系，那会很好。

It all came to a head in 1995, when Sierra released its most ambitious game yet and the jewel in Roberta’s game design crown: “Phantasmagoria.” It was the world’s first live-action video game, using real actors on computer-designed 3D backdrops and impressive audio-visual effects.

在1995年，Sierra发布了迄今为止最雄心勃勃的游戏，并在Roberta的游戏设计皇冠上亮出了一颗明珠：“ Phantasmagoria”。 它是世界上第一个真人视频游戏，在计算机设计的3D背景下使用真实演员和令人印象深刻的视听效果。

The script was a 550-page horror story about the character Adrienne Delaney, a writer who moves into a remote mansion with her husband, who becomes possessed by evil, supernatural forces. The visuals are as graphic and disturbing as the plot, including a highly controversial rape scene, as well as gruesome deaths that required special-effects magic to show Adrienne’s head split in half by a pendulum blade, or ripped apart by a demon, or consumed by flames.

剧本是一个长达550页的恐怖故事，讲述的是人物阿德里安娜·德莱尼(Adrienne Delaney)的故事，该作家与丈夫搬进了一座偏僻的豪宅，丈夫被邪恶的超自然力量所拥有。 视觉效果与情节一样生动有趣，包括一个充满争议的强奸场景，以及令人毛骨悚然的死亡，这些死亡需要特殊效果的魔法才能显示出Adrienne的头被摆锤劈成两半，或被恶魔撕裂或被吞噬通过火焰。

Producing “Phantasmagoria” was nothing short of a Herculean effort that went above and beyond Sierra’s normal operating procedure in every possible way. A cast of 25 actors and a 200-person crew worked for more than two years in a $1.5 million Hollywood-grade studio built specially for the game. Budgets ballooned as Sierra hired film professionals to handle the lighting, sound, camera, set design, and costuming. In addition to sounds effects, a musical score was composed and performed by a 135-voice neo-Gregorian choir. The original budget was $800,000, but in the end it cost $4.5 million to produce — more than a third of company’s profit margin at the time.

生产“幻觉幻想”绝非易事，它以各种可能的方式超越了塞拉的正常操作程序。 由25名演员和200名工作人员组成的演员在专门为这场比赛而建的，价值150万美元的好莱坞级工作室工作了两年多。 随着Sierra聘请电影专业人士来处理照明，声音，相机，布景设计和服装，预算激增。 除声音效果外，还由135声新格里高里合唱团创作并演奏了乐谱。 最初的预算是80万美元，但最终生产成本为450万美元，占公司当时利润率的三分之一以上。

When the game came out, it occupied a whopping seven CD-ROMs. It was rated “M” for mature, and was quickly banned from CompUSA and other retailers, condemned by religious groups and politicians, and in some countries it was refused classification altogether — which only made people want to play it more. In its first week, “Phantasmagoria” made $12 million, making it the best-selling game in the U.S., and Sierra’s top-seller to this day.

游戏问世时，它占据了多达7张CD-ROM。 它的成熟度被评为“ M”，并很快被CompUSA和其他零售商禁止，受到宗教团体和政治家的谴责，在某些国家，它被完全拒绝分类，这只能使人们想玩得更多。 在第一周，《幻梦奇缘》赚了1200万美元，成为美国最畅销的游戏，也是塞拉利昂迄今为止的最畅销游戏。

Roberta’s ambitions grew along with her fame and success. Long before “Phantasmagoria,” she had a vision of creating a totally immersive game experience that would transform Sierra into a multimedia company that operated more like a film studio, more like Disney. “My goal,” she had said in 1983, “is to create the ultimate story… and revolutionize the entertainment industry. My ultimate goal is to be a film director and producer, but I do the best I can with computer games.”

罗伯塔的雄心壮志随着她的名声和成功而增长。 早在《幻想曲》之前，她就拥有创造一种完全身临其境的游戏体验的愿景，该体验将使Sierra成为一家多媒体公司，其运作方式更像电影制片厂，更像迪士尼。 她在1983年说过：“我的目标是创造最终故事……并彻底改变娱乐业。 我的最终目标是成为电影导演和制片人，但我会尽最大努力使用计算机游戏。”

While Roberta may have had Hollywood-sized ambitions, her work routine was perhaps better suited for life in a small mountain town. She was allegedly hardly ever in the Sierra office, preferring to work at home instead, and though only a handful of Sierra’s ex-employees have gone on record, suspicions arose that Roberta wasn’t putting in the same time as her fellow designers.

