While I like Jimmy Maher's writing, I would say that he's rather biased in the way he describes those games and it's a matter of opinion.

And there are a lot of great games from Sierra: Conquest of the longbow, the ecoquest serie (aimed at a younger public), Quest of Glory, Leisure Suit Larry (but then I played that as a teenager) and yes I'd say King's Quest 6 & 4.

I wouldn't call him "biased". He has a strong opinion, but it's not based on nothing nor is it a product of some sort of ulterior motive. He has a strong opinion about these games that I agree with.

I had a C64 growing up so I didn't really play any of the Sierra games til I had a PC in college, and I remember feeling really confused about why people liked them so much. They felt unplayable and frustrating to me.

The massive popularity of many of those games proves you wrong by example.

So popularity = good design? That's a weird assertion.

Like I said, they were technological marvels, and I think people bought them because of that. I do wonder how many people who purchased them actually finished them.

Doesn't that also depend on how and why you play them? Back in the day, I couldn't finish any Sierra (or LucasArts) adventures without a walkthrough. I did finish them with a walkthrough, because for me the fun was in seeing how the story would go. They were interactive stories.

If being able to finish the games would be all that important, I would personally have to consider pretty much any arcade game badly designed. I've never been able to finish Super Mario Bros, DOOM, Quake, any of the Ultimas. But I think all of those games are well-designed and, more importantly: fun to play.

And ultimately, I had lots of fun playing Sierra's and LucasArts' adventures. They may not be the pinnacle of game design, but that enjoyment alone makes then good games in my book.

I think the difference between Sierra games and the others you mentioned is that it's possible to finish them without a walkthrough. And really, there's nothing in those games that entirely defies logic. They might be very hard, but they're fair within the rules they lay down, and you can't end up in a situation where the game is unfinishable.

Sierra games have a lot of "dead man walking" scenarios where you end up in a situation where an action you took hours earlier locks you out from finishing the game. They also have lots of instant death scenarios that you can only find by trial and error. Is your last save several hours old? Too bad, you get to play that part again.

Their games also feature a lot of "dream logic" puzzles where you really have no way of figuring out the intended solution short of clicking on everything. The "cat hair mustache puzzle" is a great example of this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_hair_mustache_puzzle. To be fair, that one wasn't created by Roberta Williams, but I think it typifies much of the Sierra design approach.

Again, Jimmy Maher at The Digital Antiquarian has gone into a lot more depth on these issues in Sierra games (and plenty from other companies), comparing them to better designed games from companies like Infocom and others.

Pretty sure all the comments above you are intimating is that there's no such thing as "better designed" without a "to what (specific) goal?". If the goal was enjoyment, then Sierra games were well-loved by lots of people, and like the guy says, that's proof by itself that the design goal was met. You can (and Maher does) argue that there are ways to take frustration out of the experience, or highlight other parts of the experience more (parts that people generally find enjoyable), but that still doesn't allow an authoritative, non-subjective, statement about "better" without some sort of qualifier.

I agree. My comment that the games were poorly designed is clearly very subjective, as are nearly all opinions are better/worse anything.