However, CUC International was caught in an accounting scandal in 1998, and many of the original founders of Sierra including the Williamses left the company.

[1] Sierra Entertainment was founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems in Simi Valley, California, by the husband-and-wife duo Ken and Roberta Williams.

After Ken had brought an Apple II to their home, she played through other text adventures such as those by Scott Adams and Softape to study them.

[3] Dissatisfied with the text-only format, she realized that the graphics display capability of the Apple II could enhance the adventure gaming experience.

With Ken's help in some of the programming, Roberta designed Mystery House, inspired by the novel And Then There Were None and the board game Clue, using text commands and printout combined with rudimentary graphics depicting the current setting.

The next release, Wizard and the Princess, also known as Adventure in Serenia, is considered a prelude to the later King's Quest series in both story and concept.

[6] Through 1981 and 1982, more games were released in the series including Cranston Manor, Ulysses and the Golden Fleece, Time Zone, and The Dark Crystal.

A simplified version of The Dark Crystal, intended for a younger audience, was written by Al Lowe and released as Gelfling Adventure.

[10] The company weathered the video game crash of 1983 with only a 20% increase in sales, after analysts in 1982 had predicted a doubling in 1983 of the entire software market.

Her game concept includes animated color graphics, a pseudo 3D-perspective where the main character is visible on the screen, a more competent text parser that understands advanced commands from the player, and music playing in the background through the PCjr sound hardware.

While finishing The Black Cauldron, programmers Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy began to plan for an adventure game of their own.

After a simple demonstration to Ken Williams, he allowed them to start working on the full game, which was named Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter.

Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards was a great hit and won the Software Publishers Association's Best Adventure Game award of 1987.

Ken Williams befriended a retired highway patrol officer named Jim Walls and asked him to produce an adventure series based on a police theme.

Several sequels followed, and the series was touted for adherence to police protocol (relevant parts of which were explained in the games' manuals), and presenting some real-life situations encountered by Walls during his career as an officer.

[16] Development of the network began in 1989, as Ken Williams was inspired by the launch of the Prodigy service in 1988 to create something similar for Sierra's games.

[17] As a free service other than access use charges, the network provided a "land-based" precursor to MMORPGs and internet chat rooms, each land theme for the type of content provided multi-player gaming and category based bulletin boards and chat rooms throughout the continental United States.

[18] By July 1993, having reached about 40,000 subscribers, AT&T announced a plan to invest $5 million into the network and add more games, gaining partial control as part of its expansion into the growing online services.

[23] Sierra needed a new building due to growth, and moved its headquarters and much of its key staff to Bellevue, Washington.

Sierra's original location in Oakhurst was later renamed Yosemite Entertainment, and continued under that name until closing in early 1999.

[24] The company was now made up of five separate and largely autonomous development divisions: Sierra Publishing, Sierra Northwest, Dynamix, Bright Star Technology, and Coktel Vision, with each group working separately on product development but sharing manufacturing, distribution, and sales resources.

[27] In February 1996, early e-commerce pioneer CUC International, seeking to expand into interactive entertainment, offered to buy Sierra at a price of about $1.5 billion.

Forbes had posited the idea to Ken that this would be the start of a large company eventually to bring in LucasArts Entertainment, Broderbund, and Davidson & Associates (which at the time owned Blizzard Entertainment) under one entity and be a major publisher in the video game industry, as a great boon to the Williams and to Sierra's shareholders.

[31] After this, Ken Williams shifted his focus work on CUC's online product distributor, NetMarket while remaining as CEO of Sierra in name only.

Layoffs continued on March 1, when Sierra terminated 30 employees at the previously unaffected Dynamix, or 15 percent of their workforce.

In early October, the company announced plans to take over management and maintenance of the online RPG The Realm and acquiring the complete yet previously canceled Navy SEALs.

Meanwhile, Sierra announced another reorganization, this time into three business units: Core Games, Casual Entertainment, and Home Productivity.

In August 2001, Sierra announced a major reorganization, which included the closure of Dynamix as well as the layoffs of 148 employees located at the company headquarters in Bellevue.

The rest of the properties, including the Sierra Online division, were deemed by the company to be "non-strategic" with its then-current business practices.

"[63] That day, King's Quest and Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions were announced as the first two games published under the revived Sierra brand.