虽然罗伯塔(Roberta)可能有好莱坞般的野心，但她的工作习惯也许更适合在山区小镇生活。 据称她几乎没有在Sierra的办公室里工作过，而是宁愿在家里工作，尽管只有少数Sierra的前雇员有记录，但人们仍怀疑Roberta与她的设计师不在同一时间。

‘As someone who never went to college and who, by her own accounts, never expected to amount to much, Robert’s ascent must have been as surprising to her as to anyone.’

“作为一个从未上过大学的人，并且以她自己的话说，从没期望过这么多钱，罗伯特的崛起一定令她和任何人都感到惊讶。”

After the early design and concept phase, Roberta tended to hand off the executional work to her team of artists and programmers before she came back in for quality control during the final testing phase. These were talented programmers who Roberta hand-picked to work on her flagship titles, many of which required significant technical savvy in order to meet her demands and her ambitious goals. “In the most difficult cases,” Nooney tells me in an interview, this meant “working more than eight hours a day, over weekends, for months at a time. More generally, many employees recount their time at Sierra as some of the most fun they had in their careers, but they also report being under tremendous, debilitating stress. This stress was extensive enough that some former employees still find these memories hard to discuss.”

在早期的设计和概念阶段之后，Roberta倾向于将执行工作交给她的艺术家和程序员团队，然后才在最后的测试阶段返回进行质量控制。 这些都是才华横溢的程序员，罗伯塔(Roberta)亲自挑选出了自己的旗舰产品，其中许多需要精通技术才能满足她的要求和宏伟的目标。 “在最困难的情况下，” Nooney在一次采访中告诉我，这意味着“在周末，每天工作超过八个小时，一次连续几个月。 一般来说，许多员工将自己在Sierra的时间描述为他们职业生涯中最有趣的时光，但他们也表示自己承受着巨大的，令人沮丧的压力。 这种压力已经足够广泛，以至于一些前员工仍然很难回忆起这些回忆。”

More than any other designer at Sierra, Roberta’s games were heavily marketed with her name and portrait prominently displayed on the packaging. She was “a useful marketing icon,” says Nooney, which only incentivized Sierra to put more marketing energy behind her games. Out of all the games Sierra released each year (the company peaked in 1993 with around 30 new titles), Williams’ were given pride of place on store shelves and in magazine ads, and her releases were strategically timed to coincide with prime annual selling seasons. “It was difficult, if not impossible, for other designers who joined Sierra later to receive the same degree of promotion or command the same volume of shelf space, because Williams’ games were already a legacy by the late ’80s,” says Nooney.

罗伯塔的游戏比塞拉利昂的其他任何设计师都要多，在其包装上醒目地摆着她的名字和肖像的广告。 Nooney说，她是“一个有用的营销偶像”，这只是激励Sierra在游戏中投入更多的营销能量。 在Sierra每年发行的所有游戏中(该公司在1993年达到顶峰，推出了30款新游戏)，Williams在商店的货架和杂志广告中都占据着很高的位置，并且在战略上将她的发行时间定为与主要的年度销售季节相吻合。 。 Nooney说：“对于后来加入Sierra的其他设计师来说，很难获得相同程度的晋升或获得相同数量的货架空间，因为Williams的游戏在80年代后期就已经成为传统。”

As someone who never went to college and who, by her own accounts, never expected to amount to much, Robert’s ascent must have been as surprising to her as to anyone, and she clung tightly to her acclaim as a creative leader and innovative designer. She didn’t get there alone, and she knew it, but once she got to the top she wasn’t likely to make room for anyone else. “As far as programming techniques go,” she said in a 1983 interview with Antic magazine, “anybody can do it. It’s nothing special. The specialness comes from the stories I make up, and nobody can do that but me. They can do it their way, but nobody can do it my way.”

罗伯特(Robert)从未上过大学，并且从自己的账目上也没想到会有什么收获，所以罗伯特(Robert)的崛起一定令她和任何人都感到惊讶，她紧紧抓住自己作为创意领袖和创新设计师的称赞。 她不是一个人到那儿的，她知道的，但是一旦登顶，她就不可能为其他人腾出地方。 她在1983年接受Antic杂志采访时说：“就编程技术而言，任何人都可以做到。 没什么特别的 特殊性来自于我编造的故事，只有我能做到。 他们可以按照自己的方式做，但是没人可以按照我的方式做。”

Still, being on her team was seen as an honor. “It meant you were considered to be the best at what you did,” says Nooney. Working their way through Roberta’s apprenticeship system is how many of Sierra’s promising up-and-comers proved themselves worthy of creating games and leading teams of their own. She developed lasting bonds with many loyal employees, but rubbed just as many others the wrong way. In that sense, she’s not much different than other powerful, high-ranking executives, but it does make it difficult to paint a portrait of Roberta as a leader who blazed a trail for women, which history is wont to do. She had every opportunity to champion promising young women at her company, and in tech and gaming in general, but that was never her endgame. From the outside her story seems heroic, full of rich and intriguing interludes, but the reveal is disappointingly simple.

仍然，在她的团队中被视为一种荣誉。 “这意味着您被认为是您做得最好的，” Nooney说。 通过罗伯塔的学徒制，Sierra的许多有前途的新人证明了自己值得创造自己的游戏和领导团队。 她与许多忠实的员工建立了持久的纽带，但以错误的方式与其他许多人擦肩而过。 从这个意义上说，她与其他有权势的高级管理人员并没有太大不同，但是确实很难描绘罗伯塔的肖像，她是一位领导者，为女性开辟了道路，这是历史无法做到的。 她有机会在自己的公司以及技术和游戏领域拥护有前途的年轻女性，但这绝不是她的最终目标。 从外面看，她的故事看起来很英勇，充满了丰富而有趣的插曲，但启示却很简单。

Video game history doesn’t know how to make sense of her except to single her out.

电子游戏历史不知道如何理解她，只能将她挑出来。

“I think we miss a lot when our sole attraction to Sierra’s legacy is fixated on Roberta, or even on Sierra’s larger cadre of female designers” says Nooney. “…it reinforces very conservative ideas about creative authorship and authorial intent.” In other words, neither Roberta nor any other talented game designer is solely responsible for the final product; it’s a group effort. The reason Sierra makes for such a compelling case is because it “reveals a history that intersects labor, class, and gender — a history the game industry very much needs to understand right now.”

Nooney说：“当我们对Sierra的遗产的唯一吸引力集中在Roberta甚至Sierra更大的女性设计师干部上时，我们会感到非常想念。” “……强化了关于创意作者和作者意图的非常保守的观念。” 换句话说，罗伯塔(Roberta)和任何其他有才华的游戏设计师都不对最终产品承担全部责任。 这是集体的努力。 Sierra之所以提出如此有说服力的案例，是因为它“揭示了与劳工，阶级和性别相交的历史-游戏行业现在非常需要理解的历史。”

It’s certainly not the history Roberta ever set out to write. She was never a crusader for equity, never a spokesperson for the women in her company, let alone her industry. And it’s not just Roberta, it’s all the women we cherry pick as signs of progress. We like to assume that any woman who once stood alone, surrounded by men in the tech world — or the science world, art world, or political world — must have held a torch fueled by some inner Joan of Arc or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

当然，这不是罗伯塔曾经打算写的历史。 她从不追求平等，从未在公司任职女性发言人，更不用说她的行业了。 不只是罗伯塔(Roberta)，还有我们挑选的所有女性都是进步的标志。 我们想假设任何曾经独自一人站在科技界，科学界，艺术界或政治界的男人包围的女人，一定是被内心的圣女贞德或亚历山大·奥卡西奥·科尔特斯(Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez)点燃了。

The role of Roberta, Queen of Inclusion and Gender Parity, is something we’ve collectively written into the historical record. It’s not only wrong to place the weight of feminist activism on the unsuspecting shoulders of women like Roberta, it’s dangerous. This revisionist history may be inspiring for young women today, but a falsely positive story is a false story nonetheless. “Video game history doesn’t know how to make sense of her except to single her out,” says Nooney.

包容和性别均等女王罗伯塔(Roberta)的角色，是我们共同写入历史记录的东西。 把女权主义活动的重担放在罗伯塔(Roberta)这样的女性毫无戒心的肩膀上不仅是错误的，而且很危险。 这种修正主义的历史可能会给今天的年轻女性鼓舞，但一个错误肯定的故事仍然是一个错误的故事。 Nooney说：“视频游戏历史不知道如何理解她，除非将她挑出来。”

Soon after “Phantasmagoria” was released, the computer game industry underwent a drastic change. The rise of fast-paced action, racing, and shooting games in the mid-’90s like “Doom,” “Duke Nukem,” and “Quake” gave birth to a “hostile, exclusionary, hyper-masculine game culture.” Roberta herself lamented the change. “I have never seen it this bad before in all my years of writing games,” she said in 1998. “There is such a dearth of games for women. I have never seen the shelves so empty.”

在发布《幻觉》后不久，计算机游戏产业发生了翻天覆地的变化。 90年代中期，诸如“ Doom”，“ Duke Nukem”和“ Quake”之类的快节奏动作，赛车和射击游戏的兴起催生了“敌对，排他，过度男性化的游戏文化”。 罗伯塔本人为此感叹。 她在1998年说道：“在我从事游戏的所有岁月中，我从未见过如此糟糕。女性游戏如此匮乏。 我从来没有见过架子那么空。”

By this point, the Williamses had already retired. After Roberta designed 18 original games and pioneered a number of firsts for the industry, she and Ken sold Sierra in 1996 to Comp-U-Card (CUC) in a deal that was soon revealed to be one of the biggest cases of financial fraud in the U.S. The details of the buyout are as fascinating as they are long and complicated, but the short story is this: a Sierra board member who worked at CUC falsely inflated his company’s worth, and CUC bought Sierra for a price it couldn’t afford. After the misdealings were revealed in an audit, stock prices plunged and CUC sold off its holdings as fast as it could. “It was the Enron of the ’90s.”

至此，威廉姆斯夫妇已经退休。 罗伯塔(Roberta)设计了18款原创游戏并开创了业界首创之举后，她和肯(Ken)于1996年将塞拉(Sierra)卖给了Comp-U-Card(CUC)，这笔交易很快就被证明是美国最大的财务欺诈案件之一。美国的收购细节既漫长又复杂，却引人入胜，但简短的故事是：一位在CUC工作的Sierra董事会成员虚假夸大了公司的价值，而CUC以无法承受的价格收购了Sierra。 。 在审计中发现不当行为之后，股价暴跌，CUC尽快出售了所持股票。 “那是90年代的安然。”

Things quickly went downhill at Sierra, too. On February 22, 1999, on a day that went down in history as “Chainsaw Monday,” Sierra’s development studio was shuttered and two-thirds of the staff (about 250 people) were fired. The top executives had already fled to Sierra’s outpost in Bellevue, Washington, and it’s rumored that a mountain of original IP (concept art, early game drafts, unique code) were landfilled. What’s left is now owned by Activision, one of the world’s largest video game publishers.

塞拉利昂的事情也很快走下坡路。 在1999年2月22日，即“ Chainsaw Monday”的历史上，Sierra的开发工作室被关闭，三分之二的员工(约250人)被解雇。 高层管理人员已经逃到了华盛顿州贝尔维尤市塞拉的前哨站，有传言称填埋了大量原始IP(概念艺术，早期游戏草稿，独特代码)。 现在剩下的才是全球最大的视频游戏发行商之一Activision所拥有。

“Sierra has been cut back to bare bones,” Roberta lamented in an interview with Just Adventure shortly after the massive layoffs. “Of course, I’m not happy as to what has happened to Sierra. It was in extremely strong shape and was doing very well when we sold it in 1996. Look at it now. It’s a travesty.”

在大规模裁员后不久，罗伯塔(Roberta)在接受《 Just Adventure 》采访时感叹道：“塞拉已经被砍断了。” “当然，我对塞拉发生的事不满意。 它的形状非常坚固，当我们在1996年将其出售时，它的表现非常好。现在来看一下。 这是一种怪诞。”

The world hasn’t heard much from Roberta since. She hasn’t designed any other commercial games, and she and Ken seem busy with their many homes and boats, which they regularly charter on excursions around the world. Ken even has a blog to chronicle his yacht purchases.

从那以后，世界对Roberta的关注很少。 她没有设计任何其他商业游戏，而且她和Ken似乎忙于他们的许多房屋和船只，他们经常在世界各地的游览中租用这些房屋和船只。 肯(Ken)甚至有一个博客来记录他的游艇购买记录。

For someone who got so much personal fulfillment from her games, it’s hard to understand how Roberta could remove herself so completely from them. But in the end, it was never really about the games — Roberta seems to have cared only as long as she was popular, and when her outlet for validation disappeared and the applause faded away, so did she.

对于一个从游戏中获得如此个人成就感的人来说，很难理解罗伯塔是如何将自己完全摆脱游戏的。 但最终，这并不是真正的比赛-罗伯塔(Roberta)似乎只在她很受欢迎的时候就在意，当她的验证渠道消失并且掌声渐渐消失时，她也是如此。

It’s not the storybook ending she might have written for herself, slinking away into the sunset instead of riding out in a blaze of glory — or any of a hundred other clichés that tidily end a story. But if a fairytale is about a prince and princess overcoming obstacles, rising to challenges, proving their worth, and succeeding against all odds, then Roberta and Ken’s story isn’t actually so far off the mark. After all, what fairytale did you ever read where the protagonist goes about solving society’s problems and righting centuries of gender and class welfare wrongs?

这不是她为自己写的故事书的结局，而是沉浸在夕阳中，而不是一头雾水，或者是整整一个故事结束的其他一百个陈词滥调。 但是，如果童话中的王子和公主是关于克服障碍，迎接挑战，证明自己的价值并成功克服一切困难的，那么罗伯塔和肯的故事实际上并不是那么遥不可及。 毕竟，您曾读过哪个主角在解决社会问题以及纠正数百年来的性别和阶级福利错误方面有什么童话故事？

In an interview Roberta gave just a few years after her first breakout success, “Mystery House,” she said, “I feel that I’ve grown as a person. I can deal with people; I can talk to them without feeling shy. I know my own mind now. I’m not floundering around in a world in which I don’t quite fit. I feel I can create a world to be how I want it to be; and not just in games. I feel in control.”

罗伯塔(Roberta)在首次获得成功后的几年里接受采访时说：“神秘屋”，她说：“我觉得我已经成长为一个人。 我可以和人打交道。 我可以不害羞地与他们交谈。 我现在知道我自己的想法。 在一个我不太适应的世界里，我没有挣扎。 我觉得我可以创造一个自己想要的世界。 不仅在游戏中。 我感到有控制权。”

引用来源 (Sources cited)

• “A Pedestal, a Table, a Love Letter: Archaeologies of Gender in Videogame History,” by Laine Nooney: aigaeod.co/gamestudies.

  Laine Nooney 撰写的 “基座，桌子，情书：视频游戏历史中的性别考古学”： aigaeod.co/gamestudies 。

• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution — 25th Anniversary Edition by Steve Levy, 1984.

  黑客：计算机革命的英雄-史蒂夫·利维(Steve Levy)创立25周年 ，1984年。

• “Let’s Begin Again: Sierra On-Line and the Origins of the Graphical Adventure Game,” by Laine Nooney, American Journal of Play, vol. 10, no. 1, 2017.

  “让我们再次开始：Sierra在线和图形冒险游戏的起源”，作者：Laine Nooney，《 美国游戏杂志》 ，第1卷。 10号 2017年1月1日。

• What Happened To The Women Who Built the Video Game Industry?” by John Adkins, 2017: aigaeod.co/mic.

  建立电子游戏产业的女性发生了什么？” 作者：约翰·阿德金斯(John Adkins)，2017年： aigaeod.co/mic 。

• Sierra News Magazine, vol. 2, no. 2, 1989.

  塞拉利昂新闻杂志 ，第一卷。 2，没有 1989年2月2日。

• “What Happened To The Women Who Built the Video Game Industry?,” by John Adkins, 2017: aigaeod.co/mic.

  约翰·阿德金斯(John Adkins) 撰写的 “发生了什么事情， 打造了视频游戏产业的女性？”，2017年： aigaeod.co/mic 。

• Interview with Ken Williams in Adventure Classic Gaming by Philip John, 2006: aigaeod.co/classicgaming.

  菲利普·约翰(Philip John)在“ 冒险经典游戏”中采访肯·威廉姆斯(Ken Williams)，2006年： aigaeod.co/classicgaming 。

• Interview with Bob Box, quoted in Carolyn’s obituary by Laine Nooney, 2018: aigaeod.co/gamasutra.

  鲍勃·博克斯的访谈，Laine Nooney在Carolyn的itu告中引用，2018年： aigaeod.co/gamasutra 。

• Interview with the Orange County Register.

  采访橙县名册。

• Interview with noted game designer David Brevik, by Filip Nonkovic, 2014: aigaeod.co/hammer.

  Filip Nonkovic着名游戏设计师David Brevik的访谈，2014年： aigaeod.co/hammer 。

Perrin Drumm is the founder of Eye on Design.

Perrin Drumm是 Eye on Design 的创始人 。

This article was originally published in the “Distraction” issue of Eye on Design magazine under the title, “Queen’s Quest.”

本文最初发表在 《 Eye on Design》杂志 的 “ Distraction”一期中， 标题为“ Queen's Quest”。